Tiziana Caponio wins ERC grant for groundbreaking research on asylum and far-right politics in rural Europe
We are proud to announce that Tiziana Caponio, Professor of Dynamics and Policies of Migration at the University of Turin and Fellow of the Collegio Carlo Alberto, has been awarded the prestigious ERC advanced grant for her new research project: Mind-the-NEXUS – Theorizing the Drivers of the Asylum-Far Right Nexus in Rural Europe.
ERC advanced grants are prestigious funding awarded to active researchers who have a track-record of significant research achievements.
Caponio’s project Mind-the-NEXUS wants to understand if there is a nexus between the arrival of refugees in rural areas and the electoral success of far-right populist parties across Europe.
Caponio aims to address this gap with the first systematic study of asylum politics in rural areas across five key European countries: France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, and the UK. The project focuses on how local politics unfolds in the face of refugee arrivals, especially in regions already facing reduced public services like schools and hospitals.
By introducing the concept of the Rural Political Arena, the project will explore how local, national, and institutional actors interact to shape asylum and integration policies, while responding to the emergence of far-right politics in local communities. Using a combination of large-scale quantitative analysis, fieldwork in over 60 rural areas, and the first-ever comparative survey of rural political elites, the research will offer fresh insights and a new theoretical framework.
This project promises to open up new directions in the study of migration, rural politics, and far-right movements: topics that are more relevant than ever in today’s Europe.
We congratulate Tiziana Caponio on this huge achievement!
Read the announcement of the University of Turin (in Italian)
