Iris Beau Segers

• Segers, Iris Beau (2024). "The Anti-Woke Academy": Dutch Far-Right Politics of Knowledge about Gender. Politics & Gender. ISSN 1743-923X. doi: https:/www.cambridge.org/core/journals/politics-and-gender/article/antiwoke-academy-dutch-farright-politics-of-knowledge-about-gender/EF9B687663D068B91D52A623555B9867. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  The Dutch parliamentary far right has been considered a relatively liberal outlier to the gender politics of the European far right, yet recent years have shown the increasing anti-gender mobilization of the party Forum voor Democratie(FvD). Based on a theoretical framework of anti-gender mobilization, the far right, and politics of knowledge, this article explores anti-gender politics as a form of alternative knowledge production through a qualitative content analysis of the FvD’s online presence. Through applying Verloo’s concept of the episteme, this article’s findings show that the FvD mobilizes against epistemic institutions by claiming they disseminate dangerous knowledge about gender, which they argue presents a fundamental threat to society, captured in conspiratorial terms like “transgender ideology” and “woke.” Simultaneously, the party promotes illiberal gender politics through the establishment of alternative epistemic institutions. This article shows how far-right actors may promote anti-gender politics by presenting themselves as “alternative intellectuals” who seek to carve out an epistemic niche alongside the mainstream.

• Segers, Iris Beau; Gelashvili, Tamta & Gagnon, Audrey (2023). Intersectionality and care ethics in researching the far right. Feminist Media Studies. ISSN 1468-0777. doi: 10.1080/14680777.2023.2280884. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Close-up research on the far right comes with inherent challenges related to issues of power, justice, and ethics, which are often gendered and intersect with other axes of inequality, like race, ethnicity, religion, and sexuality, adding complexity to research. We approach these challenges from an ethics of care perspective, reflecting on how researchers can navigate ethical dilemmas related to the inherent relationality of research, contextual and situated decision-making, and emotions. Overall, this essay raises awareness of complex and intersectional dilemmas of care and power when researching far-right actors and distasteful populations in general.

• Segers, Iris Beau (2020). The “Brick and Mortar” of Mobilization? Storytelling and Materiality in Anti-Asylum Seeker Center Protests in the Netherlands. Contention: The Multidisciplinary Journal of Social Protest. ISSN 2572-7184. doi: 10.3167/cont.2020.080204. Full text in Research Archive
• Segers, Iris Beau (2019). New neighbours or a security threat? The role of local stories in anti-asylum seeker centre mobilization in the Netherlands. International Communication Gazette. ISSN 1748-0485. doi: 10.1177/1748048519883514. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This article addresses the underexplored role of local storytelling in informing mobilization against asylum seeker centres in the Netherlands. In doing so, it summarizes the preliminary results of an in-depth qualitative study of an anti-asylum seeker centre protest movement in the neighbourhood Beverwaard in the city of Rotterdam. Based on 28 interviews with different stakeholders (citizens, local politicians, civil servants and social workers), a story-based thematic qualitative analysis inductively identified three important storylines (identity, voice and materiality) that played a key role in mobilization against the AZC in the local space. This article will discuss two concrete examples of how stories about voice and identity informed mobilization against a local asylum seeker centre based on grievances, as well as political opportunity structures. As such, this article expands currently dominant perspectives on anti-immigration mobilization that largely focus on broader macro factors such as radical right party politics and socio-economic deprivation by drawing attention to the ways in which bottom-up storytelling practices inform processes of anti-asylum seeker centre mobilization.

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• Segers, Iris Beau (2022). Mobilization against Asylum Seekers in Contemporary Urban Spaces - Not in Our Backyard. Routledge. ISBN 9780367765613. Full text in Research Archive

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• Gagnon, Audrey; Gelashvili, Tamta & Segers, Iris Beau (2024). Intersectionality and care ethics in researching the far right. Full text in Research Archive
• Rafstedt, My & Segers, Iris Beau (2024). OK to be gay? Far-right constructions of the nativist homosexual subject. Full text in Research Archive
• Segers, Iris Beau & Eslen-Ziya, Hande (2023). Special Section: Contemporary Forms of Illiberal and Anti-feminist Mobilizations of Gender. Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State and Society. ISSN 1072-4745. 30(1), p. 211–212. doi: 10.1093/sp/jxad003. Full text in Research Archive
• Segers, Iris Beau (2020). ‘Not in my backyard’: A story-based local approach to anti-asylum-seekers’ centre mobilization in the Netherlands. Universitetet i Oslo. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This thesis seeks to explain why certain communities in the Netherlands mobilized against asylum seekers’ centres (‘AZCs’) in the aftermath of the European refugee crisis. It presents a study of one case of protest that occurred in late 2015, in a relatively deprived, multi-ethnic neighbourhood on the outskirts of the city of Rotterdam. The existing literature predominantly focuses on macro-level factors such as material and/or cultural grievances, and institutional and/or discursive political opportunity structures, in explaining anti-immigration attitudes and/or mobilization among European citizens. Although these theories all provide partial answers as to why large numbers of European citizens are increasingly skeptical towards (non-Western) immigration, they fail to explain why only some communities actively mobilize against the establishment of an AZC in their area, whereas most do not. In response to the current limitations of the existing literature, this thesis provides a supplementary explanation that integrates the significance of local storytelling with existing theories. Based on a multimethod, qualitative approach that combines the analysis of interviews, mainstream media and social media, this thesis studies if and how local stories at the community level contributed to anti-AZC mobilization. In doing so, it recognizes that anti-AZC mobilization is inherently a meso-level phenomenon, contrary to dominant mobilization literature that emphasize macro-level mobilization factors. This thesis presents a theoretical model that suggests that macro-level mobilization factors such as grievances and opportunities may apply to local cases of anti-AZC mobilization, but only when these issues become relevant to the community, through local storytelling. Overall, it argues that anti-AZC mobilization at the local level is shaped by interactions between individual perspectives, storytelling, and broader ‘objective’ material, cultural, and political conditions.

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