The first chapter provided the theoretical foundations needed in order to understand and interpret the expected French discourses on the Freedom of Movement within the EU. The French attitude was explained by describing the combination of protectionism and nationalism into mercantilism, the rise of the Gaullist debate during the referendum campaign on the EU constitution was mentioned as well as the notion of National Identity. Furthermore, the idea and structure of one strong European Union was laid out. Attitudes of public opinion are of critical importance in the development of European Integration, so in that regard it is necessary to understand the processes of shaping those attitudes. With this in mind, we first need to measure public opinion to be able to shape it later on. With the theoretical explanations collected by Mathew Gabel (1998) I was able to find a basis to predict compliance of identified discourses with EU integration. Then I elaborated on the Schengen agreement, how it came to be and what the position was and is of the French. Thirdly, I focused on the discussion of the 21st century’s crisis we have and are enduring. As the crisis of Migration and extremist-Islamic terrorism are highly politicized, Europe recognizes a strong rise of Populist Radical Right parties. The French Front National thrives on focusing events like terrorist attacks or the politicization of migrants stealing French jobs. This infuses fear and misinterpretation of actual facts. Therefore, I reminded readers of the differences between refugees, displaces people and (economic) migrants. The theoretical chapter was wrapped up by the idea of Emmanuel Macron being EU’s opportunity to win over the French support again.
In Chapter two I elaborated on the essential knowledge about Q-Methodology and the fact that it appropriately fits the main goal of this research: understanding why the people think what they think. It is important to notice that the results of Q are only to be generalized to the P-set of this study. Q studies the subjectivities surrounding a topic; it identifies the discourses that are operant at a certain moment.
In the third chapter I elaborated on the interpretation of the four factors identified. With the use of PQ-Analysis software, I identified four discourses. This enables me to answer my first leading question of this research:
Reflecting on the French citizens, what discourse(s) can be identified concerning The Freedom of Movement within the European Union?
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Accordingly four Discourses were identified:
1. The Safety & Security Discourse: pro-Freedom of Movement but concerned with the issues of security.
2. The Anti-Capitalist Discourse: the EU and its Freedom of Movement is too much based on the liberal school of thought, meaning the flow of capital, and should give more attention to social policies concerning the migrants and refugees.
3. The French Nationalist Discourse: this EU-sceptical discourse is very much in line with the PRR party values and desires to restore the national borders.
4. The French Patriots’ Discourse: a pro-Freedom of Movement discourse, but which still is also somewhat reluctant towards European Integration. Respondents within this discourse do not like the fact of giving away national-sovereignty.
Within the fourth chapter I mirrored the identified discourses to the expectations of the theoretical foundations enabling me to answer the other leading questions of the research:
To what extent are these discourses related to the issues of extremist-Islamic terrorism and the growing migration-flux; and are there any important gaps or differences identified within the opinion of the French population?
It seems that the ‘pro’ ‘contra’ dichotomy regarding the debate on Europe is too simplistic. People are not simply in favour or against the idea of a Federal state, or an intergovernmental cooperation, the feeling is relative to different issues. These issues may concern the financial flows, social policies, citizen participation or security measures in Europe. All of these factors have influence on the intensity of (not/partly) supporting the EU and its Freedom of Movement. In this particular research, the expression of concerns with terrorism and migration is confirmed to be very present.
As summed above, one of the discourses is very much in line with the PRR party values, therefore very nationalistic. Nonetheless, I am inclined to state that overall Mr. Messerlin’s hope for a more open attitude and an increased positive position of France towards the outside world is on a good path to become reality. While the three other identified discourses may disagree on specific issues with the EU, they are still open to, or even see a duty for the European Union to resolve these issues. Besides the fact that the French valued their trust in Macron in May 2018 with 41%, Macron
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himself expressed not being discouraged and working very hard to put France on the map again as an important world-power. Despite Macron’s fallen popularity, opinion polls indicate that the majority of voters backed strikes against the reforms, but an even bigger majority is supporting the reforms (Reuters, 2018).
The most important advancement and addition to academic literature this research proposes it the rejection of the ‘pro’-‘contra’ dichotomy regarding the debate on Europe and its Freedom of Movement. The debate is mostly related to the issues of security, safety, the intensity of politicization and framing. The latter all influence public opinion but do not give us the power to precisely predict any of the resulting opinions as experienced in this research. I would assign the biggest restriction of this research to the fact that all respondents were mainly based in the South- West of France. I am very conscious of this matter with regards to the generalization of my results. I am very curious to see, and would be interested in the conduction of this same research but with an adaption of the geo-location in order to reach respondents in other parts of France.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my supervisors Prof. dr. B. Steunenberg and Miss E.G. Kortenska for the opportunity to conduct this research and their trust in me. Also my fellow Capstone colleagues, Bart Bussink and Lenart Sluis, with whom I have shared the struggles of this research process and shared our intellectual knowledge.
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