Citizens of Nowhere
Europe might appear like a continent pulling itself apart. Ten years of economic and political crises have pitted North versus South, East versus West, citizens versus institutions. And yet, these years have also shown a hidden vitality of Europeans acting across borders, with civil society and social movements showing that alternatives to the status quo already exist.
This book is at once a narrative of the experience of activism and a manifesto for change. Through analysing the ways in which neoliberalism, nationalism and borders intertwine, Marsili and Milanese – co-founders of European Alternatives – argue that we are in the middle of a great global transformation, by which we have all become citizens of nowhere. Ultimately, they argue that only by organising in a new transnational political party will the citizens of nowhere be able to struggle effectively for the utopian agency to transform the world.
Lorenzo Marsili is the cofounder of the transnational NGO European Alternatives and, with Yanis Varoufakis, was one of the initiators of the pan-European movement DiEM25. He has written for publications including El Diario and Il Fatto Quotidiano, and has appeared as a commentator on the BBC and Al Jazeera. He is also a founding editor of the independent quarterly journal Naked Punch Review.
Niccolo Milanese is a poet and a philosopher. He has been involved in the founding of numerous political and cultural organisations, magazines and initiatives on several sides of the Mediterranean, and in campaigning for a more influential and radical civil society voice within the EU institutions.