Description

The 2014 European Parliament elections outcome and the ongoing migrant crisis presented the trend of greater votes for far-right, Eurosceptic parties such as France’s Front National and the UK’s UKIP. What has contributed to their success? Should the EU be worried about this surge in popularity? What can be done to combat this popularity? Join ESSA and our guest speaker Professor Francisco Beltran to analyse the impact of these parties in EU politics.

Francisco Beltran is a Lecturer in Comparative and European Politics at the Department of Political Science and at the Centre for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies, University of Toronto. He is also adjunct faculty at the Open University of Catalonia, Spain, where he teaches political science and political theory. He has been a Visiting Researcher at the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung (WZB), a Visiting Professor at the Munk School for Global Affairs, a Research Fellow at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, a Visiting Researcher at the London School of Economics, and a Lecturer at the Department of Government, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid. He obtained his PhD in Political Science at the UAM, Madrid. His research interests include comparative policies of immigration and integration, political economy of the European welfare states, and political theory of liberalism. He has published a book on “European Social Models” (2009), and several articles and chapters on social policy, multiculturalism, and immigrants’ integration. He is currently working on a book on welfare state models and immigrant integration regimes.