CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2021
| Author | Metodieva, Atanaska Lyubomirova |
|---|---|
| Title | Foreign Fighter Recruitment as the Continuation of a War |
| Summary | Recruitment of foreign fighters has become essential to the study of Islamist terrorism, especially following the rise of the Islamic State (IS). There is a widely accepted assumption in the literature on European jihadists that the pathways into Islamist militancy are identical across different cases. In an attempt to find universal answers to what motivates recruitment, researchers often de-contextualize the phenomenon of foreign fighters. Consequently, there is a gap left by previous studies on European jihadists that have not paid much attention to indigenous Muslim communities with recent experiences in conflict and with a high contribution of foreign fighters. The thesis focuses on post-war radical milieus in Europe to understand the specific context of foreign fighter recruitment. The research question that guides the dissertation is: “How do post-war radical milieus in Europe shape the recruitment of foreign fighters?” By stressing the significance of local influencers in the recruitment of Bosnian and Albanian foreign fighters, the dissertation investigates the evolution of post-war radical actors, their activities, and their contribution to radical socialization. The dissertation asserts that the radical milieu of foreign fighters is highly influenced by authority figures, and their availability in a local context determines the trajectory of recruitment. Post-war radical milieus shape foreign fighter recruitment by providing influencers with the authority to manage structures and narratives that seek to encourage radical action. According to the framework of the dissertation, unlike radical milieus in Western Europe, post-war radical milieus, still in the European context, emerge as a byproduct of a domestically experienced conflict. Therefore, radical influencers were able to build authority and capitalize on it for the sake of recruitment facilitated by the external conditions of the radical milieu’s emergence. The impact of influencers in post-war radical milieus is possible due to the conducive environment of post-war fragility. The theoretical problem that this dissertation aims to address is whether the recruitment of foreign fighters is leader-led or leaderless. Thus, the dissertation focuses on radical actors and activities to stress the importance of locally managed networks as a venue of socialization. To analyze the role of radical influencers in recruitment, the dissertation employs Discursive Opportunity Structure (DOS), which is a framework situated in social movement theory. This framework allows the combined effects of a context, radical structures, and narratives to be analyzed in relation to foreign fighters. To get insights into the role of radical influencers in managing post-war radical milieus, the dissertation relies on four theoretical propositions concerned with the origin, structures, narratives, and followers of a radical milieu. The dissertation uses case studies and employed a two-stage data collection process, which included extensive desk research of open sources and semi-structured interviews. The dissertation contributes to the literature on foreign fighters by providing insights into social relations, authority, and decision-making processes that concern the departures of foreign fighters to the battlefield. |
| Supervisor | Nick Sitter |
| Department | Public Policy PhD |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2021/metodieva_atanaska.pdf |
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