Envisaging ‘Solidarity’ in Political Argumentation: Debating the Future in the European Parliament After the Brexit Referendum

We study references to ‘solidarity’ in international political debate in the context of the European Union. Our case in focus is a floor debate in the European Parliament concerning a white paper by the European Commission on the future of the EU. The paper was draft in the aftermath of and in response to the shattering Brexit referendum in Britain in June 2016 and it was released in March 2017. In our data, the President of the Commission is visiting the Parliament and introducing the paper to it on the day of its publication, to have it discussed and debated there first hand amongst the Members of European Parliament. Much of the talk makes sense of the situation in the frame of a ‘crisis in solidarity’. This is, however, not the only way to deploy the concept in the argumentation. Political actors make use of the principle and the metaphorical associations it carries for different political purposes. In this paper our aim is to explicate the strategic use of the word solidarity in conflictual political debate. The heuristic valence of the word seems to be self-evidently positive and worth supporting for amongst all the discussants, which evidences the persuasive applicability and strength of the concept as a rhetorical tool. Yet, it turns out that on the level of discursive formulations, solidarity is also very flexible. It can be signified and, indeed, populated very differently by different actors. One of the arguments we want to make is that cultural values or imageries, even when they are widely appreciated, do not convey readymade scripts to guide social change. Rather they serve as resources local actors can mobilize in motivating most various political claims. Our research takes part in the discussion on the entanglement of ideas, beliefs and interests in governance talk. We highlight the usability of identifications, positionings and normative expectations in political discourse, approaching political justifications from the perspective of discursive institutionalism, epistemic governance and membership categorization analysis. Target session: From Mechanics to Domesticity - Metaphors in International Political thought