Dialogue About Radicalisation and Equality - DARE

The DARE (Dialogue about Radicalisation and Equality) project includes 15 partners in 13 countries - Belgium, Croatia, France, Germany, Greece, Malta, Norway, Poland, Russian Federation, The Netherlands, Tunisia, Turkey and the UK - and will run for four years. Funded under the EU Horizon 2020 Framework Programme, it investigates young people’s encounters with messages and agents of radicalisation, how they receive and respond to those calls, and how they make choices about the paths they take.

DARE aims to broaden our understanding of radicalisation, demonstrate that it is not located in any one religion or community, and to explore the effects of radicalisation on society. It focuses on people aged between 12 and 30, as they are a key target of recruiters and existing research suggests they may be particularly receptive to radicalism. It approaches young people neither as victims nor perpetrators of radicalisation, but as engaged, reflexive, often passionate social actors who seek information they can trust, as they navigate a world in which calls to radicalisation are numerous. DARE focuses on environments in which radicalisation messages are found, rather than terrorist events or individuals. By observing everyday encounters, researchers are able to study people who hold radical ideas without becoming extremists, and thus help to understand what pushes others across the threshold into violence. Perhaps most importantly, this social approach allows the researchers to map and understand the everyday strategies already used to challenge radicalisation, and to recognise the potential for people to influence their peers positively

Through sustained engagement in the lives of young people navigating personal and collective uncertainty and insecurity, DARE aims to critically review existing, and generate high quality new, empirical data that will raise the bar in radicalisation studies and significantly improve our understanding of the scope, origins, causes and psychological, emotional and social dynamics of radicalisation. The research is directly linked to policy and practice objectives. Stakeholders from different countries are involved through various committees and among the project’s planned outputs are educational toolkits for use with young people in formal and informal educational settings, and a toolkit for evaluating existing de-radicalisation programmes.