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In recent decades, the administrative and competitive structures of men's elite club football in Europe have undergone a profound transformation toward Europeanization. As a result, football fans are increasingly exposed to European influences. These dynamics shape fans' perceptions of and orientations toward Europe and contribute to constructions of collective identities. Because football is a highly mediatized sport, fans' exposure to European influences and their constructions of identity are highly dependent on the representation of Europe in football media. To analyze this, we conducted a quantitative analysis of text-based online news media. Using selected German media outlets, we examined the extent and the patterned variation of media representation of Europe in football news articles. Our results indicate a highly selective media environment focused on a limited set of countries with high sporting relevance and a presence of German national-team players, while other countries rarely enter the media discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The security of Europe’s gas supply has been the subject of much debate. The focus, however, is often on technical or economical considerations. This article is the first to provide a comprehensive overview and analysis of legislative aspects of the security of gas supply to Europe. It uses the three core components of energy security – availability, reliability and affordability – as a tool to shed light on the historical development of gas security legislation in Europe. Starting with the late 1960s, the article distinguishes three broad phases of legislative activities over the last several decades, namely an early phase, a consolidation phase and a third phase of increasing Europeanisation and oversight. The article concludes with some recommendations, amongst them an increased focus of future legislative activities in the field on affordability of the gas supply for all European consumers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article combines postcolonial and feminist geography approaches to make sense of refugees' everyday lives in Europe. The article weaves 'global' accounts on migration and 'local' negotiations of inclusion and exclusion into one story: how young refugees, within urban spaces of arrival, challenge and reformulate European orders of belonging and citizenship. Departing from works that conceptualise arrival within the urban fabric, it suggests a postcolonial lens to young refugees' intimate and embodied processes of emplacement. My explorations are based on field research conducted in the East German city of Leipzig. This local urban context provides unique insights into how migration-related phenomena are negotiated in a very particular European region in which postsocialist and postcolonial histories of migration intersect. Based on qualitative interviews and ethnographic observations, the article interprets the young peoples' articulations as ways of 'speaking back' to and countering the violent and hierarchical segmentation of the (post)colonial world. In creating alternative spaces of belonging, citizenship and encounter, they decentre Europe from below. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present the findings of a quali-quantitative study of public opinion concerning Europeanization on social media platforms in Italy during the Covid-19 pandemics. The study aims to investigate which narratives about Europe are published on Italian digital platform. The research is based on a content and discourse analysis of the 720 most impactful posts published by different actors on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, between September and November, 2021. In order to assess the state of online discussions bearing the highest level of engagement during the pandemics, we took into account the actors responsible for the posts, the narratives surrounding the most relevant European issues (based on EuroBarometer polls), and the sentiment towards Europe. Our quantitative results show that professionally-produced content is more dominant, and the main topics on the social media agenda are Health and Economy, in particular related to health measures and the social and economic restrictions imposed by the Italian government on citizens. Our qualitative results show that Europeanization constituted a leverage for populism in news and contents on Italian social media platforms. The positioning towards Europe is fluid and ambivalent (encompassing both positive and negative sentiment) in populist rhetoric, and Europeanization is manipulated for national purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recents studies suggest the existence of a European Public Sphere, especially in the face of events of significant importance. In the scope of the Covid-19 crisis, this paper aims to study the platformization of the discussion on European topics by political agents such as politicians and political parties. Focusing on four Southern European countries - Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain - that have a common past history in their relationships with Europe (PIGS), we analyze political agents' posts with the highest reach. The study was conducted on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube over a period of three months, between September and November 2021. Regarding the platformization and the success of communication strategies, overall right-wing politicians tend to be more effective in capturing the attention and mobilising the participation of social media users on Facebook and Twitter. Different political groups stand out in the discussion of different European issues on different platforms. However, for most countries, the Economy, related to Europe, was the main subject with the highest reach addressed by the political actors, thus reinforcing the idea of Structural Europeanization. However, with most posts having a national scope, this does not contribute to strengthening the construction of a European Identity (Normative Europeanization). These findings are aligned with previous literature regarding European issues being first and foremost used as leverage for national political struggles, especially due to national and populist movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

My article, from the perspective of critical Europeanization studies, argues to consider a postmigratory approach for revisiting not only the 'nation' but also 'Europe' – as being similarly constituted by long-term colonial and postcolonial migration movements, as well as by Afropean entanglements across a Black Mediterranean. Therefore, migrancy is not only the product but also the producer of a shifting figuration called Europe. Hence, as much as that of the nation, the concept of and the perspective on Europe needs to be 'migrantized'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Soziologische Revue is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper explores citizenship policies in Europe with the aim of testing the salience of the ethnic–civic binary distinction. The paper starts with an overview of the existing typologies of citizenship regimes, with a special emphasis on the civic–ethnic dichotomy. After a brief assessment of different types of selective acquisition policies in the EU, the paper discusses the emerging normative legal framework of citizenship attribution in Europe. The paper shows that the Europeanization of citizenship acquisition norms legitimizes, if not encourages, selectivity in the case of non-resident ethnic kin populations. It is also argued that due to the ambiguous international legal coding, preferential naturalization allows ethnonationalist governments to strengthen the symbolic claims of the titular national groups over the state. But quite paradoxically, these ethnically framed policies in practice often open up the possibility of the facilitated naturalization for individuals who can hardly be considered 'co-ethnics' in the thick sociocultural sense of the word. Therefore, ethnonationalist political projects that emphasize the importance the 'right of blood' may lead to the naturalization of individuals who have very weak cultural or linguistic ties to their putative 'homelands'. Thus, ethnically framed citizenship policies may water down ethnic homogeneity rather than strengthening it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The evolution of EU rural development policies and imaginaries have entailed that rural areas in Europe and their residents have been assigned specific roles concerning local responsibility and identities when it comes to attaining positive territorial development. The paper approaches the rationality of rural development as community-led through a lens of Governmentality and Europeanisation to explore how the local alignment of actions and government rationalities are linked. The presented research outlines rural development discourse first in EU rural policy and then at the local level through an analysis of text data published by a local development association. The paper traces the linkage between the two institutional levels and establishes how the success of rural development is not only to constitute issues and themes in a particular form but also to have these embedded locally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The process of "Europeanization of Romania" is, in fact, the process of its modernization, because we have been European since the beginning of our history. We consider three moments to be defining in this sense: Romanization from the beginning of our era, contact with revolutionary ideas from the middle of the 19th century and the contemporary period. From the beginning until today, Europe as a model of civilization has benefited from a multitude of images in the Romanian collective mind. A few, positive and negative, we try to decipher on this occasion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study casts light on two online learning initiatives funded by the European Commission, and queries their role as policy actors in the long-term project of a "borderless" European Education Area and/or in the remediation of the so-called "refugee crisis." Particularly, the study aims to contribute to existing research on the policy enactment of European education spaces, while also addressing their implicated times. Social topology has guided a theoretical-conceptual focus on bordering practices, socio-technological architectures, and user interfaces, and their enactment of forms of Europe. This informed the methodology to center around active navigations on user interfaces of these online learning initiatives, based on the argument that these concretize bordering practices and forms of spaces-times. The findings, presented as re-constructions of the active navigations, stress multiple possibilities EC-funded online learning initiatives to evolve, including shifting responsibilities and differentiated learning trajectories. By highlighting these possibilities, the study aims to interpose the relatively short development of digitalization in (European) education, in which digital technologies have been positioned as "flexible" solutions in times of crisis. The study thereby stirs up discussions on how European online learning initiatives could integrate long-term visions with crisis remediations and, accordingly, could support continuously renewable educational spaces-times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Union's common public sphere project dates back to the 1960s and relies on Europeanisation through the gradual eradication of communication boundaries between its member countries. However, it is evident by now that Europeanisation of national public spheres is hard to achieve by increasing overlaps between national public spheres, synchronisation of news reporting across national boundaries, or diffusion of Europeanist norms into national politics. The European Union's common public sphere project may hence be in danger. This calls for explorations of other imaginable models of the public sphere for Europe. Are there traces of other modes of transnational public sphere emerging in Europe? In this article, we explore a models of the transnational public sphere which is based on an alternative concept of Europeanisation derived from the cleavage theory. By drawing on social media data and employing tools of social network analysis, we demonstrate the empirical possibility of a cleavage model of the European public sphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates whether European reference frames – the rating of living conditions in other countries – affect the prevalence of xenophobia among respondents in different European countries. For justifying such assumption, the author builds on two literatures: a large body of literature investigates the effect of individual and collective relative deprivation on xenophobia. Moreover, studies in the field of European sociology show that, in light of deepening European integration, people compare living conditions in different European countries. The author argues that such European reference frames matter for the development of stereotyped categorization processes and thus xenophobia. Based on original survey data, the author shows that country comparisons matter at least indirectly and he points at apparently important country differences, indicating the salience of the respective countries in public debates and warranting further research. With these insights, this article offers an important contribution to research on xenophobia as well as to European sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides some relevant insights about the dynamics of the European politics of history and memory against the background of the third wave of European integration, which is the so called “cultural Europeanization.” These dynamics, originated in Western European both cultural turn of the 1970s and memory boom of the 1980s, is inscribed in the complex geopolitical landscape configured after the end of Cold War, within the context of European enlargement and the struggles for recognition of the “new Europe”. The competition of “Europe’s Europes” memorial narratives about the “painful pasts” of West and East, which is also a competition between two mnemonic paradigms (cosmopolitan vs. national(ist)-antagonist), is followed against the background of both the transnational turn in memory studies and memory politics and the re-nationalization of European politics and ideologies, tightly connected to the post–Cold War developments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the relationships between the universal and the particular in high medieval Europe. It notes the enduring appeal of views of the period as being marked by an increasingly unified 'European' culture and explains their modern salience. It observes the parallel phenomena of division and plurality in the period and the prominence of themes of conflict and fragmentation in the following centuries. The purpose of the article is to re-examine the relationship between these seemingly contradictory forms and developments. Its aim is to illuminate and explain the strengthening elements of division and disunity discernible in Europe between the eleventh and the fourteenth centuries in terms of the new, over-arching cultural unities which characterise the same high medieval period. Taking as its basis the model of 'Europeanisation' developed by Robert Bartlett, it complicates his picture of advancing homogenisation by demonstrating the ways in which new, encompassing, integrative cultural forms promoted dis-integration and encouraged the articulation and reproduction of difference. The processes of change through which high medieval unities were created were themselves divisive, while strengthened institutions, particularly the Church and papacy, fostered division and provided fora within which contending claims could be negotiated. New, widely disseminated media allowed difference to be more sharply articulated. The cosmopolitan elements in high medieval European culture, the article contends, bore within them the seed of the particular(istic), which ripened together with those same universalising currents. This dialectic of unity and plurality sheds a fresh light on the transition from the central to the later Middle Ages in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Europeanization of higher education has gained considerable scope and momentum over the past quarter century. Whereas the coordinative Bologna process, with soft governance mechanisms, has facilitated standardization across countries, European Commission funding programs target universities more directly. The Erasmus Mundus Joint Degree Programme, as an incentive-based program, epitomizes the dynamics of such European funding management. Notably, it has established expanding university networks across Europe and unique new tertiary degrees that facilitate international student mobility. Applying social network analysis to 561 participating universities through several program cycles, we longitudinally examine three key patterns in the program's development: the expansion of the program, the consolidation of pan-European networks, and the participation of and coordination by central universities in these Europeanization processes. Program participation increased considerably across cycles, even as established networks were consolidated, largely through re-accreditation of established programs. Moreover, we identify those universities that assume a central position in the inter-organizational structure of this international program. These universities actively facilitate the evolving Europeanization of higher education by strengthening inter-university networks via a signature EU program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To what extent, among progressive social movements, has critical Europeanism ceded terrain to Euroscepticism, including within this alter-European vision, is a central question this article seeks to address. After summarizing the theoretical debate on Europeanization and social movements (part 2), the article looks at three main sets of frames. As far as the diagnostic framing is concerned, in comparison with the period of the ESF, the critiques of the existing European politics and policies became even more acute (part 3). Looking at the prognostic framing, part 4 of this article points however to the lack of a generalized request for a return to the nation states, with rather the search for an alternative formula. Even if the closing down of political opportunities is reflected in the diagnostic frames, the prognostic frames single out the solutions in the transformation of European institutions, rather than in their demise. At the motivational level, addressed in part 5 of this article, the progressive social movements still see themselves as main engine of these transformations, even if acknowledging the difficulties in transnational mobilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Michael Billig's seminal work 'Banal nationalism' described how everyday practice and habits reinforce national identity. Football fans provide a fertile ground for an application of this concept. The community among supporters of the same team is constitutional for football. 20 years after his book, the Europeanisation of football structures could have caused banal national identifications to expand to the European level, contributing to a 'banal Europeanism'. In contrast to the crises of political Europe, football could provide fans with an everyday practice of Europe. This might change the understanding of in- and out-groups among supporters and beyond. The article discusses 'banal nationalism' in the arena of European club football. It elaborates in how far 'banal' football fandom related practice is related to the European level. The leading question of the article is How does football create an arena for 'banal Europeanism' among football fans? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article draws on data from six European countries (Denmark, England, Germany, Ireland, Poland and Spain) to explore the higher education timescapes inhabited by students. Despite arguments that degree-level study has become increasingly similar across Europe – because of global pressures and also specific initiatives such as the Bologna Process and the creation of a European Higher Education Area – it shows how such timescapes differed in important ways, largely by nation. These differences are then explained in terms of: the distinctive traditions of higher education still evident across the continent; the particular mechanisms through which degrees are funded; and the nature of recent national-level policy activity. The analysis thus speaks to debates about Europeanisation, as well as how we theorise the relationship between time and place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article demonstrates how food contributed to the Europeanisation of British culture between 1960 and 1975, the period leading up to the 1975 Referendum on membership of the European Community. The analysis identifies the meanings and values associated with Europe in cooking columns in two British broadsheet newspapers, TheTimes and the Observer, and examines how people were encouraged to make identifications with Europe. However, the article demonstrates how the meanings associated with Europe were not monolithic and were inflected by class and gender. In particular, continental culinary practices were associated with the tastes and dispositions of emergent new middle-class formations. More generally, the analysis demonstrates how these representations of European food offered middle-class people ways to experiment with feeling European in their everyday lives. In a Brexit context in which much research has asked why British people rejected Europe, the article seeks to contribute to a parallel history of how so many other British people came to identify as European through engagements with popular culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last 50 years, British holidaymakers have chosen Europe as their main holiday destination. Inclusive tours often constituted the gateway to travelling abroad for the first time. The article focuses on the rise of package tours to Spain in the 1970s and 1980s, which has become British holidaymaker's favourite holiday destination abroad. By concentrating on holiday practices, it argues that individual experiences by package tourists should be taken seriously as they highlight differences to domestic holiday patterns. It further argues that package tourists increasingly engaged with the European holiday destination. Thus, the Europeanisation of British holiday culture was significant in two respects. Firstly, British holiday culture as a whole changed because of the increase in holidays abroad, and secondly, vacations in Europe often led to an increased interest in and engagement with the European destination via consumer goods and sights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In current debates on precarization in Europe, a transnational and more class-based perspective is demanded. While fully supporting this request, this article nevertheless notices that, often, when it comes to the economic logic of current Europeanization, scholars have only taken a one-sided look at financial capital and financialization. What is needed is a deeper conceptual understanding of European labour and production processes and how their transnational organization is interwoven with both the European integration project and rising precarization. In an inter-disciplinary approach, combining critical political economy, economic and social geography, and the sociology of work and industry, this article seeks to tackle the problem and develops three main arguments. The first is that, long before the 2008ff. crisis, a mode of Europeanization as multi-scalar competitive integration developed, one that, basically, takes socio-spatial unevenness as a competitive advantage. The second argument is that the backbone of this competitive Europeanization mode is a transnationalized European regime of fragmented and flexible production. This regime particularizes labour and labour processes on all social scales, within and beyond nation-states, by putting them in a competitive relation to each other. The third argument is that due to permanent transnational restructuring and technological (digital) modernization, no stable socio-spatial division of labour within and among the European countries arises. Instead, permanently changing forms of labour's social polarization occur, a finding that questions classic ideas of social development through economic and technological modernization. Precarization, defined as the detachment of dependent labour working conditions from the means of integrative social participation, hereby describes a specific concentration of a nevertheless wider structural uncertainty that is inherent to both the mode of European integration and the regime of European production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Complex political, economic, natural and social events shaping the migration phenomenon in all Europe and abroad. Besides, globalisation and Europeanization have resulted in a significant increase in migration flows. Thus, migration become a complex and multi-criteria phenomena with different meanings and estimation methods according to different research objectives. These particularities create an additional pressure on policymakers' shoulders who need a better understanding of the variation of time-series database. Although, have been developed several databases and indices, at the time being there are difficulties regarding the measuring and conceptualization of migration, particularly the return migration within and cross-national framework. This paper discusses these challenges and the methodological limits on migration policy indexes for comparative analysis and learning lessons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Structural heterogeneity is probably the most important category of dependency theory to characterize the "development of underdevelopment" in the Global South. Should it therefore be a provocation to speak of structural heterogeneity in Europe? No, this article argues, because with reference to Osvaldo Sunkel, Fred Scholz and Neil Brenner among others, the political-economic logic of transnational economic integration based on socio-spatial fragmentation now also encompasses the Global North; or more specifically: the structural logic of economic transnationalisation and sociospatial fragmentation constitutes the core dynamics of European integration. So, the critical development debates of the 1970s should be rediscovered as pioneering concepts and updated in terms of spatial theory in the sense of a local solidarity perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper offers new insights into the Europeanisation of adult education, as an area of intervention and a component of the European education policy and sector, by tracing routes and processes that underpinned this pathway. The analysis provides some original findings, by pointing to four moments (thematisation; lifelong learning dimension; European agenda; political centrality/absence of policies; a new opportunity?) and two trends: on the one hand, one points out the creation of a European Education Area which has regulatory processes and instruments typical of a market; on the other hand, it is against this backdrop the European Agenda for Adult Learning set out action lines around quality and participation. The 2015 mid-term review states it is unlikely that pursuing the political choices made thus far will lead to the achievement of such a goal. Some recent developments, New skills agenda for Europe or Upskilling pathways: new opportunities for adults, may become associated with significant steps to stronger commitment and sustainable policies to increase adult participation in education or, in contrast, and underlining one of the main arguments here advanced, with the continuity of the dual condition of political centrality and fragility of Adult Education, which goes back a long way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the idea of Europe in the Ukrainian national imaginary and its correlates in the mental patterns of contemporary Ukrainians. The conceptual tension exists between the imaginary "Us" (an affirmative "Ukraine is Europe") and the real "Us" embedded in Soviet practices and mental attitudes. The main actors articulating the concept of Europe are distinguished: political elites / "officials"; cultural elites / "intellectuals"; civil society / "activists"; and lay citizens / "electorate". It is proved that for most Ukrainians Europe is not a value-in-itself; it is an empty signifier with variable content defined by divergent agendas. For Ukrainian politicians, declarative European integration is a geopolitical tool aimed at obtaining prestige/recognition and a protective umbrella from Russia, with few repercussions on domestic policies. For cultural elites, "Europe" stands as a common cultural heritage, a soil breeding searches for national identity. Immanent Europeanness of the Ukrainian culture is proclaimed in the "frontstage" discourse, while in the "backstage" discourse, the lack of (self)recognition manifests itself through the symptom of being "more European than Europe". Attempts "to acquire ourselves via Europe" are complemented with the desire "to rescue Europe via acquiring ourselves". For citizens, "Europe" is a pathway to prosperity ("to build Europe at home"); yet, the content remains vague. A political struggle unfolds between the stakeholders of the captured state and public activists for the cornerstone ideas and principles, as well as for the trust of lay citizens as a political resource. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cultural borders play a significant part in modern European history as well as in the present. This Focus has been chosen in order to enhance reflections on the transcendence of cultural borders; how the crossing is conducted, why we want to move beyond cultural borders, and what actually lies beyond them. The individual articles investigate ways to transcend borders, primarily those of the European nation state, in different genres from the nineteenth century onward. This editorial article introduces the theme of thinking beyond borders and presents the contributions to this Focus. It attempts to situate the issue of Europe´s cultural borders within European history by delving into three relevant themes: the cultural construction of borders, the growing number of recognized nationalities, and the practices of Europeanization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With democracy declining and becoming sporadically illiberal and populist in Europe and elsewhere, the questions of democratic transformation gain new resonance and topicality. Within the European Union and its neighbourhoods, the results of long-pursued Europeanisation are being reconsidered against the new criteria of democratic transition resilience, as well as against the new realities of emerging de-democratisation and de-Europeanisation undercurrents - and the re-emerging split of Europe. The thirtieth anniversary of the Central and Eastern European countries' democratic transition and 'return to EUrope' provides a good opportunity to reassess successes and shortcomings of their transformation trajectories. Rather than engaging in a metrical exercise of measuring the quality of democracy in each EU member state, this article approaches the puzzle of East-Central European states' transition resilience from an interdisciplinary law and politics perspective on the respective countries' transition to EU 'member-statehood' and 'neighbour-statehood' as distinct types of statehood. In so doing, it develops an account of European Union 'member state-building' and 'neighbour state-building' as an inherent part of the respective countries' simultaneous transformation, European integration, and state-building agendas. Drawing on the democratisation, Europeanisation and state-building literatures, as well as a wealth of primary sources, this article bridges the discussion of the differentiated EU-induced and EU-centric transition trajectories of candidate and non-candidate countries in light of them becoming successfully, or less so, 'ideal' EU members or neighbours, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The coalition government that resulted from the 2010 general election represents a new scenario in the British political marketplace with implications for political marketing theory and practice. The modelling of political marketing in the UK has evolved in relatively stable market conditions in which majority governments are elected; the market restructure arising from the 2010 election outcome offers an opportunity for a revised understanding of the field. Political science has established an important and dynamic body of knowledge that explains the founding and operation of coalitions. A comparative appraisal of coalition government and commercial cooperative arrangements indicates some commonalities. Western European elections are characterised by multiple actors, regional preferences, smaller parties, cooperative distribution of power, and assumed negotiability of the offer. As the British political marketplace evolves to exhibit similar characteristics, insights from these markets are used to contribute to the more multifaceted, cooperative models of political marketing management required for the UK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay reviews five different ways in which commentators have described what Hollywood does in remaking European films which audiences frequently regard as having a uniquely intimate connection with their European subjects: Hollywoodizing, Americanizing, Europeanizing, appropriating, and reframing them. After considering the relations among these terms, the problems raised by each of them, and their respective limitations, it proposes a sixth term, scripting, which it argues is less parochial, invidious, or value-laden than any of the others, and more likely to invite further productive dialogue on the subject of remakes that cross cultural borders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In their introduction to this special issue, the editors mentioned that the commodification of labour is one important feature of capitalism. Hence, the reaction of the principal organizations that represent and defend labour needed to be explored. This article focuses on Belgian and German trade unions' apprehensions of European integration during the 1970s and sheds lights on two major findings. First, trade unions' perceptions of European integration were very clearly influenced by the condition and the evolution of capitalism. National trade unions observed that the transformations of capitalism could not be adequately addressed by national polities and industrial relations structures. Hence, trade unions heavily insisted on the necessity of political and trade unionist European cooperation. The latter is considered a necessary intermediary to allow labour to counterbalance the new forms of capital and to regain the influence it lost nationally. The second finding is that there existed a huge paradox between this enduring rhetoric of the necessity of European integration and the willingness of trade unions to give up some of their national prerogatives. The evolving forms of capitalism made it imperative to cooperate more at the supranational level but trade unions remained very much reluctant national institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines political discourse in Slovakia, particularly the representations of and ideas about refugees and the relevant topics employed in political, explanations and representations of refugees constructed and employed within political argumentation. The text reveals the main discursive legitimation strategies present in the political framing of refugees, resulting in the non-acceptance of non-Christian refugees. Among these, positive us- and negative other-representation, together with denial, moral evaluation, and discursively declared risk based on religion, prove to be the main ones employed for symbolic and physical boundary construction. In this case, the dividing line between “Slovaks” and “others” has been formed around cultural (religious) adaptability, consequently connected to (un)deservingness of solidarity. Different topics are employed before and after adoption of the European Union refugee redistribution system. Economic interests, border protection, and organized crime are applied as main themes of legitimation strategies in the pre-quota period, while cultural interest, identity protection, and terrorism are employed in the post-quota period. They function as a background for argumentation, knowledge production, political decision-making and wider identity-building and national self-determination processes. In the wider context of globalization and Europeanization trends, Christianity becomes an iconic response to global changes and it is used as a mobilizing tool for invoking nationalist and anti-European Union sentiment. Moreover, as the political strategies and responses employed in other Central and Eastern European countries are similar, the Slovak case might be applied more generally and, thus, provide a deeper understanding of the political responses and state-building processes of other countries in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focusing on three of the Central and Eastern European countries - Poland, Czech Republic, and Hungary - the paper investigates the evolution of spatial planning systems and the introduction of strategic planning practices from the beginning of the post-communist transition in the early 1990s to the present. It sheds new light on this issue by applying the conceptual lens of historical institutionalism to explain this process and elucidate the role of the accession to the European Union (EU) as a catalyst for change. In particular, the paper identifies and analyses the critical junctures at which path dependencies emerged and later constrained the capacity of the regional and local actors to adjust to the EU Cohesion Policy framework and engage in strategic planning as part of it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The collapse of Real Socialism ushered in the unification of two Europes. United Europe as a new political entity without a previous history which has formally denounced colonialism and anti-Semitism, it somehow deserves a clean slate and the right to shift ownership of its colonial histories to former colonial subjects and their national histories. On the one hand, East Europeans denounce any role in the Europe's colonial history, on the other hand, neoliberalism figures today as Europe's internal neocolonialism. In the case of the Balkans, the neoliberal normalization of the unruly Balkans failed both at the periphery and at the center. Today's economic nationalists are now euro-autocrats and the most vocal proponents of fiscal conservativism, austerity, the Protestant work-ethic and the ultimate “Europeanization.” This special issue of the neoliberal Balkans interrogates a neocolonial reconfiguration of the entire region as a massive social overhaul, which includes at once global integration and local social disintegration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public administration (PA) as a discipline and public governance as a closely related concept have been developing constantly and rather rapidly in recent years. A particularly lively progress is characteristic of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), owing to its post-communist legacy and subsequent transition. This paper outlines the mainstream topics of PA development within The NISPAcee Journal, which covers the CEE region and beyond. The principal objective of the paper is to systematically and quantitatively codify a series of text documents that comprises 142 articles published between 2008 and 2016 in The NISPAcee Journal, in order to identify the characteristics of PA development in the region. The paper investigates three hypotheses: first, whether the quality of the articles changed throughout 2008 - 2016; second, whether The NISPAcee Journal attests a multidisciplinary orientation in terms of scientific contributions from different disciplines, and third, whether The NISPAcee Journal reflects the West-East knowledge transfer among PA academia. The three hypotheses were tested against seven analytical dimensions. The research findings reveal that governance is the prevailing cognitive paradigmatic approach of The NISPAcee Journal. Europeanisation is the common thread of almost all articles, with a particular emphasis on the ideological elements of the Neo-Weberian and New Public Management doctrines. Qualitative methodology is still the prevailing research method, and the occurrence of mixed methodology is rare. The topical orientation of the analysed manuscripts is very diverse. A considerable emphasis is placed on the analysis and development of PA as a discipline. The majority of researchers originate from CEE countries and focus their studies on Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and the Caucasus. Scientific partnership between the Eastern and the Western academic worlds is still scarce. Given the low level of exchange of best academic practices between Western and Eastern Europe, research results indicate the need for an increased internationalisation of the NISPAcee Journal and a more holistic approach to tackle the future challenges of global and regional PA and public governance more adequately. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alongside the institutionally constructed European identity, research shows that insights into citizens’ sense of belonging are valuable as well in assessing questions of identity. The tendency to conflate European identity with EU identity has spurred debates about the components that underlie European identification. The online subsidiarity adopted by the EU through e-platforms has allowed for a new form of citizenship where e-citizens (de)legitimate the issues under debate. This article examines the contents of European and national identities in the e-debaters’ comments posted on the Debating Europe platform. Drawing on narrative and discursive approaches, we propose a framework to operationalize the (de)legitimation and identification categories used by e-debaters within their discursive construction of European identity. The qualitative empirical research shows three main (de)legitimation clusters: the “EU as a loss,” “inclusive gain,” and “exclusive gain.” We discuss these findings within the broader context of Europeanization, identity multiplicity, and the conditions of the EU enlargement policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent years have seen the emergence of the European dimension to the territorial planning conducted at lower scales, in a process described as the ‘Europeanization’ of spatial planning. Given that, to date, this phenomenon has received little attention as it affects Spain, this article seeks to analyse the impact of Europeanization on Spanish spatial planning, focused on an examination of its regional territorial plans. The results show that Spain has been no exception in the application of these European directives but, at the same time, its unique administrative organization means that the process of Europeanization remains slow and heterogeneous in its application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using exceptionally rich qualitative data coming from the FP7 EUCROSS project on the ‘Europeanization of the Everyday Life’, this paper focuses on high-skilled and highly transnational Turkish migrants who reside in the UK, Romania and Italy. The article analyses participants’ discursive constructions of Europe and Europeanness and shows how specific images and symbols of Europe and Turkey influence their own relationship to Europe. We argue that understanding Turkish migrants’ identification with Europe requires a comprehensive analysis of the development of a Westernization discourse in Turkey that has framed people’s identities. This discourse symbolizes the desire for being part of the Western world, and especially Western Europe, but, at the same time, the fear of being dominated by the very same world. We show that we need to grasp the values, images, symbols and discourses that underline transnational practices to understand the making of European identity among migrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper contributes to the literature on the Europeanisation of national parliaments by looking at the behavioural dimension of Europeanisation in the Swiss parliament. The authors examine the differences in parliamentary interventions on EU-related issues over time, between types of instruments (agenda-setting versus control) and across parties. Moreover, the authors measure the attention devoted to various policy issues and the tone of parliamentary interventions. Empirically, they analyse with descriptive statistical tools EU-related parliamentary interventions introduced in the Swiss parliament over 30 years (1984–2014). Results show that parliamentary attention to the EU is strongly influenced by the activism of the Swiss People’s Party, a Eurosceptic member of the Swiss governing ‘coalition’. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The 1990s were the years that Europe witnessed very dynamic and also turbulent times. Transition in the Eastern Europe paved the way for reunification of Europe in political, economic and cultural domains. Education, and higher education in particular, has been perceived as one of the most suitable means for creating a common European identity. Cooperation among European universities has long been promoted as a part of the European cultural project to develop the understanding of a European identity among the young generations. Bologna Process is the outcome of this political will declared in 1999 and aimed at creating a common European Higher Education Area and European Research Area. There have been significant changes in higher education systems of the member countries since then. Yet, after nearly two decades from its launch, the process is being questioned by many and higher education community deeply divided over the philosophy of Bologna. Turkey, as a member of the process since 2001, has also employed Bologna reforms for restructring its higher education system and for accelerating the integration with the Western world. Turkish universities succesfully implemented many of the structural reforms, yet the substance of the regulations and contribution of the process in creating a common European identity among the scholars are questionable. This paper focuses on these issues and reflects the views from the field by presenting findings of a survey carried out with research assitants in a Turkish state university. The survey was carried out in 2017 with the participation of 145 research assitants working in 10 faculties in Suleyman Demirel University. Major findings reveal that research assistants have little information on the process. Most of them think that the primary aim of Bologna process is to create a European identity, yet it is hard to talk about such an identity at the moment. In addition, research assistants do not perceive Turkish higher education and researchers as a part of European higher education area. On the other hand they do not think Bologna process as a threat to national identity. As for the implementation of Bologna process, it is seen as a bureaucratic process increasing the workload of academics which lacks democratic participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the impact of the eurozone crisis on the foreign policy of an EU Member State, Cyprus. Drawing on the literature on Europeanization of national foreign policies, it is argued that Cypriot foreign policy, despite the general frustration caused by the financial crisis within broader society, has actually undergone further Europeanization. We show that leadership is a critical intervening variable in this enhanced Europeanization, as well as pointing to the salience of the explanatory mechanisms of social and instrumental learning. The contribution of the article is twofold. It offers an empirical account of contemporary Cypriot foreign policy and contributes to the discussion of the impact of the Eurozone crisis on national foreign policy. Both, we contend, remain relatively neglected topics in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Protest and social movements are drivers for the Europeanization of national public spheres. This is suggested by the literature on the emergence of Europeanized public spheres and the Europeanization of social movements as well as the discussion about the politicization of the European polity. The article tests this assumption in a standardized content analysis for newspaper reporting on the Eurozone crisis in Greece and Germany. Focusing on the public attribution of responsibility, the analysis looks for horizontal Europeanization (senders/addressees from other EU countries), vertical Europeanization (senders/addressees from the EU level), and discursive Europeanization (similar topics discussed at the same time). The findings do not identify protest as a strong driving force towards vertical or horizontal Europeanization of the public spheres in Greece and Germany. There is a weak tendency towards discussing similar topics at the same time in German and Greek media reports on protest. Consequences for European democracy and crisis politics are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the question of how European integration shaped minority electoral strategies, which constitute the primary form of political mobilization among minorities in Central and Eastern Europe. Comparing six cases in five new member states of the EU – Hungarians in Romania and Slovakia; Russian‐speakers in Estonia and Latvia; Poles and Russian‐speakers in Lithuania – we find that minority voters across the region pool electoral resources behind specific political parties considered most likely to pursue minority interests; regardless of how they began organizing politically in the early 1990s. We identify three aspects of Europeanization with important indirect impact on these developments. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The tension between the right to family reunification as laid down in European Directives and Member States' concern to protect their sovereignty in regulating migration has resulted in growing attention to and concern about fraudulent family relationships (especially marriages of convenience). This contribution addresses the question of what forms of control are permissible from a European law perspective and whether national practices are in conformity with European law and fundamental rights. Looking at these national practices several problems are identified: definitions of 'marriages of convenience' extending beyond what European law allows; systematic checks of certain nationalities/ethnic groups, mixed couples and/or gender may amount to discrimination and the burden of proof seems to be shifting to couples. Comparing control practices for marriages of convenience with those of homosexual asylum seekers, it is argued that human dignity is at stake. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Where some researchers have seen only a limited impact of Europeanisation on national party politics, others have added a separate European Union dimension to the pre-existing economic left-right dimension to model the national political space. This article examines the effects of the European crisis on the national political space across the EU utilising data from the 2014 European Election Survey. It analyses the effect of a country's economic development on the coherence between attitudes towards the EU and economic issues using multilevel regression. Strong evidence is found that in the Southern European debtor states economic and European issues are merging as a result of strong European interference in their economic policy. In the Northern European creditor states a second relevant dimension focuses on cultural issues. These results offer the next step in theorising Europeanisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Migration and border scholars have argued that the Europeanization and securitization of borders and migration have led to forms of population regulation that constitute a questionable divide between EU and non-EU groups, as well as between different non-EU groups. This paper argues that these processes have impacted not only centrifugally, on non-EU populations, but also centripetally, on the 'intra-EU' divide regarding minorities such as Europe's Muslims and Roma. I explain how a de-nationalization of the concepts and methods of migration and border studies-beyond methodological nationalism and Eurocentrism-sheds light on the under-researched impact of the EU's external border regime on minoritized EU citizens. I introduce the notion of 'evictability' to articulate this de-nationalization and discuss the case study of Europe's Romani minority to show how contemporary forms of securitization further divide Europe bio-politically along intra-European lines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]