Transnational Europe: Promise, Paradox, Limits (Palgrave Studies in European Union Politics)

Palgrave Studies in European Union Politics Edited by: Michelle Egan, American University, USA, Neill Nugent, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK and William Paterson OBE, University of Aston, UK. Editorial Board: Christopher Hill, Cambridge, UK, Simon Hix, London School of Economics, UK, Mark Pollack, Temple University, USA, Kalypso Nicolaïdis, Oxford, UK, Morten Egeberg, University of Oslo, Norway, Amy Verdun, University of Victoria, Canada, Claudio M. Radaelli, University of Exeter, UK, Frank Schimmelfennig, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Switzerland. Following on the sustained success of the acclaimed European Union Series, which essentially publishes research-based textbooks, Palgrave Studies in European Union Politics publishes cuttingedge, research-driven monographs. The remit of the series is broadly defined, both in terms of subject and academic discipline. All topics of significance concerning the nature and operation of the European Union potentially fall within the scope of the series. The series is multidisciplinary to reflect the growing importance of the EU as a political, economic and social phenomenon . Titles include: Ian Bache and Andrew Jordan (editors) THE EUROPEANIZATION OF BRITISH POLITICS Thierry Balzacq (editor) THE EXTERNAL DIMENSION OF EU JUSTICE AND HOME AFFAIRS Governance, Neighbours, Security Joan DeBardeleben and Achim Hurrelmann (editors) TRANSNATIONAL EUROPE Promise, Paradox, Limits Kenneth Dyson and Angelos Sepos (editors) WHICH EUROPE? The Politics of Differentiated Integration Michelle Egan, Neill Nugent and William E. Paterson (editors) RESEARCH AGENDAS IN EU STUDIES Stalking the Elephant Kevin Featherstone and Dimitris Papadimitriou THE LIMITS OF EUROPEANIZATION Reform Capacity and Policy Conflict in Greece Stefan Gänzle and Allen G. Sens (editors) THE CHANGING POLITICS OF EUROPEAN SECURITY Europe Alone? Eva Gross THE EUROPEANIZATION OF NATIONAL FOREIGN POLICY Continuity and Change in European Crisis Management Adrienne Héritier and Martin Rhodes (editors) NEW MODES OF GOVERNANCE IN EUROPE Governing in the Shadow of Hierarchy Wolfram Kaiser, Brigitte Leucht and Michael Gehler TRANSNATIONAL NETWORKS IN REGIONAL INTEGRATION Governing Europe 1945–83 Hussein Kassim and Handley Stevens AIR TRANSPORT AND THE EUROPEAN UNION Europeanization and Its Limits

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Robert Kissack PURSUING EFFECTIVE MULTILATERALISM The European Union, International Organizations and the Politics of Decision Making Katie Verlin Laatikainen and Karen E. Smith (editors) THE EUROPEAN UNION AND THE UNITED NATIONS Intersecting Multilateralisms Esra LaGro and Knud Erik Jørgensen (editors) TURKEY AND THE EUROPEAN UNION Prospects for a Difficult Encounter Ingo Linsenmann, Christoph O. Meyer and Wolfgang T. Wessels (editors) ECONOMIC GOVERNMENT OF THE EU A Balance Sheet of New Modes of Policy Coordination Hartmut Mayer and Henri Vogt (editors) A RESPONSIBLE EUROPE? Ethical Foundations of EU External Affairs Philomena Murray (editor) EUROPE AND ASIA Regions in Flux Daniel Naurin and Helen Wallace (editors) UNVEILING THE COUNCIL OF THE EUROPEAN UNION Games Governments Play in Brussels David Phinnemore and Alex Warleigh-Lack REFLECTIONS ON EUROPEAN INTEGRATION 50 Years of the Treaty of Rome Sebastiaan Princen AGENDA-SETTING IN THE EUROPEAN UNION Emmanuelle Schon-Quinlivan REFORMING THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION Roger Scully and Richard Wyn Jones (editors) EUROPE, REGIONS AND EUROPEAN REGIONALISM Asle Toje THE EUROPEAN UNION AS A SMALL POWER After the Post-Cold War Richard G. Whitman (editor) NORMATIVE POWER EUROPE Empirical and Theoretical Perspectives Richard G. Whitman and Stefan Wolff (editors) THE EUROPEAN NEIGHBOURHOOD POLICY IN PERSPECTIVE Context, Implementation and Impact

Palgrave Studies in European Union Politics Series Standing Order ISBN 978–1–4039–9511–7 (hardback) and ISBN 978–1–4039–9512–4 (paperback) You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and one of the ISBNs quoted above. Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS,UK

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Transnational Europe Promise, Paradox, Limits

Edited by

Joan DeBardeleben Professor, Institute of European, Russian and Eurasian Studies, Carleton University, Canada

and

Achim Hurrelmann Associate Professor, Department of Political Science Carleton University, Canada

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Editorial matter, selection, introduction and conclusion © Joan DeBardeleben and Achim Hurrelmann 2011 All remaining chapters © respective authors 2011 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2011 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN: 978–0–230–24168–8 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Transnational Europe : promise, paradox, limits / [edited by] Joan DeBardeleben and Achim Hurrelmann. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 978–0–230–24168–8 (hardback) 1. Europe – Politics and government – 1989– 2. Transnationalism – Political aspects. 3. Transnationalism – Social aspects. 4. Transnationalism – Economic aspects. 5. Europe – Emigration and immigration – Political aspects. 6. Europe – Emigration and immigration – Social aspects. 7. Europe – Emigration and immigration – Economic aspects. 8. Europe – Boundaries. I. DeBardeleben, Joan. II. Hurrelmann, Achim. JN15.T734 2011 320.54094—dc22

2011003945

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne

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Contents List of Figures and Tables

vii

Acknowledgments

viii

Notes on Contributors

ix

1 Introduction Achim Hurrelmann and Joan DeBardeleben

Part I

1

Transnationalism in European Studies: Conceptual Perspectives

2 Transnationalism and the Theory of European Integration: Political Science Perspectives Achim Hurrelmann

19

3 Transnationalism and the Political Sociology of European Transformation: Bringing People Back In Chris Rumford

37

Part II Transnational Governance: Policy-Making and Interest Mobilization 4 Transnationalism in European Governance and Policy-Making Ingeborg Tömmel 5 The Emergence of a Public Sphere for the European Union: What Prospects for Transnationalism? Paul Statham 6 Protest in the EU: A Path toward Democracy? Didier Chabanet 7 European Integration and Transnational Labor Markets Nathan Lillie 8 East European Transformations and the Paradoxes of Transnationalization Dorothee Bohle

57

77 95 113

130

v

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Contents

Part III Transnational Spaces, Communities, and Identities 9

Historicizing the Nation: Transnational Approaches to the Recent European Past James Casteel

10 Managing Ambivalence and Identity: Immigration Discourses and (trans)national Identities in the European Union Robert Gould 11

Integrating Migrants beyond the Nation-State? The Paradoxical Effects of Including Newcomers in a European Social and Cultural Community Oliver Schmidtke

12 Muslim Migration, Institutional Development, and the Geographic Imagination: The Aga Khan Development Network’s Global Transnationalism Karim H. Karim 13 The Social Lives of Borders: Political Economy at the Edge of the European Union André Simonyi and Jessica Pisano 14

The Awkward Divide: Paradoxes of Transnationality on the Polish–Ukrainian Border Karolina Szmagalska-Follis

153

170

189

205

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15 Conclusion Joan DeBardeleben and Achim Hurrelmann

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Index

265

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Figures and Tables Figures 1.1 1.2

Nye and Keohane’s conception of transnational interactions ‘Transnational’ phenomena as topics of journal articles, Social Sciences Citation Index (1965–2009) and Arts and Humanities Citation Index (1974–2009)

3

5

Tables 4.1 5.1

Transnational relationships fostered by the European Commission 61 Participation of collective actors (by type) in forms of Europeanized public policy debates compared to national ones (column percentages) 85 8.1 Social, political, and economic indicators, 1997–9 136 8.2 Social, political, and economic indicators, 2006 141

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Acknowledgments This volume is a publication of the Centre for European Studies (CES) at Carleton University. The completion of the volume was made possible by financial support from Carleton University and from the European Commission, which has provided grant funding to CES since 2000 and designated it an EU Centre of Excellence in 2006. We are grateful to a number of colleagues who advised us in conceptualizing the project and in identifying contributors; these include Robert Gould, Chris Rumford, Christiane Wilke, and especially William Walters, who also suggested the title of the volume. We were fortunate to rely once again on an excellent copy editor, Erin Seatter, who contributed countless hours and unwavering attention in preparing the chapters. The editors of the Palgrave Studies in EU Politics series offered helpful comments on the penultimate version of the manuscript. Finally, we want to thank all of the authors for the collective effort that went into producing the volume and for their attention to our many suggestions, requests, and inquiries. JOAN DEBARDELEBEN ACHIM HURRELMANN

viii

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Contributors Dorothee Bohle is Associate Professor of Political Science, Central European University. James Casteel is Assistant Professor in the Religion Program (College of Humanities) and in the Institute of European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies, Carleton University. Didier Chabanet is Research Fellow at the École Normale Supérieure Lettres et Sciences Humaines, Lyon. Joan DeBardeleben is Chancellor’s Professor in the Institute of European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies and Director of the Centre for European Studies, Carleton University. Robert Gould is Adjunct Research Professor in the School of Linguistics and Language Studies and in the Institute of European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies, Carleton University. Achim Hurrelmann is Associate Professor of Political Science, Carleton University. Karim H. Karim is Professor in the School of Journalism and Communication, Carleton University, and Co-Director of the Institute of Ismaili Studies, London. Nathan Lillie is Associate Professor of International Business and Management, University of Groningen. Jessica Pisano is Associate Professor in the School of Political Studies, University of Ottawa and associate of the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute and Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Harvard University. Chris Rumford is Professor in Political Sociology and Global Politics and Co-Director of the Centre for Global and Transnational Politics, Royal Holloway, University of London. Oliver Schmidtke is Associate Professor in the Departments of History and Political Science and holder of the Jean Monnet Chair in European History and Politics, University of Victoria. André Simonyi is PhD candidate in the School of Political Studies, University of Ottawa and associate of the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute and Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Harvard University. ix

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x

Contributors

Paul Statham is Director of the Centre for European Political Communications and Professor of Political Sociology, University of Bristol. Karolina Szmagalska-Follis is Lecturer in the Department of Anthropology, National University of Ireland, Maynooth. Ingeborg Tömmel is Professor of International Politics, Jean Monnet Chair in European Politics and Policy, and Director of the Osnabrück Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence in European Studies, University of Osnabrück.

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1 Introduction Achim Hurrelmann and Joan DeBardeleben

Over the past two decades, transnationalism has emerged as a leading theme and core concept in many fields of the social sciences. While its popularity is greatest in studies of migration (Faist 2004; Vertovec 2009), the concept has been applied to a spectrum of topics that ranges beyond migrants and their networks to include issues such as economic and cultural globalization (Hannerz 1996; Ong 1999), the reconfiguration of political and social spaces (Strange 1996; Sassen 2006), the global spread of norms and social activism (Keck and Sikkink 1998; Tarrow 2005), and patterns of political regulation and global governance (Risse 2002; Djelic and Sahlin-Andersson 2006). Drawing on this diverse literature, there have even been attempts to define a distinct social science discipline of Transnational Studies (Khagram and Levitt 2008). Against this background, it is striking that the concept of transnationalism has not gained an established position in European Studies. This neglect is particularly evident in scholarly work on European integration and the politics of the European Union (EU). While empirical studies of the EU have pointed to a variety of transnational phenomena, including cross-national policy networks and patterns of interest representation (Kaiser and Starie 2005; Greenwood 2007), European public spheres (Wessler et al. 2008), and European identities (Herrmann et al. 2004), this research has generated few systematic discussions of transnationalism and has done little to challenge the dominance of neofunctionalist and intergovernmentalist approaches in European integration theory (Wiener and Diez 2009) – there is no such thing as a transnational theory of European integration. If European Studies is defined more broadly, as an interdisciplinary endeavor that reaches beyond the relatively well-developed field of EU Studies to include perspectives from history, sociology, economics, geography, or cultural studies that approach Europe as a social space and imagined community, a more diverse range of transnational phenomena comes into view. Rumford (2009, 2), in his attempt to define European 1

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Studies, argues that ‘cultural identities, ... Europe’s relations to the rest of the world, ... transnational communities, ... cross-border mobilities and networks, ... colonial legacies, and ... the heritage of a multiplicity of European peoples’ are what such an approach is all about. Yet while this kind of research agenda, of which transnationalism is a crucial component, is reflected in a few publications (e.g., Berezin and Schain 2003; Jensen and Richardson 2004; Fligstein 2008), it for the most part has remained a wish list, rather than a depiction of an integrated field of academic activity. European Studies, in its broad definition, is constituted by a hodgepodge of divergent approaches, and transnationalism is no more than one concept among many that have been suggested to bring some order to the multiplicity of perspectives. What, then, is the promise of transnationalism for academic work on Europe and the EU? Is there anything to be gained by employing the concept more widely, more consistently, and more systematically? Can transnationalism indeed be an idea around which the various disciplinary contributions to European Studies can define their common ground? To answer these questions, this volume follows a twofold agenda. First, it provides a multifaceted and multidisciplinary overview of the empirical importance and consequences of transnational relations in Europe, focusing on governance processes at the EU and member-state level, as well as on the social, cultural, and economic networks, practices, and identities that connect Europeans across nation-states. Second, it builds on these empirical findings to assess the potential of transnationalism as a theoretical concept in European Studies and reflects critically on the usefulness of the concept’s analytical terms and categories.

One concept, two literatures What is transnationalism? An answer to this question can be found in two distinct, yet ultimately complementary literatures. One of these has its roots in the political science discipline, particularly the subfield of International Relations (IR). This literature is primarily concerned, in one way or the other, with the impact of civil society actors on state activities or on international organizations. The second approach has grown up in the fields of sociology and anthropology and represents a more ‘bottom-up’ approach, with particular attention to horizontal social relationships; this literature is preoccupied with issues related to identity, communities, and spatial boundaries. While the two literatures frequently deal with similar thematic phenomena, for example economic or cultural linkages across borders, transboundary social networks, and migration, they address these phenomena from distinct perspectives, implying a range of methodological approaches and supporting theoretical constructs.

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Introduction 3

The concept of transnationalism first gained prominence in IR theory, where it was introduced in the early 1970s in an attempt to challenge dominant state-centric views of international politics. The seminal contribution to this debate was a special issue of the journal International Organization, edited by Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye, on ‘Transnational Relations and World Politics’. The introduction defined transnational interactions as ‘the movement of tangible or intangible items across state boundaries when at least one actor is not an agent of a government or an international organization’ (Nye and Keohane 1971, 332, emphasis added). Here, the defining characteristic of transnationalism is the presence of one or more societal actor(s) in border-crossing interactions, irrespective of whether these actors are individuals or organizations and whether the purpose of their interaction is business, political advocacy, cultural exchange, or something entirely different. The definition encompasses both horizontal linkages between such actors and vertical linkages where a societal actor interacts with an international organization or – provided that a border is being crossed – a state government (see Figure 1.1). For an actor routinely active in several states, the authors suggested the label ‘transnational organization’ (335–6) – but made it clear that the activities of such organizations were no more than a subset of all transnational relations. This broad category was even to include the ‘transgovernmental’ networking of lower-level units in national administrative systems (such as central banks, police forces, etc.),

IO

G1

G2

S1

S2

Classic interstate politics

Domestic politics

Transnational interactions

G = Government S = Society IO = International organization

Figure 1.1

Nye and Keohane’s conception of transnational interactions

Source: Adapted, with slight modernizations in terminology, from Nye and Keohane (1971, 334).

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Achim Hurrelmann and Joan DeBardeleben

since these are ‘not controlled by the central foreign policy organs of their governments’ (335). In spite of the breadth of this definition, most applications of transnationalism in IR – as well as in the discipline of political science more broadly – have focused relatively narrowly on the impact that various kinds of civil society networks or organizations have on state or international policy-making (Risse-Kappen 1995; Risse 2002). This emphasis on the political impact of transnational actors has been particularly pronounced since the end of the Cold War, when debates about globalization, the retreat of the state, and the growing prominence of nonstate actors became central concerns (Strange 1996; Sørensen 2004). The roles accorded to transnational actors in the resulting political constellations have included, according to a recent literature review, those of (1) lobbyists and interest groups putting pressure on states and international organizations, (2) partners of states and international organizations in global governance arrangements, (3) opponents of states and international organizations engaged in peaceful protest (e.g., antiglobalization demonstrations) or violent attacks (e.g., terrorist networks), and (4) functional substitutes for states and international organizations in fulfilling certain regulatory functions (Calliess and Steffek 2009). As is evident from this taxonomy, the main opposition around which the IR literature is constructed is between transnational actors on the one hand and states or international organizations on the other. Compared to this emphasis on the relative political influence of transnational actors, IR scholars are less interested in transnational relations that consist of only occasional and unsystematic contacts, have a low degree of institutionalization, and have a purpose that is not primarily political. A second literature on transnationalism emerged in the 1990s in sociological and especially anthropological scholarship (e.g., Hannerz 1996; Ong 1999). The origins of this strand of the debate are also related to globalization, but this literature is less interested in the effects of globalization on international power dynamics than in its local repercussions – for economic relations, social networks, cultural practices, and collective identities. The common theme stressed in sociological and anthropological discussions is the horizontal interconnectedness between societies, meaning that the lives of both societal elites and ‘ordinary’ citizens are increasingly affected by geographically remote economic, social, and cultural processes. Along these lines, Vertovec (2009, 2) has defined transnationalism as ‘sustained crossborder relationships, patterns of exchange, affiliations and social formations spanning nation states.’ Even though this definition in no way contradicts that by Keohane and Nye, the focus here is less on a specific kind of actor than on connections and movements across borders, which can be material as well as ideational.

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Introduction 5

Where the IR literature contrasts the transnational with states and international organizations, the antonym of transnationalism in the sociological and anthropological literature is the bordered national space. By breaking open the boundaries of this national space, transnational connections have the potential to destabilize established social relations. As Ong (1999, 2) has put it, Trans denotes both moving through space or across lines, as well as changing the nature of something. Besides suggesting new relations between nation-states and capital, transnationality also alludes to the transversal, the transactional, the translational, and the transgressive aspects of contemporary behavior and imagination that are incited, enabled, and regulated by the changing logics of states and capitalism. Thus, the sociological and anthropological literature, and the debates in adjacent fields it has inspired, has been particularly interested in the changes in cultural practices and identities that are triggered by cross-border connections. The two literatures on transnationalism have developed largely independently of each other. Both have become increasingly popular and influential since the mid-1990s, a development illustrated by an exponentially growing number of journal articles on ‘transnational’ topics (see Figure 1.2). Yet there are surprisingly few interconnections between the literatures. This book is based on the assumption that the two strands of the debate are

900 800 Number of articles

700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0 1965

1970

1975

1980

1985

1990

1995

2000

2005

Year Figure 1.2 ‘Transnational’ phenomena as topics of journal articles, Social Sciences Citation Index (1965–2009) and Arts and Humanities Citation Index (1974–2009)

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complementary and that each can profit from paying more attention to the issues highlighted by the other: ●

●

The IR literature, with its focus on intentional political activities by transnational actors, does not pay enough attention to forms of transnational interconnectedness that are established in nonintentional and less explicitly political ways, even though these might have far-reaching implications for domestic and international politics (see also Chapter 2). For instance, the transnational mobility of capital and labor can fundamentally alter power dynamics between interest groups in national political debates and impose limitations on the policy choices available to state governments (see Chapters 7, 8, and 10). The sociological/anthropological literature, on the other hand, with its focus on various kinds of cross-border connections in which individuals are embedded, could profit from a more developed conception of agency in analyzing the development of these linkages. In particular, this could help elucidate to what extent states and international organizations, or their personnel, are themselves key players in shaping transnational networks, interactions, and identities (see Chapters, 4, 11, 13, and 14).

This volume, with its interdisciplinary design, is intended to contribute to a more sustained exchange between the two strands of scholarship on transnationalism.

The normativity of transnationalism: Promise, paradox, and limits What explains the popularity of transnationalism as a theoretical concept? Why should we care about the transnational relations that can be empirically observed? One main reason for the appeal of the concept, in our reading, is that it holds a clear normative promise. Each of the two scholarly traditions of transnationalism has a distinct normative component, and each tends to greet transnational relations, by and large, as a positive phenomenon: ●

For discussions in IR and contributions influenced by its definition of the issue, the normative attractiveness of transnationalism lies primarily in its potential to democratize international politics. In the short term, the contribution of societal actors to international decision-making constitutes a welcome counterweight to the dominance of state executives and international organization personnel in international relations, and promises to result in policy decisions that are more transparent for, and responsive to, the people to whom they are addressed and for whom they are significant (Steffek et al. 2008). In the long term, transnational relations can be seen as laying the groundwork for the emergence of regional

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Introduction 7

●

or even global public spheres that would provide the societal infrastructure for full-fledged democracy in contexts ‘beyond the state’ (Habermas 2001; Wessler et al. 2008; see also Chapters 5 and 6). For the sociological and anthropological literature, the promise of transnationalism lies in its ability to undermine the hegemony, transcend the limits, and counteract the exclusionary dynamics of national cultures, societies, and politics. For instance, transnational human rights discourses have, according to a much-cited analysis, led to an extension of the rights granted to noncitizens in many Western states, to the point where the distinction between citizens and noncitizens is becoming increasingly blurred (Soysal 1994). In a similar way, transnational networks of migrants can provide members with professional opportunities and forms of cultural ‘rootedness’ that allow them to confront the discrimination they often face in their host societies. Finally, the transnationalization of identities undermines the cultural hegemony of established conceptions of national community, and might make these host societies an altogether more accommodating environment for minorities (see Chapters 11, 12, and 13).

Yet, transnationalism also has implications that are much less benign. Its democratic potential is hampered primarily by the unevenness of transnational developments. Some segments of the population, and some interests, engage in transnational connections more extensively than others. What is more, states and international institutions discriminate quite deliberately between various transnational actors in determining to whom to grant access to decision-making processes. As a consequence, transnationalism produces inequalities between social groups (e.g., well-educated and less-educated citizens), as well as between rival interests that structure societal cleavages (e.g., business and labor). If transnationalization coincides with the transfer of political power from the state to institutions at the international level, as it does in the EU, the result might actually be less democracy: decision-making shifts to an arena where only a privileged few have opportunities to participate in an effective way. Similarly, transnationalism is also not necessarily counter-hegemonic. One reason is that transnational connections put pressure not only on those national structures that are exclusionary, such as chauvinistic national identities, but also on national institutions that serve inclusionary goals, such as social security systems, which are struggling to come to terms with transnational economic competition (Scharpf 2000, 2009). Matters are complicated even further because many national institutions are inclusionary (of the national community) and exclusionary (of outsiders) at the same time. In such constellations, the effects of transnationalism will be ambiguous by definition. A second reason why transnational connections are not necessarily counter-hegemonic is that the opening of formerly closed and tightly

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bordered national spaces more often than not results in a re-bordering at a higher level. For example, the regionalization of markets is usually coupled with the erection of new external trade barriers to shield against outside competition; more transnational mobility tends to be associated with the securitization of borders; and the emergence of transnational identities often coincides with efforts to define new internal or external ‘others’ who are excluded from transnational solidarities. As a result, most forms of transnationalism, in Europe and elsewhere, have inclusionary implications for some people and exclusionary implications for others at the same time. This book takes as its working hypothesis that neither the positive nor the negative effects of transnationalism are clearly and unambiguously dominant. Transnationalism carries a distinct promise, but it is also inherently paradoxical. A differentiated analysis – focusing on specific policy areas, institutional settings, geographic locations, social groups, and so forth – is needed to identify where transnationalism exists, which forms it takes, and which people profit from it (and at whose expense). In addition to deciphering the internal complexities and contradictions of transnationalism, this analysis also reveals where the limits of transnationalism lie. There is no reason to expect, after all, that transnationalism will automatically and consistently spread to all policy domains, regions, or social contexts. Just like globalization, transnationalization should not be seen as an actorless dynamic, but as a process that is contingent on political and social struggles between proponents and opponents of establishing and institutionalizing transnational connections – struggles whose outcome is influenced by more or less favorable opportunity structures. In doing research on transnationalism, it is therefore important to pay attention not only to the transnational linkages that have been established but also to the barriers that have been erected against further transnationalization, as well as to attempts by states, national political communities, or international organizations to reassert control over processes that were once transnationalized.

Transnationalism in Europe: Transformations of governance and societal relations What should we expect, then, from research on transnationalism in European Studies? There are several reasons why Europe is interesting as a geographical setting in which transnational relations have been established. First, there is a long and relatively well-documented history of cross-border connections linking Europeans to each other and – not least through colonialism – also to the rest of the world (see Chapters 6 and 12). Second, the European integration process has actively promoted transnational linkages through policies such as the single market, the Euro, the abolition of internal border controls in the Schengen area, funding for interregional cooperation

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Introduction 9

(as part of the EU’s cohesion policy), and mobility initiatives, including the ERASMUS program for student exchange (Beck and Grande 2007; Fligstein 2008). Finally, and in large part as a consequence of the first two factors, European societies have been described as becoming increasingly similar over time and as sharing common traits that set them apart from the rest of the world (Kaelble 2004). For all of these reasons, transnational connections in Europe can be expected to be particularly dense. The mere quantity of transnational relations, of course, tells us little about their political, social, and cultural significance. The contributions to this volume therefore move toward a more differentiated analysis of how transnational relations affect governance patterns and societal structures in the EU and the wider Europe, and how their intensification – if it can indeed be observed – contributes to the transformation of the continent. Two broad sets of issues are highlighted in these discussions, which reflect the priorities of the two literatures on transnationalism surveyed above: ●

●

Contributions that are influenced by discussions of transnationalism in IR, or political science more broadly, are primarily interested in the role that transnationalization has played in shaping European governance. This includes the influence of transnational actors on the European integration process and/or the development of EU policies; the implications that transnational developments have for politics in the member states; the establishment of private transnational governance structures that compete or cooperate with the public institutions of the EU and European states; and the ways in which transnational linkages have affected power dynamics between various political interests. As mentioned above, the IR literature on transnationalism also raises normative issues that are of crucial importance for European governance, such as the emergence of Europeanized public spheres and patterns of political contention that could form the basis for the further democratization of the EU. Ultimately, the question here is whether transnationalization implies the shift toward a ‘Europe of the citizens,’ which would have the potential to complement and eventually replace the mixture of member-state-based, interstate, and EU-based procedures that presently define the European system of multilevel governance. Contributions that are influenced primarily by the sociological and anthropological literature on transnationalism seek to understand how political communities, collective identities, and spatial reference points in European society have been reconfigured under the influence of new transnational interconnections. Questions raised in this context include the relationship between national, European, and global community and identity projects; the importance of new social spaces that have been created through European integration and/or EU discourses (single market, Schengen area, Eurozone, ‘area of freedom, security and justice’, etc.);

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as well as the reconfiguration of the EU’s internal and external borders that function as membranes structuring various forms of transnational exchange. It is clear that these two sets of issues overlap, and that the distinction is primarily an analytical one. In fact, the contributions to this volume highlight various possibilities for a ‘cross-fertilization’ between the two analytical perspectives. They all converge on one common theme: the embeddedness of Europe’s political and social structures within larger networks of societal transactions and connections, both material and ideational in kind, which force researchers to look beyond the conventional ‘nation-statism’ when analyzing the political and social transformations of the continent.

Structure of this volume The volume is subdivided into one conceptual and two empirical parts. The chapters in Part I set the stage for the empirical analysis by giving a detailed and critical overview of the roles that the two notions of transnationalism – one emerging from political science/IR, one from sociology/anthropology – have played, or can potentially play, in European Studies. Following this conceptual discussion, Part II focuses on transnationalism in EU and member-state governance (i.e., on the first set of issues discussed above), while Part III focuses on the emergence of a transnational spaces, communities, and identities (i.e., the second set of issues in the previous section). The conceptual discusstion in Part I begins with Chapter 2, in which Achim Hurrelmann discusses the importance of transnationalism in theories of European integration. Such theories have primarily been developed in the discipline of political science, which tends to define transnationalism in an actor-centered way, as suggested in the IR literature. Hurrelmann shows that conceptual attention to transnational actors is equally significant for descriptive theories that seek to make sense of the EU, explanatory theories that develop causal accounts of the EU’s development, and normative theories that evaluate the quality of EU institutions. He also argues, however, that the actor-centered understanding of transnationalism in political science obscures the full analytical potential of the concept. To move beyond this actor-centeredness, he points to the importance of systemic, functional, and ideational aspects of transnationalism, which are more convincingly addressed in sociological and anthropological conceptions of transnationalism, and shows how increased attention to them could inform European integration theory. In Chapter 3 Chris Rumford explores societal aspects of transnationalism, particularly focusing on the contribution that the concept can make to the still relatively nascent political sociology of Europe. His discussion is rooted

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Introduction 11

in the second, sociological/anthropological tradition of scholarship on transnationalism. Rumford argues that transnationalism encourages a break with state- and EU-focused approaches and can provide building blocks for a theory of society that is thus far lacking in European integration studies. Distancing himself from an understanding of the concept that defines the transnational as located at an intermediary level between the national and the global, he stresses that the potential of transnationalism lies precisely in its ability to shed light on the relationship between European integration and globalization, as well as on the reconfiguration of the relationship between territory, borders, and governance in European spaces. Part II, dealing with transnational governance, begins with Chapter 4 by Ingeborg Tömmel. In this chapter, Tömmel demonstrates the significance of various forms of transnationalism in EU policy-making. Drawing on extensive empirical examples, she shows how transnational actors have been systematically incorporated into EU decision-making processes by the European Commission in an attempt to overcome policy stalemate. This incorporation is particularly effective, according to her analysis, because transnational actors from the same policy field often share similar worldviews, which allow them to bridge differences between supranational and intergovernmental institutions, as well as dissent among the member states. While transnationalism hence seems to work relatively well at an elite level, nonelite groups face far greater challenges in making their political interests heard through transnational channels. These challenges are explored in the following two chapters. In Chapter 5, Paul Statham examines empirical evidence for the emergence of a transnational public sphere in Europe, focusing on debates in the mass media. He shows that the EU has achieved a high degree of visibility in media discourses; however, these discourses are to a greater extent elite-dominated than are discourses about national politics. The transfer of policy competencies to the EU level has hence disadvantaged civil society: while access to the mass media has been an important way for civil society to challenge governments at the national level, so far it does not provide similar opportunities regarding Europeanized decision-making. In Chapter 6, Didier Chabanet comes to similar conclusions. He examines protest movements in the EU, asking in particular whether the emergence of an additional level of policy-making has increased or decreased the chances of disadvantaged groups to influence policy processes. Based on detailed case studies of social movements by migrants, the unemployed, and a specific segment of the alter-globalization movement (pressing for increased transparency of lobbying in the EU), Chabanet shows that the political opportunities the EU provides for transnational mobilization differ quite substantially from one policy field to the next and usually reinforce rather than offset exclusionary dynamics at the national level. However, he

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also discerns an increased willingness on the part of EU actors to engage in a dialogue with transnational protest movements, a practice that bears some resemblance to the attempts by nation-states, in the process of state formation, to integrate erstwhile challengers into the state apparatus. While the chapters by Tömmel, Statham, and Chabanet are concerned mainly with the EU level, the following two chapters focus on the effects of transnationalism on domestic politics in the member states. Both chapters indicate that these effects can be profound. In Chapter 7, Nathan Lillie analyzes the impact that economic transnationalism in the EU has had on the domestic political influence of employers and labor. He argues that transnational capital and labor mobility, together with a set of employer-friendly rulings by the EU’s Court of Justice, have undermined the capacities of national labor movements to engage in effective collective action, while creating de-territorialized ‘spaces of exception’ in which national labor laws and collective agreements do not apply. In this interpretation, transnationalism circumvents national class compromises and undermines the organizational capacities of the labor movement, a development that might result in increasing discontent among the European workforce. A similarly skeptical view on transnationalism is presented in Chapter 8 by Dorothee Bohle, who analyzes the role that transnational actors have played in Eastern Europe’s political and economic transformation since the fall of communism. Bohle argues that from the mid-1990s until the economic crisis of 2008–9, the transformation process was encouraged and stabilized by a combination of EU conditionality, transnational linkages between social actors, and a deep penetration of transnational capital in the region. With the onset of the economic crisis, however, this high degree of transnationalization – particularly the prevalence of credit in foreign currencies – turned into a dramatic problem for East European states and contributed to deep recessions and increased disaffection with democracy. Bohle’s case study is another example of the paradoxical effects that transnationalism in Europe can have for processes and outcomes of governance at the EU and memberstate level. After this discussion of transnational governance, Part III of the book discusses the emergence of a transnational society in Europe, focusing on the transformation of social spaces, communities, and identities in the EU and European states. The first contribution to this part is Chapter 9 by James Casteel, which examines the trajectories of European nation building between the late nineteenth century and today. Drawing on the growing literature on transnational history, Casteel shows that, paradoxically, such processes of nation building have often been the outcome of transnational politics. The ‘national’ and the ‘transnational’ are hence not necessarily antithetical; one of the most striking insights produced by transnational approaches in history is that transnational relations within civil society can play a key role in constructing and perpetuating discourses of nationhood.

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Introduction 13

Chapter 10 by Robert Gould also addresses the interplay between national and transnational influences on collective identities. This chapter analyzes the ways in which political elites at the EU and member-state level incorporate migration into their discourses of European and/or national identity. Gould shows that the dual processes of European integration (increased EU powers over immigration policy) and transnationalization (increased migration into and within the EU) are clearly perceived as challenges to entrenched national identities; however, they do not result in the displacement of national identities by a new, transnational European identity, but rather in a deliberate reformulation of national identities. These reformulated identities are both more open toward fellow Europeans and more dismissive of (alleged) non-European values. They remain nationally distinct, reaffirming traditional conceptions of the nation-state and its political culture. While Gould’s discussion details how political elites respond to transnational migration, Chapter 11 by Oliver Schmidtke focuses on the migrants themselves. He examines how transnational influences affect their integration into West European societies, particularly with respect to labor market participation. Schmidtke argues that transnationalism has been liberating for many migrants, because the presence of multinational corporations, the Europeanization of national identities, and the growth of ethnic enclaves have reduced the barriers that migrants face when entering their host countries’ labor markets. On the other hand, he points out that these developments have also generated new forms of exclusion and inequality, especially an increase in the salience of the European/non-European divide. While the chapters by Casteel, Gould, and Schmidtke concentrate primarily on the dialectic between the national and the European, Chapter 12 by Karim H. Karim deals with the relationship between the European and the global. In a case study of diasporic networks formed by Ismaili Muslims, Karim discusses the significance of Europe as a geographic site for transnational connections. He notes that the institutions established by Ismailis – most importantly the Aga Khan Development Network – are global in reach, even though they are centered in Europe and shaped in part by the legacies of European colonialism. This globality means that Europe is not a privileged social or spatial category for the members of the Ismaili networks; rather they develop their own constructions of community and territoriality, which are superimposed on established national and European categories. The important implication is that transnationalization does not necessarily lead to the Europeanization of society; instead, it might serve to undermine the importance of ‘Europe’ as a social and spatial category. The impact of transnationalism on constructions of space and community is hence complex and multidimensional, and detailed empirical work is necessary to gain insight into the processes that are relevant in this respect. For this reason, the last two chapters of the volume focus

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on one important site of transnational connections: the external borders of the EU, where the social meanings of Europeanness and nationality are shaped in everyday interactions. In Chapter 13, André Simonyi and Jessica Pisano report on their ethnographic study of interactions along and across the borders between Ukraine, Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania. They show that while the border between nationally territorialized spaces may be clearly delimited and policed, the border as people experience it is fluid and multisited, reaching far beyond the official lines marked on the ground. While some people, ideas, and commodities move through it, others are confined in increasingly circumscribed physical and social spaces. The social meanings defined by the border are hence not homogeneous, but reflect a person’s position in a web of national and transnational relationships. Chapter 14 by Karolina Szmagalska-Follis reports on similar dynamics along the border between Poland and Ukraine. She shows how the unleashing of exchange and traffic after Ukrainian independence in 1991 forged transnational connections between formerly isolated areas, which, among other results, reduced nationalist tensions between the two countries. With Poland’s accession to the EU in 2004, however, the once porous border became heavily fortified. Szmagalska-Follis details how Ukrainian officials have been systematically incorporated into efforts to craft the new EU border regime. This process builds on the networks and trust established after 1991, but undermines these transnational connections at the same time, as interactions between citizens are increasingly curtailed. Once more, transnationalism is revealed to be an uneven and contradictory phenomenon with the potential to lead to new, or reinforced, patterns of social stratification. The Conclusion, written by the editors, sums up the empirical insights gained in this volume on the various forms of transnationalism in Europe and reflects on the analytical potential of transnationalism as a theoretical concept in European Studies. We argue that although European transnationalism is extremely differentiated and heterogeneous empirically, the usefulness of transnationalism as a theoretical concept is strongly supported by contributions to this volume. There is hence a strong case for employing the concept more systematically, both in analyses of the EU and its governance processes and in broader discussions of societal dynamics within and across Europe.

References Beck, U. and E. Grande (2007) Cosmopolitan Europe (Cambridge: Polity Press). Berezin, M. and M. Schain (eds.) (2003) Europe without Borders: Remapping Territory, Citizenship and Identity in a Transnational Age (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press). Calliess, G. P. and J. Steffek (2009) ‘Transnationalismus in Politik und Recht: Versuch einer interdisziplinären Begriffsklärung’, unpublished manuscript, Bremen.

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Introduction 15 Djelic, M.-L. and K. Sahlin-Andersson (eds.) (2006) Transnational Governance: Institutional Dynamics of Regulation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Faist, T. (2004) ‘Towards a Political Sociology of Transnationalization: The State of the Art in Migration Research’, Archives Européennes de Sociologie, 45(3), 331–66. Fligstein, N. (2008) Euro-Clash: The EU, European Identity, and the Future of Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Greenwood, J. (2007) Interest Representation in the European Union, 2nd edn (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan). Habermas, J. (2001) The Postnational Constellation: Political Essays (Cambridge: Polity Press). Hannerz, U. (1996) Transnational Connections: Culture, People, Places (London: Routledge). Herrmann, R. K., T. Risse and M. B. Brewer (eds.) (2004) Transnational Identities: Becoming European in the EU (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield). Jensen, O. and T. Richardson (2004) Making European Space: Mobility, Power, and Territorial Identity (London: Routledge). Kaelble, H. (2004) ‘Social Particularities of Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Europe’ in H. Kaelble (ed.) The European Way: European Societies during the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (New York: Berghahn). Kaiser, W. and P. Starie (eds.) (2005) Transnational European Union: Towards a Common Political Space (London: Routledge). Keck, M. E. and K. Sikkink (1998) Activists beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press). Khagram, S. and P. Levitt (2008) The Transnational Studies Reader: Intersections and Innovations (London: Routledge). Nye, J. S. and R. O. Keohane (1971) ‘Transnational Relations and World Politics: An Introduction’, International Organization, 25(3), 329–49. Ong, A. (1999) Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality (Durham: Duke University Press). Risse, T. (2002) ‘Transnational Actors and World Politics’ in W. Carlsnaes, T. Risse, and B. A. Simmons (eds.) Handbook of International Relations (London: Sage). Risse-Kappen, T. (ed.) (1995) Bringing Transnational Relations Back In: Non-State Actors, Domestic Structures and International Institutions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Rumford, C. (2009) ‘Introduction: the Stuff of European Studies’ in C. Rumford (ed) The SAGE Handbook of European Studies (London: Sage). Sassen, S. (2006) Cities in a World Economy, 3rd edn (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage). Scharpf, F. W. (2000) ‘The Viability of Advanced Welfare States in the International Economy: Vulnerabilities and Options’, Journal of European Public Policy, 7(2), 190–228. Scharpf, F. W. (2009) ‘Legitimacy and the Multilevel European Polity’, European Political Science Review, 1(2), 173–204. Sørensen, G. (2004) The Transformations of the State: Beyond the Myth of Retreat (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan). Soysal, Y. N. (1994): Limits of Citizenship: Migrants and Postnational Membership in Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Steffek, J., C. Kissling, and P. Nanz (2008) Civil Society Participation in European and Global Governance: A Cure for the Democratic Deficit? (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan). Strange, S. (1996) The Retreat of the State: The Diffusion of Power in the World Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

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Tarrow, S. (2005) The New Transnational Activism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Vertovec, S. (2009) Transnationalism (London: Routledge). Wessler, H., B. Peters, M. Brüggemann, K. Kleinen-von Königslöw, and S. Sifft (2008) Transnationalization of Public Spheres (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan). Wiener, A. and T. Diez (2009) European Integration Theory, 2nd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

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Part I Transnationalism in European Studies: Conceptual Perspectives

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2 Transnationalism and the Theory of European Integration: Political Science Perspectives Achim Hurrelmann

Tuesday, February 14, 2006, was a typical winter day in Strasbourg with mild rain and moderate temperatures. Yet the crowd that had gathered outside the European Parliament building was anything but typical: 50,000 demonstrators had heeded a call by the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) to protest against the European Commission’s proposal for a Services Directive. Two days ahead of a European Parliament vote on the directive, their speeches, banners, and sirens signaled an unequivocal ‘no’ – in various languages – to the European Commission’s plans. The rally in Strasbourg was the culmination of a months-long campaign, directed mainly against the ‘country of origin principle’ contained in the draft directive, a rule that would have allowed service providers from any European Union (EU) state to work elsewhere in the Union under their home country’s labor and safety standards. When the European Parliament passed its own version of the directive two days later, the ‘country of origin principle’ had been eliminated. ‘A major victory for European workers,’ boasted ETUC in a press release (2006b). John Monks, its General Secretary, declared, ‘Trade unions are a political force to be reckoned with’ (ETUC 2006a). As of now, transnational mobilization of this magnitude is infrequent in EU politics. But as the example of the Services Directive shows, it can be politically quite consequential. For political scientists interested in conceptual work on the EU, this raises questions about the role that the concept of transnationalism should play in theories of European integration. This issue is equally significant for descriptive theories that make sense of the EU polity, its governance modes, and political processes; explanatory theories that identify the actors and processes that drive the EU’s institutional and policy development; and normative theories that evaluate and seek to improve the quality of EU institutions, policies, or processes (Wiener and Diez 2009, 17–20). This chapter probes the contribution that the concept of transnationalism can make to each of these theoretical projects. It takes at its starting 19

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point the definition of transnationalism first proposed by Nye and Keohane (1971), which has come to dominate the discipline of political science: Transnationalism is here understood as the presence of at least one societal actor – meaning an actor who is neither an agent of a state nor of an international organization – in border-crossing interactions (see Chapter 1 for a full discussion). What role has been accorded to such actors in the various strands of the literature in European integration theory? To answer this question, the first part of this chapter surveys important contributions to descriptive, explanatory, and normative theorizing about the EU. This literature review shows that transnationalism can contribute meaningful insights to all three theoretical projects. It also becomes evident, however, that the actor-centered understanding of transnationalism that dominates in political science obscures the full analytical potential of the concept. To move beyond this actor-centeredness, the second part of this chapter proposes a revised definition that takes on board some of the ideas highlighted in the sociological and anthropological scholarship on the issue. This revised definition points to the importance of systemic, functional, and ideational aspects of transnationalism that deserve more systematic theoretical attention.

Locating the transnational in European integration theory The best way of understanding the significance of transnationalism in European politics might be to clarify what transnationalism is not. Based on Nye and Keohane’s definition, transnational interactions in Europe can be distinguished from interactions in which (1) no national border is crossed (member-state processes); (2) EU member states connect through their governments only (intergovernmental processes); (3) all interactions take place between EU representatives (supranational processes); and (4) member-state governments and EU actors interact with each other without the involvement of societal participants (mixture of intergovernmental and supranational processes). On a superficial reading, it might appear that the political science literature on the EU and European integration is overwhelmingly concerned precisely with such ‘non-transnational’ issues. Yet as the following sections will show, all three perspectives on European integration theory – the descriptive, the explanatory, and the normative – have in fact accorded significant weight to phenomena that fall under Nye and Keohane’s definition of transnationalism, even if they do not always explicitly use the term. What is lacking in European integration theory is not attention to transnational interactions per se, but a systematic discourse of transnationalism that would make it possible to link the insights of various theorists to each other, thus forming a comprehensive account of the transnational society that is emerging around EU institutions.

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Descriptive theories: Transnationalism as a characteristic of the EU system Debates about how best to describe the ‘nature of the beast’ that is the EU have often been portrayed as a controversy between those who view the Union as a peculiar type of international organization, to be analyzed with tools and concepts from international relations (Moravcsik 1998), and those who view the EU as a peculiar type of state, for which tools and concepts from comparative politics are adequate (Hix 2005). Both of these approaches agree, however, that one respect in which the EU differs from the ‘pure models’ of both state and international organization is precisely the crucial role that societal actors play in its political processes. The literature that looks at the EU from a polity-centered perspective, focusing primarily on the structure of EU institutions, does not usually employ the term transnationalism. But the widely accepted characterization of the EU as a system of multilevel governance (Hooghe and Marks 2001; Jachtenfuchs 2006) highlights the remarkable presence of societal actors in the EU, whose political system is open to participation from European, member state, and subnational representatives (the multilevel element) and grants access to national governments and EU institutions as well as to various private, civil society, and administrative actors (the governance element). This wide range of participants involved in the EU’s political processes contributes to its character as a ‘hyper-consensus polity’ (Hix 2006), in which an overwhelming number of actors must agree to any political decision. More policy-centered studies shed light on who exactly these actors are in different policy fields, how negotiations between them take place, and whose perspectives and interests dominate policy outcomes (e.g., KohlerKoch and Eising 1999; Tömmel and Verdun 2009). With respect to transnationalism, two results of such studies are particularly important. First, the inclusion of societal actors in EU decision-making primarily involves political elites and should not be equated with grassroots participation. Societal actors who have a say in EU policy processes are mainly administrative personnel involved in transgovernmental cooperation (Eberlein and Newman 2009; Lavenex 2009) or lobbyists who speak for business or labor, certain sectors of the economy, individual companies, or civil society organizations (Greenwood 2007). Although the European Commission systematically incorporates these types of actors into EU decision-making processes by consulting extensively with relevant stakeholders before making a legislative proposal, direct interactions between EU institutions and European citizens are rare. Broader political mobilization, if it occurs at all, often takes place in ‘internalized’ form, in the member states rather than in Brussels (Tarrow 2005, 77–96). This is due in part to the fact that most EU policies are implemented by the member states, but it also indicates that nonelite groups still perceive greater political opportunities at the national level.

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The second noteworthy tendency highlighted in the policy literature is that transnational influence on EU policy-making takes place mainly through vertical rather than horizontal interactions, meaning that nongovernmental actors do not interact primarily with each other, but with EU institutions. Even where such actors have formed relatively enduring transnational organizations – mainly in the form of transgovernmental networks or interest group confederations – these in many cases exist only because they are ‘initiated, supported, and sometimes structured by actors from the European level’ (Tömmel and Verdun 2009, 295; see also Tömmel in this volume). The weakness of horizontal transnationalism is even more pronounced at the nonelite level, where there are few examples of successful mobilization (see also Chabanet in this volume). This last observation – that ‘Europeans have not learned to cooperate contentiously across Europe’s internal boundaries’ (Tarrow 2001, 235) – is also borne out in politics-centered studies of the EU (for an overview, see Balme and Chabanet 2008; Fligstein 2008). For instance, studies of media debates in EU member states point to a dominance of executive actors (national governments and the European Commission) in public discourse, while interest groups and civil society organizations – particularly those that are noneconomic in nature – remain marginal (Koopmans 2007; see also Statham in this volume). Even though media debates are becoming more Europeanized over time, the pattern is primarily one of vertical, rather than horizontal, transnationalization: national media focus readily on EU issues, often turning them into a topic of intense debate, but there is little crossborder exchange between discourses in individual countries (Wessler et al. 2008). In a similar vein, political conflicts about European integration are becoming more explicit and its winners and losers more discernable, but in most cases the resulting political debates remain confined to the national political arena and do not generate truly transnational cleavages (Hooghe and Marks 2008; Kriesi et al. 2008). These research results point to two questions that can be expected to top the agenda of descriptive integration theory in the years to come. Coincidentally, both questions also indicate some of the limits of an actorcentered understanding of transnationalism. The first question concerns a ‘Europeanized’ analysis of social conditions in the EU and its member states. As decisions about resource distribution and life chances are increasingly made at the EU level, and European integration has more clearly discernible winners and losers, it is necessary to move beyond the traditional ‘methodological nationalism’ in social policy research and study patterns of wealth distribution – and their causes – in a pan-European perspective (Heidenreich 2006; Beck and Grande 2007). Such a perspective has sometimes been labeled ‘transnational’, but an exclusively actor-centered understanding of transnationalism will not get research very far here: in addition to an analysis of cross-border interactions between societal actors, more

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systemic questions regarding the interplay of political and economic power, as well as the structural constraints faced by the makers of social policy at various political levels, must also be tackled. The second question focuses in more detail on the relative lack of horizontal political transnationalization, which is all the more remarkable given that other types of cross-border linkages – economic interactions, cultural or educational exchange, migration and tourism, binational marriages, and so forth – have greatly intensified in recent years (Kaelble 2004; Beck and Grande 2007; Fligstein 2008). How do these linkages relate to political transnationalization, and what prevents them from having more significant political ramifications? Again, this is a question that requires attention to systemic relationships between various social spheres in Europe (e.g., economy, education, politics) and encourages a break from an exclusively actorcentered approach. Later sections of this chapter discuss which revisions to the concept of transnationalism are necessary to come to terms with such questions. Explanatory theories: Transnationalism as a driving force of European integration In attempts to explain the trajectories of European integration, scholars have in recent decades tended to define their dependent variable in relatively narrow institutional terms: European integration is understood as the creation of new primary or secondary EU law, a process that comes about through intergovernmental conferences, formal EU legislation, or more informal mechanisms such as policy drift, soft law, or court decisions. In this framing, the role that transnational interactions can play is that of an independent variable – a more or less influential factor that drives the EU’s institutional development. Today’s institutional understanding of European integration – and the role of transnationalism in causal models seeking to explain it – differs from earlier theories, which tended to conceptualize their dependent variable more broadly. This is true for the transactionalism of Karl Deutsch (Deutsch et al. 1957), the early neofunctionalism of Ernst Haas (1958), and even the original intergovernmentalism of Stanley Hoffmann (1966). All of these conceptions defined the (potential) outcome of European integration by transnational practices (European political activities) and corresponding beliefs (European loyalties), while other transnational practices (e.g., crossborder communication, mobility, economic exchange) were cited as factors that could influence their emergence. In these theories, transnational phenomena were hence as relevant as dependent variables as they were as independent variables – a structure that, as Haas (1971, 26–7) noted in retrospect, implied the danger of circular reasoning. The institutional definition of European integration used in contemporary causal theories guards against this fallacy. Its downside is a largely instrumental understanding of

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transnationalism as a factor that is relevant only as a trigger of institution building, but not interesting in and of itself. Contemporary neofunctionalist theorists such as Stone Sweet and Sandholtz (1998, 6) explicitly discard changes in citizens’ loyalties and political activities as a defining component of integration and stress instead that ‘there is substantial room for supranational governance without an ultimate shift in identification.’ Transnationalism is placed unambiguously on the independent variable side: transnational activities generate demands for EU rules (e.g., the reduction of barriers to economic exchange), transnational interest groups acting in association with EU actors seek to exploit spillovers from existing European rules to turn these demands into reality, and member states, although they remain important players in the process, cannot prevent the EU system from moving beyond the arrangements they had originally envisaged (Stone Sweet and Sandholtz 1998; Schmitter 2004). With respect to the role of transnationalism, this scenario does not differ dramatically from the one sketched in intergovernmentalist theories of European integration, of which Moravcsik’s (1998) liberal intergovernmentalism is the most prominent example. This approach is likewise based on an institutionalist conception of European integration, which according to Moravcsik must be analyzed in a three-stage sequence: national preference formation, interstate bargaining, and institutional choice. Transnational relations are not mentioned explicitly by Moravcsik; however, they do enter his model indirectly at the stage of national preference formation, which is described as being determined largely by domestic actors who are engaged in cross-border economic exchange. This opens the door to giving transnationalism a theoretical role in intergovernmentalist theories. As Schmitter (2004, 72) remarks, ‘If Moravcsik were to concede that the calculation of member-state strategies was affected not only by “domestic interests,” but also (and even increasingly) by transnational firms, associations, and movements working through domestic channels, then, his approach would be virtually indistinguishable from neofunctionalism.’ Given the role that transnationalism plays as an independent variable in neofunctionalist and (indirectly) in intergovernmentalist explanations of EU institution building, there seems to be little room for developing a distinct ‘transnational’ causal theory of European integration that would compete with neofunctionalist and intergovernmentalist approaches. One attempt to devise such a theory has been made by Kaiser and Starie (2005, 11–12), who argue that both neofunctionalism and intergovernmentalist are too state-focused – in the case of neofunctionalism, ‘state-focussed ... at the EU level’ – and that a transnational approach can correct this deficiency. What they mean is that the influence of transnational actors on EU institution building is more direct, and to a smaller extent mediated by national governments and EU actors, than neofunctionalism and intergovernmentalism approaches admit. Taking issue with these theories, Kaiser and Starie

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(2005, 12) claim, ‘States do not develop societies. Societies develop states.’ This formula, however, belies not only historical accounts of state-sponsored nation building, but is also difficult to square with empirical research results on the role of transnational interactions in the EU. As we have seen, transnational linkages in the EU are very often initiated and structured by EU actors, and many – especially transgovernmental ones – retain a firm rooting in the member states, even though they might escape direct governmental supervision. It therefore makes little sense to conceptualize the EU’s institutional dynamics as processes driven purely by transnational factors, unaffected by national governments and EU actors. A more serious problem with the dominant understanding of transnationalism in neofunctionalist and intergovernmentalist models is that transnational activities are seen as necessarily aiming at, or leading to, more rather than less European integration. This runs counter to empirical observations, which suggest that in the last decade, in spite of ever-growing transnational linkages, explicit transnational mobilization has increasingly been directed against further steps in the integration process (Hooghe and Marks 2008). These research results not only cast doubt on the dominant assumption that transnationalism is a driving force of the integration process, but they also indicate that there is a need to distinguish more explicitly between various forms of transnationalism, for example, those that are established through the participants’ deliberate decisions (such as political mobilization) and those that are not (such as economic interdependencies). Apparently these different forms of transnationalism do not necessarily play the same role as triggers of political integration. The identification of various mechanisms through which transnational connections are established is another issue that cannot usefully be addressed with Nye and Keohane’s vocabulary, which differentiates various forms of transnational relations by their participants only. Much of the recent literature assumes implicitly that transnationalism reflects the participants’ wishes and neglects that there are also transnational linkages that the participants enter into unknowingly, or without much thinking. For example, discussions of economic transnationalism tend to focus on the activities of corporations or business communities (Mann 1998; Kentor and Jang 2004), but border-crossing patterns of consumption are more important in the lives of most citizens. For European integration as well, such functional, non-intentional aspects of transnationalism appear particularly relevant. This chapter later discusses that conceptual distinctions should be added to Nye and Keohane’s vocabulary to take account of them. Normative theories: Transnationalism as precondition of European democracy The third strand of European integration theory is the normative evaluation of the EU. In recent years, there has been a noticeable ‘normative

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turn’ in theoretical discussions about European integration (Bellamy and Castiglione 2003; Føllesdal 2006), and the literature that seeks to assess – and possibly improve – the normative quality of EU governance is growing rapidly. The majority of contributions to this literature have focused on the question of whether there is a ‘democratic deficit’ in the EU. Although there are many other worthwhile topics for normative theorizing, the discussion here is likewise restricted to this issue. In the past two decades, debates about democracy in the EU have reached a high level of sophistication, and most remaining points of disagreement can be traced back to ultimately irreconcilable differences between various views of democracy. Using deliberately broad strokes, four main approaches can be distinguished, each of which is based on specific conceptions in democratic theory: (1) realist approaches see the essence of democracy in procedures that prevent the abuse of power by special interests – measured by this standard, the EU with its consensual and depoliticized decision making meets all the crucial tests, and there is no deficit to worry about (Majone 1998; Moravcsik 2002); (2) liberal approaches define democracy as electoral competition between rival interests, organized in political parties – these approaches come to more critical assessments, since partisan competition about policies and personnel in the EU is hampered not only by the absence of effective Euro-parties, but even more importantly by precisely those hyper-consensus rules that realist theories praise (Føllesdal and Hix 2006; Hix 2008); (3) deliberative approaches conceptualize democracy in less competitive terms as a process of argumentative exchange in search for the common good – many advocates of this conception describe the EU as being surprisingly democratic, since its decision-making procedures, particularly the European Commission’s broad consultation of stakeholders, allow for a large variety of viewpoints to be represented (Trenz and Eder 2004; Sabel and Zeitlin 2008); (4) republican approaches put forward an understanding of democracy that stresses collective self-determination, the citizens’ engagement with the polity, and their solidarity with their fellow citizens – these approaches tend to view the chances of democratizing the EU pessimistically, since common identities in the European population remain weak (Greven 2000; Etzioni 2007). In one form or another, all of these approaches accord significant normative weight to the presence or absence of transnational actors and interactions in European politics, which is seen as an important precondition of EU democracy. Realist positions stress the lack of intense transnational politicization – the fact that both citizens and political parties do not consider the European political arena particularly salient and that mobilization occurs mainly at the national level – as an indication of the legitimacy of depoliticized decision rules in the EU. Liberal approaches, by contrast, portray the weakness of transnational party competition as a democratic deficiency; at the same time, they are relatively optimistic about the chances of

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strengthening Euro-parties through targeted treaty reforms. From the perspective of deliberative approaches, such reforms might not be necessary; after all, those forms of transnational political activism that are already fairly widespread in the EU – transgovernmental cooperation, consultation with lobbyists, and so on – are interpreted as having a significant positive influence on democratic quality. Of the four approaches, republican theories have the most demanding conception of transnationalism; they also pose the greatest challenge to the conventional, actor-centered understanding of the concept. The first requirement that such approaches define as a precondition for democracy is still easy to make sense of in the conventional terminology: for republicanists, EU democracy presupposes an ‘infrastructure’ of transnational actors and activities that is more diverse than that deemed necessary by other approaches – in addition to party federations, lobby groups, and peak associations, the existence of Europeanized membership associations, media, social movements, and so on is seen as indispensable (Greven 2000). A second requirement is more difficult to conceptualize within an actor-/ interaction-based definition of transnationalism: this is the demand for Europeanized identities and patterns of social solidarity – specific beliefs that the citizens must hold (Etzioni 2007). Such beliefs have sometimes been characterized with the adjective transnational, both in the ‘classical’ integration theories discussed above and in more recent contributions (e.g., Herrmann et al. 2004). However, this use of the term is difficult to square with a definition of transnationalism as border-crossing interaction. What if someone identifies with Europe without being engaged in any bordercrossing activities? What if such activities do not lead to Europeanized beliefs? Obviously, interactions and beliefs have to be treated as separate dimensions, and there is again a case for developing a wider understanding of transnationalism that can make sense of this distinction.

EU institutions and their societal environment: Moving beyond actor-centeredness This literature review allows for the conclusion that the concept of transnationalism, as defined by Nye and Keohane, has much to contribute to European integration theory. The presence of societal actors in EU decisionmaking, and their transnational interactions with each other as well as with EU and member-state institutions, have been accorded a central role in each of the three main strands of integration theory: describing the EU, explaining its institutional development, and assessing its democratic quality. In each case, the concept of transnationalism serves to underline that theories of European integration cannot afford to focus solely on the EU’s supranational and intergovernmental political institutions; rather they must analyze how these institutions are embedded in, and interact with, a societal

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environment from which they emerge, which affects their functioning, but which is also shaped by them. When applied in political science theorizing on the EU, transnationalism thus highlights an important research field: the relationship between the EU’s political institutions and their societal environment. This research field has received too little systematic attention, in part because a political sociology of European integration has been slow to develop (Rumford 2002; Beck and Grande 2007; see also Rumford in this volume). But if more attention to the relationship between the EU’s political institutions and their societal environment is the core contribution of transnationalism to European integration theory, it is also evident that an exclusively actor- and interactionbased understanding of transnationalism, even though it provides relevant categories for some discussions, is ultimately too narrow to make sense of all of the questions that European integration theories are concerned with: the societal environment in which the EU’s political institutions operate cannot be comprehensively described by a concept that (1) focuses only on agency while neglecting dynamics between the political and other societal subsystems; (2) assumes that all transnational interactions are intentional while paying no attention to functional interdependencies; and (3) remains restricted to an analysis of observable activities while disregarding bordertransgressing beliefs and identities. The remainder of this chapter discusses some ideas for how these limitations can be overcome. The discussion will be restricted to the EU, even though some suggestions might also be applicable in other settings. Its starting point is a broadened definition of transnational relations, encompassing all connections that link the society of an EU member state, or parts thereof, to (1) the society of at least one other member state, (2) an EU institution, or (3) the government of another member state. Compared to Nye and Keohane, this definition – whose focus on ‘connectivity’ resembles some sociological and anthropological conceptions of transnationalism (for an overview, Vertovec 2009) – retains the horizontal–vertical distinction, but seeks to avoid their bias towards agency, intentionality, and observable activities. This makes it possible to address the three core omissions in existing political science discussions: systemic, functional, and ideational aspects of transnationalism. The following sections will discuss each of them, focusing on how they can contribute to European integration theory. They will also show that these ideas not only broaden the concept – a risky endeavor given that transnationalism is already being criticized for its fuzziness – but define useful distinctions between aspects of transnational connections that make the term less ambiguous. Systemic transnationalism The first such distinction is the one between an actor-centered and a system-centered analysis of transnationalism. The existing literature on

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transnationalism in political science (but not only here) is overwhelmingly actor-centered. However, if we are to explore the interactions between the EU’s political institutions and their societal environment, one core dimension concerns the relationship between Europeanization in politics and Europeanization in other societal spheres, such as the economy, the family, and the like. This is a question that calls for a systems-oriented analysis. Such an analysis can draw on sociological systems theory, whose most sophisticated conception can be found in the work of Niklas Luhmann (1997). Luhmann describes modern societies as being differentiated into various functionally defined subsystems – politics, the economy, religion, law, education, the family, and so on – which are constituted by specific forms of communication and remain closed off against each other in their routine operations. Societal integration, for Luhmann, occurs when these functional subsystems nevertheless influence – or, as he puts it, ‘irritate’ – each other, thus mutually restricting their degrees of freedom (601–8). For functionally differentiated societies, both too little integration and too much integration are dangerous. Too little integration makes it difficult for one subsystem to rely on services provided by another subsystem (e.g., the family system needs the legal system to stabilize marriage contracts); too much integration might result in dedifferentiation by imposing one subsystem’s logic onto another. Luhmann’s idea of system integration, which has thus far received little attention in discussions of European integration (for exceptions, see Albert 2002; Jessop 2004), offers the opportunity to complement studies of cross-border interactions with an analysis of intersystem dynamics. For Luhmann, such dynamics are transnational by definition: all subsystems of modern societies are ultimately global in reach, constituting one ‘world society.’ Nevertheless, various subsystems differ from each other by the degree to which spatial categories – such as the nation-state or Europe – structure their internal operations (Stichweh 2000). Put simply, some subsystems are Europeanizing more rapidly than others. This has implications for system integration. For example, it has been argued that the economic system has shifted to the European level more quickly than the political system, which makes it ever more difficult to rein in the economy through political interventions (Heidenreich 2006, 35–44). The result might be an over-integration of the economic and political systems, resulting in an ‘invasion’ of economic considerations into politics. This thesis – which of course requires empirical corroboration – is obviously relevant for the debate about social conditions in Europe that was mentioned above. Compared to more conventional actor-centered approaches, a systemic understanding of transnationalism implies the loss of some specificity; for instance, it can no longer distinguish transnational from intergovernmental or supranational connections, since the focus is on system operations rather than on the nature of participants. But in return, other dimensions

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of the relationship between EU politics and its societal environment are illuminated. The systems perspective stresses that this relationship is not only defined by interactions between different types of actors – (inter-) governmental and supranational actors on the one side, societal actors on the other – but also by intersystem dynamics in which the potentially conflicting logics of various functional subsystems are balanced under specific power constellations. This approach is applicable beyond the politics–economy nexus; it might be used to analyze the interactions between the political system and a host of other subsystems. One example is the link between politics and the law. A recent controversy in this respect concerns the question of whether the disgraced ‘country of origin principle’ omitted from the Services Directive is now being introduced through the back door by the European Court of Justice, thus overturning the trade unions’ victory of 2006 (Scharpf 2009; see also Lillie in this volume). If this were indeed the case, this would indicate that political operations in the EU are systematically disadvantaged not only vis-à-vis the economy, but in relationship to the law as well. It seems that the systemic limitations of politics in the integration process deserve a more systematic theoretical discussion, a project for which the expanded understanding of transnationalism proposed here can provide a useful conceptual basis. Structural transnationalism The second distinction that should be introduced to discussions of transnationalism is one that keeps apart, within actor-oriented analyses of transnationalism, various mechanisms through which societal actors are drawn into cross-border connections. As discussed above, it is particularly important in this respect to address the degree of intentionality with which a participant enters such connections. A helpful starting point for this analysis are the categories of functional (or system) integration and social integration defined by Jürgen Habermas (1984/87) in his theory of communicative action. In this conception, functional integration refers to social linkages that are established through ‘interconnections of action’ that work ‘in a subjectively inconspicuous fashion’ (vol. II 186–7). This refers to cases in which individuals are entangled in societal relations (possibly of a transnational kind) without having intentionally constructed them, or even being fully aware that they exist. As Habermas puts it, such forms of integration occur in ways that go ‘beyond the actor orientations of those involved’ and ‘cannot be grasped without further ado’ from their perspective (vol. II 232). The most important mechanisms of functional integration are the market and public administration, relying on money and power, respectively, as media of integration. By contrast, social integration is defined as a kind of integration in which actors take charge of their own social relationships by means of a ‘communicative

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intermeshing of actor orientations’ (vol. II 233), ideally leading to a ‘consensus of those involved’ (vol. II 186). Social integration, whose most important medium is language, constitutes an individual’s ‘lifeworld’ – but Habermas sees the danger of this lifeworld being successively ‘colonized’ by the mechanisms of functional integration. In the language of Habermas’ theory, the implicit assumption of intentionality in much of the literature on transnationalism can be described as a tendency to conceive of transnational relations as elements of Europeans’ lifeworlds only, thus neglecting the systemic features also inherent in them. By contrast, Habermas (1998, 91–169) in his own analyses quite plausibly describes the ‘postnational constellation’ in Europe as being structured by both functional networks and social lifeworlds. In fact, his main concern is whether transnational lifeworlds can develop quickly enough to keep up with the rapid expansion of transnational networks. In Habermas’ interpretation, ‘horizontal relations of exchange and interaction that are established via markets, transport links, and communication networks between actors making decentralized decisions’ (125, translation A.H.)1 are elements of functional integration, operating largely through the media of money and power. The steady expansion of such networks breaks open the existing, nationally defined lifeworlds, necessitating a reconstitution of the lifeworld at the European level. This in turn requires the emergence of Europe-wide beliefs of solidarity and practices of collective will formation, which can by no means be taken for granted (122–35). Habermas’ analysis indicates that cross-border linkages between Europeans are governed by both intentional and functional mechanisms and that it is precisely the interplay of these mechanisms that determines future directions of the European integration process. The example cited at the beginning of this chapter, the successful trade union mobilization against the Services Directive, is a clear case of intentional transnationalism. But such intentional activities might be much less significant, in the aggregate, than many of the non-intentionally transnational practices that Europeans routinely engage in, such as hiring service providers from other member states, not because they are from other member states, but because their services are available (whether legally or not) and cheap. The implications of transnationalism for the process of political integration can be assessed only if both kinds of practices – intentional and functional – are accorded equal significance. Ideational transnationalism The last distinction that is needed to address the weaknesses in dominant political science conceptualizations of transnationalism is one that differentiates, within actor-oriented perspectives, between physical cross-border interactions and ideational cross-border beliefs. It is the latter that poses problems for Nye and Keohane’s understanding of transnationalism: although

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their conception can be applied to the exchange of ideas or cultural products (the movement of ‘intangible items’ is explicitly included in their definition), it neglects that transnational beliefs – such as a citizen’s identification as a ‘European’ – are not necessarily directly related to such interactions. In principle, it seems uncomplicated to widen the definition of transnationalism to include ‘imagined’ cross-border connections, a move that would be in line with the expanding constructivist scholarship in EU Studies (Checkel 2006; Risse 2009). Applying the horizontal–vertical distinction, we could then speak of ideational transnationalism whenever a European citizen defines his or her identity – positively or negatively – by reference to the EU and its institutions (vertical identification) or his or her fellow Europeans (horizontal identification). Things become more complicated when the attempt is made to designate specific substantive beliefs as transnational, since it is unclear what this designation would be grounded in. Research on European identities, however, can quite easily be conducted without making any substantive assumptions about supposedly ‘European’ values. If we include imagined cross-border connections in the concept of transnationalism, the large literature on European identities (see for overviews Hermann et al. 2004; Hooghe and Marks 2005) becomes accessible to a transnational research agenda. Issues to be explored as part of this research could include the importance of various EU institutions as objects of identification, the extent to which EU citizens trust the citizens of other EU states (Delhey 2008), the relationship between European identities and national identities (Duchesne and Frognier 2008), and the chances of EU identity politics (Shore 2000). Perhaps even more importantly, discussing European identities as part of broader transnationalization processes makes it possible to probe how imagined connections between Europeans relate to other aspects of transnationalism. How do identities of people engaged in transnational interactions differ from identities of people who are not? Are transnational connections in certain social spheres or subsystems (say, education) particularly likely to generate European identities? Are people who already hold European identities more likely to view transnational connections as an object of intentional construction? How do European identities relate to global identities? Empirical research on questions such as these promises results that are highly relevant especially to explanatory and normative integration theories.

Conclusion The concept of transnationalism can make important contributions to each of the three strands of theorizing about European integration that can be found in political science: describing the EU, explaining its institutional development, and evaluating its normative quality. While the

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concept is at present not systematically used in European integration theory, it provides categories and distinctions to make sense of many of the most pressing issues these theories are concerned with. As this chapter has shown, the limitations that are caused by the dominant actor-centered definition of transnationalism in political science can be overcome by shifting to a broader definition that incorporates systemic, structural, and ideational aspects. In this broader definition, the concept of transnationalism allows for a comprehensive analysis of the relationship between the EU’s political institutions and their societal environment, a question that is at the core of descriptive, explanatory, and normative theoretical projects. There is hence a strong case for moving this broader concept of transnationalism to the center of European integration theory. This would allow for cross-fertilization between theories that presently talk past each other, but whose queries and findings can each be expressed in the language of transnationalism. It might also generate the building blocks for a more systematic transnational approach to European integration theory, with the relationship between political and societal aspects of European integration at its core.

Note 1. The published English translation only mentions ‘market decisions of independent actors’ at this point (Habermas 2001, 82), thus obscuring that system integration, in Habermas’ conception, reaches beyond economic exchange in a narrow sense.

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Hooghe, L. and G. Marks (2008) ‘A Postfunctionalist Theory of European Integration: From Permissive Consensus to Constraining Dissensus’, British Journal of Political Science, 39(1), 1–23. Jachtenfuchs, M. (2006) ‘The European Union as a Polity (II)’ in K. E. Jørgensen, M. A. Pollack, and B. Rosamond (eds.) Handbook of European Union Politics (London: Sage). Jessop, B. (2004) The Future of the Capitalist State (Cambridge: Polity Press). Kaelble, H. (2004) ‘Social Particularities of Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Europe’ in H. Kaelble (ed.) The European Way: European Societies during the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (New York: Berghahn). Kaiser, W. and P. Starie (eds.) (2005) Transnational European Union: Towards a Common Political Space (London: Routledge). Kentor, J. and Y. S. Jang (2004) ‘Yes, There Is a (Growing) Transnational Business Community: A Study of Global Interlocking Directorates 1983–98’, International Sociology, 19(3), 355–68. Kohler-Koch, B. and R. Eising (eds.) (1999) The Transformation of Governance in the European Union (London: Routledge). Koopmans, R. (2007) ‘Who Inhabits the European Public Sphere? Winners and Losers, Supporters and Opponents in Europeanized Political Debates’, European Journal of Political Research, 46(2), 183–210. Kriesi, H., E. Grande, R. Lachat, M. Dolezal, S. Bornschier, and T. Frey (2008) West European Politics in the Age of Globalization (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Lavenex, S. (2009) ‘Transgovernmentalism in the Area of Freedom, Security, and Justice’ in I. Tömmel and A. Verdun (eds.) Innovative Governance in the European Union (Boulder, CO: Lynn Rienner). Luhmann, N. (1997) Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp). Majone, G. (1998) ‘Europe’s “Democratic Deficit”: The Question of Standards’, European Law Journal, 4(1), 5–28. Mann, M. (1998) ‘Is There a Society Called Euro?’ in R. Axtmann (ed.) Globalization and Europe: Theoretical and Empirical Investigations (London: Pinter). Moravcsik, A. (1998) The Choice for Europe: Social Purpose and State Power from Messina to Maastricht (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press). Moravcsik, A. (2002) ‘In Defence of the “Democratic Deficit”: Reassessing Legitimacy in the European Union’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 40(4), 603–24. Nye, J. S. and R. O. Keohane (1971) ‘Transnational Relations and World Politics: An Introduction’, International Organization, 25(3), 329–49. Risse, T. (2009) ‘Social Constructivism and European Integration’ in A. Wiener and T. Diez (eds.) European Integration Theory, 2nd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Rumford, C. (2002) The European Union: A Political Sociology (Oxford: Blackwell). Sabel, C. and J. Zeitlin (2008) ‘Learning from Difference: The New Architecture of Experimental Governance in the EU’, European Law Journal, 14(3), 271–327. Scharpf, F. W. (2009) ‘Legitimacy and the Multilevel European Polity’, European Political Science Review, 1(2), 173–204. Schmitter, P. (2004) ‘Neo-Neofunctionalism’ in A. Wiener and T. Diez (eds.) European Integration Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Shore, C. (2000) Building Europe: The Cultural Politics of European Integration (London: Routledge). Stichweh, R. (2000) Die Weltgesellschaft: Soziologische Analysen (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp). Stone Sweet, A. and W. Sandholtz (1998) ‘Integration, Supranational Governance, and the Institutionalization of the European Polity’ in W. Sandholtz and A. Stone

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36 Achim Hurrelmann Sweet (eds.) European Integration and Supranational Governance (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Tarrow, S. (2001) ‘Contentious Politics in a Composite Polity’ in D. Imig and S. Tarrow (eds.) Contentious Europeans: Protest and Politics in an Emerging Polity (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield). Tarrow, S. (2005) The New Transnational Activism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Tömmel, I. and A. Verdun (eds.) (2009) Innovative Governance in the European Union: The Politics of Multilevel Policymaking (Boulder, CO: Lynn Rienner). Trenz, H.-J. and K. Eder (2004) ‘The Democratizing Dynamics of a European Public Sphere: Towards a Theory of Democratic Functionalism’, European Journal of Social Theory, 7(1), 5–25. Vertovec, S. (2009) Transnationalism (London: Routledge). Wessler, H., B. Peters, M. Brüggemann, K. Kleinen-v.Königslöw, and S. Sifft (2008) Transnationalization of Public Spheres (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan). Wiener, A. and T. Diez (2009) European Integration Theory, 2nd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

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3 Transnationalism and the Political Sociology of European Transformation: Bringing People Back In Chris Rumford

Transnationalism is best understood as social connectivity across borders (Robinson 2007a) and points to increasing social, cultural, and political interdependence – possibly resulting from globalization, though this causality is disputed. The rise in popularity of transnationalism as an object of study can be attributed to the general social science preoccupation with all things global, and more particularly with what Appadurai (1996) identifies as the disjunctures between economy, culture, and politics to which processes of globalization have given rise. The idea of a ‘borderless world’ no longer has intellectual purchase in a world in which borders and bordering proliferate, but it is evident that the transformative power of globalization, viewed as a combination of neoliberal marketization and communication technology-led connectivity, has made it increasingly difficult to maintain a ‘national container’ with which to protect the unity of economy, culture, and politics. One important consequence has been a range of mobilities and flows that have facilitated the growth of transnational linkages between ethnic communities, religious groups, and other communities of fate, all which are more able to work ‘in and through the cracks between state and borders’ (Appadurai 1996, 41). This chapter seeks to outline the importance of the concept of transnationalism to European Studies. It makes the case for treating transnationalism not as a niche concept, relevant only when discussing migration, citizenship, and social movements, for example, but as one applicable more generally in understanding contemporary Europe and the European Union (EU). This applicability, it is argued, stems from the social connectivity and bottom-up networking that define transnationalism and that represent some of the most understudied dimensions of the social and political transformations of contemporary Europe. Seen in this way, transnationalism is revealed to 37

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have dual relevance to the study of Europe. First, it focuses attention on modes of integration other than those driven by institution or polity building, the single market, and the central bank. Transnationalism introduces a world of professional associations, citizens’ groups, social movements, and representative bodies that seek to organize transnationally (whether or not their activities lead to greater EU integration). Second, it helps to address the problem that integration studies lack a ‘theory of society’ (Delanty and Rumford 2005). Transnationalism offers the potential to remedy this deficiency by drawing attention to social networks and connectivities across nation-states and regions. To further this argument this chapter explores two areas of European Studies where the potential relevance of transnationalism is particularly strong. First, transnationalism may be helpful in understanding the relationship between the EU and globalization, hitherto poorly dealt with in EU integration scholarship, the normal assumption being that globalization is external to the EU project and exists as a source of threats and insecurities (and therefore also an incentive to integration). It is argued that not only is the relationship richer and more complex, and therefore in need of reexamination, but that transnationalism reveals some important nonEuropean dynamics at work in shaping the development of core European processes. Second, transnationalism may aid in accommodating EU Studies to the ‘spatial turn’, in particular by highlighting the importance of understanding the relationship between territory, borders, and governance. Transnationalism is a concept that has not made a major impact on EU Studies – apart from in the obvious examples of one or two niche fields, migration studies, and contentious politics – but has the potential to do so. One reason for its limited influence to date is that EU Studies has not developed a particularly rich understanding of the dynamics of globalization and its impact on European integration. The argument here then is that making the case for transnationalism requires a more sophisticated understanding of the dynamics of globalization. In stating the problem this way the question of the relationship between transnationalism and globalization is foregrounded; therefore, it is necessary, before proceeding to consider the two areas of European Studies where the potential usefulness of the concept of transnationalism is particularly evident, to establish the relationship between transnationalism and globalization.

Transnationalism and globalization The relationship between transnationalism and globalization is anything but straightforward and is much contested in the literature. For example, Vertovec (2009, 2) sees transnationalism as ‘a key manifestation of globalization,’ whereas Albrow (1998, 15) entreats us to establish the linkage between globalization and transnationalism (if any) through research, rather than

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assume a relationship of causality or dependency: ‘there is no intrinsic connection between them ... . We can therefore treat the encounter between globalization and transnationalism as a contingent historical event and not in the nature or meaning of either.’ Alternatively, attempts to understand the relationship often place emphasis on the scale of transnational connectivity, that is, the extent and scope of the linkages (Khagram and Levitt 2008b). But in seeking to differentiate the transnational from the global in this way, scholars may have obscured other, perhaps more important, aspects of transnationalism. Put simply, transnationalism is not only about the scope of connectivity, but also about who is being connected. The position advanced here is that transnationalism is social connectivity. In Giulianotti and Robertson’s (2007, 62) evocative phrase, transnationalism is a form of ‘connectivity which registers the social “electricity” of globalization.’ The ‘social connectivity across borders’ (Robinson 2007b, 136) interpretation of transnationalism is a consensual feature of the literature. For Vertovec (2009, 2, 3), for example, transnationalism – defined as ‘sustained cross-border relationships, patterns of exchange, affiliations and social formations spanning nation-states’ – can be observed in the ‘sustained linkages’ between ‘non-state actors [such as] businesses, non-governmental organizations, and individuals sharing the same interests.’ He is skeptical about the usefulness of the idea of transnationalism when applied to capital flows, trade, corporations, and so forth. Giulianotti and Robertson (2007, 76) concur that when applied to a wide variety of processes (business organizations, communication infrastructures, etc.) the idea of transnationalism ‘appears somewhat meaningless.’ Its main use, they argue, is in helping ‘recover the social in the analysis of globalization’ (Giulianotti and Robertson 2007, 61). This interpretation is also supported by Portes (quoted in Roudometof 2009, 314), who ‘maintains that the “transnational” should be reserved for activities initiated and sustained by non-institutional actors.’ Developing this theme further Giulianotti and Robertson (2009, 134) use the term transnationalism to refer to the way globalization leads to ‘the social interconnections and interweaving of individuals and groups across diverse geo-political terrains.’ This definition not only advances the social provenance of transnationalism but accords it a particular relationship with globalization: the ‘social in the global.’ Transnationalism is concerned with non-state, noninstitutional actors, or, in other words, transnationalism is a form of bottom-up connectivity: social linkages whereby persons, groups, movements, and networks become connected through autonomous social and political activity. This locates transnationalism firmly on the ground of social relations and networking among individuals and communities of fate. Roudometof reinforces the societal interpretation of transnationalism, stating that in contemporary social science there are two main ways to interpret the ‘transnational.’ First, there is the cross-border activity of actors.

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Second, there is a broader interpretation that refers more generally to cultural or institutional trends (migration or religion, for example) and that is connected to the questioning of ‘methodological nationalism’ (Roudometof 2009, 313–4). In both of these interpretations social connectivity is brought to the fore. In order to distinguish between transnationalism and globalization, Holton (2008, 44) has suggested that transnationalism is a term better suited to designate high-density border-transcending activity that may lead ‘beyond a singular national identification or structural location,’ whereas globalization is reserved for process and activities that ‘span the globe.’ On this view, ‘some of the networks labelled as global might more helpfully be labelled transnational’ (Holton 2008, 45). The position outlined by Holton accords with the view of those seeking to establish Transnational Studies as an alternative to Global Studies. For Khagram and Levitt (2008a, xi), Transnational Studies achieves an identity by advancing ‘a critique of scholarship that takes nation-states and the nation-state system for granted, as well as other perspectives that do not take them seriously enough, like many of the conceptual perspectives on globalization.’ On this account, Transnational Studies is formed out of a dissatisfaction with the limitations imposed by working with a number of levels of analysis (national, international, global) and a conceptual priority that assumes that either the national or the global is the primary unit of political organization (and assumes that the global is replacing the national as a frame of reference). To embrace Transnational Studies then is to acknowledge ‘that human interactions and social life have always involved the crossing and transforming of borders and boundaries from the trans-local to the transcontinental’ (Khagram and Levitt 2008a, xi), without giving in to the ‘global temptation’ to see everything that crosses borders as part of a global process. Although this formulation does advance a clear vision of the field of Transnational Studies, at least in broad outline, it does not differentiate it sufficiently from Global Studies. Or rather, it attempts to distinguish Transnational Studies from Global Studies on the basis of a particular flawed reading of globalization and the nature of Global Studies; thus the claims of Transnational Studies are undermined by the rather literal reading of globalization that is employed to define it. Globalization is equated to encircling the earth and/or the existence of a global ‘level,’ both of which entail the separation of the global from the local, the global from the national, and so on. In other words, what is assumed here is the ‘onion model’ metaphor suggested by Beck and Sznaider (2006, 9): the local and the national form the core and inner layers of the onion and the international and the global form the outer layers. Transnational Studies applies itself to the middle layers of the onion – processes that cross boundaries and stretch across continents but are not the ‘whole onion,’ that is, they stop short of global reach.

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Khagram and Levitt (2008b, 1) make the point that ‘even contemporary nation-states and the nation-state system have been transnationally constituted and shaped over time and space in powerful ways.’ This is undoubtedly true but echoes one of the core tenets of ‘cultural globalization’ thinking on the relation between nation-states and globalization processes (e.g., Robertson 1992; Meyer 2001; Axford 2007), expounded in key works that predate the recent interest in transnationalism. This is a good example of how attempts to delineate Transnational Studies are based in claims to originality that would not find much support from within the fraternity of Global Studies scholars. In their defense, Khagram and Levitt (2008b, 3) quote one leading globalization scholar, the anthropologist Ulf Hannerz, who admits to feeling uncomfortable with the ‘use of the term globalization to describe just about any process or relationship that somehow crosses state boundaries. In themselves, many such processes and relationships obviously do not all extend across the world.’ Again, the implication is clear that the designation global should be reserved for world-encircling phenomena, and the term transnational employed where processes and flows move across borders and nation-states but have a sub-global sphere of operation. Djelic and Sahlin-Andersson (2006), editors of another key book in the nascent Transnational Studies canon, coincidently anchor their understanding of the transnational in the same quote from Hannerz. Again, transnationalism is employed as an alternative to globalization, which as a label for processes that extend across national borders has become ‘such a catchword that its meaning is highly blurred’ (Djelic and Sahlin-Andersson 2006, 3). It is argued that ‘the neat opposition between “globalization” and “nations” ... does not really make sense whether empirically or analytically. Organizations, activities and individuals constantly span multiple levels, rendering obsolete older lines of demarcation’ (Djelic and Sahlin-Andersson 2006, 4). According to Khagram and Levitt (2008b, 3), ‘worldist’ (i.e., globalization) scholarship ‘tends to equate all transborder and transboundary phenomena with planetary integration and worldwide isomorphism.’ This sets up a rather problematic distinction between the transnational and the global, assuming as it does that the global and the local are at opposite ends of the spectrum and that globalization must equate to encompassing the entire earth. This critique of globalization also remains trapped within Beck and Sznaider’s (2006) aforementioned ‘onion’ model. Transnational Studies cannot claim to have discovered the tension between the global and the local. For as long as Global Studies has existed, a central debate has revolved around the relationship between the global and the local, and the scope and reach of processes labeled ‘global.’ Either globalization is ‘out there,’ properly associated with the linking of human activity over huge distances, and distinct from the local, which is not connected to the same networks of possibility, or the local and the global exist

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in a relation of mutual implication and ultimately in the form of ‘glocalization’ theorized by Robertson (1992). Held et al. (1999, 15) hold to the former and in doing so add grist to the Transnational Studies mill: Globalization can be located on a continuum with the local, national and regional. At the one end of the continuum lie social and economic relations and networks which are organized on a local and/or national basis; at the other end lie social and economic relations and networks which crystallize on the wider scale of regional and global interactions. On this view, processes of globalization and localization do not exist as a ‘globewide cultural nexus,’ as they do for Robertson, but form distinct spheres of activity that operate at different levels. Local networks operate at the local level but are distinct from global or supranational networks, which do not have to work within the same spatial restrictions. What is absent from this type of work was hinted at earlier, namely a developed sense that the local and the global are interconnected, that processes of globalization also work in local settings (and can perhaps best be observed there), and that globalization can work from the inside out or bottom up. In the words of Bauman (2006), ‘Globalization is not a process taking place somewhere far away in some exotic place. Globalization is taking place in Leeds as well as in Warsaw, in New York, and in any small town in Poland. It is just outside your window, but inside as well. It is enough to walk down the street to see it.’ The debate surrounding the emergence of Transnational Studies has been worth commenting upon at length as it highlights many important issues in the relationship between globalization and transnationalism. Not least of these is that there a real danger that transnationalism, as framed by Transnational Studies, could become the domesticated version of globalization that finds favor with an EU integration studies constituency that has never fully understood the constitutive nature of the global (Meyer 2001) or been comfortable with the idea that globalization works ‘from within’ Europe (Beck 2000). The sections that follow offer an extended discussion of the relationship between globalization and transnationalism, but it is worth reiterating that what is important about transnationalism is that it draws attention to the social processes that are constitutive of globalization. This is particularly important in relation to a study of Europe, since what is often lacking from understandings of integration processes is a theory of society: transnationalism has the potential to correct the statist, institutionalist bias in integration studies (see also Hurrelmann in this volume).

Rethinking the relationship between the EU and globalization Taking up some of the issues alluded to in the previous section, the argument here is that the encounter between EU integration studies and Global Studies

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has not been a happy one. There remains an assumption that globalization is external to the EU and exists as a threat (and therefore also an incentive) to the integration project. According to Hay and Rosamond (2002), globalization is both a description of ‘reality’ and a powerful discursive construct that serves to justify further European integration. Caricaturing EU Studies only a little, it can be said that EU Studies has been rather inward-looking and tends to see Europe as separate from the rest of the world. Indeed, many accounts of integration make no reference to the impact of globalization on the EU (Wincott 2000, 178–9). In such an intellectual environment transnationalism offers much, it is argued, particularly in terms of providing a global context for understanding Europe (as opposed to Eurocentric views of globalization) and allowing for consideration of the non-European drivers of change in Europe. Certainly, the EU cannot be fully understood without taking into account the impact of globalization on the transformation of postwar Europe and the project of European integration, as well as the role played by the EU in promoting globalization (Rumford 2002). There have of course been many attempts to explain the relation between globalization and the EU. Castells (2000, 348) has written, ‘European integration is, at the same time, a reaction to the process of globalization and its most advanced expression.’ This echoes a consensus view that the EU was originally threatened by globalization, completed the single market and monetary union as a defensive reaction, following which it developed the capacities with which to shape globalization, both in Europe and the wider world. However, Castells’ account is problematic. It assumes that globalization is primarily an economic process driven by international trade, capital flows, global markets, and multinational business organizations. This is an economistic interpretation of globalization, which can be more productively thought of as multicausal and multidimensional. Second, it assumes that globalization is a relatively recent phenomenon. It does not acknowledge that processes of globalization (plural rather than singular) have a long history and can be traced back over a millennium or more (Robertson 1992). In short, globalization existed long before the EU was around to shape it. Third, it views globalization as the increasing interconnectedness of nation-states. In doing so it ignores the more generalized interconnectedness that is characteristic of globalization, linking social movements, citizens, nongovernmental organizations, communities of interest, enterprises, and a range of other actors. According to Meyer (2001, 227), ‘It is difficult to draw definite boundaries between Europe ... and the wider world society.’ However, studies of the EU and globalization tend to see the former as distinct from the rest of the world, more so as globalization is deemed to be leading to the creation of regional economic trading blocs (such as NAFTA, MERCOSUR, and ASEAN). Moreover, it is a mistake to conflate Europe and the EU (the EU does not comprise all European countries and different versions of institutional

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Europe exist, e.g., the Council of Europe), which are not necessarily driven by the same global dynamics. Alternatively, global forces at work in Europe may increase the web of interconnectedness in which the EU operates. Citizenship is one example. It became a formal part of EU affairs with the Treaty on European Union (1993) and rests, in the main, on the model of citizen as worker and the ‘four freedoms’ (capital, goods, services, and persons) at the heart of the single market. However, the institutionalization of citizenship by the EU accounts for only part of the broader transformation of citizenship for Europeans. In the postwar period, national citizenship rights have been largely displaced by human rights (Soysal 1994), and global discourses of personhood rights, sponsored by the United Nations, have become increasingly influential. One consequence of this has been the increased rights (such as access to education, the labor market, and welfare benefits, and even entitlement to vote in local elections) granted to nonnationals resident in a particular nationstate. As such, the advent of ‘post-national rights’ in Europe is one outcome of globalization and the accommodation of global trends via the Council of Europe, not the EU. Debate on the relationship between globalization and the EU has also been broadened by the recent concern with cosmopolitanism, which has emerged as a key theme in recent years, with the EU being described as a ‘cosmopolitan empire’ (Beck and Grande 2007) or the nearest thing to ‘actually existing cosmopolitanism’ (Archibugi 1998). Much of the interest in cosmopolitanism revolves around questions of EU identity in the contemporary world. On the one hand, cosmopolitanism can be seen as embodying universal values and aspirations, such as those represented by human rights or environmental values, and as such makes any separation between Europe and the rest of the world meaningless. Cosmopolitanism is also associated with the inclusion of non-European perspectives on Europe, a much-neglected theme in a great deal of EU integration studies literature. On the other hand, many recent writings on cosmopolitanism have seen it as a European value upon which Europe’s ‘core identity’ rests (Habermas and Derrida 2003). This idea of a cosmopolitan Europe has been contrasted with a much more self-interested United States, for example. The assumption that Europe is more cosmopolitan than other parts of the world or that cosmopolitanism is intrinsically European is highly problematic, and in fact works to divide Europe from the rest of the world rather than confirming an underlying universalism of values (Rumford 2007). In this context transnationalism is important as a corrective to both the rather unilateral assumptions of integration scholars regarding the EU’s relation to globalization and the ‘possessive cosmopolitanism’ of the Habermasians. Transnationalism stands to make two main contributions to studies of Europe: (1) allowing Europeans to see Europe from a global perspective; and (2) foregrounding the non-European drivers of European change.

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First, to assert the need for a global framework in order to understand European developments flies in the face of accepted wisdom in integration studies (Borocz and Sarkar 2005). Nevertheless, what is much needed in European Studies is the development of non-Eurocentric perspectives on European developments. Transnationalism, seen as networks of social connectivity not delineated by reference to nation-states, is not an expression of national identity or a process engineered by the project of integration. The autonomy of transnational connections means they may traverse European space but have no necessary connection to EU integration. Seen in this way they permit a study of Europe that is not based on assumptions of institutional building or multilevel assemblages. In short, a transnational study of Europe does not start from the assumption that transnational activity can be aggregated into the project of integration. Second, and closely linked to this, globalization may act upon Europe in ways that bypass the EU, as for example in the case of global cities (Brenner 2009) and regional autonomization (Paasi 2009). A good example of global processes acting on Europeans but having no relation to EU integration can be found in the Danish cartoon protests in 2005/06, which involved the development of transnational activists’ advocacy networks aimed at a global, not primarily European, audience, and which resulted in significant political challenges within European space but had no obvious European institutional referent. It is interesting that scholars of contentious politics tend to overlook the cartoon protests when mapping European social movements, precisely because they were not directed at European institutions and did not seek to contest European citizenship norms. As Devji (2009) points out, the cartoon protests were remarkably dispersed geographically and unconcerned for the most part with the rights of states or the responsibilities of citizenship. Muslim protests, which travelled far beyond the bounds of state and citizenship, were informed by the new rationality of a global arena. Within this arena the idea of freedom of expression has been rendered irrelevant because at the global level there is no common citizenship and no government to make freedom of expression meaningful – or offer recourse to insults and injuries. This makes uncomfortable reading for integration scholars for whom Europe is the level at which all things ‘make sense.’ This example of the cartoon protests clearly demonstrates the benefits of refocusing the study of Europe around a transnational agenda.

Transnational studies and the ‘spatial turn’ This chapter has already given consideration to the idea that integration studies has been rather poor at grasping the relationship between globalization and Europe and that studying transnationalism can provide a firmer footing for understanding the impact of global processes on Europe. The

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same can be said for the ‘spatial turn’; a focus on transnationalism can lead out of the statist cul-de-sac that is integration studies and help to understand Europe as a complex of emerging spaces, not all of which are by any means created by or yoked to the integration project. Conventional EU Studies tends to distill discussion of spatiality into a question of multiple levels of governance (e.g., local, national, supranational). The EU is then seen to organize existing spaces differently – through networks and governance structures – rather than creating new types of political spaces. Alternatively, European space is seen as ‘the projection of the nation-state onto a transnational scale’ (Kastoryano 2003, 80), or, in other words, a nation-state ‘writ large.’ In such ways the question of the spatiality of Europe is turned into a non-question: European space is but a reorganization of preexisting (sub-) national spaces. It is hard to disagree with the assertion that too many approaches in EU Studies treat ‘spatiality as no more than a descriptive category, explaining nothing about social processes’ (Axford 2007, 325). What is needed, then, is a more sophisticated understanding of Europe’s spatiality – its polycentric organization, its borderlands. Europe no longer (if it ever did) comprises only nation-states, or even subnational regions, aggregated together in a common project. The spatial novelty of the EU, combining the management of genuinely pan-European spaces (e.g., single market, Euro-land, Schengenland) and European Commission-sponsored Euro-regions with more traditional levels of national governance, and attempts to apprehend and understand this novelty, can be seen very clearly in the terms and concepts with which contemporary Europe is described and analyzed. In the past few years, a whole new lexicon of spatial politics has been incorporated into EU Studies: polycentricity (multiple centers encouraging diffused growth rather than core–periphery distinctions); ‘network Europe’ (an EU characterized by connectivity and mobility); territorial cohesion (the balanced distribution of economic activities across the EU); multilevel governance (partnerships between EU institutions, national governments, and regional and local authorities); borderlands (zones of interaction between countries rather than ‘hard’ frontiers); and Europe-as-empire (the non-statelike organization of the EU comprising an internal ‘variable geometry’ and flexible, expanding frontiers). The brief mention of these terms and concepts makes it clear that spatiality is an increasingly important dimension of the study of contemporary Europe. By the same token, there has been a reordering of Europe’s spatial hierarchies leading to an enhancement of the competitive role of regions and cities vis-à-vis that of the national state, as well as a rescaling of space (Brenner 2004) wherein cities and regions become networked within panEuropean space and transborder networks assume a greater importance. In addition, European borders (nicely captured by the idea of ‘borderlands’) are deemed to have their own spatiality and, as such, require their own regimes

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of governance. In fact, borders have undergone dramatic changes, not only in terms of their extent and range: enlargement has massively lengthened the EU’s borders and projected them beyond the former Iron Curtain. On some accounts, Europe has been ‘re-bordered’ (Andreas 2000); the external borders of the EU protect a borderless single market within which internal space mobility is greatly enhanced. On other accounts, borders are themselves networked, mobile, and diffused throughout society (Balibar 1998). In short, the new spaces of European governance are intimately related to the processes of (re-)bordering, often associated with securitization, that have proceeded alongside the processes leading to a removal of the internal (national) borders, which for so long prevented the emergence of a genuine European space. The ‘governance turn’ in EU Studies is well documented (Marks et al. 1996; Jachtenfuchs and Kohler-Koch 2004; Bache and Flinders 2005) but this concern with governance has largely ignored the transformation of space that this entails. This has resulted in some dissatisfaction among EU scholars: the ‘governance turn’ must not remain blind to the ‘spatial turn’ (Berezin 2003). Space is much more important, and much more complex, in understanding the EU than suggested by either the idea of multilevel governance or networked polity. In fact, it can be argued that rather than being primarily concerned with state building or the institutionalization of governance structures, the EU is centrally concerned with the construction of European spaces (Jensen and Richardson 2003). Put simply, the EU actively constructs European spaces that it alone is capable of governing, or, stated in different terms, the EU works to create new policy networks and governance spaces within which it can deploy European solutions to European problems (see Delanty and Rumford 2005, especially Chapter 8). Having established the importance of the changing nature of Europe’s spaces and borders, this chapter now looks at the ways in which the concept of transnationalism can help to understand these transformations. A significant contribution to understanding Europe’s transnational spatiality, and a book that places transnationalism at the heart of understanding the social and political transformation in Europe, is the recently published Escape Routes: Control and Subversion in the 21st Century by Papadopoulos et al. (2008). The authors conceive of the EU as an example of a ‘postliberal aggregate,’ a new constellation of power that connects segments of nation-state polities (elements of the state coupled with social and economic actors) into a form of ‘post-liberal sovereignty.’ Transnationalism is a motor of ‘post-liberal sovereignty’ as it ‘reinterpellates, on a global scale, the participatory actors of national sovereignty in many different ways’ (Papadopoulos et al. 2008, 27). Transnational sovereignty merges national spaces and actors with other institutional players, one consequence of which is that borders are constructed wherever they are needed (not according to nation-state preferences). The EU’s bordering activities

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in Africa through the activities of Frontex would fall into this category, such developments accord with Balibar’s (2006) notion of the ‘Great Wall of Europe.’ The work of Papadopoulos et al. (2008) is significant in many respects, not least for its detailing of forms of political opposition that evade regulatory structures of rights and representation, what the authors term ‘imperceptible politics.’ In the context of this chapter their work is particular useful as it highlights the need to place the transnational at the center of accounts of Europe. Governance, even supranational governance, should not narrowly be conceived of as always attempting to regulate the connections between people, nation, and state territory (Papadopoulos et al. 2008, 19). Transnational neoliberalism is now hegemonic and its sphere of activity is not nation-state space (or an aggregate thereof); a whole range of actors including social groups, enterprises, and ‘cultural and technoscientific bodies’ coalesce into new constellations of power, and in doing so they bypass conventional structures of (EU) governance. Escape Routes is a great example of rethinking Europe from the bottom up and for not working from the baseline of the nation-state when assessing Europe’s transformations. Europe can be conceived instead as a series of transnational spaces, transnational connectivities, and transnational actors, which do not necessarily resolve themselves into new national (or supranational) entities. Transnationalism is a motor of Europeanization precisely because it can promote the connectivity of political actors, enterprises, and social networks in unpredictable and informal ways. In doing so it creates new spaces, new political actors, and new economic opportunities. A good example of how a study of social connectivity can help to understand the novel spatiality of Europe can be found in the changing nature of borders. The phrase ‘transnational borders’ may be an oxymoron from the perspective of conventional approaches to the study of borders, which would see borders as dividing lines between nation-states and not ‘engines of connectivity,’ but there is much substance in the idea that Europe’s borders possess a transnational dimension and that transnational processes of bordering exist within European space. An obvious example is the ‘juxtaposed borders’ that exist at the railway stations and terminals on the Eurostar rail network (Gare du Nord in Paris, St. Pancras in London, and the stations at Lille, Brussels, Ebbsfleet, etc.). In these locations the passport controls are juxtaposed so that the United Kingdom (UK) passport control takes places in Paris, Lille, and so on, while the French passport controls are situated at St. Pancras, Ebbsfleet, and so on. Juxtaposed borders also exist at ferry ports, for example, Calais. This is a transnational, rather than transborder, phenomenon because the bordering activity is networked across several countries, not just across a single common border, and the expanding network comprises multiple nodes, the number of which can be increased as the

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needs and capacities of the network change. The juxtaposed Eurostar passport controls are a good example of the networked and mobile borders that are increasingly characteristic of Europe. One significant development in relation to borders in Europe is that they are no longer under the sole control of EU member states. The EU constructs and shifts its borders far more easily than nation-states have ever been able to do. Successive enlargements have transformed the external borders of the EU, both in terms of length and location. The EU now decides where the important (and Europe-defining) borders are to be located. The EU also has a border harmonization agency, Frontex, which works to ensure that national borders are European ones and policed and maintained in a standard fashion. But there are other aspects of Europe’s borders that suggest they are no longer simply a possession of the nation-state. Increasingly ordinary people are active in processes of constructing, shifting, and even dismantling borders (Rumford 2008). The bottom-up ‘borderwork’ performed by citizens has a marked transnational dimension. For example, Melton Mowbray is England’s self-appointed ‘rural capital of food.’ Melton Mowbray is a small town famous for producing pork pies and Stilton cheese, both of which are, thanks to EU regulations, geographically protected and can be produced only within a designated area. Stilton cheese currently has (since 1996) Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) status, and the Melton Mowbray pork pie was awarded Protected Geographical Indication (PGI)1 status in 2008. As the result of the efforts of a small number of culinary entrepreneurs, Melton Mowbray has embraced a new form of EU bordering, both empowering and exclusionary, which has massive implications for those producers falling outside of the protected zone. At the time the new Euro-border was drawn, the producers of pork pies falling on the wrong side of the line were at a serious economic disadvantage. The creation of this new European border – which overlays the more traditional administrative boundary map of the United Kingdom – is the product of grassroots activity and is a very good example of the way in which the nation-state has ceded control of making borders both ‘upwards’ to the EU and ‘downwards’ to autonomous economic actors. Melton Mowbray’s PGI border represents more than a form of economic protectionism within the UK. PGI status links Melton Mowbray to a host of other similarly protected places in the United Kingdom and Europe and beyond. In this case, the border has become the basis for novel forms of European connectivity and economic opportunities: as the United Kingdom’s ‘rural capital of food,’ Melton Mowbray hosts a major annual food event called The East Midlands Food and Drink Festival. The border is being used to further Melton Mowbray’s reputation and identity far beyond its locality: it is a connection or ‘gateway’ to Europe and beyond. Melton Mowbray is now a locality connected by its border to the national, regional, and international in new ways.

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Conclusion To conclude, it is useful to consider the ways that ‘putting the social into the global’ via transnationalism is important for studying European transformations. In the study of globalization there exists some consensus that the most important dimensions are the economic, the political, and the cultural. It is not common to see the social accorded equivalent status, despite the growing popularity of the idea of global civil society. Similarly, in EU Studies the social dimension of integration is deemed to be the least developed, and in the case of Europe civil society is thought to be conspicuous by its absence. This leads to the rather odd state of affairs whereby global civil society is seen to be far more developed than European civil society, a situation that reveals more about the nature of EU Studies than it does about the nature of civil society (Delanty and Rumford 2005). The reason for the neglect of the social is pretty much the same in both instances. Both Global Studies and EU Studies have relied to an unhealthy degree on top-down accounts of institutional developments. With the former the focus has been on the extent to which globalization can be managed, governed, shaped, and so forth, the assumption being that more effective mechanisms of global governance are a likely (and desirable) outcome of the increasing investment in attempts to understand the complexity of global processes. In the case of Europe the focus has been on the institutionalization of integration and the need to establish pan-European mechanisms of regulatory governance. In relation to managing society this has resulted in attempts by the European Commission to ‘organize civil society at European level’ and delineate a ‘European model of society’ (Rumford 2002, 86–94). What is neglected in these top-down approaches are the unruly networks of social connectivity that do not yield to pan-European or global governance. The efforts of individuals, families, groups, enterprises, and social movements to network across large distances cannot always be aggregated into a coherent and purposeful process. There is a messiness to social life, which can mean that many activities defy classification in the terms in which organized social and political life is normally understood. There are transnational processes or activities occurring in Europe that may have no connection with the EU’s project of integration: networks of educationalists (Lawn 2009), football tournaments, networks of Islamic protest, for example. Similarly, there are actors and agencies in Europe who may be animated by global processes but the effects of these processes on European people are not mediated by European institutions, what I have elsewhere termed ‘autonomization’ (Rumford 2000). The unruly and nonregulated dimensions of transnationalism (and the social fragmentation that can result from transnational protest, networking, or conflict generation) remain the ‘undiscovered continent’ for Europeanists.

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Note 1. PDO status requires foods to be produced, processed, and prepared exclusively within the specified geographic area using specialist know-how, whereas PGI status requires foodstuffs to be closely linked to a specific area with at least one of the preparation stages taking place within the designated boundary.

References Albrow, M. (1998) ‘Frames and Transformations in Transnational Studies’, http:// www.transcomm.ox.ac.uk/working%20papers/albrow.pdf, date accessed January 25, 2010. Andreas, P. (2000) ‘Introduction: The Wall After the Wall’ in P. Andreas and T. Snyder (eds.) The Wall Around the West: State Borders and Immigration Controls in North America and Europe (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield). Appadurai, A. (1996) Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis, MN: Minnesota University Press). Archibugi, D. (1998) ‘Principles of Cosmopolitan Democracy’ in D. Archibugi, D. Held, and M. Kohler (eds.) Re-Imagining Political Community: Studies in Cosmopolitan Democracy (Cambridge: Polity Press). Axford, B. (2007) ‘Editorial: Borders and Networks in the Global System’, Globalizations, 4(3), 321–6. Bache, I. and M. Flinders (eds.) (2005) Multi-Level Governance (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Balibar, E. (1998) ‘The Borders of Europe’ in P. Cheah and B. Robbins (eds.) Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling Beyond the Nation (Minneapolis, MN: Minnesota University Press). Balibar, E. (2006) ‘Strangers as Enemies: Further Reflections on the Aporias of Transnational Citizenship’, Globalization Working Papers 06/4, Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, McMaster University, Canada. Bauman, Z. (2006) ‘The Unwinnable War: An Interview with Zygmunt Bauman’ Eurozine, http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2006-12-13-bauman-en.html, date accessed January 30, 2010. Beck, U. (2000) What Is Globalization? (Cambridge: Polity Press). Beck, U. and E. Grande (2007) Cosmopolitan Europe (Cambridge: Polity Press). Beck, U. and N. Sznaider (2006) ‘Unpacking Cosmopolitanism for the Social Sciences: A Research Agenda’, British Journal of Sociology, 57(1), 1–23. Berezin, M. (2003) ‘Introduction. Territory, Emotion and Identity: Spatial Recalibration in a New Europe’ in M. Berezin and M. Schain (eds.) Europe without Borders: Remapping Territory, Citizenship and Identity in a Transnational Age (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press). Borocz, J. and M. Sarkar (2005) ‘What is the EU?’ International Sociology, 20(2), 153–73. Brenner, N. (2004) New State Spaces: Urban Governance and the Rescaling of Statehood (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Brenner, N. (2009) ‘Cities and Territorial Competitiveness’ in C. Rumford (ed.) The Sage Handbook of European Studies (London: Sage). Castells, M. (2000) The Rise of the Network Society. The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, Volume 1, 2nd edn (Oxford: Blackwell). Delanty, G. and C. Rumford (2005) Rethinking Europe: Social Theory and the Implications of Europeanization (London: Routledge).

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Devji, F. (2009) ‘The Mountain Comes to Muhammad: Global Islam in Provincial Europe’ in C. Rumford (ed.) The Sage Handbook of European Studies (London: Sage). Djelic, M-L. and K. Sahlin-Andersson (2006) ‘Introduction. A World of Governance: The Rise of Transnational Regulation’ in M-L. Djelic and K. Sahlin-Andersson (eds.) Transnational Governance: Institutional Dynamics of Regulation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Giulianotti, R. and R. Robertson (2007) ‘Recovering the Social: Globalization, Football and Transnationalism’ in R. Giulianotti and R. Robertson (eds.) Globalization and Sport (Oxford: Blackwell). Giulianotti, R. and R. Robertson (2009) Globalization and Football (London: Sage). Habermas, J. and J. Derrida. (2003) ‘February 15, or, What Binds Europeans Together’ in D. Levy, M. Pensky, and J. Torpey (eds.) Old Europe, New Europe, Core Europe: Transatlantic Relations after the Iraq War (London: Verso). Hay, C. and B. Rosamond (2002) ‘Globalization, European Integration and the Discursive Construction of Economic Imperatives’, Journal of European Public Policy, 9(2), 147–67. Held, D., A. McGrew, D. Goldblatt, and J. Perraton (1999) Global Transformations: Politics, Economics and Culture (Cambridge: Polity Press). Holton, R. (2008) Global Networks (Houndmills: Palgrave). Jachtenfuchs, M. and B. Kohler-Koch (2004) ‘Governance and Institutional Development’ in A. Wiener and T. Diez (eds.) European Integration Theory (Oxford: Oxford University). Jensen, O. and T. Richardson (2003) Making European Space: Mobility, Power and Territorial Identity (London: Routledge). Kastoryano, R. (2003) ‘Transnational Networks and Political Participation: The Place of Immigrants in the European Union’ in M. Berezin and M. Schain (eds.) Europe Without Borders: Remapping Territory, Citizenship and Identity in a Transnational Age (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press). Khagram, S. and P. Levitt (2008a) ‘Preface and Acknowledgements’ in S. Khagram and P. Levitt (eds.) The Transnational Studies Reader: Intersections and Innovations (London: Routledge). Khagram, S. and P. Levitt (2008b) ‘Constructing Transnational Studies’ in S. Khagram and P. Levitt (eds.) The Transnational Studies Reader: Intersections and Innovations (London: Routledge). Lawn, M. (2009) ‘An Intellectual Homeland: Governing Mobilities and Space in European Education’ in C. Rumford (ed.) The Sage Handbook of European Studies (London: Sage). Marks, G., F. Scharpf, P. Schmitter and W. Streek (1996) Governance in the European Union (London: Sage). Meyer, J. W. (2001) ‘The European Union and the Globalization of Culture’ in S. S. Andersen (ed.) Institutional Approaches to the European Union, ARENA Report No. 3/2001 (Oslo: ARENA). Paasi, A. (2009) ‘Regions and Regional Dynamics’ in C. Rumford (ed.) The Sage Handbook of European Studies (London: Sage). Papadopoulos, D., N. Stephenson, and V. Tsianos (2008) Escape Routes: Control and Subversion in the 21st Century (London: Pluto Press). Robertson, R. (1992) Globalization: Social Theory and Global Culture (London: Sage). Robinson, W. (2007a) ‘Transnationality’ in J. Scholte and R. Robertson (eds.) Encyclopedia of Globalization (London: Routledge). Robinson, W. (2007b) ‘Theories of Globalization’ in G. Ritzer (ed.) Blackwell Companion to Globalization (Oxford: Blackwell).

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Roudometof, V. (2009) ‘Nationalism and Transnationalism’ in C. Rumford (ed.) The Sage Handbook of European Studies (London: Sage). Rumford, C. (2000) European Cohesion? Contradictions in EU Integration (Houndmills: Palgrave). Rumford, C. (2002) The European Union: A Political Sociology (Oxford: Blackwell). Rumford, C. (ed.) (2007) Cosmopolitanism and Europe (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press). Rumford, C. (2008) ‘Introduction: Citizens and Borderwork in Europe’, Space and Polity, 12(1), 1–12. Soysal, Y. (1994) The Limits of Citizenship (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press). Vertovec, S. (2009) Transnationalism (London: Routledge). Wincott, D. (2000) ‘Globalization and European Integration’ in C. Hay and D. Marsh (eds.) Demystifying Globalization (Houndmills: Palgrave).

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Part II Transnational Governance: Policy-Making and Interest Mobilization

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4 Transnationalism in European Governance and Policy-Making Ingeborg Tömmel

Analyses focusing on the European Union (EU) as a political system or on its modes of governance rarely conceptualize transnationalism as a specific issue. Scholars tend to either ignore the existence and relevance of transnational relations or assume they form a byproduct of European integration that will emerge only in the long run. In contrast to these views, this chapter argues that transnationalism is an indispensable factor underlying and facilitating European integration. Yet this factor is often hidden behind the ever-present disunity among the EU member states. Transnational relationships in European governance evolve in many policy areas between societal actors from the public and the private spheres (for a definition of transnationalism, see Introduction). However, in most cases they do not emerge by themselves or originate in dynamics inherent to the process of integration. Instead, European actors and elites, in particular the European Commission, foster, shape, and transform transnational relations and integrate them into the political system of the EU. This implies that such relationships are triggered by and stabilized through carefully designed institutions, ranging from rather informal arrangements to highly organized structures and modes of procedure. Altogether, transnational relationships form, in many policy areas, an important if not an indispensable factor for making these policies work. What might be the rationale underlying this phenomenon? Why do European actors pursue a deliberate strategy of fostering transnationalism? To answer these questions, a consideration of the institutional structure of the EU is necessary. The European polity is constituted by institutions designed to mediate between two contradictory principles in the process of integration. These are the European and the national principles, or, to put it more simply, the principles of unity and diversity (Tömmel forthcoming). In general, European actors and institutions tend to foster unity, whereas national governments primarily pursue their particular interests and thus advocate or even increase diversity. In the process of policy-making, European actors and institutions press for further integration, whereas 57

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the governments of the member states try to preserve, as much as possible, their autonomy (Scharpf 1994). As the latter have more formal powers and authority at their disposal, whereas the former are relatively weak in terms of formal powers and competences, this constellation often results in nondecision and stalemate, which is further aggravated by dissent among the various member states. Building and stabilizing transnational relationships and institutionalizing them firmly serves to overcome this stalemate. Institutionalized transnational relationships provide for a far-reaching unity ‘from below’ while preserving the member states’ influence on European policy-making. Therefore, the central hypothesis of this chapter is that transnational relationships in European governance and policy-making serve both to countervail intergovernmental disunity and to compensate for the comparatively weak authority of the supranational institutions. In other words, such relationships bridge the gap between the contradictory supranational and intergovernmental forces that constitute the political system of the EU. Why are transnational relationships able to bridge such a structurally determined gap? In his theory of society, Luhmann (1997) assumes that society is divided into functional subsystems governed by different codes (see Hurrelmann in this volume). Communication between the subsystems is impossible or occurs only in the form of ‘irritations.’ Within every subsystem, the respective codes provide the framework for the behavior and orientation of actors. Regardless of their national origin, transnational actors in different policy areas of the EU can be assumed to belong to the same subsystem. Because these actors adhere to the same codes, communication and cooperation between them is significantly facilitated. Against this background, the chapter proceeds as follows. First, it explores the basic characteristics of transnational relationships in European governance and policy-making, as they are fostered and shaped by the European Commission. This results in a typology distinguishing four forms of transnationalism. Second, it presents empirical examples of transnational relationships in various policy areas. This serves to illustrate the strategy of the Commission to foster the emergence and institutionalization of such relationships, as well as the role that transnationalism plays in policy-making and, more generally, European integration. The chapter then concludes with a summary on the nature of transnationalism in the EU and some thoughts on its role and importance in the European polity.

Forms of transnationalism in policy-making: A typology As mentioned in the introduction, transnationalism abounds in many forms and variations in European policy-making. What follows focuses on those forms of transnational relationships that are fostered deliberately by the European Commission. Because the Commission is the central institution responsible for initiating, implementing, and monitoring European policies,

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it has a strong interest in making these policies work. In pursuit of this objective, it triggers, shapes, and supports the emergence of transnational relationships in many ways and through various modes of procedure. One prominent strategy of the European Commission is to establish transnational networks or more open forums as well as advisory committees (Tömmel and Verdun 2009). Such bodies consist of representatives of every member state. Another is to foster the creation of transnational interest groups and associations (Greenwood 2007). They may act as lobbyists, advisors, and even bodies responsible for the implementation of EU policies. In most cases, such associations are formed by uniting existing national associations under a common umbrella. A third strategy is pursued through certain modes of procedure in policy-making. Thus in all policy areas governed by the Open Method of Coordination (OMC) the Commission establishes procedures for the exchange of best practices between actors of the member states, which are accompanied by peer reviews (Eberlein and Kerwer 2004). Finally, the Commission uses procedural requirements in order to promote transnational cooperation. This is particularly the case in the Structural Funds programs, which require cross-border or other forms of transnational cooperation between regions of different member states (Tömmel 1998). The actors involved in the transnational settings described above may vary widely. Transnational networks, forums, and advisory committees generally consist of experts in the respective policy areas. They may range from lower-level civil servants, as representatives of special agencies or regional and local governments, to independent experts or scientists. In fact, many of these actors can be characterized as transgovernmental, because they are agents of public authorities. However, they are not official representatives of their governments and therefore constitute a subcategory of transnational actors (see Introduction). Transnational interest associations by contrast represent private or nonstate actors in European decision and policy-making. Besides a wide spectrum of economic and social partners, that is, employers’ associations as well as trade unions, the European Commission increasingly includes other civil society representatives in advisory and lobbying circles. Thus environmental groups, women’s lobbies, consumer associations, and human rights advocates all organize themselves at the European level with active support from the Commission. Transnational settings in the framework of OMC procedures may include public as well as private actors, although the former dominate such settings. Forms of transnational cooperation triggered through Community programs focus primarily on public actors at regional and local levels. Yet these activities may also include a wide spectrum of nonstate actors, such as representatives of chambers of commerce, development agencies, local industrial associations, trade unions, and weakly organized interest groups. In sum, although transnationalism in European policy-making in many cases involves public actors and therefore often takes the form of transgovernmentalism, nonstate actors are increasingly drawn into these processes. These actors from different levels, sectors,

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and fields of expertise all have a direct or indirect stake in the respective policy area. According to these different forms of transnationalism in European policy-making, the forms as well as the degree of institutionalization also vary. With regard to forms of institutionalization, a distinction can be made between those that result in organized network structures and those that are based merely on procedural provisions (Tömmel and Verdun 2009). Network structures in turn may vary in their degree of institutionalization. In many policy areas, transnational networks are established according to rules laid down in Council regulations. Such regulations define not only the membership and the competences of these bodies, but also their rules of procedure as well as the role of the European Commission in their activities (Eberlein and Newman 2009). In general, the Commission acts as the presidency and the agenda setter of such networks. Other transnational networks, for example the forums in energy policy, are more loosely organized (Eberlein 2008). Accordingly, the Commission takes the lead on a rather informal basis. Finally, advisory committees of the Commission are usually established without explicit formal provisions. The members of such committees are in most cases appointed by the Commission. European interest associations and other transnational lobby groups organize themselves autonomously, but the European Commission often plays an indirect or sometimes even direct role in this process. Indirectly, it supports such a development by making clear that it prefers to consult with groups that are organized on a transnational basis (Hull 1993). Because such groups have already found a common ground with regard to European policy issues, the Commission in this case does not need to mediate between diverging national views and preferences. Directly, the Commission supports weaker groups by providing them with financial support. This may take the form of support for transnational conferences and meetings, for example, financing translation services. Trade unions and European labor councils in particular enjoy this form of support. In other cases, the Commission finances research projects or studies in areas where interest groups have specific expertise. With such activities, interest groups can cover up to half of their budgets (Greenwood 2007). Transnational relationships in the framework of OMC procedures are in general less firmly organized; they are merely governed by the procedures for exchanging best practice experiences (Eberlein and Kerwer 2004). As the participants in such procedures may vary from case to case and year to year, such forms of transnationalism are less stable. By contrast, transnationalism in the framework of Community programs requires stable structures for cross-border cooperation (Tömmel 1998). Because these programs cover several years and are vested with significant financial resources allocated by the European Commission, stable relationships between actors of different member states have to be built up. It is not surprising that such forms of

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transnational cooperation work successfully only after an initial experimental phase. The Commission therefore aims to foster follow-up programs, so that the cooperation can increasingly be stabilized and institutionalized. With regard to the distinction between horizontal and vertical forms of transnationalism (see Introduction), there is also variation in the cases described above. Although all forms of transnationalism in European policymaking display characteristics of both horizontal and vertical relationships, some are more explicitly vertically organized, whereas others are dominated by horizontal relationships. Thus transnational networks, forums, and committees can be regarded primarily as vertically integrated, since the European Commission plays a leading role in them. Furthermore, transnational forms of cooperation in the framework of Community programs are characterized by strong vertical relationships. The formal requirements governing such forms of cooperation are laid down in Council regulations. Compliance with these regulations is rewarded with significant financial incentives. In addition, the Commission monitors compliance carefully throughout the implementation process. In contrast, interest groups and associations, although supported by the Commission, are actors primarily organized along horizontal lines and acting more or less autonomously in the framework of European governance and policy-making. Similarly, actors brought together in transnational settings in the framework of OMC procedures are linked by horizontal ties. Because mutual learning is the central objective in this context, horizontal interactions dominate. The Commission plays only a background role as organizer and advisor in this process. This overview of various forms of transnationalism fostered by the European Commission in policy-making allows an elaboration of a tentative typology based on two important variables: the mode of institutionalization and the form of transnationalism (see Table 4.1). The degree of

Table 4.1 Transnational relationships fostered by the European Commission Form of transnationalism

Mode of institutionalization

Through institutional structures

Through procedural provisions

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Primarily vertical

Primarily horizontal

Transnational networks Forums Advisory committees Cross-border and transnational cooperation in Community programs

Transnational interest groups or associations

Exchange of best practices in OMC procedures

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institutionalization could not be included in this matrix, as it varies within each of the four categories; yet to a certain extent it coincides with forms of transnationalism. Horizontal forms are in general institutionalized less firmly than vertical ones. The actor structure could also not be used as an important variable for classification, because both public and nonstate actors play a role in all four categories; however, in this case there is also a certain degree of variation according to forms of transnationalism. Vertical forms are clearly dominated by public actors and agents. Horizontal forms display a much more varied actor structure, with nonstate actors dominating in the area of transnational interest groups and associations. The following section presents selected empirical examples in order to illustrate the forms of, and variations between, transnational relationships, as well as the strategy of the Commission to establish and stabilize such relationships. This also shows that, in practice, the distinctions between forms of transnationalism are not as clear-cut as they appear in the typology.

The practice of transnationalism in European policy-making The following empirical examples of transnationalism in European policymaking do not appear in the order they do in the previous section, but instead in chronological order. This shows how transnationalism evolved as an incremental process and how the European Commission promoted it deliberately in order to foster European integration or the Europeanization of the member states. Transnationalism in interest representation The first forms of transnationalism emerged in the sphere of interest associations. European interest groups organized themselves in the early years of integration. Reflecting the then-dominant policy areas, agricultural and industrial producers were the first to become active at the European level. Union des Industries de la Communauté Européenne (UNICE),1 an overarching association of employers, as well as the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), the umbrella organization of European trade unions, were founded in 1958 and 1973 respectively. With the creation of the single market and the ensuing extension of European policy-making to noneconomic areas, lobbying activities in Brussels proliferated at an unprecedented rate (Mazey and Richardson 1993). Since the mid-1990s, new social movements have organized themselves transnationally as well. In particular, environmental groups, as well as women’s lobbies and associations advocating consumer interests, human rights, or animal protection, to name a few, have all become active on a European scale (Marks and McAdams 1996). The European Commission fostered this development from the very beginning (Greenwood 2007). In particular, it invited these organizations

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to provide information as well as policy advice and to participate in advisory committees. Initially, these activities were limited to economic and social partners. With the growing range and scope of European policies, they were also extended to rather weakly organized interests such as environmental groups. A further boost to this development occurred during the era of Delors, when he invited the economic and social partners to a structured tripartite dialogue, the Val Duchesse Dialogue. More important, with the adoption of the Maastricht Treaty, a procedure was introduced that gave economic and social partners under certain conditions a legislative role in social policy (Falkner et al. 2005). Although the procedure did not result in major successes, it strengthened the position of UNICE and the ETUC vis-à-vis their national member organizations. Transnationalism was also further extended by giving European private standardization organizations – such as CEN (Comité Européen de Normalisation) and CENELEC (Comité Européen de Normalisation Électrotechnique) – a central role in defining European technical norms and monitoring compliance (Egan 2001). Altogether, transnational interest groups and organizations were not only included in advisory circles and bodies, but also vested with significant functions in legislation and policy implementation. The most paradigmatic case for using a European transnational group of private actors as a resource for promoting integration is the European Round Table of Industrialists. In the literature, this Round Table is often described as having emerged in the wake of the single market project on the initiative of Wisse Dekker, then top manager of Philips (e.g., Sandholtz and Zysman 1989). In fact, however, the Round Table was already founded by 1981 upon invitation of Commissioner Davignon, then responsible for Directorate General XIII (Technology etc.) of the European Commission. The objective of the Commission was to use this Round Table for defining and elaborating the basic parameters of a European technology policy (Peterson and Sharp 1998). With the support of the Round Table, consisting of the top managers of the most important high-tech enterprises in Europe, it was much easier to convince national governments that such a policy was needed in the Community in order to improve the competitive position of European enterprises vis-à-vis the United States and Japan. After the European technology policy was established successfully – though with the hesitant consent of the member states – the Round Table continued to work. It then turned to the most salient issue of the period, the project of the single market. It acted as an important advocate for this project and lobbied national governments successfully to support market integration actively (Sandholtz and Zysman 1989). The Round Table continues to exist into the present. It serves both to give advice to the Commission and to lobby national governments to embark on further integration steps. Altogether, transnational interest groups and associations, or specific institutions such as the European Round Table of Industrialists, all perform

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a twofold function in the EU. On the one hand, they serve to bring in visions and preferences with regard to European policies or major steps of integration. This implies that these visions and preferences have first to be elaborated through a process of horizontal interactions that takes into account national views and formulates a common denominator. On the other hand, they feed back into the national political or societal community by advocating or even lobbying for ‘European’ views and preferences. In sum, interest groups and associations act primarily on a horizontal basis; however, they are increasingly vertically integrated into EU decision making and even policy implementation. Transnational networks, forums, and committees Transnationalism in the form of institutionalized networks emerged in the early phase of integration as well. The European Commission first established advisory committees, consisting of delegates from every member state, for different policy areas. Although participants were mostly civil servants, they did not act as governmental representatives. Because they were asked to provide advice to the Commission for conceptualizing legislation and other policy initiatives, they were committed primarily to substantial and procedural issues of the respective policy. In other words, they acted as experts in search of optimum common solutions and not as advocates of national interests. Accordingly, deliberation, and not bargaining, was the predominant style of interaction in these committees. A famous example of a committee of experts set up deliberately to circumvent intergovernmental bargains and the threat of nondecision was the Committee for Economic and Monetary Union (Dyson and Featherstone 1999; Verdun 1999; Van Assche 2005). Established during the run-up to the Treaty of Maastricht, the committee was intended to elaborate a concept for European monetary integration. Under the presidency of Delors, it consisted of the governors of national central banks, two commissioners, and three independent experts. Although some of them, in particular Karl Otto Pöhl from the German Bundesbank, were adamantly opposed to the project, they jointly elaborated a viable concept for establishing a common currency and the necessary institutional framework. The committee, ‘this rare beast’ as one observer put it, was driven predominantly by expert views and visions, and national interests hardly played a role.2 This facilitated consensus on a detailed route toward monetary integration. After the committee had completed its work and submitted its plan, national governments could hardly reject the project (Dinan 2004, 239–40). Accordingly, the regulations for a monetary union were adopted with the Treaty of Maastricht. A parallel Committee on Political Union that was to submit proposals for further strengthening and democratizing the EU ended up in nondecision. Its members, delegates of national governments, were deeply divided on all major issues and also on the proposals launched by the Commission (Pryce 1994;

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Ross 1995). In sum, this example shows that major integration steps cannot be achieved through intergovernmental bargains alone or merely upon proposal of the Commission. Instead, they need careful preparation by transnational bodies that are able to pursue the objectives of creating unity for the EU as a whole and preserving diversity among the member states. The Committee for Economic and Monetary Union not only worked on a transnational basis, but also proposed transnational institutions for governing the common currency. Thus the European Central Bank is governed by an Executive Board consisting of six members. They are experts from the banking sector3 nominated by the member states according to a principle of rotation. Furthermore, the European Central Bank is assisted by a Governing Council, which consists of the Executive Board as well as the governors of the central banks of those member states that have adopted the Euro. As a precondition for this institutional structure, all member states had to establish an independent central bank. Thus transnationalism, first embodied only in the advisory committee, provided the pattern for creating a series of new institutions that serve to safeguard the independence of the European Central Bank from national and European political interference. It is not surprising that after this eminent success, the European Commission further exploited transnational settings for initiating or improving European policy-making in a broad range of sectors and areas. In particular, recently established policies that fall under shared competence are accompanied by transnational networks. These networks in most cases consist of delegates from national regulatory agencies or other experts in the respective policy area (Tömmel and Verdun 2009, 300–2). They fulfill a series of important policy functions, such as exchanging experiences and best practices, discussing further regulatory initiatives, and even designing European laws and regulations or coordinating national regulatory frameworks and policy approaches. The networks are in most cases established on the basis of a Council regulation. This implies that member states have explicitly consented to this institutional arrangement. Transnational networks in particular play a pivotal role in sectors that were recently liberalized or privatized, that is, public utilities such as electricity, railways, telecommunications, and other network infrastructures (Eberlein and Grande 2005; Eberlein and Newman 2009; Grande and Hartenberger 2009). Furthermore, they are established in comparatively new sectors that are increasingly subject to stricter governmental and also European control, such as private data protection (Newman 2008), the health and safety sector, food control (Gehring et al. 2007), and financial market regulation (Donnelly 2007). In all these cases, transnational networks coordinate national policies horizontally between the member states and vertically within the European regulatory framework. They tend to transform the patchwork of different national policy approaches into

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a more coherent policy strategy covering the EU as a whole. And, most importantly, they make a far-reaching transfer of powers to the European level obsolete. At this point, it might seem that institutionalized transnational networks are used in particular in those cases where the EU has only recently acquired a policy role or where it actively tries to Europeanize the policies of the member states. Yet surprisingly, the European Commission has also used this approach to improve existing policies. The most famous example is competition policy, a sector where the Commission held, until recently, exclusive competence. Yet this policy was decentralized to a certain degree in 2003 from the European to the national level (McGowan 2005; Wilks 2005). The reform delegated to the member states significant competences in dealing with minor competition cases. However, this implied that every member state had to establish a competition authority in the form of an independent agency. After this step had been implemented successfully, several transnational networks were set up to deal separately with different sectors of competition policy, that is, cartels, merger control, and state aid. Members of national agencies – experts in the respective areas – participate in the networks based on a Council regulation. Under the presidency of the Commission, the networks perform similar functions as those described above.4 They discuss competition cases, exchange experiences, and give advice to colleagues who deal with difficult cases. In addition, they elaborate opinions on and proposals for further European policy initiatives or common strategies and standards to be pursued at the national level. In sum, they coordinate national policies horizontally as well as vertically with the – in this case far-reaching and path-setting – policy initiatives and strategies of the Commission. In the literature, a heated debate has evolved over whether this recent reform of competition policy strengthens or weakens the role of the Commission or, more generally, the European level (McGowan 2005; Wilks 2005). In other words, the debate centers on the question of whether supranational or intergovernmental forces prevail in this policy area. Such a debate misses the point because it ignores the importance of transnationalism. Transnational networks, staffed by national experts – delegates of independent agencies – act at both European and national levels, with active support and guidance provided by the Commission. Together they transform European and national policies into a more coherent whole. Because the members of the networks are experts of the respective sectors, their perceptions of policy problems and possible ways toward solutions tend to converge. Therefore, the decentralization of European competition policy – going hand in hand with the delegation of important policy tasks from governmental to more or less independent actors and agents, who however collaborate closely under the auspices of the Commission – means improving the authority of this policy at a European scale vis-à-vis both national

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governments and private actors. In addition, it implies that decisions taken in competition cases, whether by the Commission or a national agency, enjoy more legitimacy. If the case of competition policy shows that transnational networks are used to improve a policy area where the Commission held exclusive competence, there are examples for the opposite case as well. That is, the approach is also applied in order to get a hold on policies that are the exclusive competence of the member states. A case in point is energy policy, where the Commission established so-called forums as a more loosely organized form of transnational networks (Eberlein 2008). These forums, consisting of policy experts from the member states, usually meet several times a year under the presidency of the Commission. They discuss common policy approaches and strategies to be pursued at the national level. To a certain degree, the members of the forums also act as lobbyists trying to persuade national governments to transfer some competences in energy policy to the European level. Yet, up to the present, major results in this respect have not been achieved. Nevertheless, progress has been made in coordinating national policies under a common umbrella. Increasingly, OMC procedures are applied to intensify coordination (see below). Thus, also in energy policy, which is still a preserve of exclusive national competence, a certain degree of Europeanization has been achieved, in particular through the use of transnational forums as a vehicle for changing the minds and perceptions of national policy agents. Altogether, this section shows that transnational networks, whether highly institutionalized or based on a more informal arrangement, play an important role in unifying European policies, either top-down from the European to the national level (competition policy) or bottom-up from the national to the European level (energy policy), or, as is most often the case, through intensive interactions in both directions. Although these networks are primarily vertically integrated, based on Council regulations and the Commission’s leading role, their purpose is also to intensify horizontal integration and to facilitate policy transfers, particularly between more and less developed countries. Transnational cooperation in Community programs Transnational cooperation in Community programs first emerged during the 1980s in the framework of the Structural Funds (Tömmel 1998; Sodupe 1999). Once ‘invented,’ the approach was transferred to other policy areas. Transnationalism in this case is triggered mainly by financial incentives provided for certain policy initiatives and programs. Actors are expected to organize themselves transnationally in this framework and to collaborate closely in joint projects and programs. Some basic parameters determining the modes of procedure in transnational cooperation are laid down in Council regulations. In addition, the European Commission provides the

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actors involved with detailed procedural norms as well as advice on managing and administering joint programs. Cross-border cooperation was the first type of transnational program fostered by the Commission (Tömmel 1998). An early experiment, referring to the border region between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, dates as far back as the late 1970s. In the mid-1980s the Commission launched the so-called Community Initiatives, programs that set the basic parameters for policy implementation. One of these initiatives was dedicated to cross-border cooperation. With the ‘big’ reform of the Structural Funds in 1989, the Community Initiatives were significantly extended and cross-border cooperation was promoted with a specific initiative called INTERREG (Sodupe 1999). It covered all the internal border regions of the Community. The next logical step was to extend INTERREG to the external border regions of the EU, so as to also include nonmember states in transnational cooperation. This approach was particularly important for preparing for the eastern enlargement of the EU. The INTERREG program, through horizontal interactions between regions, served not only to apply structural policy to the accession states, but also to make their civil servants familiar with the administrative procedures and practices of the EU. With the last reform of the Structural Funds in 2007, cross-border cooperation was included in the mainstream approach of this policy and thus further expanded (Tömmel 2006). Obviously, cross-border cooperation in all its varying forms and institutional settings serves primarily to organize a horizontal policy transfer between more advanced countries and regions and their less developed partners. This transfer however is embedded firmly in a European policy approach and thus vertically integrated. Next to cross-border cooperation, the Commission also fostered transnational cooperation between regions that did not share common borders (Tömmel 1998; Sodupe 1999). The preferred institutional framework for such initiatives was the so-called pilot action. Such actions were first defined in the Council regulations of the Structural Funds in 1994. However, the substance of the corresponding programs was elaborated by the Commission and the cooperating actors. The Commission issued, by way of communication, substantial and procedural criteria for the adoption of the programs. The underlying idea was to foster cooperation between regional and local actors – public as well as private – that face similar problems. The cooperating actors had to elaborate in this framework their programs for implementation. As a consequence, a series of pilot programs proliferated in the following years. Some covered two or three partner regions from different states, whereas others aggregated a much larger number of participants. The latter led to the emergence of associations, for example between regions bordering the sea, cities hit by industrial decline, chambers of commerce aiming to foster economic growth, and mountain areas facing particular development problems (Tömmel 1998). Also in this case the purpose was to

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exchange opinions and visions between the cooperating partners, to share best practices, and to search for common policy solutions. In other words, these institutional arrangements, triggered by procedural norms and financial incentives, were expected to facilitate multiple policy transfers between the cooperating partners in terms of substance as well as procedures of implementation. The policy approach of transnational cooperation in the framework of Community initiatives and pilot actions was soon transferred to other policy areas. For example, consider the programs of DG Education for student exchanges between universities of Europe (ERASMUS, LEONARDO, SOKRATES) and for the creation of ever-larger transnational research networks (for example, the New Gov project). The principle of transnationalism is thus transferred to the decentralized actors that manage and implement the programs. More important, the approach was used extensively to incorporate the accession states and later other neighboring states of the EU into European programs. In fact, much of the neighborhood policy, as far as it is implemented through development programs financed by the EU, is based on the approach of transnational cooperation between the EU and third states (Kelley 2006). In conclusion, the approach, once ‘invented’ and implemented successfully in the framework of the Structural Funds, had an enormous multiplier effect on structural policy and a number of other policy areas to which it was transferred. In particular, it played – and still plays – an important role in European foreign policy, which used to be the reserve of the governments of the member states. By delegating foreign policy tasks to transnational actors, relationships with third states across the globe could be intensified and based on a more cooperative style of interaction. Transnationalism in the framework of OMC procedures Transnationalism in the framework of OMC procedures is marked by more open and ad hoc relationships between actors of different member states. This form of transnationalism, triggered by procedural norms, emerged only in the course of the 1990s, when coordination became a major tool for Europeanizing national policies. In the vast and still growing literature on the OMC, the Lisbon Summit in spring 2000 is usually assumed to mark the beginning of this procedure. During this summit, the European Council launched the so-called Lisbon Agenda, a set of policy initiatives aimed at transforming the EU within 10 years into the most competitive area of the world. With this ambitious objective, the OMC was launched as the procedural tool for coordinating national policies. However, the OMC procedure did not follow from these farreaching European Council decisions, but was already applied in the second half of the 1990s on the initiative of the European Commission. The basic parameters of the approach were laid down in the European Commission

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(1993) White Paper on Growth, Competitiveness and Employment. In practice, the procedure started in 1997 with the European Employment Strategy and a strategy to improve the performance of industrial enterprises (Tömmel 2003, 172–3). It was only after this experimental phase that the member states accepted the approach and adopted it with the decision of the Lisbon Summit. The procedure usually consists of five stages (Armstrong and Kilpatrick 2007). It starts with defining common objectives at the European level, which the Council adopts on proposal of the Commission. In a second step, national authorities elaborate a National Action Plan, defining more detailed policy objectives, modes of procedure, and steps of implementation. Third, member states have to report in regular intervals of one, two, or three years on their policy achievements. Fourth, the Commission draws up a summary report on national performances. Fifth, policy recommendations based on the summary report are provided by the Council to the member states. This core part of the procedure is based on the interaction between European institutions and national governments. Transnationalism comes in only through the accompanying procedures. These include meetings of lowerlevel civil servants and other policy experts, brought together to perform peer reviews. Participation in these settings is often voluntary. Dependent on the policy area, they may also include private actors, as is the case in procedures referring to the industrial sector. In sum, the OMC is a hybrid procedure, on the one hand consisting of a process based on the interaction between European institutions and national governments, and on the other hand supported by transnational institutional arrangements that bring together a wide variety of public and private actors, often on a voluntary basis. There is much debate in the literature about what triggered the emergence of the OMC procedure. Some authors claim the coordination of economic policy in the framework of monetary union provided the paradigm for the OMC (Hodson and Maher 2001). Others assume the Commission incorporated procedures similar to those used by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) into the European context (Schäfer 2006). The answer depends on which side of the hybrid structure of the OMC is taken into account. The formal side of the OMC approach, based on the interaction between the Commission, the Council, and national governments, may have been inspired by the procedure of economic coordination in the EU. The transnational dimension of the OMC might have been inspired by the OECD. More important, however, it seems to have been inspired by earlier forms of transnational relationships in the EU. This assumption is based on the fact that all major elements expected to result from OMC procedures, that is, mutual learning, the exchange of best practices, and policy transfers (Eberlein and Kerwer 2004; Sabel and Zeitlin 2008), were already well

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developed in earlier forms of transnational cooperation. What is new about the OMC procedure is the hybrid combination of tighter control mechanisms and more loosely organized institutional settings. The former refers to the definition of European policy objectives as well as to the obligation of submitting national plans and reports that are embedded into formal decision making at the European level. The latter refers to the transnational settings with varying participants and types of actors, often based on voluntary participation. However, this second form of a seemingly voluntary interaction is often accompanied by competitive mechanisms that put pressure on actors to adapt to European norms (Benz 2009). Such competitive mechanisms intensify horizontal integration. By conceiving the OMC as an open form, which is however embedded firmly into formal decision making, the approach has also appealed to the governments of the member states. It allows them to retain control over European decisions and remain fairly autonomous at the national level, since any direct interference of the Commission into national policy-making is prevented. Although the impact of OMC procedures on the behavior of political actors is questionable, the procedure has been extended rapidly to a number of policy areas. This does not refer only to new policies where the EU has hardly any powers, but also to well-established policies with far-reaching competences at the European level. An example is the structural or cohesion policy of the EU. With the last reform of the Structural Funds in 2007, OMC procedures were incorporated into this policy area (Tömmel 2006). The Commission seems to expect positive outcomes from more precisely defined policy objectives adopted by the Council. However, it also hopes that vertically and horizontally integrated relationships between transnational actors will improve policy implementation. In drawing conclusions on transnational relationships in the framework of OMC procedures, it can be stated that such relationships are conceived in a much more open form as compared to institutionalized networks and other organized forms of cooperation. Yet, these open forms are embedded firmly in European and national institutional structures. Transnationalism in the framework of the OMC constitutes, as in all other cases described above, the substratum of intergovernmental and supranational decision making. It thus serves to improve European governance and policy-making, in this case predominantly by coordinating national policies.

Conclusion: The nature of transnationalism in European policy-making In drawing conclusions on transnationalism in European policy-making, it can first be stated that such relationships and the corresponding institutional settings characterize more or less all policy areas of the EU. They

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abound in recently established policies, but they also feed back into policy areas that have been the responsibility of the EU or the Community since its foundation. In many cases, they serve to compensate for the limited powers at the European level, but they are also of importance where the EU holds far-reaching competences. They even play a role in those policies that continue to be the exclusive domain of the member states. When looking at transnationalism from a chronological perspective, it can be observed that it had already emerged in the early years of European integration. Since then, it has been significantly expanded, first with the expansion of the range and scope of European policies, and second, more importantly, with the sophistication of European policy-making in substantial and procedural terms. Its major contribution to the improvement of European policy-making lies in bridging the contradiction between a necessary degree of unity in the EU as a whole and an equally necessary preservation of diversity among the member states. It thus provides authority and legitimacy to the policy of the EU as well as to processes of Europeanization in the member states. The enormous proliferation and differentiation of transnationalism in the course of European integration and its ongoing refinement in its varieties of institutional forms and modes of interaction indicate that it forms an indispensable asset in European governance and policy-making. As seen in this chapter, the European Commission played a pivotal role in initiating, encouraging, consolidating, and managing transnational relationships in varying institutional settings and modes of interaction. However, the degree of their proliferation as well as their embedding in Council regulations and decisions and even in the treaties also proves that the phenomenon is widely accepted by the governments of the member states as well. More so, national governments increasingly make use of transnationalism to improve policy areas that continue to be based on intergovernmental decision making. An example is cooperation in Justice and Home Affairs, a policy that Wallace (2005), in her typology of European policies, conceptualized as ‘intensive transgovernmentalism’ (for empirical details see Lavenex and Wallace 2005, Lavenex 2009). Another, no less important, example is cooperation in higher education, better known as the Bologna Process (Haskel 2009). If transnationalism abounds not only where the Commission is involved directly in policy-making, but also in those policies where national governments hold control, it can be assumed it compensates for the shortcomings of both supranational and intergovernmental decision making. On the one hand, it serves to soften up and legitimate the authoritative decisions of the supranational institutions; on the other hand, it helps to prevent or overcome stalemate in the face of the ever-present threat of nondecision in intergovernmental bargains. Transnationalism, as an institutional arrangement and a mode of interaction, provides ample opportunities for intermediating between the contradictory forces of intergovernmentalism and supranationalism in European integration. This is not

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to say these forces might be made obsolete by the existence of transnational relationships. It is rather to emphasize that transnationalism provides favorable conditions for achieving progress in European integration where these forces alone are unable to do so. Why can transnationalism play such a pivotal role in European policymaking? The empirical cases presented above show that transnational actors, mostly experts or stakeholders of the respective policies, often share perceptions of the problems at stake. Furthermore, they are committed to finding common solutions or a common denominator for such solutions. At the same time, they are also well equipped to adapt such solutions to differing national needs, contexts, regulatory frameworks, and institutional settings. In other words, they are able to differentiate common solutions in such a way that the solutions fit with the diverging national institutional settings and regulatory systems. At this point, reference can be made, once again, to Luhmann’s (1997) theory of society. According to Luhmann, societal actors in transnational settings operate within the same subsystem and thus under the same codes. In addition, functionally differentiated subsystems are not limited to the national context, but are by nature global. Thus transnational communication and cooperation ultimately serve to reproduce and further differentiate these subsystems beyond national boundaries. In conclusion, transnationalism in European policy-making continues to grow in importance, in quantitative as well as in qualitative terms. Although it is still limited to selected European elites and experts, it tends increasingly to draw in broader circles of civil society actors, in particular stakeholders in the respective policy areas. It therefore might mark in its actual form the first stage of an emergent European society. However, such a society should not be imagined as leading to a more or less homogenous or well-integrated whole. On the contrary, as Münch (2008), following Luhmann, has emphasized, it is to be expected that increased transnationalism in different societal subsystems goes hand in hand with an increasing dissociation of national societal and political systems.

Notes 1. In 2007, UNICE changed its name to EUROBUSINESS. 2. Interview with Council of the EU, 1998. 3. In most cases, they are governors or vice governors of national central banks before assuming office. 4. Interviews with the European Commission and DG Competition, 2007.

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Transnationalism in EU Governance 75 Lavenex, S. (2009) ‘Transgovernmentalism in the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice’ in I. Tömmel and A. Verdun (eds.) Innovative Governance in the European Union (Boulder, CO and London: Lynne Rienner). Lavenex, S. and W. Wallace (2005) ‘Justice and Home Affairs: Towards a “European Public Order?” in H. Wallace, W. Wallace, and M. A. Pollack (eds.) Policy-Making in the European Union (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Luhmann, N. (1997) Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp). Marks, G. and D. McAdam (1996) ‘Social Movements and the Changing Structure of Political Opportunity in the European Union’, West European Politics, 19(2), 249–78. Mazey, S. and J. Richardson (eds.) (1993) Lobbying in the European Community (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press). McGowan, L. (2005) ‘Europeanization Unleashed and Rebounding: Assessing the Modernization of EU Cartel Policy’, Journal of European Public Policy, 12(6), 986– 1004. Münch, R. (2008) Die Konstruktion der europäischen Gesellschaft: Zur Dialektik von transnationaler Integration und nationaler Desintegration (Frankfurt and New York: Campus). Newman, A. (2008) ‘Building Transnational Civil Liberties: Transgovernmental Entrepreneurs and the European Data Privacy Directive’, International Organization, 62(1), 103–30. Peterson, J. and M. Sharp (1998) Technology Policy in the European Union (Basingstoke: Macmillan). Pryce, R. (1994) ‘The Treaty Negotiations’ in A. Duff, J. Pinder, and R. Pryce (eds.) Maastricht and Beyond: Building the European Union (London: Routledge). Ross, G. (1995) Jacques Delors and European Integration (Cambridge: Polity Press). Sabel, C. and J. Zeitlin (2008) ‘Learning from Difference: The New Architecture of Experimental Governance in the EU’, European Law Journal, 14(3), 271–327. Sandholtz, W. and J. Zysman (1989) ‘1992: Recasting the European Bargain’, World Politics, 41(1), 95–128. Schäfer, A. (2006) ‘A New Form of Governance? Comparing the Open Method of Coordination to Multilateral Surveillance by the IMF and the OECD’, Journal of European Public Policy, 13(1), 70–88. Scharpf, F. W. (1994) ‘Community and Autonomy: Multi-Level Policy-Making in the European Union’, Journal of European Public Policy, 1(2), 219–42. Sodupe, K. (1999) ‘The European Union and Inter-regional Co-operation’, Regional and Federal Studies, 9(1), 58–81. Tömmel, I. (1998) ‘Transformation of Governance: The European Commission’s Strategy for Creating a “Europe of the Regions” ’, Regional and Federal Studies, 8(2), 52–80. Tömmel, I. (2003) Das politische System der EU (Munich: Oldenbourg). Tömmel, I. (2006) ‘EU Structural Policy – More than a Financial Transfer between Rich and Poor?’ Foedus, 15, 3–10. Tömmel, I. (forthcoming) The Political System of the European Union (Boulder, CO and London: Lynne Rienner). Tömmel, I. and A. Verdun (2009) ‘Innovative Governance in the European Union: What Makes It Different?’ in I. Tömmel and A. Verdun (eds.) Innovative Governance in the European Union (Boulder, CO and London: Lynne Rienner). Van Assche, T. (2005) ‘The Impact of Entrepreneurial Leadership on EU High Politics: A Case Study of Jacques Delors and the Creation of EMU’, Leadership, 1(3), 279–98.

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76 Ingeborg Tömmel Verdun, A. (1999) ‘The Role of the Delors Committee in the Creation of EMU: An Epistemic Community?’ Journal of European Public Policy, 6(2), 308–28. Wallace, H. (2005) ‘An Institutional Anatomy and Five Policy Modes’ in H. Wallace, W. Wallace, and M. A. Pollack (eds) Policy-Making in the European Union (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Wilks, S. (2005) ‘Competition Policy: Challenge and Reform’ in H. Wallace, W. Wallace, and M. A. Pollack (eds.) Policy-Making in the European Union (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

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5 The Emergence of a Public Sphere for the European Union: What Prospects for Transnationalism? Paul Statham

The European Union (EU) is the world’s most advanced case of institutional cooperation across borders and political levels, and has resulted in a close regional interpenetration of societies, markets, and governments. Its multilevel political architecture is historically unprecedented, and over time its power has grown beyond recognition. Neil Fligstein (2008) documents how the expansion of markets and economic growth has produced Europe-wide economic, social, and political fields. This has led to an increasing density of social interaction across Europe’s national borders and an increasing willingness of people to sometimes identify themselves as Europeans. Fligstein claims that these transnational developments have advanced sufficiently to declare that: ‘it is possible to say that there now exists a European society’ (2008, 244). Yet while it is clear that increasing trans-European social interaction has made Europe a shared location of interests and power, at least for a small minority of the population (including business people, EU officials, and Brussels lobbyists), the extent to which Europe is visible, salient, and meaningful to the general public is much less evident. The advancement of European integration over the past 50 years has been driven by political elites and, at least for the period of the so-called ‘permissive consensus,’ has remained largely out of the public eye. Even Fligstein (2008, 2) concedes that a gap remains between structural change and public perceptions: ‘what has struck me most about the creation of a European society is the degree to which people in Europe are unaware of it.’ This gap points to a dilemma: Advancing economic and political integration within the EU has involved a shift in power from the nation-state up to the European political level, and across to other European countries. Given that about 80 percent of legislation is deemed to have EU-level origins, this increasingly impacts people’s lives. Still, the degree and extent to 77

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which modern democracies offer opportunities for the citizens to become aware of these impacts, to be included in political decisions about them, and to contest them in an effective way is unclear. Undeniably, from a democratic theory perspective, an emergent transnational European society with a European polity needs something resembling a European public sphere. Moreover, this public sphere must be inclusive and open for the participation of nonstate and civil society actors. Otherwise, it is not only deficient in democratic terms but also fails to meet a key criterion for ‘transnational’ politics, which according to Nye and Keohane (1971, 332), requires the presence of actors that are ‘not an agent of a government or an international organization.’ This chapter studies the prospects for the development of European transnational politics by examining the field of mass-mediated political communication that has emerged in response to the establishment of the EU. The increasing complexity of political relations in Europe, due to the transfer of competences up to the EU-level, and to intergovernmental arenas where decision-making is shared with other European polities, sets important challenges for the performance of media and political systems. Geographical boundaries of governance are now less clear-cut than they once were, while possibilities for direct access to political elites are reduced when the political game becomes multileveled, transnational, and broader in scope. This remoteness of European compared to national decision-making makes the role of mass media communication even more vital as a link between those who govern and the governed. The first section of this chapter introduces the European public sphere as a research field, and outlines some of the basic concepts on which studies of the European public sphere are based. Following this, the next two sections report some empirical findings. First, attention is given to the degree and form in which Europe has become visible in mass-mediated communication. Then the participatory potential of Europeanized forms of communication is assessed by comparing the extent to which different types of collective actors are able to gain access to Europeanized public policy debates. The fourth section discusses media performance and the role of journalism in generating Europeanized political communication, asking whether media actors play an enhancing or restrictive role. Finally, the conclusion addresses the prospects for the emergence of a form of transnationalism in Europe that can foster the inclusion of nonstate actors in the public sphere.

A transnational public sphere for the EU? Some academics have looked for the emergence of ‘European’ transnationalism, and hence for a solution to the problem of Europe’s missing public, by

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focusing on how individuals define their identities, as gauged by opinion polling (e.g., Bruter 2005). However, it is widely accepted that for most citizens identification with Europe remains secondary to national identity, so that at best Europe generates an ‘identity-lite’ (Risse 2003). Instead of looking for evidence of European transnationalism at the individual level, the European public sphere research shifts the focus onto the role of the mass media. The function of mass media is seen as selecting, translating, and supplying relevant aspects of European decision-making to ordinary people in a language and idiom they are able to understand. From the public sphere viewpoint, a citizen requires access to adequate supplies of information about European decisionmaking, at least to the same extent as it is available for purely national affairs. From this perspective, one would not necessarily expect citizens to develop a culturally ‘thick’ sense of European identity en masse. The public sphere approach considers the transformation of communication flows carried principally by mass media to be the most realistic candidate for generating a European-wide public policy debate. It sees the mass media as fulfilling vital roles for the European policy process. First, European actors, issues, and policies need to be made publicly visible to be able to gain legitimacy (legitimation). Media coverage supplies this visibility to European decision-making. Second, European decision-makers depend on media coverage for information about the concerns of the citizenry (responsiveness). Third, the general public, who in most cases have insufficient direct experience to form opinions about European institutions and policies, rely strongly on media representations to be able to evaluate European-level governance (accountability). Fourth, most citizens’ efforts to participate in decision-making through nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and civic initiatives have their potential strongly enhanced by achieving visibility for their demands in media discourse (participation). At the European level, this is especially the case for nonstate actors from civil society, except for the small number of well-resourced lobby groups that have direct access to policy-makers (Koopmans 2007). These considerations raise the question of whether mass media political communication has been transformed in response to emergence of multilevel governance in Europe. Following insights from the classic research on nationalism and social communication by Karl W. Deutsch (1953), this approach considers that the distribution of communication flows, across different political levels and national boundaries, defines the spatial reach and boundaries of politics. It examines the relative density of public communication within and between different political spaces. Deutsch emphasized the importance of communication flows in generating nation-states and national identities. In the absence of something resembling a European supranational and transnational media system, however, transnational European public sphere development is unlikely to simply replicate the

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national experience at a higher level. Any Europeanization of communication is likely to be generated from within national public spheres that increasingly cross-reference one another, or that include references to the supranational level (Schlesinger 1999; Habermas 2005). In the search for the Europeanization of national public spheres, the density and direction of communication flows across levels and national boundaries of polities serves as an important indicator of the degree and form of transnationalization of public communication. A number of prominent studies on the European public sphere have examined trends in such communication flows using large-scale cross-national data drawn largely from newspaper sources (Trenz 2004; 2007; Peters et al. 2005; Sifft et al. 2007; Wessler et al. 2009; Koopmans and Statham 2010a; for a critical review, see Meyer 2007). Such studies have identified various dimensions of the development of a transnational public sphere. First, the visibility of Europe to publics is crucial. For there to be anything that meaningfully resembles a public sphere, European decision-making needs to be visible to citizens. The performance of mass media is critical in ensuring this visibility. Second, the degree to which Europe is inclusive of publics is also important. This refers to the accessibility of European policy decisionmaking to the public, either through interest representation, or through collective action mobilized by civil society. This dimension is related to the democratic performance of the political system. Regarding the forms that transnational public spheres may take, there are two general trajectories that correspond to different forms of polity development beyond the nation-state: vertical linking (between the national polity and the European-supranational level) and horizontal interlinking (between different national polities in Europe). Both are distinct from those that remain contained within a national domestic public sphere, and correspond to a large degree, respectively, to the supranational and intergovernmental features of the EU. The extent of emergence along these two trajectories indicates the degree of openness or closure of a national public sphere, up to the EU level (vertical) or across to other European countries (horizontal). When contrasted to communication that remains national, the analysis of these two forms of Europeanized communication provides insights into the extent, form, and shape of the emerging European public sphere.

The visibility of Europe in mass media communication Turning to the first dimension identified above, this section examines how much Europe is visible in news carried by the mass media, and which forms transnational developments take. These questions were examined in the context of the Europub.com collaboration (Koopmans and Statham 2010a). A significant finding from this research is that Europe is publicly visible in policy fields where the EU is influential. The study examined Europeanized

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communication using a large data-set drawn from newspaper sources on public claim-making. A claim-making act (shorthand: a claim) consists of a purposive and public articulation of political demands, including calls to action, proposals, and criticisms, which, actually or potentially, affect the interests or integrity of the claimants and/or other collective actors (Koopmans and Statham 1999). For each claim, we coded the actor who makes it, the addressee to whom it is made, the policy issues raised, and the ways in which these issues are framed, referring to specific normative, institutional, and spatial contexts. This method provides the information about claims that we need to answer our research question: whether an actor making a claim is from the same country as the newspaper reporting it, or from another European country, or from the European level; and whether a claim refers only to national normative, institutional, and spatial contexts, or includes references to other European countries, or the European level. The method includes claims regardless of who makes them and where they are made, which means the data include claims by a wide range of different collective actor types. For each of the seven countries examined in our study – Germany, the Netherlands, France, Italy, Britain, Spain, and Switzerland – we coded a sample of articles on seven policy fields – monetary, agriculture, immigration, troop deployment, pensions, education, and the meta-issue of European integration – from four newspapers, covering the years 1990, 1995, and 2000–2. The resultant data-set is drawn from more than 2,500 editions of 28 different European newspapers and includes more than 20,000 individual claims (see Koopmans and Statham 2010a Ch. 2 for more details). Claim-making acts build communicative links between actors by referring to policy issues in meaningful ways that span across different polity levels (national, European-level) and across different national polities (domestic national, other European countries). Each communication flow mobilized by an act of claim-making constructs a specific political/spatial relationship. By aggregating the visible communication flows, it is possible to define the spatial contours of public communication produced, and examine which type of collective actor is most effective at successfully mobilizing demands within specific spatial forms of public policy debate. Regarding the visibility of Europe in mass media debates, the research shows that in policy fields where European competences are strong (e.g., monetary or agricultural policy), public debates are strongly Europeanized, which means that European-level actors and actors from other European countries appear frequently as speakers or as addressees of claims, and issues are frequently discussed in a European frame of reference. In other issue fields (e.g., immigration, troop deployment, pensions, education), Europeanization tendencies are much weaker. This is most likely because decision-making competences in these fields have remained largely national. Crucially, the clearest explanatory determinant for whether a communicative act in a

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specific policy field is Europeanized is the extent to which competences have shifted to the EU level. Our empirical findings go against the oft-heard thesis (see, for example, Hix 2008, 185), that the EU has a communication deficit because the media pays no attention to it. Indeed our stance on the visibility of Europe is corroborated by Trenz’s (2004, 311) media content analysis of 11 quality newspapers from six EU countries in 2000, which finds that: ‘one out of three articles in a European quality newspaper makes political reference to Europe, and one out of five directly reports on at least one European issue.’ The general rule is that the more a policy field is supranationalized, the more it has a public policy debate that includes and makes the EU-level visible to citizens, and the more vertical communication flows are found (Koopmans et al. 2010). For example, EU actors have a high share in debates over policy fields that are supranationalized – European integration (30% of all claims analyzed), monetary policy (21%), and agriculture (15%) – compared to those which are not, such as immigration (4%) or education (0.4%). For horizontal communication flows, the story is a little less clearcut. Policy fields characterized by intergovernmental decision-making – for instance, European integration (32%), troop deployment (19%), and immigration (19%) – do indeed host a significant presence of actors from other European countries. However, this is also the case for supranational fields – for instance, monetary policy (21%) or agriculture (20%). This is most likely due to the increasing cross-national interdependence that results from common supranational institutions and policy-making. In contrast, public policy debates where competences remain national – such as pensions (7%) or education (6%) – have a lower presence of actors from other European countries. Turning to trends across time, the visibility of EU actors has grown markedly from 9 percent in 1990 to 15 percent in 2002, over a period when integration advanced. In addition, the increase in the monetary policy field (monetary union occurred in this period) was dramatic, from 9 percent in 1990 to 29 percent in 2002. However, these increases in vertical communication flows have not been matched by horizontal ones, with claims by actors from other European countries remaining stable at about a fifth of all claims. Overall, it seems that the deepening of European integration has led to a rise in vertical Europeanization, but not to increased horizontal flows of communication across national borders to the same degree.1 To summarize, the overall finding is that, at least when viewed quantitatively, Europeans seem to have sufficient opportunities to see European policy decision-making in their national mass media discourses, especially with regard to the supranational level. However, it could be that the deficit is not in the quantity, but in the quality of Europeanized public policy debates, and in the extent to which nonstate actors are able to take part. This issue is addressed in the next section.

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Participation by nonstate actors in Europeanized public policy debates2 European integration is a form of transnationalism that implies a redistribution of power, not just institutionally, but also regarding power relationships between collective actors and within public debates (Marks and McAdam 1999). Importantly, the transfer of competences from national to intergovernmental and supranational European arenas opens up more opportunities and makes more resources available for some actors than for others. Hix and Goetz (2000, 14) argue that European integration may benefit resourceful elite actors, but also actors who are relatively weak in the domestic arena; they conclude that ‘the openness of the EU policy process and the pursuit of neo-pluralist strategies by the Commission (such as subsidizing underrepresented groups) ensure that both diffuse and concentrated interests tend to be able to pursue exit and veto opportunities and have access to key information.’ This optimism echoes a position from the international relations field regarding opportunities for NGOs to gain domestic power by issuing their demands on a political institutional level above the nation-state through so-called ‘boomerang effects’ (Keck and Sikkink 1998). Similarly, advocates of ‘post-national citizenship’ from the immigration field emphasize new possibilities for migrants’ organizations as a result of denationalization processes and the erosion of national sovereignty. They argue that migrants, usually considered a weak group without access to national citizenship, actually have their rights enhanced by being able to draw on legitimating resources from international universal human rights regimes and discourses (Soysal 1994). Given that the inclusion of nonstate actors is a key ingredient of transnationalism (Nye and Keohane 1971), it is important to establish the extent to which they are able to voice their demands within European multilevel decision-making, compared to other types of actors. Here we address an important aspect of this question by comparing the relative presence of different collective actors in Europeanized public policy debates. Under conditions of limited resources and opportunities, collective actors face a strategic choice, namely whether or not to mobilize their demands in a way that refers to Europe. The more they do so, the more we can talk of a Europeanization of public policy debates. This Europeanization can occur in three forms: First, European-level actors and institutions, such as EU Commissioners or the European Parliament, may become more prominent as speakers in public debates carried by national news media. This top-down vertical form of Europeanization implies a supranationalization of national public spheres, because European-supranational institutions and actors and their demands become more prominent. Second, claims made by domestic actors in their national media may increasingly refer to European institutions, actors, policy issues, and norms. This is a bottom-up

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vertical form of Europeanization, where the supranational level is brought into public policy debates by domestic actors’ mobilization. Third, the Europeanization of public debates can occur without any direct reference to the European-supranational polity (Risse 2003). Many EU bodies and policies have an intergovernmental rather than a supranational basis. In an intergovernmental polity, other member states can no longer be treated as foreign countries whose internal politics are not relevant for one’s own. Advancing intergovernmentalism is likely to lead to increased media attention for political actors, events and claims from other European countries, because these become consequential also domestically. This results in horizontal forms of Europeanized debate, which are purely transnational, when compared to the vertical variants, because they build direct communicative links and exchanges between polities across national borders. The possibility for horizontal European transnational debates to emerge is likely to be reinforced by the increasing interdependence created by common EU policies on markets, freedom of movement, and monetary union. In this section we examine whether there is a deficit in the participatory quality of these forms of Europeanized public policy debates. The Europub. com data-set on public claim-making is used here to examine the inclusiveness of mass-mediated debates. To assess whether collective actor types are underrepresented or overrepresented in the three forms of Europeanized public debates (top-down vertical, bottom-up vertical, and horizontal), it is necessary to establish a standard for comparison. For this, we take the share of collective actors in public policy debates that remain nationally confined. These purely ‘national’ debates consist of claims by actors from the same country as the newspaper that reports them and make no reference to European-level actors, issues, or norms, nor to those from other European countries. Table 5.1 shows the relative share of collective actors in the four spatial fields of communication produced by claim-making acts that we have identified: national; top-down vertical; bottom-up vertical; and horizontal. In contrast to the nationally encapsulated policy debates, the three forms of Europeanized debates in the subsequent columns are subdivided into an ‘all policy fields’ column, referring to a sample from all seven policy fields across all seven countries (weighted by country), and a ‘European integration’ column that contains only claims referring to European integration issues (again weighted by country). The rows in Table 5.1 distinguish five main categories of actors: state executives, judiciary, legislative and political parties, media, and civil society. State executives are the policy decisionmakers and power holders. Judiciaries can hold executive power accountable through legal rulings and challenges. Legislative and party actors are directly elected by and responsible to the public, thereby holding representation and accountability functions. Media actors are entrusted with making decisionmaking power visible.3 Last, the ‘civil society’ category is used in a descriptive sense for nonstate actors, excluding media and political parties that are

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0.7 15.6 0.2 3.1

2.4 19.6

6.2 35.3

100 4,446

Total % n

100 4,233

80.3

36.5

All policy fields

State Executive and Government Judiciary Legislative and Political Parties Media Civil Society

National

100 2,129

0.3 2.2

1.2 24.3

72.0

European integration

Vertical top-down

100 5,316

19.1 21.2

0.6 17.4

41.6

All policy fields

100 2,628

20.9 12.7

0.4 23.5

42.6

European integration

Vertical bottom-up

100 4,722

7.9 12.2

0.6 11.6

67.6

All policy fields

100 2,360

8.4 8.1

0.3 15.0

68.3

European integration

Horizontal

Table 5.1 Participation of collective actors (by type) in forms of Europeanized public policy debates compared to national ones (column percentages)

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categorized separately. By this definition ‘civil society’ includes the wide range of public interest groups, NGOs and social movements that mobilize collective action. Prominent examples from our sample are employers and firms, trade unions, economists and financial experts, farmers, scientists and researchers, education professionals and students. The vertical top-down spatial field, represented in Table 5.1, is produced when European-supranational actors communicate in national public spheres, for example, when the European Parliament criticizes the European Commission, or when the European Central Bank calls on governments in the Eurozone to maintain their fiscal obligations and this is reported in a national newspaper. For this supranational form of public policy debate, the striking finding is the extent to which government/executive actors are dominant. Governments and executives are already the most prominent category in national debates (37%), but their share doubles and they account for fourfifths of the supranational variant of claim making (80%) in all policy fields. Of these government/executive actors making claims from the European level, the European Commission is by far the most prominent, accounting for more than half of the total, followed at a distance by the various Councils. Commission President Romano Prodi alone made 333 claims in our sample. Prodi’s total was two-and-a-half times more than all European-level civil society actors taken together (131 claims). This finding militates against the oft-stated idea that the EU institutions are unsuccessful in achieving coverage in national media. The dominance of executive actors in claim-making from the European level (80%) is further underlined relative to legislative and party actors (16%), who are swamped by a ratio of about 5:1. By comparison, the discrepancy is much lower, nationally, with executive actors more prominent than the legislative at about 1.75:1. The European judiciary is also less visible than its national counterpart. Turning to the media, it is perhaps not surprising that European-level media play virtually no role, given the lack of a supranational media system. However, the very low participation of European-level civil society actors, who together account for only 3 percent of claims, suggests evidence for a severe deficit in participation. This acute lack of public visibility must have considerable impact on the bargaining power of European civil society groups within the European decision-making process. The picture is virtually the same when we focus only on the public policy debates over European integration. The only slight variation is that the European Parliament and Euro-parties (24%) are more present than they are in the policy fields (16%); they have a greater share here than national parliaments and parties have in national debates (20%). However, even in this case, it seems that the European legislative body and parties benefit in their presence at the expense of civil society, not government/executive actors: the legislature’s share is only one-third that of executive actors in top-down claim-making, while national parliaments make almost three-fifths of the claims made by national executives in domestic politics.

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The overall picture for vertical top-down claim-making is clear: when compared to domestic politics, executive and government actors dominate the discussions over policies coming down from the European level, to an extent that overshadows the presence of the legislative actors and dwarfs that of civil society. The extent to which executive actors dominate over the elected legislature, and the virtual absence of European civil society actors appear to be problematic from the standpoint of democratic legitimacy. The second variant of Europeanized claims-making is vertical bottom-up, where national actors address European institutions or frame issues with reference to European norms. For example, the media might report on a British migrant organization taking a case to the European Court of Justice in the attempt to enforce better protection of migrant rights over deportation methods in the United Kingdom. Here the findings from all policy fields in Table 5.1 show a greater share of government/executive actors in claims mobilized from the national arena addressing the European-supranational level (42% compared to 37% nationally), but the difference is very much less pronounced than for the top-down variant. Also legislative actors have only a marginally smaller share in bottom-up Europeanized debates (17%) than they do nationally (20%). The share of civil society actors drops more steeply, however; they account for only one-fifth of this Europeanized variant (21%) compared to more than a third within nationally encapsulated debates (35%). The findings are especially interesting concerning the media. National media organizations and journalists are significantly present in making demands on or about the EU (19%) and three times more so than they are in the national arena (6%). This goes against claims that national media do not pay attention to the European level. On the contrary, it shows that they have relatively a lot to say about European-level politics. Indeed their voicing of demands offsets the relative shortfall of civil society, compared to the national context. The patterns within the European integration field are broadly similar to the overall pattern. Again the only difference is that the share of the legislative actors and parties relatively increases (17 to 24%) and that of civil society declines (21 to 13%) compared to the policy fields. This indicates that civil society actors find it relatively harder to gain a foothold in public debates over European integration issues, whereas political parties do not. It suggests that European integration remains a field of political party claim-making, while interest groups, NGOs and social movements struggle to mobilize demands. Generally, we again find that an actor’s capacity for bottom-up Europeanized claim-making largely correlates with institutional power. However, it is clear that in claims originating from national arenas that address Europe, the participation deficit is much less marked than in the top-down variant. Finally, what about the variant of Europeanized claim-making where actors make claims that refer horizontally to other European countries?

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These occur, for example, when the British government is reported as criticizing the French government’s handling of the BSE epidemic. Table 5.1 shows which actors gain access to, and benefit from, their presence in these transnational fields of political communication. Once more, executive actors play a dominant role (68%); their presence is almost twice as high as in national debates (37%). Legislative and party actors fare much worse (12%) than in any other form of communication, indicating that there is not much in the way of transnational party activity. Civil society actors (12%) have about a third of the share they command in national debates (35%) but are slightly more prominent than parties. However, this situation is reversed in the specific field of European integration, where again civil society (8%) is less prominent than party actors (15%). Regarding the media, news organizations and journalists make transnational claims to a slightly greater degree than they do in national affairs. The main conclusion that the actors who manage to dominate transnational debates are overwhelmingly core executive actors, including heads of government and cabinet ministers. Like the top-down form of Europeanized debates, transnational public policy debates seem to offer additional opportunities for those powerful elite actors who are already dominant on the national level, and it exacerbates rather than compensates for the relatively weaker position of civil society actors. Overall, the results are clear-cut. The only actors who are systematically overrepresented in vertical and horizontal forms of Europeanized claim-making are government and executive actors. This indicates a relative empowerment of those actors, who are already powerful nationally. Across all issue fields, they are responsible for 37 percent of all purely national claims, but across the three forms of Europeanized claim-making their share rises to 56 percent (average computed across columns in Table 5.1). Media actors are, interestingly, the only other actor type that is more prominently represented in Europeanized claim-making (6% national claims compared to 9% Europeanized claims). Also Europeanization does not strengthen the hand of legislative and party actors, whose share is 20 percent in national and 15 percent across all forms of Europeanized claim making. That may not seem a large difference, but to appreciate its importance one must look at the relative influence of legislative versus executive actors. Among national claims, the executive outnumbers legislative and party actors two to one, but among Europeanized claims the proportion is almost four to one. Actors from the judiciary are also markedly less present in Europeanized debates. Civil society actors, finally, are clearly the least able to profit from the opening up of Europeanized discursive spaces. Among national claims, they command a reasonable 35 percent of claims, but among Europeanized claims, they account for only 12 percent of claims. This raises important concerns about the ability of independent nonstate actors to be engaged in the public policy debates that are emerging

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in response to the shift of competences to multilevel and transnational political institutions. One might argue that civil society actors are perhaps better considered in the context of the specific policy fields of their operation. However, in almost all cases, the issue-specific perspective reveals a considerable decline in discursive influence for civil society actors in Europeanized claim-making. For example, farmers make 22 percent of national claims on agriculture, but only 11 percent of Europeanized claims. In monetary politics, employers make 16 percent of national claims, but only 5 percent of Europeanized ones. Likewise, labor unions have less influence in Europeanized debates in their primary issue fields. The only example of civil society actors who do slightly better in Europeanized claim making are employers’ organizations in the pension’s field, whose share among Europeanized claims (9%) is just higher than that among national claims (8%). Finally, we checked for crossnational variation by conducting all analyses for each country separately, and found the main conclusions to be highly consistent across countries. In each country-specific analysis, government and executive actors as well as the news media were overrepresented among Europeanized claims, and in each case civil society actors were strongly underrepresented.

Mass media performance and transnational public sphere development So far, we have examined media performance in supplying information about Europeanized politics on the basis of news content. The findings point in the direction of an elite-dominated Europeanized public sphere. However, these media ‘outputs’ could result from the way journalists and media organizations have responded to the challenge of reporting news in an era of multilevel governance. For this reason, we now discuss the media’s role as an actor in Europeanization processes. There are competing views on the adequacy of media performance and standards for a public sphere.4 In one version, labeled elite dominance following Ferree et al. (2002), media largely limit themselves to providing the public with reliable and accurate information on events in the political world, exposing the corrupt and incompetent. In this view, too much interpretive journalism distorts political issues. The role of media is largely seen as being to publicize the differences between political elites over policies by ‘objectively’ reporting the facts of a story. Against this, another version, popular inclusion, depicts a much more proactive media that aims to broaden public engagement and participation. Here media open up policy debates to civil society by enabling collective actors and social movements to voice their demands. Journalists also enter the debate through political commentary. Mediated political discourse becomes an interface for deliberative exchanges between policy-makers and their civil society challengers, under

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the watchful gaze of an attentive public. What type of journalism is found in reporting over Europe? Our research, which involved structured interviews with journalists,5 shows how the press has responded to the challenge of covering Europe and examines the norms journalists have applied to take up this role. Overall, the findings indicate that the press operates within a difficult context for providing political information about Europe, but has nonetheless adapted to this role effectively. Journalists understand their role to be closer to the elite dominance than to the popular inclusion version. They see themselves as professionals exposing political elite power to public scrutiny, but consider it the job of politicians to make a case for Europe and to take responsibility for addressing any perceived participation deficits. Very little evidence was found for journalists who felt motivated to initiate and lead an inclusive and deliberative public debate about Europe. Journalists of all types and from all countries identified similar problems in reporting on the European level. The restricted market generated by low readership demand plus the dominance of information flows from national sources does not provide an encouraging context for European news. Added to this are the feeble efforts by the EU – at least according to journalists – to address its citizens through the national mass media. There is also the obscure and technocratic content of EU politics, which is singularly lacking in news values, and it is clear that journalists face high barriers in making Europe newsworthy. Nonetheless, European governance is visible in the news. This implies that the press has not been pushed by external factors, but has largely taken the initiative to incorporate Europe in its professional norms for covering politics. A shared understanding among journalists of their professional role and aims can be discerned. For the most part they see their goals as raising awareness, informing, and opening up a space for Europe within their readerships’ understandings of politics. Even when commentating on Europe, however, most advocacy is strongly educational, rather than partisan or ideological. That a ‘newspaper has a duty to improve public knowledge’ was ranked as one of the biggest differences that journalists saw compared to commentating on national affairs: ‘On European issues (we) have to be a lot more informative since more explanations are needed for the reader to understand the opinion piece’ (Correspondent, El Mundo). ‘The public does not know much about the subject so the paper has the duty to inform’ (Editor, Leeuwarder Courant). ‘The newspaper sees itself as pro-European, internationalist, it feels it has duty to inform and explain because of levels of ignorance of the subject’ (European Editor, Guardian). These examples, selected from among many similar statements, underline that journalists seem to be motivated by informative rather than political goals. There are only a few cases where specific newspapers have self-consciously adopted political goals. Notably, these campaigning journalists came from countries, such as Britain and Switzerland, where clear political cleavage lines over

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Europe are mobilized through contention in the party system. This suggests that a precondition for the press to take on a more partisan or ideological advocacy role is the establishment of clear cleavages over Europe among major national political parties. In general, journalists follow and represent the opinions expressed by political actors. Journalists can only mediate the political world they are given. There was nothing from the study to suggest they would be unable to adapt if politicians made European governance more inclusive. Thus, the strong elite dominance within Europeanized communication found in our research is considered to be an accurately drawn assessment by journalists of the current political reality of European governance, not an artefact of inadequate media reporting. Journalists report the European politics they see: a game between domestic, EU, and foreign European elites. At present there is not much of a participatory transnational story to tell.

Conclusion: A mass-mediated European transnationalism? The emergence of a European public sphere of communication and political contention for the EU is an important case of transnationalism. However, the processes of transformation that have occurred are problematic in terms of democratic legitimacy. This is not because Europe lacks visibility; Europeans now live in an era where European decision-making is sufficiently mass mediated. However, the problem is that the shift of policy competences to the European level has resulted in Europeanized public debates that are less inclusive of civil society than national ones. This has led to an empowerment of the already powerful executive actors. Thus, the actual path of development of the European public sphere remains a long way from the inclusive Europe advocated by normative participatory democratic theories (see especially Habermas 2005, 2006). In addition, evidence on the European case contradicts the thesis of possible ‘boomerang effects’ for transnational activists (Keck and Sikkink 1998). On the contrary, it seems that a discursive disempowerment of NGOs, and especially social movements, is dynamically embedded in the Europeanization process. The clear lack of visibility for anything resembling social movements within Europeanized debates compromises the ability of these actors to exert influence over policy decisions. Such findings support the view that massbased transnational social movements are hard to construct, difficult to maintain, and have different relationships to states and international bodies than the more routinized international NGOs (Tarrow 2001). However, at the European-level, it is not only social movements but also the more routinized European NGOs that find it difficult to gain a foothold within Europeanized public policy debates. For social movements and NGOs that might want to influence the European level or build transnational ties resources are a big problem. Many depend on EU funding. This is especially the case for groups representing weaker public constituencies, such as migrants. Such

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sponsorship can impede raising an independent voice within the decisionmaking process. The extent to which EU-sponsored organizations actually represent their allotted public constituency becomes highly questionable. Many European organizations that are nominally NGOs are actually clients, dependent for their existence on their supranational institutional masters. Overall the findings offer an important lesson for the possibility of transnationalism through the process of European integration: it seems that it is much easier for executive and elite actors to build relationships and operate effectively within the emergent European politics and that there are strong barriers facing civil society actors. If European transnationalism requires nonstate public involvement, as Nye and Keohane (1971) suggest, then European integration occurring through the vehicle of the EU moves in the opposite direction. The aggregate effect of shifting the political game to a level beyond the nation-state gives all the trump cards to executive actors. It allows executives to increase their influence over policy decisionmaking relative to their national parliaments and civil societies. It makes those civil society actors who are influential nationally more dependent on their domestic executive masters, who conduct bargaining on their behalf at the European level. At the same time, because executive voices dominate Europeanized political discourse, it is hard for independent NGOs and social movements to mobilize an alternative message over an issue in the public domain. While gaining access to mass media discourse has been an important way for civil society and social movements to mobilize challenges to governments nationally, so far it does not provide opportunities to the same degree at the European level. From the viewpoint of democratic legitimacy, the initiation of a more effectively performing and inclusive European public sphere for the EU requires a kick-start of change at the political institutional level. However, since political elites and executives are the main beneficiaries of the current state-of-play they have few incentives to increase the channels of access to European policy decision-making and will most likely continue to try to pass the blame for the EU’s public legitimacy deficits onto the media, when the responsibility really lies at their own door. In fact, as our research indicates, it is not that the media do not report or mobilize claims about Europe. On the contrary, journalists broadly report European policy decision-making as it is: as a policy arena with relatively few opportunities for access to nonstate actors, especially those which are independent, or of a social movement type.

Notes This research was developed within the Europub.com collaboration funded by the European Commission (HPSE-CT2001-00046). Key findings and arguments are detailed in Koopmans and Statham (2010a). For this chapter, special acknowledgement is due to Ruud Koopmans with whom many of the thoughts presented here were developed.

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1. These empirical findings on vertical and horizontal Europeanization are similar to those of the team originally led by Peters (Peters et al. 2005; Wessler et al. 2009; Sifft et al. 2007). However, they interpret these findings differently, concluding that a public sphere deficit exists. This claim appears to be overstated. It is based on unrealistically high normative standards, particularly with respect to horizontal Europeanization, where they require ‘the emergence of a common European discourse’ (Sifft et al. 2007, 130). By this standard, many political discourses that remain at the national level would fall short. 2. This section draws on Koopmans and Statham (2010b). 3. Technically, the media category consists of explicit claims made by journalists in news reports, and the reported quotations of claims by journalists from other media organizations. Editorials and commentaries are not included in the samples for these analyses. 4. Among the many contributions on media performance and journalism, see, for example, Patterson (1998). On public sphere norms and standards, see Ferree et al. (2002), whose broad distinction between elite dominance and popular inclusion is adopted here. 5. The detailed findings of these analyses are presented in Statham (2007, 2008, 2010). The findings are based on structured interviews with more than 100 journalists of different types (editors, EU correspondents, news journalists), from different types of newspapers (broadsheets, tabloids, regional), and from the seven countries of the study.

References Bruter, M. (2005) Citizens of Europe? The Emergence of a Mass European Identity (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan). Deutsch, K. W. (1953) Nationalism and Social Communication: An Inquiry into the Foundations of Nationality (Cambridge: MIT Press). Ferree, M., W. A. Gamson, J. Gerhards, and D. Rucht (2002) Shaping Abortion Discourse: Democracy and the Public Sphere in Germany and the United States (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Fligstein, N. (2008) Euro-Clash: The EU, European Identity, and the Future of Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Habermas, J. (2005) ‘Why Europe Needs a Constitution’ in E. O. Eriksen, J. E. Fossum, and A. J. Menéndez (eds.) Developing a Constitution for Europe (London: Routledge). Habermas, J. (2006) Time of Transitions (Cambridge: Polity Press). Hix, S. (2008) What’s Wrong with the European Union and How to Fix It (Cambridge: Polity Press). Hix, S. and K. H. Goetz (2000) ‘Introduction: European Integration and National Political Systems’, West European Politics, 23(4), 1–26. Keck, M. and K. Sikkink (1998) Activists beyond Borders (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press). Koopmans, R. (2007) ‘Who Inhabits the European Public Sphere? Winners and Losers, Supporters and Opponents in Europeanised Political Debates’, European Journal of Political Research, 46(2), 183–210. Koopmans, R., J. Erbe, and M. F. Meyer (2010) ‘The Europeanisation of Public Spheres: Comparisons across Issues, Time, and Countries’ in R. Koopmans and P. Statham

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94 Paul Statham (eds.) The Making of a European Public Sphere: The Europeanisation of Media Discourse and Political Contention (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Koopmans, R. and P. Statham (1999) ‘Political Claims Analysis: Integrating Protest Event and Political Discourse Approaches’, Mobilization 4(2), 203–21. Koopmans, R. and P. Statham (eds.) (2010a) The Making of a European Public Sphere: Media Discourse and Political Contention (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Koopmans, R. and P. Statham (2010b) ‘Winners and Losers in Europeanized Public Policy Debates: Empowering the Already Powerful?’ in A. Azzi et al. (eds.) Identity and Participation in Culturally Diverse Societies: A Multidisciplinary Perspective (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell). Marks, G. and D. McAdam (1999) ‘On the Relationship of Political Opportunities to the Form of Collective Action: The Case of the European Union’ in D. Della Porta, H. Kriesi, and D. Rucht (eds.) Social Movements in a Globalizing World (London: Macmillan). Meyer, C. (2007) ‘The Constitutional Treaty Debates as Revelatory Mechanisms: Insights for Public Sphere Research and Re-Launch Attempts’, RECON-Online Working Paper 2007/06, http://www.reconproject.eu/main.php/RECON_wp_0706. pdf?fileitem=5456963, date accessed March 31, 2010. Nye, J. S. and R. O. Keohane (1971) ‘Transnational Relations and World Politics: An Introduction’, International Organization, 25(3), 329–49. Patterson, T. E. (1998) ‘Political Roles of the Journalist’ in D. Grabber, D. McQuail, and P. Norris (eds.) The Politics of News (Washington, DC: CQ Press). Peters, B., S. Sifft, A. Wimmel, M. Brüggemann, and K. Kleinen von Königslöw (2005) ‘National and Transnational Public Spheres: The Case of the EU’, European Review, 13(1), 139–60. Risse, T. (2003) ‘An Emerging European Public Sphere? Theoretical Clarifications and Empirical Indicators’, Paper Presented to the Annual Meeting of the European Union Studies Association, Nashville, March 27–30. Schlesinger, P. (1999) ‘Changing Spaces of Political Communication: The Case of the European Union’, Political Communication, 16(3), 263–79. Sifft, S., M. Brüggemann, K. Kleinen von Königslöw, B. Peters, and A. Wimmel (2007) ‘Segmented Europeanization: Exploring the Legitimacy of the European Union from a Public Discourse Perspective,’ Journal of Common Market Studies, 45(1), 127–55. Soysal, Y. (1994) Limits of Citizenship: Migrants and Postnational Membership in Europe (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press). Statham, P. (2007) ‘Journalists as Commentators on European Politics: Educators, Partisans or Ideologues’, European Journal of Communication, 22(4), 461–77. Statham, P. (2008) ‘Making Europe News: How Journalists View Their Role and Performance’, Journalism. Theory, Practice and Criticism, 9(4), 395–419. Statham, P. (2010) ‘Making Europe News: Journalism and Media Performance’ in R. Koopmans and P. Statham (eds.) The Making of a European Public Sphere: The Europeanisation of Media Discourse and Political Contention (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Tarrow, S. (2001) ‘Transnational Politics: Contention and Institutions in International Politics’ Annual Review of Political Science, 4, 1–20. Trenz, H.-J. (2004) ‘Media Coverage on European Governance: Exploring the European Public Sphere in National Quality Newspapers’, European Journal of Communication, 19(3), 291–319. Trenz, H.-J. (2007) ‘ “Quo vadis Europe?” Quality Newspapers Struggling for European Unity’ in J. E. Fossum and P. Schlesinger (eds.) The European Union and the Public Sphere (London: Routledge). Wessler, H., B. Peters, S. Stifft, M. Brüggemann, and K. Kleinen von Königslöw (2009) Transnationalization of Public Spheres (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan).

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6 Protest in the EU: A Path toward Democracy? Didier Chabanet

Since the institutional foundations for a political Europe were first laid, with the Congress of the European Unity Movement in The Hague in 1948 and the signing of the Treaty Establishing the European Coal and Steel Community in 1951, European integration has offered, in the public sphere, a motive for protest. Farmers’ demonstrations, which have accompanied agricultural negotiations and reforms of the Common Agricultural Policy since the 1960s, are the most familiar and evident examples. More recently, these demonstrations have been complemented by the emergence of Eurostrikes in the industrial sector, the most emblematic of which took place in Vilvorde in 1997 in response to the closure of a Belgian Renault factory. This was not, strictly speaking, a first, since it was preceded by other instances of transnational union mobilization,1 but it had unprecedented symbolic power due to the media coverage it garnered and its politicization, including an intervention by the European Commission with the company’s management (Lefébure and Lagneau 2002). The recurrence of such events brings up questions about the importance of protest in Europe and the emergence of a transnational space for political activities (Della Porta and Tarrow 2005), as well as the impact of protest events on democracy in the EU. A pluralist interpretation of European integration might highlight the openness of EU institutions to different groups and their capacity to provide alternative forms of access for actors represented poorly at the national level. By contrast, a more elitist interpretation would be sensitive to logics of domination with profound political effects and would point out the filters and biases at work in the process. This kind of analysis is particularly relevant in a legal system, such as the EU’s, that was structured politically long after cleavages at the nation-state level had stabilized. The fact that the EU responds to sociological and institutional logics that, in certain respects, compete with those of national spaces makes its role as a target for transnational mobilization particularly interesting. This chapter is divided into four sections. The first takes stock of what is known about the Europeanization of protest. The facts, even though 95

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they are few in number and somewhat fragmented, indicate an increase in the phenomenon. The following three sections are devoted to the analysis of specific categories of actors who have, with varying degrees of success, attempted to mobilize against the EU. Each of these case studies enables an understanding of why and how certain groups have gained access to EU institutions more easily than others. First, migrants have had the greatest difficulties in organizing at the European level, mainly because they lack the resources, but also because policies pertaining to immigration and asylum remain anchored in widely varying national contexts, which prevents joint activities. By contrast, the movement behind the European Marches against Unemployment, Job Insecurity and Exclusion has taken far greater advantage of the opportunities provided in the EU, in particular by publicizing its cause through the organization of European ‘counter-summits.’ Finally, the ALTER-EU movement, the Alliance for Lobbying, Transparency and Ethics Regulation, is remarkable because its demands have moved to the core of the European Commission’s own agenda. The concluding section reflects on the structural constraints faced by the three groups and the ways these actors contesting European integration have succeed and failed in gaining access to public debates and in contributing to the definition of the problems around which European democracy is constructed.

Toward a Europeanization of protest? Are protests being Europeanized? The facts available to answer this question are few and far between and must be approached with prudence. Rucht (2002) rejects the hypothesis, using quantitative methods and focusing on the case of Germany between 1950 and 1994. His conclusion applies to genuinely transnational protests as well as to national ones linked to European issues; it holds for both social conflicts and topics such as the environment, even though the latter might appear more favorable to transnationalization. Giugni and Passy (2000) reach the same result in their research on immigration policy. Other studies have recorded contradictory findings, notably that of Reising (1999), who concludes there was a moderate rise in protests at the European level between 1980 and 1995 in France and Germany, but a decline in Belgium. In their quantitative research on protests at the European level, Imig and Tarrow (2001) establish a relative and limited increase between 1994 and 1997 (the period examined in the study), on the one hand, and a marked preponderance of demonstrations that remain exclusively national, on the other.2 Imig and Tarrow (2001) emphasize the demanding macrostructural and cultural conditions for a Europeanization of protest, in particular the need for a correspondence of social networks, collective identities, and political opportunity structures, which has proven difficult to achieve. Rucht (2002), for his part, identifies four types of constraints limiting the Europeanization

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of protest: the dominant role of states and national governments in the European political process, the complexity of EU institutions and decisionmaking processes, the organization and coordination problems faced by highly segmented social actors, and the lack of a structured European public opinion that could be addressed by these mobilizations. Yet even if they are rare, the protest events that do occur can have a considerable impact. They can also take variable forms. Imig and Tarrow (2001) shed light on this complexity by distinguishing three kinds of transnational protest: ‘international cooperation,’ uniting individuals from different countries in a coordinated campaign against a common enemy (e.g., protests against the approval of genetically modified organisms); ‘international conflict,’ this time pitting actors from different countries against each other (e.g., the 1994 conflict between French and Spanish fishers); and ‘collective European protests,’ focused explicitly on EU institutions and policies. Who protests? Imig and Tarrow (2001) observe that between 1984 and 1997, 82.1 percent of all claims relating to the EU were made by professional groups. Within this category, farmers represent half of the protests examined, and their proportion even increases over time. The proportion of nonprofessional and minority interests in the sample doubles between 1993 and 1997, reaching 21.2 percent. This increase of nonprofessional protests signals a politicization of issues of a less socioeconomic kind at the European level. Furthermore, the data assembled by both Imig and Tarrow (2001) and Rucht (2002) converge to confirm that European protests do not involve violence against people or property more frequently than strictly national protests. On the contrary, European protests are more likely to use peaceful means. Two main explanations for these findings appear plausible: on the one hand, the strategic interest of the majority of mobilized actors to achieve the greatest possible support from the public across Europe, notably in countries accustomed to relatively peaceful means of settling disputes, and on the other hand, the desire of the EU institutions addressed by the protest to avoid triggering acts of violence for which they might be held responsible and which might give rise to anti-EU discourse. As of now, European protests have tended to denounce relatively specific EU policies without contesting the process of integration itself or opposing the construction of a political Europe in general. As time goes by and the role of EU institutions is judged more and more on their effectiveness, conflict about European integration in general can be expected to increase, as has been the case in antiglobalization protests. Here, the perception of international institutions as adversaries and the wholesale denunciation of a liberal political and economic project have led to more serious confrontations, such as the ones that occurred in Prague on September 26, 2000 surrounding the summits of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The anti-G8 riots in Genoa in July 2001 were even marked by the death of a young protestor.

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Which institutions are the focus of European protests? Agricultural mobilizations, which represent an important proportion of the protests, occur mainly during meetings of the Council of Ministers that aim at reforming the Common Agricultural Policy. This is explained by the role of the Council in agricultural policy, where until recently the European Parliament did not have co-decision rights and decisions had to be made unanimously. Protesters also exert pressure later in the decision-making process, after the outcomes of implementation activities by the European Commission, COREPER (Committee of Permanent Representatives), and national administrations have become evident – and have left certain interests unsatisfied. At this stage, it is generally too late to overturn decisions, and the most that protesters can hope for are compensatory measures. Another characteristic development is the emergence of counter-summits convened outside meetings of the European Council, which bring together the heads of state and governments of the member states. The practice of counter-summits was invented by the European Trade Union Confederation in the 1970s and has become systematized through mobilization against unemployment and exclusion. The most significant counter-summits occurred during the European Council in Amsterdam in June 1997 (Chabanet 2008). However, demands addressed at EU institutions during these protests have remained relatively diffuse, and calls to intervene are usually directed at all the national governments and all the different EU authorities taken together. Finally, it must be noted that this type of protest is transplanted onto a preexisting agenda, which it tries to influence, taking advantage of the media attention devoted to the summits.

Mobilization in support of migrants The first example of mobilization examined in this chapter concerns migration policy, which has developed a European dimension relatively recently and is becoming more and more sensitive politically. It targets populations that are extremely diverse in their origins and very heterogeneous sociologically. The following discussion focuses mainly on migrants from outside the EU who seek to relocate to EU territory, in particular ones in irregular circumstances or seeking asylum.3 European cooperation in the area of immigration and asylum initially developed in a very specific fashion, as a set of interrelated measures usually devised in intergovernmental contexts, mostly at meetings of interior ministers. These measures concentrated on issues associated with the flow and control of immigrants – or illegal cross-border activities – but did not address questions of integration, naturalization, or citizenship regimes, which remain the exclusive competence of the member states. The latter policies generally reflect positions defined in national political spheres by

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governmental actors, which resonate at the European level, rather than the other way around (Hollifield 1992). In spite of the changes introduced by the Amsterdam Treaty, the Europeanization of migration policy is shaped mainly by the internal dynamics of the member states represented in the Council and for the most part escapes the influence of other EU institutions. The Commission’s Directorate General for Home Affairs, established as Directorate General for Justice, Freedom and Security in 1999, deals with questions of immigration and asylum, attempting to promote a coordinated approach within the Commission, but has only a limited capacity for action. The expertise on which it can draw remains weak and has not been systematically increased, as in other areas of public action, by a close collaboration with representatives of European civil society, since the control of national executives in this policy area is so firm that such action hardly appears worthwhile. A few members of the European Parliament have expressed an interest in immigration issues – notably in denouncing racism and discrimination faced by migrants – but usually in a polemic way and more to establish personal political legitimacy than to entrench these issues in the EU agenda effectively (Favell and Geddes 2000). Nevertheless, the Parliament occasionally offers a forum to defenders of migrant rights, and it undoubtedly constitutes one of the most open access points for their cause. At the beginning of 2006, it even issued a stern warning to the heads of state and government, demanding they end certain detention practices for illegal immigrants, which were judged as a violation of human dignity. Overall, however, the Europeanization of migration policies has been so unfavorable to the populations concerned that it has even led to a modification of the role played by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, whose support for migrants has become increasingly restrictive, particularly since the beginning of the 2000s (Lavenex 2001). Many nongovernmental organizations that succeeded in establishing privileged links with this agency – notably through its European office – have experienced greater and greater difficulties in obtaining its support and in exerting significant influence through this channel. Today, most migration control measures developed by the EU are prepared in collaboration with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which has reduced the space available to defenders of migrants to maneuver, as well as the possibility of forming alliances. Nevertheless, international institutions, most importantly the United Nations and its associated institutions, are still markedly more favorable to their cause than national or European institutions. Thus, in national public debates on immigration, migrants account for only 2 percent of political claims with a European dimension,4 compared to 14 percent of claims with an international dimension and 10 percent of claims that remain exclusively national (Koopmans et al. 2005, 58). Only a minute proportion of the political concerns of migrants find expression in the European sphere, irrespective of whether it is in the form of transnational

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activities, demands addressed to the EU, or references to a norm issued by the EU.5 It seems the EU acts as a filter with very unfavorable consequences for the representation of migrants’ interests. If opportunities are so reduced at the European level, this is not only because of the incomplete integration of migration policies, but also because organizations that defend migrant rights encounter organizational difficulties that prevent them from exploiting all possibilities for action fully. The development of the European Migrants’ Forum illustrates clearly the inability of the migrants’ movement to establish effective and sustainable structures for interaction with EU institutions. Created in 1991 at the Commission’s initiative, this consultative organ representing migrant populations was involved for almost 10 years in lobbying activities aimed at defending immigrant rights, notably in the context of the European citizenship project. However, its influence has declined quickly, to the point of justifying its eventual disappearance, in the first place because its expertise was insufficient to respond to the needs of the Commission, and second because its internal divisions prevented it from developing arguments that were supported by all of its national constituents. In this case, as in others, the mobilization of migrants, rooted in strongly divergent national political and judicial contexts, could not be integrated effectively at the European level. Today, the organizations that are capable of intervening in European institutions in favor of migrants are not very numerous; they generally prefer modes of action that are peaceful and have relatively little public visibility. Many of these organizations are rooted in the countries of Northern Europe that are not confronted directly with the challenges posed by the inflow of migrant populations at the EU’s southern and eastern borders. Others, such as the European Citizenship Action Service, are mainly service providers and intervene to facilitate administrative processes for immigrants who have a regularized legal status and are already on the path toward integration. The priorities of such organizations are the promotion of civil rights and equality policies, and they are often out of touch with the situation of migrants whose legal status and presence in Europe is problematic. Finally, among the nongovernmental organizations defending the rights of migrants, only Amnesty International and the European Council on Refugees and Exiles maintain regular and official contacts with the Commission, although the former does not specialize in questions of asylum and immigration and the latter can make only relatively limited demands (Guiraudon 2001). It is possible that national organizations will begin intensifying their ties with European nongovernmental organizations, especially the European Council on Refugees and Exiles, thus responding to the progressive integration of migration policy (Gray and Statham 2005). But this process is still in its infancy, with Europeanization growing ‘from below,’ outside of, and at the margins of EU spaces, even in opposition to them. The association

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Migreurop, which was created at the European Social Forum in Florence in November 2002 and virulently denounces the EU’s migration policies, is a good example of this phenomenon. Its members are all responsible, within their respective national associations, for monitoring European immigration and asylum policies – they are hence undeniably specialists – and proceed in this framework to exchange information and formulate common positions in the interest of raising awareness and shaping public opinion. Their positions are based on a high level of expertise and they generally employ a strategy of scandalization. The use of provocative rhetoric, for example comparing the policy of detaining immigrants at the borders of the EU to Nazi concentration camps, is one way of offsetting their institutional isolation and logistical and financial weakness. On the whole, the movement for the defense of migrants’ rights is faced with a number of obstacles, and their effects are cumulative. The dominant role of the member states in migration control policies prevents the establishment of genuinely European debates and makes it difficult for organizations representing migrants’ rights to collect relevant information and to influence public opinion. The complexity and opaqueness of the field make it difficult to identify political logics and responsibilities, even for specialists. The ruling elites have little interest in publicizing these questions, which clearly display the exclusionary practices on which the European project is implicitly founded, as well as the limited application of human rights standards when dealing with foreigners in irregular situations. In periods of mass unemployment and economic difficulties, migrant populations are victims of xenophobia – on the rise in many European countries – and are often not defended by other actors in national politics, who tend to limit their solidarity to the ‘community of citizens.’ The placement of migrant concerns on the European political agenda, and support for their cause more generally, is impeded by the stigma migrants face due to their ethnic origins and made even more difficult by the invisibility of those who arrived clandestinely. The discrimination they suffer seems understandable, if not justifiable, in the eyes of a significant part of the European public, particularly in the light of the omnipresent associations established in public discourse between immigration, insecurity, and terrorism. Because the subject is disturbing for political elites and difficult for journalists to investigate, the amount of information made available to the wider public is reduced. Recent events have shown that when media attention is given to the situation of illegal immigrants – as they are turned away from the gates of European paradise and dying by the thousands – the European political class as a whole is asked to justify migration policies. The heads of state and government are well aware of the strategic importance of this media display, which is why they have decided to set up retention centers outside of the EU territory, hoping these will exercise their responsibilities with less media scrutiny.

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The example of migrants confirms the results reached in the more general literature on interest representation in Europe, which argues that the EU is not capable of significantly altering power structures and inequalities established at the national level. An interesting counterexample is provided by the unemployed, who have achieved massive mobilization at the EU level in recent years, something they have not brought about at the national level. As mentioned above, this success was achieved mainly through the practice of using – and in a sense, hijacking – European summits to render visible their concerns, while they received little voluntary support from the EU institutions.

European Marches against Unemployment and the alter-globalization movement The European Marches against Unemployment have since the 1990s constituted a pioneering expression of the alter-globalization movement. Although rooted firmly in specific national contexts, collective action by the unemployed has spread to the EU level. The movement of European Marches against Unemployment, Job Insecurity and Exclusion (Chabanet 2008) first demonstrated its capacity for mobilization in Amsterdam on June 14, 1997, when it brought nearly 50,000 people to the streets on the occasion of an EU summit. The event was all the more remarkable in that the protesters came from many different countries: for more than two months, small groups of marchers had crisscrossed Europe, finally converging in the Netherlands for the summit. This episode was not unique. On June 3 and 4, 1999, during the EU summit in Cologne, similar marches took place, gathering approximately 30,000 people. Other subsequent EU summits were marked by less important protests. In the absence of a common policy on fighting unemployment, the focus of public action remains at the national level, which militates against Europeanization ‘from above.’ For one, it would be very difficult for the European Trade Union Confederation to federate the protests, since this association privileges cooperation in the context of the ‘social dialogue’ and generally voices support – albeit with a critical impetus – for EU policies (Dølvik 1999). Furthermore, the network of European associations that aim to represent the interests of the vulnerable is limited, weak, ineffective, and largely composed of subsidiaries of national organizations. The European Anti-Poverty Network, created in 1990, resembles an epistemic community; it possesses consultative status with the Council of Europe, but its means of action are limited and not oriented toward protest. The influence of the European Network of the Unemployed, founded in 1982, which consists of national associations of the unemployed, is even weaker due to a lack of resources; this organization has not met since 1998 and its activities have been all but invisible (Royall 2002).

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Even if the marches departed from different points and spread across the territory of the EU, thus giving the protests a genuinely European dimension, their organization rested in large part in the hands of a small number of leaders from the extreme left, most of whom were French and involved in many different causes as current or former trade unionists and members of associations of the unemployed. With limited visibility since the mid1990s, these groups attempted through the marches to establish unemployment and job insecurity as issues on the EU agenda. The mobilization of the unemployed in each country depended first and foremost on the support of third-party actors. The help of trade unions and civil society actors, especially churches, made a difference in Germany, which provided the greatest number of marchers after France, and in the countries of Northern Europe, which were also visibly present, though in less impressive numbers. The next highest numbers of marchers came from Italy, followed most notably by Belgium, Slovenia, and Spain. By contrast, the low turnout among British unemployed was striking. In this case, the support of trade unions was limited, because most of them have been considerably weakened over the past two decades and because the European Trade Union Confederation – following the position of the Labour Party, which was at odds with the demands brought forward by the unemployed – refused to participate in the marches. Moreover, the expansion of precarious employment in the United Kingdom has increased labor market participation and further diminished the capacities of associations of the unemployed to mobilize. The residual character of unemployment insurance did not become the target of mobilization here, especially since access to the labor market, albeit in precarious forms, became easier since the 1990s. Taken together, the national composition of the European Marches accurately reflects the mobilization capacity of the unemployed in the member states. It is greatest not where conditions for the unemployed are the least favorable, but in countries that have relatively generous systems that are becoming increasingly restrictive (notably France, Germany, Finland, and Belgium). In contexts marked by high unemployment, it is indeed the interplay of these two factors, plus the role of trade unions, that explains, for the most part, the participation of the unemployed. This is even more pronounced in countries where structural rigidities lead to a bifurcation of the labor market, reducing the prospects of finding work. The principal challenge confronting the organizers of the marches was how to make the situation of Europe’s unemployed tangible as a political problem. From a limited repertoire of action, the practice of marches gives underprivileged groups, with a limited access to power holders, the opportunity to make themselves visible: it is directed at public opinion, in the hope of influencing political institutions. From this perspective, two opposing orientations become evident within the marches. For one, which takes a long-term view, the emergence of an alter-EU social movement is

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the ultimate objective of political mobilization. In this approach, collective action on behalf of the unemployed and those whose jobs are at risk is considered secondary, since the primary goal is the creation of conditions for an enlargement of the struggle. The other orientation, generally favored by associations of the unemployed and by the unemployed themselves, presents the problems of unemployment and precarious work as requiring immediate attention and focuses on achieving short-term results. This dispute over the ultimate objectives of the movement has not prevented the marchers from jointly striving for visibility and, beyond that, seeking the support of the European public. In this constellation, the marches constitute a specific mode of the externalization of protest: the unemployed in action constitute a transnational coalition of actors who take aim at the EU to oppose the policies advanced by its member states. Dependent on these states’ welfare systems, they expect nothing, in the short term, from EU institutions on which their fate does not seem to depend. In addressing the European Council, they profit from the visibility of its meetings to put pressure on national executives. In many respects, the European Marches can be seen as one of the pioneering components of the alter-globalization movement, which has systematized, since the World Trade Organization conference in Seattle in October 1999, the practice of counter-summits. However, the European movement of the unemployed has not survived its initial success. Indeed, since the Nice Summit in December 2000, its mobilization capacity has eroded, and the movement persists today mainly in the form of an online network for information exchange, albeit a very active one.6 The alter-globalization movement today hardly transmits the demands of the unemployed and corresponds less and less to their sociology, as several recent studies have shown. Thus, the profile of activists at the European Social Forum in Florence in November 2002 bore little resemblance to those who are excluded from, or losers of, European integration and globalization. Among the participants, 53 percent were students, 11 percent were unemployed or underemployed, 25 percent were pensioners, and 7 percent were independents (Della Porta 2005, 54). At the second European Social Forum, held in Ile-de-France in November 2003, a fairly homogeneous picture of a public well endowed with cultural capital emerged: 69 percent of participants had college degrees, compared with 30 percent of the French population as a whole, and 51.6 percent of these were university graduates, a group that usually benefits from stable public employment (at a rate of 46.1 percent, compared to less than 10 percent of the whole of the active population) (Gobille and Uysal 2005, 107). The share of the unemployed is small and corresponds more to the figure of the ‘precarious intellectual’ than to the ‘disaffected’ (Castel 2003) who are permanently marginalized. Far from being the victims of globalization, the actors of the alterglobalization movement represent instead the discontent of a fringe group

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of ‘rooted cosmopolitans’ (Tarrow 2001), who benefit from high social and cultural capital. Organizations fighting against unemployment and job insecurity try to intervene in the context of the European Social Forum to take advantage of the attention it receives in the public sphere, but they are reduced to minimal influence. To be sure, their concerns are transmitted, but they are also diluted and stifled by representatives of civil society and union activists who are much more powerful and for whom public speaking and access to the political sphere is much easier. Social exclusion is compounded by activist exclusion: isolated and dominated within national politics, the unemployed remain in a similarly disadvantaged position even within the European movement that they helped to initiate and that has established itself as a collective actor whose influence continues to rise (Agrikoliansky et al. 2005).

The emergence of the ALTER-EU movement In its European version, the alter-globalization movement was born and has developed outside of, or at the periphery of, the institutions of the EU. The movement’s capacity to attract media attention and to mobilize the public contrasts starkly with the skepticism, or outright rejection, that EU institutions evoke, which demonstrates how strongly bifurcated the European public sphere is (Balme and Chabanet 2004). The development of Europeanized forms of protest and the increasing attention paid to this protest in EU politics nevertheless indicate the possibility of a more integrated political debate. In this respect, it is remarkable that the transparency of the EU institutions and the regulation of lobbying became at once the starting point from which a new EU-critical actor emerged and the framework around which the agenda of the European Commission was built. The ALTER-EU movement formed at the end of 2004, focusing its attacks on the all-too-close ties between business and the decision-making bodies of the EU. It brings together traditional actors from the alter-globalization movement and European groups representing social and civic interests often overlooked in the EU’s governance processes, but also professional associations of journalists, notably the European Federation of Journalists, which is concerned about the rising influence of pressure groups on the media.7 Unlike typical alter-globalization protests, or European Social Forums, the interaction here between European elites and their challengers is direct and internalized, in the sense that the movement intervenes directly within the European institutions. The necessity of responding to growing Euroskepticism constitutes a window of opportunity for the ALTER-EU movement, whose leaders meet regularly with some of the Commission’s highest officials. Conceived largely as an information network, ALTER-EU employs the Internet to develop very precise and well-documented arguments, often

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using humor and satire. This practice is sufficiently systematized to suggest a strategic positioning, focused on attracting the attention of Internet users and the larger public.8 It aims to persuade those not specialized in EU issues, with no specific knowledge of the subject matter, and to distinguish itself from the masses of information available on the Internet by avoiding the jargon and hermetic style generally used by EU institutions. In the same way that social movements with limited political or institutional support make recourse to highly visible forms of action, ALTER-EU has made humor, derision, and sometimes even provocation its weapons of choice to attract the public’s attention. Fundamentally, the movement advocates the mandatory registration of lobbyists, for all categories of interest, with the exception of groups that are poorly institutionalized and command few resources (e.g., do not have an office in Brussels) and for whom a mandatory declaration of activity would seem excessive and impose unacceptable administrative burdens. Since the end of 2004, ALTER-EU has outlined positions that today inspire the activities of the Commission concerning the regulation of lobbying and the transparency of EU institutions. The most prominent suggestions concern the establishment of an independent public authority, entrusted with the necessary powers to guarantee the transparency and ethics of lobbying; a mandatory electronic registration system for lobbyists to report on their activities (including the names of their clients) and ensure that European decision-making is transparent; a code of conduct for lobbyists and EU public servants, including a clause prohibiting, for a certain ‘cooling off’ period, transfers from the private sector to high positions in the Commission (and vice versa); a ban on offering gifts of a value of more than 150 Euros; a requirement to declare all reimbursements for travel and lodging paid by lobbies to EU public servants; and finally, a requirement that the Commission publish a list of all organizations consulted for each of its policy initiatives (ALTER-EU 2006). This catalogue of demands is all the more remarkable in that it has formed the background for the European Transparency Initiative, officially launched in March 2005 by Siim Kallas, Vice-President of the Commission and Commissioner for Administrative Affairs, Audit and Anti-Fraud. The programmatic speech he delivered to the European Foundation for Management at the Nottingham Business School takes up the main points of the ALTER-EU movement and uses the same alarmist tone (Kallas 2005). Pointing to the loss of confidence in the EU among a majority of its citizens, especially in the past few years, Commissioner Kallas announced a set of possible measures to respond to such tendencies, indicating the possibility of EU legislative action on the issue. A more draconian regulation of lobbying – encompassing all sectors of activity – and a clarification of acceptable conduct for Members of the European Parliament, their assistants, and Commission personnel were at the heart of his proposals, which

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even hinted at a complete change of doctrine by noting that ‘one option would be to transform the existing “CONECCS database” into a compulsory registration system for all interest groups and lobbyists, including public affairs practitioners, trade unions etc’ (European Commission 2005, 6). The subsequent publication of a Green Paper on the European Transparency Initiative on May 3, 2006 marked a significant step forward, not only because the issue at stake had never before been at the center of the EU agenda, but also because the Commission itself admitted in the Green Paper to having undertaken ‘a review of its overall approach to transparency’ and underlined clearly ‘the need for a more structured framework for the activities of interest representatives (lobbyists)’ (European Commission 2006, 3). The new Register of Interest Representatives, launched in June 2008 to replace the CONECCS database, reveals some of the codification and transparency requirements with which groups now have to conform.9 Even though registration is voluntary, this register in September 2009 listed more than 1,700 organizations, divided into different categories depending on their main objectives. This categorization, which is an innovation, offers to the general public an overview of the distribution of groups over different activities. The Commission’s scheduled review of the system in October 2009 concluded that ‘the voluntary approach has worked and made the register a good basis on which to build further’ (European Commission 2009).

Conclusion The collective actors examined in this chapter – the unemployed, migrants, and the alter-globalization movement – have one thing in common: their access to EU decision making is limited and difficult. The focus of their activities therefore lies outside, or on the periphery, of EU institutions. They all position themselves in opposition to these institutions, criticizing their economic liberalism. At present, their struggle is less about the content of EU policy-making, in which they hardly participate, than about the cognitive construction of a possible alternative – ‘another Europe.’ In this framework, the principal objective of their activities is to appeal to the media and to public opinion, whose support is considered of primary importance, rather than to participate directly in the decision-making process. While the status and the structure of unemployment benefits is completely neglected in the economic and social policies of the EU, which are based on the labor market and notably on measures of job creation, the case of migrants is different in that EU policies on the regulation and control of migrant inflows have expanded substantially in recent years. It is a curious paradox that the unemployed, a group whose situation is largely unaffected by EU policies, has succeeded through the European Marches in making itself heard in the public sphere and within EU institutions, while migrants

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experience great difficulties in asserting their interests at the EU level, even while their living conditions are increasingly determined there. While the resources of the groups in question do not seem to account for these differences, one core factor where the two groups differ is the political opportunities at the EU level, which are greater for the unemployed than for migrants. The mobilization of the unemployed has benefited from an alliance, temporary yet decisive, with certain leaders of the alter-globalization movement, as well as from the strategy of explicitly targeting the European Council, which has turned out to be very beneficial, at least in the short term. The consistent tactic of organizing European counter-summits to attract the attention of the media has allowed one of the most precarious social groups, one that is usually among the least disposed toward collective action, to constitute itself as a political actor at the EU level and to exert an influence on both national politics and the EU agenda. So far, migrants have not been able to benefit from similar circumstances, which would allow them to overcome their isolation, not least because they find themselves confronted with a surge in xenophobic ideologies, which pervade an increasing proportion of national public opinion and which influence the policies of European political elites in more and more significant ways. What is more, the specific mode of the Europeanization of immigration policies, where heads of state and government are more influential than the Commission, largely removes issues of migration from public debates and political representation. From different perspectives, the mobilization of the unemployed and of migrants highlights the challenges of social exclusion and poverty, which threaten to turn into permanent cleavages within the EU. European democracy is being built without being able to respond to the social questions that undermine it, or at the very least without giving these questions the forms of expression and the political significance they deserve. This problem poses itself in a great number of member states as well as in the EU itself, but it makes the EU particularly vulnerable, to the point of compromising the continuation of the integration process. The divide between the economic liberalism espoused by the EU institutions, on one hand, and the manifestations of public incomprehension and rejection of this orientation, on the other, obviously affects the future of the EU, which has been successful neither in significantly reducing unemployment rates and combating social exclusion nor in developing at the European level social arrangements or political mechanisms to give voice to the discontent. The alter-globalization movement is clearly distinguished sociologically from the movements of the unemployed and migrants, recruiting its activists primarily from the protected wage-earning classes and possessing greater capabilities for action than the other two groups. If it fiercely protests the principles of economic liberalism and brings forward social demands, it can hardly be considered the spokesperson for, or the representative of,

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the victims of globalization. The resonance that it has had with a growing number of European citizens, and the influence it exerts on the national stage, constitutes it as one of the most important developments in Europe’s political life in recent years. The alter-globalization movement indicates the growing strength of transnational mobilization and, as a result, the structuring of an emerging political actor, which calls for European and global governance to become more just, fair, participative, and transparent (Imig and Tarrow 2001; Bandy and Smith 2004; Della Porta and Tarrow 2005). Although the financial, logistical, and activist resources that this movement mobilizes are essentially national, its action space is largely supranational. Relatively young, heterogeneous, and poorly institutionalized, it is at present more a force of protest than one of proposals, defying traditional forms of social and political participation. The European and global forums that it organizes at regular intervals allow it to mobilize selectively but forcefully, and independently of political parties and trade unions, in an attempt to put forward new ideas in the public sphere. The influence it exerts on political decision makers is thus rarely direct and mostly bypasses the classic structures of representation at the national and even more so the European level. Still, its mobilization capacity is strong, and it has profited since the mid-1990s from Euro-skeptical sentiments, which are in turn supported by the movement. This generates an interesting contrast with the usual lack of interest in EU politics among the public. Recently, the European Commission itself seems to be more open to some of the movement’s aspirations, which is evident for example in its attempts to move questions of transparency and of the ethics of public action to the core of its agenda. In this context, the success of the ALTER-EU movement shows an undeniable rapprochement between the EU and its challengers, with the latter directly influencing the former’s political activities. This indicates that the fundamental challenge for European democracy concerns its ability to engage in dialogue with trans-European protest movements and to incorporate them in institutionalized procedures. Like national democracies, which were constructed and stabilized slowly and with great difficulties by integrating erstwhile challengers into the state apparatus, the EU must find political solutions to the growing anxieties it provokes. More than 50 years after the Treaty of Rome, this challenge has never been so urgent.

Notes Translated from French by Luc André Brunet and Achim Hurrelmann. 1. In the early 1980s, German, Spanish, and French workers protested against the restructuring of Gillette’s European sites; in 1996, German workers from Alcatel demonstrated in Paris against the closure of a German factory; and in the same year, European railway employees gathered in Brussels to protest against deregulation projects, a protest that was reinforced in November 1998 by a European strike.

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2. Each of these studies uses a distinct methodology that has its own strengths and weaknesses. For example, the study by Imig and Tarrow (2001) is based on the analysis of 9,872 events identified by the international press agency Reuters between 1984 and 1998, which are then coded by an automatic procedure. Its main advantage is that it draws on a homogenous source, whose protocol for treatment and presentation of European information is fairly consistent. It suffers, however, from an identification procedure that is restricted to the title and first sentence of each article. Furthermore, since Reuters is an economic information agency, it may exaggerate economic information at the expense of the more political aspects of events. Rucht (2002) relies on two databases of German dailies, PRODAT and TEA. PRODAT offers information on a much larger period, from 1950 until 1994, and brings together 13,201 cases of protest. In limiting himself to a national monograph, Rucht can offer a more exhaustive picture of protest and its coverage in the media. But the sheer amount of information available necessitates limiting the range of sources analyzed, in this case to articles published on Mondays and Thursdays only. Most of all, the treatment of information is obviously subject to the economic constraints faced by media outlets, such as varying production costs and the amount of space dedicated to advertising, but also differences in the economic climate that affect editorial policies. These biases are less marked in the case of press agencies. It must be underlined that the increase in protest discerned by Imig and Tarrow concerns the period 1994 to 1997, which is not considered by Rucht, and that the results of both studies for earlier periods are compatible. In both cases, the quantitative analysis is subject to important limitations, since the occurrence of social conflicts is equated with their representation in the media, without controlling for the media’s internal logic of selection or omission and the biases that might imply. 3. Each year, approximately 2.4 million persons from nonmember states settle in the EU, to which can be added an estimated 120,000 to 500,000 illegal immigrants. 4. This European dimension can consist of a European speaker, a European addressee, or a European norm that is invoked in the claim. 5. It is remarkable that the European Court of Justice does not play as strong a role in this area as it does in promoting other rights. 6. http://www.euromarches.org 7. The movement currently includes approximately 250 member organizations. 8. For example, a publication called Lobby Planet: Brussels in the EU Quarter, based on the well-known tourist guide, offers details about the location of the principal interest groups in Brussels, using maps to illustrate their proximity to EU institutions. An online poll (http://www.worstlobby.eu) is used to award the Worst EU Lobby Award each year to a group whose conduct is considered particularly shocking. Nominees are divided into two categories: (1) a lobby that used the most deceitful and irresponsible practices, and (2) an institution or civil servant who privileged a sectoral interest to the detriment of the public interest. Once the vote is closed, an awards ceremony is held in December in Brussels. 9. https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/transparency/regrin/welcome.do?locale=en

References Agrikoliansky, É., O. Fillieule, and N. Mayer (2005) L’altermondialisme en France: la longue histoire d’une nouvelle cause (Paris: Flammarion).

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ALTER-EU (2006) ‘Recommendations on Lobbying Transparency and Ethics in the European Union’, http://www.foeeurope.org/publications/2006/Recommendations_ on_tranparency_January_2006.pdf, date accessed March 17, 2010. Balme, R. and D. Chabanet (2004) ‘Construire l’intérêt public européen: les mobilisations dans les processus conventionnels’ in O. Beaud, A. Lechevalier, I. Pernice, and S. Strudel (eds.) L’Europe en voie de constitution: pour un bilan critique des travaux de la Convention (Brussels: Bruylant). Bandy, J. and J. Smith (eds) (2004) Coalitions across Borders (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield). Castel, R. (2003) From Manual Workers to Wage Laborers (New Brunswick: Transaction). Chabanet, D. (2008) ‘When the Unemployed Challenge the European Union: The European Marches as Externalization of Protest’, Mobilization: An International Journal, 13(3), 311–22. Della Porta, D. (2005) ‘Démocratie en movement: les manifestants du Forum social européen, des liens aux réseaux’, Politix: Revue des Sciences Sociales du Politique, 17(86), 49–77. Della Porta, D. and S. Tarrow (eds.) (2005) Transnational Protest and Global Activism: People, Passions, and Power (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield). Dølvik, J. E. (1999) An Emerging Island? ETUC, Social Dialogue and the Europeanisation of the Trade Unions in the 1990s (Brussels: European Trade Union Institute). European Commission (2005) ‘Communication to the Commission from the President, Ms. Wallström, Mr. Kallas, Ms. Hübner and Ms. Fischer Boel Proposing the Launch of a European Transparency Initiative’, http://ec.europa.eu/commission_barroso/kallas/doc/etik-communication_en.pdfCommunication, date accessed March 17, 2010. European Commission (2006) ‘Green Paper: European Transparency Initiative’, COM (2006) 194 final, http://ec.europa.eu/transparency/eti/docs/gp_en.pdf, date accessed March 17, 2010. European Commission (2009) ‘Commission’s Lobby Register Improved Following One-Year Review’ (Press Release IP/09/1608), http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/09/1608&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLan guage=en, date accessed March 17, 2010. Favell, A. and A. Geddes (2000) ‘Immigration and European Integration: New Opportunities for Transnational Political Mobilisation?’ in R. Koopmans and P. Statham (eds.) Challenging Immigration and Ethnic Relations Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Giugni, M. and F. Passy (2000) ‘Resistance to Europeanization: National Barriers to Supranational Changes in Migration Policy’, La lettre de la Maison française d’Oxford, 12, 183–206. Gobille, B. and A. Uysal (2005) ‘Cosmopolites et enracinés’ in É. Agrikoliansky and I. Sommier (eds.) Radiographie du mouvement altermondialiste (Paris: La Dispute). Gray, E. and P. Statham (2005) ‘Becoming European? British Pro-Migrant NGOs and the European Union’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 43(4), 877–98. Guiraudon, V. (2001) ‘Weak Weapons of the Weak? Transnational Mobilization around Migration in the European Union’ in D. Imig and S. Tarrow (eds.) Contentious Europeans: Protest and Politics in an Emerging Polity (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield). Hollifield, J. (1992) ‘Migration and International Relations: Cooperation and Control in the European Community’, International Migration Review, 26(2), 568–95.

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Imig, D. and S. Tarrow (eds.) (2001) Contentious Europeans: Protest and Politics in an Emerging Polity (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield). Kallas, S. (2005), ‘The Need for a European Transparency Initiative’ (Speech/05/130), http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=SPEECH/05/130, date accessed March 17, 2010. Koopmans, R., P. Statham, M. Giugni, and F. Passy (2005) Contested Citizenship: Immigration and Ethnic Relations Politics in Germany, Britain, France, the Netherlands, and Switzerland (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press). Lavenex, S. (2001) ‘The Europeanization of Refugee Policies: Normative Challenges and Institutional Legacies’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 39(5), 851–74. Lefébure, P. and E. Lagneau (2002) ‘Le moment Vilvorde: action protestataire et espace public européen’ in R. Balme, D. Chabanet, and V. Wright (eds.) L’action collective en Europe (Paris: Presses de Sciences Po). Reising, U. (1999) ‘United in Opposition? A Cross-National Time-Series of European Protest in Three Selected Countries, 1980–1995’, Journal of Conflict Resolution, 43(3), 317–43. Royall, F. (2002) ‘Building Solidarity across National Boundaries: The Case of Affiliates of the European Network of the Unemployed’, Journal of European Area Studies, 10(2), 243–58. Rucht, D. (2002) ‘The EU as a Target of Political Mobilisation: Is There a Europeanisation of Conflict?’ in R. Balme, D. Chabanet, and V. Wright (eds.) L’action collective en Europe (Paris: Presses de Sciences Po). Tarrow, S. (2001) ‘Transnational Politics: Contention and Institutions in International Politics’, Annual Review of Political Science, 4, 1–20.

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7 European Integration and Transnational Labor Markets Nathan Lillie

In January and February 2009, a wave of wildcat strikes swept across the United Kingdom, as British workers protested the employment of Italian and Portuguese workers at construction contractors at power plants. These protests erupted spontaneously from workers who were angered at foreign contractors bringing their ‘posted’ workforce from abroad to work on UK sites while local workers remained unemployed.1 The result was a compromise settlement, in which some jobs were made available to British workers. More important, it set off a debate in the United Kingdom about the role of ‘obscure European law’ (Winnet and Squires 2009) in opening Europe’s labor markets. The issue of posted workers is not confined to the United Kingdom; all over Europe worker posting is becoming a standard way for employers in some industries to access cheap, unregulated labor (Menz 2005; Felini et al. 2007; Lillie and Greer 2007). The European public is gradually awaking to the realization that national labor market institutions are a thing of the past. This transnationalization of labor markets is likely to have as much influence on national political economies in coming years as the transnationalization of capital had in the past two decades. This chapter argues that the creation of a transnational labor market in the European Union (EU) is the result of the deliberate market-making political agenda of EU institutions, namely the European Commission and European Court of Justice (ECJ), which seek to deregulate national industrial relations systems in Europe. The way in which labor and capital mobility are being increased is not class-neutral, but rather is accomplished through demolishing nationally based labor movement capacities, while deploying de-territorialized regulatory strategies such as variegated sovereignty and spaces of exception, to maintain differences between groups of workers of different nationalities in the face of an integrating labor market. Thus, transnational capital fractions and European institutions seek to create a unified transnationally regulated economic space as a way of circumventing national class compromises. They do this by maintaining fissures between national working classes in order to set them one against the other. 113

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The politics around integration requires, and in some cases manufactures, difference in order to generate and sustain competitive relations (Lillie and Martinez Lucio 2009). In this context, transnationalization is a more accurate term to describe what is happening to European labor markets than alternatives such as globalization, internationalization, or supranationalization. The terrain in which class struggle takes place is located in many national environments, and the actors involved strategize across these spaces, but the spaces themselves are not necessarily becoming uniform or unified. This chapter focuses on the political struggle over labor mobility in the EU, as it relates to the posting of workers, that is, the movement of labor under the right of establishment and freedom to provide services as interpreted by the ECJ. This is not the entire scope of labor migration. EU institutions seek to promote internal mobility by implementing rules supporting the free movement of labor as individual workers, which is of a different and altogether less pernicious nature. There is also the issue of migration from outside the EU, some of which is for economic reasons, and some of which is not. Although there is overlap in these issue areas, the posting of workers is analyzed here as a distinct phenomenon, because of the way it has effectively attained the status of a ‘right’ for capital to deploy it against workers and their representatives, and the way it reorganizes regulatory territoriality to create a situation where access to citizenship rights by workers becomes contingent and variegated.

Functionalism, negative integration, and class conflict Neo-functionalist scholars (e.g., Haas 1958), and later institutionalist scholars interested in European integration (e.g., Fligstein and Stone Sweet 2002) have long noted that integration in particular policy arenas creates what they call ‘spillover effects’; that is, integration in one arena creates functional pressures for integration in related arenas, by reconfiguring the interests of nonstate actors so that these come to favor economic integration. These nonstate actors then push their governments and European institutions for regulatory harmonization. Although neo-functionalism is generally considered outdated, its central tenets have been assumed by institutionalist scholars studying European integration (e.g., Corbey 1995; Fligstein and Stone Sweet 2002; Stone Sweet 2004). Functionalist logic predicts that ECJ decisions favoring free labor mobility at the expense of national institutions regulating capital–labor relations will result in the harmonization of industrial relations systems within the EU, as national industrial relations actors seek to reestablish their ability to regulate. The spillover effects of liberalization, according to this logic, should mobilize unions behind a ‘Social Europe’ agenda, involving the establishment of constitutionally protected labor rights at the EU level. There is evidence to support this prediction; Swedish unions, for example, opposed the harmonization of labor rights at

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the EU level in the past, but are now more supportive as a result of recent ECJ decisions.2 However, it is not clear that labor rights can be established at the EU level in the same sense they were once protected at the national level. The ECJ has long exploited functionalist dynamics, using the principle of mutual recognition to create pressures for policy harmonization (Stone Sweet 2004). The rapid pace of market integration, compared with the slow fits and starts of ‘Social Europe,’ has been facilitated by the relative ease of negative integration through legal decisions, compared to the difficulty of harmonization through political agreement (Scharpf 1996, 2002). Because market-restricting integration must inevitably be achieved through harmonization rather than mutual recognition, it is automatically at a structural disadvantage, in a political sense. Scharpf (1988) refers to this bias as the ‘joint decision trap.’ Even more fundamentally, it is not clear that ‘positive’ harmonizing industrial relations legislation will be accepted by the ECJ (Höpner 2008). As will be discussed later, there are reasons to believe pro-labor EU legislation may be struck down or modified so the original intent is undermined, as has arguably occurred with the Services and Posted Workers Directives. What is missing, therefore, from functionalist and institutionalist frameworks for explaining European integration is an understanding of class power relations: the implications of European integration for the balance of power between classes (Bieler 2006). Negative integration through harmonization will not result in an effective push for ‘Social Europe’ if the process destroys the organizational capacity of the working class – in that case, this class will not have the political influence to ensure its interests are represented. Deregulating national industrial relations using EU politics has not been possible without a good deal of convoluted legal reasoning designed to allow the creation of ‘spaces of exception’ in which normal rules do not apply. Sovereign authority is being reconfigured in the EU in defiance of physical geography, in ways reminiscent of ‘offshore.’ By using non-territorial definitions of sovereignty or exploiting situations in which territorial sovereignty is little more than a convenient fiction, capital shifts the sovereign regulatory regime under which social relations take place. As Palan (2003, 3–4) writes, the process of bifurcating sovereignty is driven by the expansive logic of capitalism, confronted with the constraints of the Westphalian international system. Social and political controls are selectively not enforced, with the explicit goal of allowing capital a freer hand in designing the social relations of production. Instead of attacking labor rights directly, which could be difficult politically, capital removes specific work spaces, contexts, and categories of powerless people from the protection they would normally enjoy as human beings within sovereign states. Elements of capital can operate in areas of less regulation by ‘bracketing’ their activities, without challenging the right of the state to ‘carry on discharging traditional roles as if nothing had happened’ (Palan 1998, 627).

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Firms no longer have to uproot production to inconvenient locations in order to access unregulated and inexpensive labor. Thus, the state and its sovereignty norms are reconfiguring in interaction with capital strategies for labor subjugation and control. Ong (2006) labels this regulatory process ‘neoliberalism as exception’3 in her analysis of the reconfiguration of citizenship and sovereignty in Asia. The phenomenon observed by Ong also confronts European welfare states: capital strategies for reconfiguring employment relations drive the development of non-geographically based regulation backed by a pan-European political–judicial enforcement regime.

Free movement, the European Court of Justice, and the European integration project National industrial relations systems have been subordinated to internal market freedoms in four recent ECJ decisions: Viking Line v. the Finnish Seamen’s Union and the International Transport Workers’ Federation (2007); Laval un Partneri v. the Swedish Construction Workers’ Union and Swedish Electrical Workers’ Unions (2007); Dirk Rüffert v. Land Niedersachsen (2008), and The Commission of the European Communities vs. Luxembourg (2008). These constrain the rights of unions and governments to regulate the working conditions of foreign service providers operating in their territory (Blanke 2008), allowing firms to create ‘spaces of exception’ by exploiting enclaves of alternative, de-territorialized sovereignty (Lillie 2010). As Bernard (2009, 123) puts it, ‘the ECJ sees the application of national labor law by a host state as a barrier to the provision of services under Article 49 and therefore presumptively unlawful,’ creating a situation in which industrial relations rules must be harmonized at the EU level or the consequences of deregulation accepted. The decisions represent a new turn in ECJ activism; although there is a trend in legal logic behind the decisions, they also boldly disregard the national structuring of industrial relations systems and dismiss wholesale the ‘Social Europe’ concept. The decisions came in the wake of a series of EU-level political struggles, in which the representative institutions of the EU rejected exactly the principles the ECJ instituted through its decisions. The EU politics of labor mobility have revolved around the passing and implementing of the 1996 Posted Workers Directive, the 2004 accessions of Eastern European and Mediterranean island countries, the debate over the 2006 Services Directive, and the four recent ECJ decisions. In the early 1990s, the EU became a major site for re-regulatory activity, as unionists and industry representatives worked together to frame EU-level regulations for governing working standards of posted workers in the construction industry. Because of a construction boom in the newly acceded East German Länder, posted workers from Western Europe appeared

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in increasing numbers on German construction sites. The German social partners, with the help of their representatives in Brussels, lobbied for an EU directive establishing the host country principle. In 1996, the EU passed the Posted Workers Directive, establishing that posted construction workers are entitled to the statutory minimum conditions of either their host state or sending state, whichever is better from the workers’ perspective, thus allowing national regulation of employment at transnational subcontractors. The Posted Workers Directive initially had little impact because of a decline in posting in the late 1990s, but in the context of increasing labor migration from Eastern Europe it became important in reshaping the national-level and site-level regulatory terrain in construction (Lillie and Greer 2007). The Posted Workers Directive mandates only that national governments pass posted worker rules covering the construction sector, but leaves open the possibility of extending these rules to other sectors as well. Meanwhile, business interests worked with the European Commission to draft a directive on the free movement of services, which they hoped would establish a ‘country of origin’ principle for regulating service-sector firms. The country of origin principle asserts that economic activities taking place in one country but received in another should be regulated in the country where the activity takes place rather than in the country where they are received. For manufacture and export it is clear what this means. The bottle of Cassis produced in France can be sold in Germany, as long as it was legally produced in France, as the well-known 1979 Cassis de Dijon decision of the ECJ established. For cross-border provision of services, however, whether the activity should be considered to take place in the country of origin or country of reception is the subject of continued contention. Broadly interpreted, the country of origin principle allows firms to base themselves in, or subcontract activities to, countries with favorable regulatory regimes, while providing services anywhere they like. This assumption of extraterritoriality forms the basis for the creation of spaces of exception – firms move across national boundaries, carrying with them their home country practices and regulatory frameworks, protected by enclaves of alternative sovereignty, unregulated by local authorities and trade unions (Lillie 2010). The proposed Services Directive became highly controversial because it threatened to undermine national regulation, including EU legislation such as the Posted Workers Directive. Due to union protests and concerns expressed by parts of the business community, the European Parliament and Council amended the directive significantly (Gajewska 2008). The version of the directive finally passed in November 2006 did not include the country of origin principle, marking an important, although as it turns out temporary, defeat for its advocates. Despite legislative defeat, however, the country of origin principle has what some see as strong support in EU and private international law (Michaels 2006). The basis for this claim in EU

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law is constitutional; the EU legal order is built on the four ‘freedoms’ of movement: capital, goods, people, and services. These freedoms are constitutionally enshrined in the 1957 Treaty of Rome, which established the European Economic Community. Interpreted through certain kinds of enabling legislation and/or legal decisions, these freedoms of movement can be interpreted as supporting a country of origin principle in broad aspects of economic activity. Advocates of the country of origin principle then pinned their hopes on the ECJ finding support for the principle in EU constitutional law, and in particular in the application of the four freedoms. The ECJ has broad powers to enforce the EU legal regime by judging whether national law is compatible with EU law, giving EU law semi-constitutional status (Stone Sweet 2004, 14–15), since its decisions have both ‘supremacy’ over national law and ‘direct effect,’ in that national laws and courts must protect the rights conferred by the EU (Fligstein and Stone Sweet 2002, 1215). In the past, the ECJ has treaded delicately in expanding its influence into the realm of industrial relations. However, the four recent ECJ rulings mark a break with that tradition, in that they raise important questions about the compatibility of EU market freedoms with the well-established rights of association and collective action that underpin the European social model at the national level. The first case, Viking Line v. the Finnish Seamen’s Union and the International Transport Workers’ Federation, C-438/05, deals with Viking Line, a Finnishowned shipping company that operates the ferry Rosella between Finland and Estonia. The ferry had a predominantly Finnish crew, covered by a collective agreement between the Finnish Seamen’s Union (FSU) and Viking Line. In 2003, Viking decided to re-flag the Rosella to Estonia, with the intention of replacing the crew with Estonians and paying lower wages. Both the Finnish and Estonian seafarers’ unions are members of the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF), a London-based Global Union Federation organizing the transport sector. ITF jurisdiction policy in maritime matters gave the FSU continued negotiating rights to the Rosella, even if it were re-flagged to Estonia. Negotiations between Viking Line and the FSU for a new collective agreement under the Estonian flag were unsuccessful, and the FSU threatened a strike. The ITF sent a circular to all its affiliates requesting they respect the FSU’s negotiating rights. In December 2003, Viking Line withdrew its plans to re-flag the vessel, and continued to operate under the Finnish flag. On January 1, 2004, Estonia joined the EU. In August 2004, Viking Line began legal proceedings in the High Court in the United Kingdom against the ITF and the FSU, for an order to prevent them from stopping the re-flagging of the Rosella. The case was appealed to the Appeals Court, which referred questions to the ECJ about whether trade union action to prevent social dumping should be regarded as a restriction on employers’ internal market freedoms. In December 2007, the ECJ judged that the public policy objectives of the unions and the right of the employer

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to free movement had to be balanced. The unions could exercise their right to collective action only for the purpose of protecting the interests of workers, and only insofar as necessary to attain this objective. Action to prevent re-flagging, or to make re-flagging pointless, by, for example, applying Finnish wages to ships under the Estonian flag, could constitute a restriction on an employer’s freedom of movement. The second case, Laval un Partneri v. the Swedish Construction Workers’ Union and Swedish Electrical Workers’ Union, C-341/05, deals with a Latvian construction enterprise, Laval un Partneri, which posted workers from Latvia (the state of origin) to work on a project to build a school in Vaxholm, Sweden (the host state), from May to December 2004. (The contract had previously been awarded to Baltic Bygg AB, a Swedish subsidiary fully owned by Laval.) Laval was not party to the collective agreements covering the Swedish construction sector and paid wages considerably lower. The Swedish unions made contact with Laval and began negotiations for a collective agreement, but these were unsuccessful, and in November 2004 the union began a blockade. Laval sued the unions in the Swedish Labor Court, which referred questions about the compatibility of the blockade tactics with EU law to the ECJ. In December 2007, the ECJ judged that unions are not entitled to take action that increases pay above the legal minimum wage, nor do they have the right to negotiate conditions of employment with a foreign employer that has chosen to remain outside the Swedish collective agreement. In Sweden and in many other countries, no legal minimum wage exists. Under these circumstances, any industrial action taken on behalf of posted workers of a foreign undertaking could violate the company’s freedom to provide services across borders. The case of Dirk Rüffert v. Land Niedersachsen, C-346/06, deals with an issue raised in the context of a 2003 public tender launched by the German state (Land) Lower Saxony (Niedersachsen), awarded to Objekt und Bauregie, for construction works at the Göttingen-Rosdorf prison. As required by the Lower Saxony law related to the award of public contracts, the contracted company undertook to pay workers according to the German collective agreement and to monitor compliance by subcontractor firms, including a Polish firm. Following accusations that this subcontractor was paying its Polish workers roughly half the wage prescribed by the collective agreement, Lower Saxony terminated the contract and considered levying penalties on the main contractor. A German court asked the ECJ to decide whether the freedom to provide services precludes a statutory obligation requiring a contractor in a public works contract to pay its employees according to a collective agreement. The ECJ found in April 2008 that the provisions of the public contract were incompatible with the Posted Workers Directive, since the rate of pay was not fixed according to one of the procedures laid down in the directive. Finally, in The Commission of the European Communities v. Luxembourg, C-319/06, the Commission brought an enforcement action against

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Luxembourg, alleging it had failed to fulfill its obligations under the Posted Workers Directive and under Article 49 and 50 of the 1957 Treaty of Rome. In this case, the ECJ ruled in August 2008 that host states should not apply regulatory burdens to companies sending posted workers if these duplicate requirements already in effect in their home country – in other words, the court made explicit the country of origin regulatory principle rejected by the legislative bodies of the EU in the Services Directive debate (European Trade Union Confederation n.d.). The Luxembourg decision served to confirm the trend set by the previous three cases; those decisions were not ill-considered or ill-informed mistakes made by a court inexperienced in dealing with labor law issues, but represented a trend of viewing national industrial relations systems per se as a constraint on free movement, requiring justification either as public policy or under the provisions of the Posted Workers Directive, narrowly construed (Bernard 2009). The decisions have far-reaching implications, in that they allow private actors to access EU Treaty-based free movement rights against other private actors – and in that they deny trade unions in the EU the role they have developed for themselves in national industrial relations systems over the past century. The rulings establish free movement rights for labor as a commodity, but not for workers as citizens. Thus, firms become the real bearers of rights under EU law. A firm providing services transnationally may freely post workers and is protected by EU law from trade union attempts to raise standards for those workers. This legal formulation creates an incentive for firms to post workers, rather than hire locally, and to create subsidiaries or engage subcontractors who do this. The basis of trade union power is the ability to deny labor to capital, usually through industrial action. The rulings effectively make this illegal by applying competition law arguments to trade unions. This was a common justification for legal sanctions against unions in the nineteenth century, but over the course of the twentieth century, the reasoning of national labor law shifted to except trade unions from competition law restrictions. As the ITF and European Trade Union Confederation pointed out in their submissions to the ECJ regarding the Viking case, the ECJ decisions represent an attempt to ‘turn the clock back’ to the times of trade union repression. This, the unions asserted, could destabilize the balance behind national industrial relations systems (Bercusson 2007, 283–5). The precedents have already been used by British Airways to prevent a strike, on the basis that any strike of airline pilots inevitably inhibits free movement within the EU (Done 2008).

Transnationalism and the variegated regulation of migrant work Regulating labor mobility as a factor of production, through the freedom to provide services, has implications for the way migrants interact with their

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host societies and access citizenship rights. The issue of labor migration in the EU has changed fundamentally in the past two decades, with the development of new EU frameworks protecting the right to free movement, while channeling much of it into worker posting. Instead of a pattern of movement, integration, and settlement within specific national societies, the discussion is increasingly about the ‘partial migration’ of different categories of workers (Golynker 2006). Earlier waves of labor migration in the EU were regulated under an international pattern, in which entry was regulated by the government of the host country, while the current wave is following a transnational pattern. This is because the way in which posted migrants encounter host societies is mediated by their employment relationship, via the home country employer. In this new configuration, work often serves as a form of alienation from national host societies. The accession of the much less prosperous states of Central and Eastern Europe to EU membership has motivated this; the willingness of workers from these countries to accept relatively low wages provides an opportunity for firms seeking to cut labor costs. To facilitate this, the EU had to break the link between worker and host society, by defining it as a protectionist barrier to free movement. The purpose of engaging the migrant in a transnational employment relationship in the first place, rather than a native worker or a migrant who has travelled to the work site individually, is the cost advantage gained by the ability to deny access to host society rights and employment norms (ECJ 2007). Many firms in Western Europe engage subcontractors from Eastern Europe that can offer lower bids because they post workers who work for lower wages. Construction employers are particularly able to exploit posted workers because extensive subcontracting and use of agency labor are common in the industry. In recent years, however, employers in other industries, such as metalworking and telecommunications, have also exploited a general trend of increased subcontracting and agency work as a way to ‘exit’ constraining regulatory frameworks (Doellgast and Greer 2007). Construction served as a pioneer and other industries are now following suit (Lippert 2006). Despite half-hearted efforts to encourage the growth of a ‘European citizenship,’ the free movement of people as citizens has lagged behind the free movement of dependent workers. This is deliberate, as labor mobility is being used as a wedge to undermine political resistance and dismantle the welfare state, in part through the unbundling of citizenship rights. Limiting access to citizenship rights for mobile workers goes together with employers using flexible forms of production organization to create categories of precarious employees for whom they take no responsibility. EU law then constrains the rights of trade unions and governments in taking action to protect the rights of these categories of migrants. As Ong (2006, 500) puts it, ‘Instead of all citizens enjoying a unified bundle of citizenship rights, we have a shifting political landscape in which

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heterogeneous populations claim diverse rights and benefits associated with citizenship.’ The idea of importing labor, but not citizens, with the rights and obligations citizenship implies, is of course as old as the Egyptian Pyramids. In the post-World War II boom, many Western European countries designed guest worker programs with the goal of trying to isolate the wage bargain from the rest of the social contract, that is, trying to import workers to fill immediate labor market needs with the understanding that these workers would then go home once they were no longer needed (Entzinger and Biezeveld 2003, 11). From the 1950s into the 1970s, labor migrants moved within the EU, or, more frequently, came from outside Europe to fill the jobs that natives did not want. Despite facing racism and institutional barriers to integration, many of these workers settled in the countries where they worked and formed the basis of new ethnic communities. In this respect, government immigration policies designed to treat migrant workers as commodities were remarkably unsuccessful in the long term (Castles and Kosack 1985). Although this might seem to indicate a pattern that could be followed by the current wave of migrants – that of settlement and the eventual attainment of citizenship rights – it would be hasty to jump to conclusions based on historical analogy. This is because the interaction between the transnational regulatory framework for migration on the one hand and the national industrial relations systems on the other is having – and will likely to continue to have – a corrosive effect on the latter. Posted workers may work in the same physical space as native workers, but they are denied the same rights, and because of this, they can receive lower wages and poorer conditions. The differentiated access to citizenship rights, enforced by variegated sovereignty and producing an ethnicization of the labor market, is used to reinforce differences between groups of workers, creating a dynamic of competition based on nationality and ethnicity and threatening standards for all workers, migrant and native (Ong 2006; Lillie 2010). Rather than being integrated into national industrial relations systems and welfare states, posted workers are excluded by design and, in being excluded, they undermine these systems at the same time. Equality, if it is ever achieved, is likely to arrive through universal deregulation and the deterioration of standards for both native and migrant workers, rather than through the integration of migrants into national welfare states.

Trade unions and the problem of posted worker representation From the perspective of trade union organization within Europe, the movements of capital, goods, service, and labor all present similar challenges, in that they introduce competition between groups of workers not previously in competition. Labor mobility is one aspect of an EU’s ‘politics of scale,’

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which ultimately reflects capital strategies to outflank organized labor by expanding markets beyond its reach. Accordingly, Gough (2004, 186) argues that ‘upward and downward scalar shifts within the European Union ... have been constructed by, and have in turn helped to constitute, shifts in class relations.’ As the classical industrial relations work of J. R. Commons (1909) has established, the scale of union organization should match the scale of the product market in which the union organizes, if the union is to be able to influence wages and conditions over the long term, because union power depends on labor monopoly. From the union’s perspective, this match can be accomplished by organizing everywhere within a product market or by establishing social mechanisms for excluding competition from cheaper producers. Following this logic, the growth of a common market should also trigger the growth of pan-EU trade unions. Ulman (1955) has elaborated on Commons’ thesis, showing the rise of the national union was a difficult and complex process, resulting (in the United States at least) in a fragmented and incomplete transfer of union organizations to the national level. Ulman considers labor mobility to have a more important role in this process than product markets, as the need to organize a mobile workforce made local unions, which had previously guarded their local autonomy jealously, more willing to cooperate and to assign authority to a national organization. Similar issues arise in the EU around the representation of posted workers (Lillie and Sippola 2010). The power base for unions at the European level is primarily via national union affiliates of the EU bodies, because it is the national unions that have access to political influence and the ability to mobilize union members (Turner 1996). Historically, trade unions grew up in interaction with the growth of modern nation-states (Crouch 1993). As a result, the global structure of the existing labor movement mirrors that of the global state system (Stevis 1998). Thus, EU trade union organizations are not themselves membership organizations, but merely associations of national unions. This is different from the typical situation at the national level. Membership in a union is generally national in scope, so that a worker moving from one work site to another can remain a member of the same union; at the European level there is no corresponding mechanism. On the ideological and rhetorical level, unions nowadays are very sensitive to the need to build transnational relationships with trade unions in other EU countries, and to observe multicultural norms within their home context. There are interunion networks within multinational firms, established around European Works Councils, which serve as vehicles for union cooperation. Their networked nature, however, makes this form of cooperation quite vulnerable to management manipulation and whipsawing (Martinez Lucio and Weston 2000; Greer and Hauptmeier 2008). Since worker representation is mediated through networks rather than hierarchies, interunion cooperation is vulnerable to differences in interests between

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national and local groups of workers, which are exploited or even deliberately constructed by management (Mueller and Purcell 1992; Lillie and Martinez Lucio 2009). Erne (2008) contends plausibly, based on comparative case studies of union responses to transnational restructuring, that it is these competitive pressures, rather than national cultures or national union embeddedness, that are the most salient obstacles to the development of transnational unionism. Nonetheless, since such pressures have always been present, and unions have managed to overcome them in the past, in principle this should not preclude the development of transnational unionism. It is therefore more appropriate to regard competition, whether transnationally between production sites, or between native and migrant workers, as a challenge to be overcome rather than an argument against transnational unionism. However, on a structural level, union organizational logic drives unions to treat outsiders, that is, labor migrants, as a threat. Without stronger organizational linkages binding workers directly to an EU-level trade union movement, mobile workers will continue to be, in effect, nonunion and unregulated workers (Lillie and Sippola 2010). As Penninx and Roosblad (2000) point out, because of this orientation toward national systems, and the representation of nationally defined groups of workers, transnational migration presents unions with a difficult dilemma. On the one hand, they want to prevent an increase in the domestic labor supply, which may place downward pressure on the price of labor. On the other, they want to represent migrant workers who enter the national labor market, to ensure these workers do so on the same terms as native workers. Pushing for the first objective is likely to reduce their ability to recruit migrants, which interferes with their ability to accomplish the second objective. The problem is, however, that in the context of the recent ECJ decisions, unions have little scope to pursue either strategy. Union policies that serve to protect national labor markets are clearly considered to violate firms’ freedom of movement, and the scope for host country unions to represent migrants is also quite limited. Although the Laval un Partneri decision leaves room for unions to enforce national minimum wage laws, union action to increase the wages of posted workers beyond that constitutes a violation of the principle of free movement. Presumably, then, home country standards should apply – and home country unions should have the right to take action to increase the wages of workers posted to other countries – but in practice, this appears very unlikely to happen. Posted workers fall in the cracks between national systems and exist in a ‘state of exception’ (Lillie 2010) in which practical representation is denied, even if the right to it is acknowledged. There are multiple challenges for trade unions, then, which come in a package and require fundamental structural and strategic changes in the labor movement. The need for transnational union cooperation is clear;

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without strong cross-border union cooperation, the ability of trade unions to represent mobile workers is minimal. Unions must shift their scale of operations to the European level, so that union membership can be transported across national boundaries, and trade unions should cooperate routinely in the representation of mobile workers. Second, unions must acquire the capacity to represent and organize a diverse workforce within each national territory, so that posted workers can feel confident they will receive union representation and services wherever they go. Third, they must challenge the assumptions behind the way EU ‘freedoms’ have been implemented, since effective trade unionism is impossible if union tools for influence are automatically considered by the ECJ as unacceptable impediments to the free movement rights of capital.

Concluding remarks: European integration and labor The ECJ’s recent decisions affect the definition of sovereignty in Europe, making it non-territorial in order to create new realms for regime competition through transnationally structured ‘latitudes of citizenship’ (Ong 2006, 121). Via transnational subcontracting and the relabeling of certain kinds of migrant work as ‘service provision,’ the ECJ limits the practical access of workers to labor rights that were previously conferred on a geographic basis. It has, in effect, overturned over a century of industrial relations custom and practice with the bang of a gavel, making illegal the main instruments of trade union influence. National class compromises are based on a balance of power between labor and capital (Wright 2000). National industrial relations systems accept conflict to preserve this power balance, even as they seek to institutionalize it and channel it in ways less threatening to the accumulation of capital; therefore, to deny labor the right to strike is to end this balance of power. As Barnard (2008, 14) puts it, The social interests have to defend themselves from the economic. And the Court has made it difficult to defend the social interest. Despite the recognition of the right to strike as a fundamental right in the early part of the Viking judgment, this recognition has little more than rhetorical value. Unions have been given a stark choice: accept the irrelevance assigned to them by the Court or mount a fundamental challenge to EU law and the course taken by European integration. Unions have long been supporters of European integration, with the idea that the reward for this would eventually be a ‘Social Europe’ (Martin and Ross 1999). Although this support has from time to time been reciprocated with minor EU-level victories, in general the promise of a real Social Europe – that is, EU-level Keynesian policies including full employment

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and significant social spending – has always remained a project for the future. The most significant outcomes of Social Europe initiatives, such as the European Works Councils and Posted Workers Directives, have had important effects, but have also been diffuse and ambiguous in terms of their benefit to the labor movement.4 It is clear that labor is structurally disadvantaged within the EU’s political configuration, suggesting that labor’s ineffectiveness in holding capital and EU institutions to their Social Europe ‘bargain’ is not due, as some have asserted, to co-optation, but rather to a lack of power (Bieler and Schulten 2007). Bieler and Schulten (2007) suggest that unions might be able to regain the political initiative lost at the national level by acting strategically at the European level. They could do this, as Erne (2008) argues, through politicizing the contradictions behind European integration, thereby threatening to delegitimize the EU. Perceptions that the EU has a structural democratic deficit have fueled opposition to European integration, resulting in periodic ‘no’ votes on EU constitutional referendums, which have stalled the progress of a new EU constitution in recent years (Haller 2008). Although most trade unions and the European Trade Union Confederation have supported the various EU accessions and constitutional changes on which referendums were held, they have also held up these failures as demonstrations of how Europe’s technocratic and neoliberal agenda have failed to attract popular support. Some unions have portrayed the ECJ rulings as one of the reasons behind the failed 2008 Irish referendum, showing the potential for unions to hold European integration hostage to obtain better social conditions. But as the wildcat strikes over posted workers in the United Kingdom show, union strategic responses may not in the end be as effective an argument as the consequences of declining union power for the ability of industrial relations systems to contain and manage class conflict. Unions have served as ‘managers of discontent’ (Burawoy 1985) within capitalist nation-states by integrating the working class into a national consensus in support of the market economy (Przeworski 1985). The UK unions were not able to control the strikers and contain the strikes precisely because they would likely have been held liable for damages had they decided to become involved. Regardless of unions’ intentions, undercutting national industrial relations systems by removing the right to strike (de facto, though not de jure), while at the same time failing to give workers a significant investment in the European integration project, is likely to result in an increasingly discontented European workforce, which will increasingly (and rightly) see the EU as responsible for their grievances. Negating the ability of unions to act as mediators of class conflict is likely to exacerbate the crisis of legitimacy for the EU, not because unions will be able to challenge European integration, but because they will lack the influence to channel it in ways that bring about negotiated solutions. Undermining unions does not eliminate class

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conflict in the EU; it merely makes it more diffuse and thus more difficult to contain, resolve, and channel into ‘spillover’ and further EU integration.

Notes 1. UK unions remained on the sidelines, as Thatcherite laws and recent European Court of Justice decisions had made clear that union sanctioning of the action risked fines. 2. Interview by Markku Sippola with Kyösti Suokas, the second vice chairman, Finnish Construction Workers’ Union, June 16, 2008. 3. The idea of ‘exception’ as related to the sovereignty principle comes from Nazi political philosopher Carl Schmitt. A state of exception is a condition in which the normal rule of law does not apply (as elaborated by Agamben 1998). Palan (1998) relates that offshore occurs in ‘spaces of exception,’ which are physical or social spaces in which a state of exception applies. 4. The European Works Councils and Posted Workers Directive have also been turned against labor at certain junctures: they do not unambiguously represent labor protections, but are rather contested terrain on which labor is less disadvantaged than it is elsewhere (Martinez Lucio and Weston 2000; Lillie and Greer 2007).

References Agamben, G. (1998) Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press). Barnard, C. (2008) ‘Employment Rights, Free Movement under the EC Treaty, and the Services Directive’, Mitchell Working Paper Series 5/2008 (Edinburgh: Europa Institute, University of Edinburgh). Bercusson, B. (2007) ‘The Trade Union Movement and the European Union: Judgment Day’, European Law Journal, 13(3), 279–308. Bernard, C. (2009) ‘The UK and Posted Workers: The Effect of Commission v Luxembourg on the Territorial Application of British Law’, Industrial Law Journal, 38(1), 122–32. Bieler, A. (2006) The Struggle for a Social Europe: Trade Unions and EMU (Manchester: University of Manchester Press). Bieler, A. and T. Schulten (2007) ‘European Integration: A Strategic Level for Trade Union Resistance to Neo-Liberal Restructuring and for the Promotion of Political Alternatives?’ http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/shared/shared_scpolitics/documents/ gwcprojectPapers/Global_Labour-EU_chapter.pdf, date accessed February 7, 2010. Blanke, T. (2008) ‘Die Entscheidung des EuGH in den Fällen Viking, Laval und Rüffert – Domestizierung des Streikrechts und europaweite Nivellierung der industriellen Beziehungen’, available from http://www.etui-rehs.org/en/Headline-issues/VikingLaval-Rueffert-Luxembourg/2-Articles-in-academic-literature-on-the-judgements, date accessed February 21, 2010. Burawoy, M. (1985) The Politics of Production: Factory Regimes under Capitalism and Socialism (London: Verso). Castles, S. and Kosack, G. (1985) Immigrant Workers and Class Structure in Western Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Commons, J. R. (1909) ‘American Shoe Makers 1648–1895,’ Quarterly Journal of Economics, 24, 39–83.

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128 Nathan Lillie Corbey, D. (1995) ‘Dialectical Functionalism: Stagnation as a Booster of European Integration’, International Organization, 49(2), 253–84. Crouch, C. (1993) Industrial Relations and European State Traditions (Oxford: Clarendon). Doellgast, V. and I. Greer (2007) ‘Vertical Disintegration and the Disorganization of German Industrial Relations’, British Journal of Industrial Relations, 45(1), 55–76. Done, K. (2008) ‘Pilots Face BA Legal Threat over Strike’, Financial Times, 4 (March 10). Entzinger, H. and R. Biezeveld (2003) Benchmarking in Immigrant Integration, Report for the European Commission, European Research Centre on Migration and Ethnic Relations (Rotterdam: Erasmus University). Erne, R. (2008) European Unions: Labor’s Quest for a Transnational Democracy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press). European Court of Justice (ECJ) (December 18, 2007) Laval un Partneri Ltd v Svenska Byggnadsarbetareförbundet and Others (C-341/05). European Trade Union Confederation (n.d.) ‘European Implications of the Luxembourg Case Judgement – Preliminary Analysis’, http://www.efbww.org/pdfs/ European%20implications%20of%20the%20Luxembourg%20Case%20judgment%20final.pdf, date accessed February 21, 2010. Felini, I., A. Ferro, and G. Fullin (2007) ‘Recruitment Processes and Labour Mobility: The Construction Industry in Europe’, Work, Employment, and Society, 21(1), 277–98. Fligstein, N. and A. Stone Sweet (2002) ‘Of Markets and Polities: An Institutionalist Account of European Integration’, American Journal of Sociology, 107, 1206–43. Gajewska, K. (2008) ‘The Emergence of a European Labour Protest Movement’, European Journal of Industrial Relations, 14(1), 104–21. Golynker, O. (2006) Ubiquitous Citizens of Europe: The Paradigm of Partial Migration (Antwerp: Intersentia). Gough, J. (2004) ‘Changing Scale as Changing Class Relations: Variety and Contradiction in the Politics of Scale’, Political Geography, 23, 185–211. Greer, I. and M. Hauptmeier (2008) ‘Political Entreprenuers and Co-Managers: Labour Transnationalism at Four Multinational Auto Companies’, British Journal of Industrial Relations, 46(1), 76–97. Haas, E. (1958) The Uniting of Europe (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press). Haller, M. (2008) European Integration as an Elite Process: Failure of a Dream? (New York: Routledge). Höpner, M. (2008) Political Answers to Judicial Problems? Europe after Viking, Laval and Rüffert (Brussels: Notre Europe and ETUI-REHS). Lillie, N. (2010) ‘Bringing the Offshore Ashore: Transnational Production, Industrial Relations and the Reconfiguration of Sovereignty’, International Studies Quarterly, 54(3), 683–704. Lillie, N. and I. Greer (2007) ‘Industrial Relations, Migration and Neo-Liberal Politics: The Case of the European Construction Sector’, Politics and Society, 35(4), 551–81. Lillie, N. and M. Martinez Lucio (2009) ‘Rollerball and the Spirit of Capitalism: Competitive Dynamics and the Problem of Labour Transnationalism’, manuscript. Lillie N. and M. Sippola (2010) ‘Edunvalvonnan ongelmat Olkiluoto 3 – rakennustyömalla, (Difficulties in Worker Representation on the Olkiluoto 3 Nuclear Power Plant Construction Site)’, Sosiologia, 47(2), 97–110. Lippert, I. (2006) Niedriglohnstrategien im Hochlohnsektor: Öffnung des Arbeitsmarktes und Beschäftigung von MOE-Arbeitskräften in der Metall- und Elektroindustrie (Berlin: Intercase).

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Transnational Labor Markets 129 Martin, A. and G. Ross (1999) ‘In the Line of Fire: The Europeanization of Labor Representation’ in A. Martin and G. Ross (eds.) The Brave New World of European Labor: European Trade Unions at the Millenium (New York: Berghahn). Martinez Lucio, M. and S. Weston (2000) ‘European Works Councils and “Flexible Regulation”: the Politics of Intervention’, European Journal of Industrial Relations, 6(2), 203–16. Menz, G. (2005) Varieties of Capitalism and Europeanization: National Response Strategies to the Single European Market (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Michaels, R. (2006) EU Law as Private International Law: Re-Conceptualizing the Countryof-Origin Principle as Vested Rights Theory, Legal Studies Research Paper Series No. 122 (Durham: Duke University Law School). Mueller, F. and J. Purcell (1992) ‘The Europeanisation of Manufacturing and the Decentralization of Bargaining: Multinational Management Strategies in the European Automobile Industry’, International Journal of Human Resource Management, 3(1), 15–34. Ong, A. (2006) Neoliberalism as Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and Sovereignty (Durham: Duke University Press). Palan, R. (1998) ‘Trying to Have Your Cake and Eating It: How and Why the State System Has Created Offshore’, International Studies Quarterly, 42(4), 625–44. Penninx, R. and J. Roosblad (2000) Trade Unions, Immigration and Immigrants in Europe, 1960–1993 (New York: Berghahn). Przeworski, A. (1985) Capitalism and Social Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Scharpf, F. (1988) ‘The Joint-Decision Trap: Lessons from German Federalism and European Integration’, Public Administration, 66(3), 239–78. Scharpf, F. (1996) ‘Negative and Positive Integration in the Political Economy of European Welfare States’ in G. Marks, F. Scharpf, P. Schmitter, and W. Streeck (eds.) Governance in the European Union (London: Sage). Scharpf, F. (2002) ‘The European Social Model: Coping with the Challenges of Diversity’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 40(4), 645–70. Stone Sweet, A. (2004) The Judicial Construction of Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Stevis, D. (1998) ‘International Labor Organizations, 1986–1997: The Weight of History and the Challenges of the Present’, Journal of World Systems Research, 4, 52–75. Turner, L. (1996) ‘The Europeanisation of Labour: Structure before Action’, European Journal of Industrial Relations, 2(3), 325–44. Ulman, L. (1955) The Rise of the National Trade Union: The Development and Significance of its Structure, Governing Institutions, and Economic Policies (Cambridge: Harvard University Press). Winnet, R. and N. Squires (2009) ‘Wildcat Strikes Threaten to Escalate after Lord Mandelson Calls Protests “Xenophobic” ’, Daily Telegraph (February 2). Wright, E. O. (2000) ‘Workers Power, Capitalist Interests and Class Compromise’, American Journal of Sociology, 105(4), 957–1002.

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8 East European Transformations and the Paradoxes of Transnationalization Dorothee Bohle

The process of transformation toward democratic capitalism in East–Central Europe1 has given rise to a number of competing interpretations. The early literature focused almost entirely on domestic variables in order to explain progress and setbacks on the region’s road toward Western-type political and economic systems. More recently, a rapidly growing literature has placed emphasis on the role of transnational actors, stressing their pervasive impact on post-communist transformations. Competing interpretations of the internal and external factors of regime transformation are also closely linked with divergent assessments of the chances that the democratic capitalist project will succeed. The early literature was mostly pessimistic about the outcome of the ‘dual’ or even ‘triple’ transformation to capitalism, democracy, and nation-state, as it judged the reform agenda was too loaded and full of contradictory requirements. In contrast, approaches focusing on transnational influences took a much more optimistic stance, arguing that such influences helped to stabilize the democratic capitalist project in the region. Recent developments, however, should give scholars pause. In the wake of the dramatic financial and economic downturn at the end of the first decade of the new millennium, the fragility of post-communist democratic market societies returned with a vengeance. Although leaving socialism and heading toward transnational integration appeared to be the solution in the 1990s, by the late 2000s full exposure to the risks of an increasingly unstable global order had become part of the region’s problems. Almost all new European Union (EU) member states have accumulated major economic imbalances and experienced steep recessions. Three countries – Hungary, Latvia, and Romania – had to turn to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in order to defend their currencies and keep their economies afloat. The current crisis in East–Central Europe is not only economic. Surging protests and the increasing appeal of political illiberalism attest to the end of the happy marriage between transnationalization and successful transformation. 130

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In light of the current calamities of democratic capitalism in the region, this chapter seeks to contribute to the debate about domestic and transnational factors in post-communist transformation. Comparing the Hungarian and Latvian experiences, it argues that although those with pessimistic views were right in pointing to the dilemmas of the dual or triple transformations, they underestimated the possibilities for political actors to find temporary solutions to these dilemmas. At first, domestic resources – such as generous welfare policies or appeals to sentiments of national solidarity – made it possible to reconcile democracy with market reforms. In a second phase, from the latter half of the 1990s onward, EU accession and deeper transnational integration helped to secure the democratic capitalist project. Proponents of an optimistic view, however, have underestimated the dilemmas inherent in this latter solution. The current crisis has brought the drawbacks of deep transnationalization to the fore. Comparing Hungary and Latvia allows a teasing of out of the similarities and differences between pathways toward democratic capitalism and forms of transnationalization in the region. Hungary was considered a forerunner in the transformation, while Latvia lagged behind during the first years. Hungary faced only a dual transformation, while Latvia went through a triple transformation to nation-state, democracy, and market economy. Hungary’s transnational integration comprises both its industrial and service sectors and has given rise to increasing international competitiveness, while Latvia’s transnational economic integration is concentrated on services. Despite their differences, however, both countries had to turn to the IMF in the recent crisis. The chapter is structured as follows. The first section briefly revisits the theoretical debate as a starting point for developing a refined analytical framework of the dynamics of transformation and transnational integration, then proceeds to show how different solutions to the ‘dilemmas of simultaneity’ (Offe 1991) were applied across cases and over time. The second section shows that Hungary mitigated the social costs of the transition to a market economy through welfare policies, whereas Latvia – a newly independent state – used identity politics to instill tolerance for social hardship in its society. However, these domestic resources were insufficient to create solid support for democratic capitalism and already showed signs of exhaustion during the 1990s. The next section argues that transnational actors and markets increasingly came to the rescue of the fragile capitalist democracies. The EU’s decision to start entry negotiations offered an external anchor for reforms and made the countries much more attractive for transnational capital flows, which were abundant in the 2000s. The tolerance of international markets and institutions for great economic imbalances allowed governments in both countries to grant their populations a broader share of the new system’s wealth. The fourth section traces the varied routes to economic and political instability in both countries, and the final section offers a conclusion.

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132 Dorothee Bohle

Challenges of transformation, transnationalization, and temporary remedies After the breakdown of communism, a number of scholars forcefully made the case for the incompatibility of simultaneous economic and political transformations (Dahrendorf 1990; Offe 1991; Przeworski 1991). These scholars argued that although the agendas of creating capitalist market economies and democratic societies were inextricably linked, they were also mutually contradictory. In their analysis, creating a market society is a political project, which requires popular legitimacy in order to succeed. However, the social dislocation inevitably brought about by marketization creates masses of dissatisfied voters, who can use their newly gained democratic rights to undermine that legitimacy and obstruct further reforms. In addition, many East–Central European countries not only had to cope with the challenges of simultaneously introducing democracy and the market, but they also had to build up new nation-states. Most of them thus had to traverse a process in three stages that Western Europe had ‘mastered over a centuries-long sequence’ (Offe 1991, 873). The early literature saw a real danger that the double or triple transformation would either result in economic backsliding to ‘third ways’ between socialism and capitalism or give rise to authoritarian temptations and upsurges of nationalism and xenophobia. A decade into the transformation, however, most students of East–Central European transformation concluded that ‘the breakdown literature has failed’ (Greskovits 1998, 4). In order to explain successful transformation, scholars turned from the role of domestic actors to that of foreign advisers, international financial organizations, the EU, and transnational corporations (for an overview see Jacoby 2006). According to these scholars, it was particularly the prospect of EU membership that was crucial for stabilizing the region’s development paths (Schimmelfennig and Sedelmeier 2005; Vachudova 2006). EU accession has bestowed the transformation with greater legitimacy, as it offered a concrete option for Eastern European societies to return to the West. It also lengthened the time horizons of political actors who otherwise might have slipped back on some of the reforms in light of waning popular support. In some cases, EU accession tipped the balance in favor of pro-market and pro-democratic forces. In addition, accession conditions aimed at achieving conformity with the EU’s laws, regulations, and norms have strengthened governance effectiveness in the region. Finally, the EU’s decision to start entry negotiations also impressed a seal of approval on previously undertaken reforms and served as a guarantee for further reform efforts. As such, it increased the region’s credibility for transnational market actors. From the second half of the 1990s onward, transnational capital flows kept pouring into the region, greatly assisting economic development. The major contention of Europeanization and transnationalization literature is succinctly summarized by Orenstein et al.

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(2008, 6): ‘At first ignored, transnational actors turned out to be the dark matter that held the various aspects of post-communist transition together in Central and Eastern Europe.’ The divergent interpretations present two puzzles. First, neither the dilemma of simultaneity thesis nor the transnationalization thesis can account for the initial success of democratic capitalism in the region. Although occasional lapses into authoritarian temptation and some backsliding in economic reforms occurred in the first seven or so years of the transformation, it is nevertheless remarkable that despite a ‘transformational recession’ (Kornai 1993), comparable to the Great Depression of 1929–33 for its extraordinary depth and length, no wholesale attack on the project of democratic capitalism was launched. Furthermore, East–Central Europe made progress in creating a market order remarkably quickly. For proponents of the dilemma of simultaneity thesis, this outcome was unexpected. But the transnationalization literature cannot account for the initial success of the transformation either. International financial institutions and foreign advisors were mostly engaged in propagating radical economic reforms, thus contributing to the stress on the new democracies, rather than seeking to engage these countries in a democratic process. The EU itself, far from embracing the newly democratic countries, was initially very hesitant in its attitude toward the region. It is only from the second half of the 1990s onward that it developed into a ‘causal behemoth’ of transnational influence in post-communist politics (Vachudova 2008). The transnationalization thesis faces a second puzzle. If transnationalization is indeed the ‘dark matter’ allowing for the East–Central European success, how to explain that, soon after EU accession, elements of this success seem to be coming apart? Liberal democracies have been challenged by the rise of populist parties and extreme political forces. The capitalist project has experienced a significant setback with the global economic crisis. To qualify as the dark matter that holds democracy and capitalism together in East–Central Europe, transnationalization – and its beneficial influences – should surely stretch beyond the short period of EU accession. Although neither the dilemma of simultaneity nor the transnationalization thesis can thus fully account for the successes and calamities of the democratic capitalist project, it is not so much because these approaches are wrong, but because they are incomplete. The remainder of this section presents the building blocks of a solution to the puzzles by drawing on and combining both sets of literature. The starting point is the vulnerability of the capitalist-democratic project in East–Central Europe, as analyzed by the dilemma of simultaneity literature. In fact, this vulnerability is not specific to Eastern Europe. The very history of the ‘short twentieth century’ (Hobsbawm 1994) is a powerful reminder that combining capitalism and mass democracy is a challenging agenda, not just for countries that have to introduce both simultaneously. At the same time, the second half of the

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twentieth century has also provided ample evidence for temporary solutions that successfully mediated these tensions. Keynesianism, consumerism, and welfarism are but some examples of such temporary solutions (Crouch 2008). The experience of the West thus implies that by drawing on economic or ideological resources that bring stability and security to an important share of the population, capitalism and mass democracy can be reconciled. Although the task is more challenging in East–Central Europe, there appears no a priori reason why politicians in this region should not attempt to draw on similar resources. At the same time, however, as Crouch (2008, 475) says, ‘The tension can never be “resolved” as it is endemic to the only successful form of political economy that we know; it has to be managed, by a series of regimes that will always in the end wear out and need to be replaced by something else.’ Thus, the problems stemming from the dilemma of simultaneity can be solved for a certain period of time, but ultimately fundamental tensions tend to come to the fore again and new solutions have to be found. Politicians in East–Central Europe at first relied on domestic resources to cope temporarily with the dilemma of simultaneity. However, these resources started to wear out quickly. It was against this background that transnationalization lengthened the life span of initial solutions and offered additional resources to cope with the tensions underlying the economic and political processes, exactly as argued in the transnationalization literature. Deep integration, however, also presents no more than a partial and temporary solution to the problems inherent in the capitalist-democratic project, rather than stabilizing it ad infinitum.

Coping with the dilemma of simultaneity Any attempt to reconcile the tensions inherent in the simultaneous introduction of capitalist market economies and mass democracy has to find ways to mediate between ‘the insecurity and uncertainty created by the requirements of the market to adapt to shocks, and the need for democratic politics to respond to citizens’ demands for security and predictability in their lives’ (Crouch 2008, 476). Which resources could reformers in East– Central Europe rely upon in order to mediate the tensions? Political elites have drawn on the legacies of socialist welfare states or revitalized ideological traditions that were repressed under the communist regimes, such as nationalism, or combined both strategies (Bohle and Greskovits 2007, 2009; see also Greskovits 2008). While welfare states directly mitigate the social dislocations of transformation by building in protective devices, nationalism gives people a sense of identity, belonging, and pride, which can to some extent compensate for material losses and insecurity (e.g., see Ringmar 2005, 101).

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The Hungarian welfarist social contract Hungarian political elites resorted overwhelmingly to a welfarist social contract in order to cope with the dilemma of simultaneity. In this, they drew on the legacy of ‘goulash communism,’ a set of policies introduced by the communist leader Janos Kadar after the revolt of 1956 in order to appease the citizenry. Goulash communism showed a far greater concern for the material well-being of the citizens than communist regimes in neighboring countries. It combined economic reforms with moderate consumerism and social protection and also loosened somewhat the restrictions on individual freedoms (Greskovits 2008, 277). Post-communist attempts to deviate from the inherited patterns of social appeasement were short-lived. The first democratic government led by Jozsef Antall attempted a radical shift away from the past by simultaneously cutting subsidies and raising the charges on fuel. Confronted with fierce resistance, the conservative government backpedaled, and henceforth committed itself to ‘dividing and pacifying’ opposition to market reforms through relatively generous welfare provisions. Access to disability and early retirement benefits was liberalized, and unemployment and family benefits as well as encompassing schemes of public health care and education were continued. The welfare packages also had the effect that the better-off and more vocal parts of the population could exit from the labor market under more advantageous conditions than less resourceful workers (Vanhuysse 2006). Yet ‘goulash post-communism’ (Kornai 1996), while capable of generating some consent and legitimacy for market reforms, was soon seen as an impediment to the effectiveness of the new economic system. Major macroeconomic imbalances and a fear of losing international competitiveness motivated the second post-communist government, formed by a coalition of the Socialist Party and the Free Democrats, to launch a major austerity program. The Bokros package – named after its architect Lajos Bokros – was successful in improving Hungary’s external balance by facilitating a shift toward export-oriented reindustrialization. However, the shock it administered ‘proved to be a lasting nightmare for the Hungarians, produced loss of trust in the Socialists’ and Liberals’ sensitivity toward issues of social welfare, and reinforced the welfarist opportunity structure of political life’ (Greskovits 2008, 282). After the Bokros package, popular satisfaction with democracy and the market economy reached a historical low (see Table 8.1). The Latvian nationalist social contract Latvian political elites had to face the challenges of a ‘triple transition,’ as they had to rebuild their nation-state while introducing democracy and capitalism. The ‘dark matter’ that held the early transition together was a nationalist social contract. Successive governments in Latvia relied on a nationalizing2 project rather than welfare policies in their attempts to

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81 66.2

6.9 14

20.7 17.2

Social Unemployment protection (% of labor spending force) (% of GDP) 6 0

Satisfaction with market economy (% of respondents) 30 24

Satisfaction with democracy (% of respondents)

Satisfaction with democratic capitalism (1997)

101.5 131.1

–7.8 –9.0

External debt Current account (% of exports) (% of GDP)

External vulnerabilities (1999)

Source: Column 1: Transmonee database 2004; Column 2: AMECO database; Column 3: Eurostat; Columns 4 and 5: Central and Eastern Eurobarometer 1997. Questions: Do you personally feel that the creation of a market economy is right or wrong for your country’s future? (Annex 71) On the whole, are you very satisfied, fairly satisfied, not very satisfied or not at all satisfied with the way democracy is developing/working in your country? (Annex 72). The table summarizes the percentage of respondents who were very or fairly satisfied with the way democracy was working in their country; Columns 6 and 7: EBRD Transition Report 2007.

Hungary Latvia

Real wages (1989 = 100)

Social indicators (1999)

Table 8.1 Social, political, and economic indicators, 1997–9

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generate support from citizens. One very important symbol of national independence, with crucial implications for social welfare, was the (re)introduction of Latvia’s own currency, the lats, shortly after independence. As Gilbert and Helleiner (1999) argue, national currencies are a major device to bind state and nation and play an important role in building national identities. Latvia opted for a strong currency. It pegged the lats against an external anchor, and the Latvian Central Bank’s policy successfully mimicked the currency board arrangements of its two Baltic neighbors (Knöbl et al. 2002, 20). As a corollary of the choice of currency regime, Latvia’s political elite accorded great importance to macroeconomic stability. Successive governments tried to control public expenditure, thereby limiting the resources for compensatory social policies. Although the social costs of transformation were much higher than in Hungary, social benefits remained low (see Table 8.1). Latvia was also the first country in the region to embark on radical welfare state reforms. The resulting dislocation put disproportionate burden on Latvia’s large Russian-speaking minority. The nationalizing project also severely limited the minority population’s access to the democratic polity. Due to Latvia’s restrictive citizenship law and slow progress in naturalization, an important share of the Russianspeaking population was denied citizenship rights. As late as 2006, 18 percent of the Latvian resident population were noncitizens (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights 2007). This had repercussions on the emerging party system and political competition, as it effectively wiped out the electoral basis for a major left-wing party. The nationalizing project was in the final account only half successful in generating support from Latvian citizens for the new political and economic system (see Table 8.1). Already by the mid-1990s, nationalism as a mass ideology had lost much of its appeal. Teachers and doctors went on strike for higher wages, and Latvian politicians were increasingly confronted with the social grievances of the population, while having only limited resources to offer relief (Dreifelds 1996; Smith-Sivertsen 2004). In sum, toward the second half of the 1990s, the first set of solutions to the challenges of the double or triple transitions had reached its limit.

Transnationalization and privatization of social contracts From this point onward, transnational actors and markets increasingly came to the rescue of the democratic capitalist project in East–Central Europe. In particular, the EU’s decision to start accession negotiations had crucial impacts on the development prospects of the region. Most important, it offered an external anchor for further reforms. The criteria animating the accession process were comprehensive and included political and economic requirements that pushed the candidates further down the road

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toward democratic capitalism. Compliance was ensured through a number of instruments that put the members-to-be under constant surveillance of the European Commission. The EU’s devotion to push the agenda of democratic capitalism further – as well as its heavy-handed top-down approach, which sidelined domestic politics in most crucial decisions over public policy – could have easily reinforced the frustration of the region’s population over the course their countries had taken after the breakdown of communism. However, a number of compensatory effects contributed to turning the process of EU accession into a stabilizing device for the new regimes, at least initially. First, the prospect of membership bestowed additional legitimacy on the new regimes. ‘Returning to Europe’ was the main objective of the East–Central European societies and leaders alike. Europe was seen as a place abundant in all those properties that their region lacked in the late 1980s and before: an efficient economy, generous public welfare provisions, political freedom, and national sovereignty. Second, accession conditions aimed at achieving conformity with the EU’s laws, regulations, and norms strengthened governance effectiveness in the region. This coincided with periods of higher catch-up growth in many countries. Both processes taken together helped to increase the new regimes’ ‘output legitimacy’ (Scharpf 1999). Finally, the accession process made the region very attractive for transnational capital flows, which were becoming abundant in the 2000s. The ensuing debt economy allowed for the pursuit of domestic policies of mass appeasement. Transnationalizing Hungary’s welfarist social contract Hungary belonged to the first wave of Central–East European countries that started entry negotiations with the EU in 1997. By this time, the country fulfilled the political criteria for membership, and the European Commission considered its economic reforms to be going in the right direction. The Hungarian accession strategy focused on reinforcing the economic reform path, strengthening Hungary’s overall regulatory framework, and assuring its adoption of the acquis communautaire. All major political actors agreed on the goal of joining the EU. Arguably, therefore, the major impact of EU accession on the viability of the capitalist-democratic project in Hungary was indirect: under the protective umbrella of EU candidate status, Hungary could attract massive transnational capital flows. Foreign direct investment contributed to reindustrialization, job creation, and growing international competitiveness, while the external financing of public and private debt provided the resources for the welfarist social contract. After the shock of the Bokros package, neither of the two major Hungarian parties dared to challenge this contract. The conservative Fidesz–MDF government coalition (1998–2002) pursued a number of policies with the aim of boosting domestic output and consumption. One important policy measure was a program for generously subsidized housing loans, coupled with

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hefty personal income tax exemptions, through which the government sought to appeal to the middle and upper-middle classes (Greskovits 2006). According to estimates, total housing subsidies reached about 1.5 percent of GDP (Rozsavolgyi and Kovacs 2005). After the conservative coalition marginally lost the 2002 elections, the left-liberal coalition led by the Hungarian Socialist Party continued the welfare effort by additionally focusing on public sector employees and pensioners. Confronted with the increasing budgetary costs of the housing subsidies program, the government decided to cut the subsidies sharply in 2003–4. At this time, transnational banks stepped in to allow the Hungarian middle class to continue its recently acquired consumer habits. Employing a practice created in Austria, Hungary’s mainly Austrian-owned banks offered foreign exchange-denominated mortgage loans – mostly in Swiss francs – to their private customers. By the end of 2007, roughly 50 percent of mortgage and personal loans in Hungary were denominated in Swiss francs, and in 2006–7, 80 percent of all new home loans and 50 percent of small business credits and personal loans were in this currency (Hugh 2008a). The significance of foreign currency consumer credits and mortgage lending has to be seen against the background of the policy of the National Bank. Preparing for Eurozone entry, it pursued a policy of high interest rates to fight inflation and the growing fiscal deficit. This made borrowing in Hungarian forint almost prohibitive. The much lower interest rates of the Swiss franc-denominated credits and the ensuing house price rises sheltered middle-class consumers from the impact of the restrictive domestic monetary policy and simultaneously extended available credit. The move into private foreign currency-denominated lending can be called a transnational form of ‘privatised Keynesianism,’ a term coined by Crouch (2008) to refer to the shift from countercyclical state policies designed to secure income and employment in times of recession to the growth of private credit markets for poor and middle-income groups, which compensate for stagnating salaries and job insecurity and bolster consumer confidence. The specificity added to privatized Keynesianism in Hungary was that the credit and mortgage boom relied on foreign rather than domestic currencies, thus privatizing the exchange risk and placing it on the consumers. Yet, both consumers and financiers seemed to bank on Hungary’s eventual entry into the Eurozone, which would put an end to exchange rate risks.3 Middle-class-oriented policies as well as public and private forms of consumer subsidization allowed the country to experience a period of somewhat greater political stability and satisfaction with the new system. Despite high electoral volatility and repeated wholesale alternations of government and opposition, the Hungarian political system overall proved to be among the more stable ones in Eastern Europe (Toka 2004). For the first time in the history of post-communist Hungary, an incumbent government coalition was reelected in 2006. Overall satisfaction with democracy increased

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over the 2000s as compared to the 1990s (see Table 8.2), and popular protests against market reforms subsided after 1995, only to take off again in 2004 (Greskovits and Varhalmi 2009). It is important to note, however, that ‘overall political stability in Hungary probably benefited from the fact that the major issue of economic transformation became a matter of partisan controversy only to a limited extent’ (Toka 2004, 321). The convergence of the major political parties on issues of economic reforms, integration with Western Europe, and welfare policies implies that socioeconomic cleavages – however weak they might have been – were not articulated in the existing party system. This was not a problem as long as enough (external) resources were available to keep the economy afloat and guarantee basic security, as well as access to housing and consumption, to a broad share of the population. But as will be shown below, it also set the stage for political destabilization in hard times. Transnational privatized Keynesianism in Latvia Latvia was excluded from the first wave of countries that started entry negotiations with the EU on two grounds. The European Commission found Latvia’s policies toward the Russian-speaking minority wanting and urged the country to accelerate the naturalization process and ensure greater equality for noncitizens in access to professions and political participation. In addition, the Latvian economy was not considered sufficiently prepared for EU membership (European Commission 1997). Nonetheless, entry negotiations with Latvia started a year after those with Hungary. Latvia’s accession agenda was more challenging than Hungary’s, as the Commission kept pushing the country toward greater political and economic reforms. However, political conditionality was only weakly enforced, which allowed Latvia to enter the EU without having made major changes to its discriminatory regime against the Russophone population (Hughes 2005). In contrast, the economic and administrative agenda of the EU in Latvia had a beneficial effect on government effectiveness (Kaufmann et al. 2003). To a greater degree than in Hungary, EU accession indirectly constituted a major stabilizing device, as the prospect of EU membership encouraged massive transnational capital flows, which allowed Latvian citizens to finance their welfare through increasing indebtedness (see Table 8.2). Latvian governments continued to rely mostly on market forces to secure citizens’ living standards. During the 2000s governments stayed committed to prudent fiscal policies and were reluctant to stretch fiscal limits by increasing social spending, minimum wages, and public sector salaries. However, the high rates of catching-up growth – more than 8 percent on average between 2000 and 2006 – made it easier to reconcile pension and wage growth with fairly balanced budgets. Growth also brought down unemployment. Moreover, in contrast to Hungarians, Latvians made use of the newly acquired right to exit when their country joined the EU. In 2006,

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135.6 159.5

Real wages 2006 (2000 =100)

7.5 6.8

Unemployment (% of labor force) 22.3 12.2

Social Spending (%of GDP)

Social indicators

13.9 28.9

Mortgage loans (% of GDP)

Social, political, and economic indicators, 2006

26 19

Trust in the economic situation (% of respondents) 45 41

Satisfaction with democracy (% of respondents)

Satisfaction with democratic capitalism

121.4 271.8

External debt (% of exports)

–8.4 –21.1

Current account (% of GDP)

External vulnerabilities

Sources: Column 1: AMECO database, deflator: private consumption; Column 2: AMECO database; Column 3: Eurostat; Column 4: EBRD structural indicators; Columns 5 and 6 Eurobarometer 65, 2006. Questions QC1: How would you judge the situation of the national economy? The table summarizes the percentage of respondents who answered very or fairly good. QA34a: On the whole, are you very satisfied, fairly satisfied, not very satisfied or not at all satisfied with the way democracy works in your country? (fieldwork from spring, before the Hungarian adjustment package). The table summarizes the percentage of respondents who were very or fairly satisfied with the way democracy was working in their country; Columns 7 and 8: EBRD Transition Report 2007.

Hungary Latvia

Table 8.2

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6 to 8 percent of the labor force was working abroad (Hugh 2007). As a consequence, labor markets tightened, leading to exceptional wage growth (see Table 8.2). Amid fast growth and abundant transnational credit, Latvian governments relied on privatized Keynesianism even more strongly than the Hungarian governments, in an attempt to further promote middle-class living standards. The European Commission had encouraged Latvia to open its banking sector to foreign investors, as this promised the easiest way to achieve more efficient allocation of capital and improve the quality of financial services. In May 2002, Swedish Hansabanka, a major foreign investor, submitted a proposal to facilitate mortgage lending, which was embraced by Andris Berzins’ center-right government (Swedbank 2002; Leitner 2007). As a consequence, residential construction took off and housing prices soared. On average, between December 2001 and 2006 the price of a square meter in a standard-type block house in Riga increased by 42 percent annually. By 2006, more than 70 percent of construction loans were issued in a foreign currency (Latio Real Estate 2007). Housing prices in the Baltic states exhibited growth rates ‘unseen in the industrial world’ (Egert and Mihaljek 2007, 4).4 Mortgage loans, as well as consumer and firm credits, were issued mostly in Euros. In political terms, Latvian democracy has long been among the least stable in East–Central Europe. As discussed above, it started off as a highly exclusionist regime, and naturalization has been slow. Electoral volatility and party fragmentation have been notoriously high, and while political elites have not changed all that much, political parties were not there to stay. New start-up parties emerged at every election, and more-established ones disappeared as rapidly (Kreuzer and Pettai 2003). Still, some signs of stability found their way into this highly volatile environment. Mirroring developments in Hungary, an incumbent government coalition was reelected for the first time in 2006. Consistent with patterns in Latvia’s political economy, this silver lining of stability amid political instability was achieved against the background of a mass exit from politics. Voter turnout decreased significantly, from almost 89 percent in the early 1990s, to 71 percent in 2002, to just above 60 percent in 2006.

The exhaustion of privatized social contracts From the second half of the 2000s onwards, the resources that EU accession and the transnational credit boom had offered to Hungarian and Latvian political actors to mediate the social costs of marketization started to wane. A number of developments conspired to reach this effect. Even after accession, EU pressure for further reforms did not weaken. Almost immediately after enlargement, the EU started to scrutinize its new members on their economic convergence with the Maastricht criteria. This led to increasing

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tensions within the prevailing social contracts. In addition, both countries had relied to an unusual degree on transnational markets to finance their public and private social contracts (see Table 8.2). With export competitiveness declining, and external debts and current account deficits soaring, access to transnational finance slowly tightened. The outbreak of the global financial crisis in the fall of 2008 finally pulled the rug from under the existing social contracts. Hungary’s road to economic crisis and political destabilization Although its fundamental macroeconomic and financial imbalances were by no means worse than those of Latvia, it was Hungary that first felt increasing pressures. Its twin fiscal and current account deficits as well as its persistent exchange rate instability brought it on the radar screen of several transnational actors at the same time. Almost immediately after enlargement, the EU started an excessive deficit procedure against Hungary. The socialist–liberal government submitted a first convergence program in 2005, which was rejected by the European Council. Complying with the Council’s request for a new program, the recently reelected socialist–liberal coalition in 2006 took a radical departure from ‘goulash post-communism.’ Shortly after his reelection, Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany (2006) delivered his infamous speech in Balatonöszöd to the Socialist Party members of the National Assembly, where he suggested that only ‘divine providence, the abundance of cash in the world economy, and hundreds of tricks, which you obviously don’t need to know about, [had] helped’ the government to survive and be reelected, but that the time had now come to finally stop lying and bring the house in order. The austerity package presented by Gyurcsany envisaged short-term measures to redress the budget deficit, as well as long-term structural reforms of the public sector, health care, and pension systems (Toth and Neumann 2006). While the Gyurcsany package started to redress some of the domestic and external imbalances, it had negative repercussions on growth, real wages, and consumption. The shock was not yet digested when Hungary became one of the hot spots of the global financial crisis. In October 2008, its currency and stock markets started to plunge and credits dried up. In order to boost confidence in the forint and to get access to foreign currency liquidity, the Hungarian government had to turn to the IMF. Although the loan – all in all 20 billion Euros granted by the IMF, the EU, and the World Bank – is huge by any comparison, the conditions attached to it are bound to be grim for a large part of the Hungarian population. What have been the political repercussions of the increasing problems of capitalism? Far from being a resource for solving these problems, Hungarian democracy has suffered as well. Its seemingly stable and consolidated party system is on the brink of a major reshuffle. As a corollary to its reinvigorated drive toward economic reform from 2006 onwards, the Socialist Party has

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downsized its engagement with civil society by severing its remaining ties to trade unions. The party also does not seem to care about its unprecedented drop in voter support and the prospect of being reduced to a marginal political actor with the next elections. No longer much concerned about generating popular support, the Socialist Party has tied its fate increasingly to a narrow circle of domestic and transnational actors eager to continue harsh economic reforms. This became especially clear with the replacement of Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany by Gordon Bajnai in March 2009, whose cabinet is made up by a number of ‘experts’ with close connections to transnational corporations. While the Socialists (and their previous junior partner, the Liberal Party) have ‘evacuated’ the ‘traditional world of party democracy – a zone of engagement in which citizens interact with their political leaders’ (Mair 2006, 33), the conservative opposition party Fidesz has skillfully moved into that zone. Since its electoral defeat in 2002, it has concentrated successfully on bringing a host of local grassroots protest movements and organizations under its auspices. The current success of Fidesz is based on nationalist–populist mobilization. In economic terms, it has so far fallen short of offering a credible alternative to the Socialists’ austerity package. More recently, an extreme-right competitor has emerged with realistic chances of getting into parliament. While not formally in danger, the future of Hungarian democracy will be played out in the competition and alignment between extremeright and nationalist–conservative parties amid an increasingly alienated electorate. Latvia’s road to economic crisis and political instability Latvia’s more disciplined approach to fiscal policies, which is grounded in its effort to defend the currency peg, has allowed the country to cruise longer under the radar of international attention. The first signs of stress occurred when, after joining the Exchange Rate Mechanism II in 2005, Latvia’s inflation rate was persistently higher than the European Monetary Union reference value. At that time, however, it was generally assumed that inflation would soon be brought under control (Feldmann 2006). In 2006 the IMF published one of the first critical analyses of Latvia’s growing imbalances. The report drew attention to the rising current account deficit and the country’s limited capacity to close the gap through exports. The same report also stressed the problem of rapidly growing credits to private households and duly warned that ‘as numerous cross-country studies have documented, rapid credit growth is the single best predictor of banking crises’ (IMF 2006, 54). Despite signs of increasing imbalances, Latvia stayed committed to its currency peg, thus severely limiting the policy options available to confront its problems. In March 2007, the center-right coalition government headed by Aigars Kalvitis endorsed an anti-inflation plan, which seemed

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modest for an economy that had spiraled out of control. Latvia’s current account deficit reached more than 25 percent of its GDP in the first quarter of 2007, wage and price inflation accelerated, and the real exchange rate rapidly appreciated (Hugh 2007; IMF 2009). With the outbreak of the global financial crisis, both the banking system and the peg came under pressure. In December 2008, facing bankruptcy, the center-right coalition government of Ivars Godmanis turned to the IMF for support. Latvia received a loan of 1.7 billion Euros from the IMF, complemented by additional funds from the EU, the World Bank, and several bilateral creditors, bringing the total amount to 7.5 billion Euros. Latvia’s adjustment program is severe even by IMF standards. IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said as much: ‘It [the program] is centered on the authorities’ objective of maintaining the current exchange rate peg, recognizing that this calls for extraordinarily strong domestic policies, with the support of a broad political and social consensus’ (quoted in Hugh 2008b). Although the IMF in the end endorsed Latvia’s commitment to keep the currency peg, it had initially opted for a widening of the lats corridor (IMF 2009, 10). Broad political and economic support for the austerity package has been in short supply. In January 2009, tens of thousands of demonstrators gathered in front of the parliament to protest against the worsening social and economic conditions and demand the government’s resignation. Shortly thereafter, farmers blockaded the capital city and forced the resignation of the agriculture minister. In late February 2009, the government collapsed and Prime Minister Godmanis resigned, leaving a new government – again made up solely of center-right political forces – with the task of complying with the IMF program. The appointment of Einars Repse – the former president of the National Bank and architect of the reintroduction of the lats – as finance minister is a strong signal that the government has no intentions of touching the currency peg, no matter how high the social costs become. Latvian democracy is ill prepared to deal with the increasing popular dissatisfaction. As a result of its nationalizing project, no political party that questioned the currency peg and the domestic adjustment measures it necessitates has had a chance of forming a government. The lats, symbol of the country’s newly gained national independence, is pitted against popular demands for social safety. In contrast to Hungary, however, in Latvia the political resources that nationalism can offer in times of crisis seem to be exhausted. Latvian democracy, then, is bound to see exit on a grand scale.

Conclusion: The paradoxes of transnationalization and the reemergence of the dilemma of simultaneity Where does this lead when studying transnational relations in Europe? As argued in this chapter, the literature on Eastern European transformation has focused intensively on the transnational dimensions of regime

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formation over the past decade, stressing in particular the beneficial impact that the European accession process had in supporting the region’s development paths. The combination of international negotiations and conditionality, the transnational linkages between social actors, and the deep penetration of transnational capital in the region were seen as formidable stabilizing devices. That there is a rich literature on the transnational dimension of Eastern European transformation should not come as a surprise. East–Central Europe’s ambitious journey toward democratic capitalism coincided with a new wave of economic globalization and regional (European) integration. Eastern transformation thus became rapidly entangled in these broader processes. What is perhaps more surprising is the overwhelmingly optimistic assessment of transnational influences on the region, an assessment arguably fuelled by the overly skeptical early literature on transformation. With the outbreak of the global financial crisis, scholars are in a better position to evaluate the conditions under which Europeanization could contribute to greater economic and political stability in the region. Most important, it was the abundance of transnational capital flows that eased the tensions inherent in the transformation and European accession process alike. The rapprochement with the EU encouraged transnational companies to invest heavily in the region, led transnational banks to channel a significant amount of liquidity into the domestic markets, and induced global financial markets to tolerate economic imbalances of unusual proportions. The global financial crisis put an end to all of this. Even worse, it reversed the impact of the institutions and devices that had mitigated the costs of transformation. Rather than constituting a resource for democratic capitalism, welfare spending has turned into a liability for Hungary. Latvia’s stable lats, once the proud symbol of renewed nationhood, has turned into a dire straightjacket. Shortcuts to Western capitalism have turned into major risk factors; for example, transnational banking systems have huge loan books in the East that are not necessarily covered by their home countries’ bailout plans. Informal Euroization or Swissfrancization, once backed by the prospect of Eurozone entry, has turned into a trap of gigantic proportions for the debtors who bear the exchange rate risk. The EU itself, which provided the protective umbrella for social and economic progress in the region, has turned into a guard over economic orthodoxy. The resurfaced economic woes have put the fragile democracies at risk. Neither the Hungarian nor the Latvian party system allows for politicizing socioeconomic questions. In Hungary an increasingly frustrated electorate is left with the choice between voting nationalist, extreme right, or not at all. Latvian voters, trapped by the political consequences of the nationalizing project without believing any longer in the remedies of identity politics, might once more punish barely established parties by voting for a new start-up, or, more likely, defect from politics altogether. In short, democratic

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politics in the region is not prepared to address citizens’ demands for basic security and predictability in their lives. Does this mean that with a detour of 20 years, the early prophecies of democratic breakdown in East–Central Europe will come true? The argument developed in this chapter leads to a different conclusion. While transnational support for democracy and stability in the region seems to have dried out together with the debt economy underlying it, the new democracies have already ventured into yet another temporary solution to their dilemmas: although not challenging democracy on formal grounds, political elites are increasingly inclined toward ‘ruling the void,’ that is, governing a democracy ‘stripped of its popular component’ (Mair 2006, 25). For how long this solution is there to stay, and which tensions and contradictions it entails for democratic capitalism in hard times, remain to be explored.

Notes I am grateful to Magdalena Bernaciak, Bela Greskovits, Kristin Nickel-Makszin, and the editors of this volume for their comments on a previous version of the chapter. 1. East–Central Europe refers to those 10 post-communist countries that eventually became members of the European Union: Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia. 2. According to Brubaker (1996, 105), who coined the term nationalizing, it entails ‘a state of and for a particular ethnocultural “core nation” whose language, demographic position, economic welfare, and political hegemony must be protected and promoted by the state.’ Hughes (2005) applies this concept to Latvia’s and Estonia’s post-communist projects. 3. For a thorough discussion of the Euroization and Swissfrancization in Eastern Europe, see Becker (2007). 4. Egert and Mihaljek (2007) do not provide data for Latvia, but according to all available sources Latvia is at the high end of the housing boom in the Baltic countries.

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150 Dorothee Bohle Toth, A. and L. Neumann (2006) Trade Unions Reject Stringent EU Convergence Programme, http://www.eurofound.europa.eu/eiro/2006/09/articles/hu0609029i. htm, date accessed January 12, 2009. Vachudova, M. A. (2006) Europe Undivided: Democracy, Leverage, and Integration after Communism (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Vachudova, M. A. (2008) ‘The European Union: The Causal Behemoth of Transnational Influence on Postcommunist Politics’ in M. A. Orenstein, S. R. Bloom, and N. Lindstrom (eds.) Transnational Actors in Central and East European Transitions (Pittsburgh, PA: Pittsburgh University Press). Vanhuysse, P. (2006) Divide and Pacify: Strategic Social Policies and Political Protests in Post-Communist Democracies (Budapest: Central European University Press).

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Part III Transnational Spaces, Communities, and Identities

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9 Historicizing the Nation: Transnational Approaches to the Recent European Past James Casteel

Historians of modern and contemporary Europe are currently engaged in a ‘transnational turn,’ an attempt to move beyond the nation-state as the primary unit of analysis. This move has served to expose the central role that nationhood has played and continues to play in the writing of modern European history. Since the founding of the discipline, professional historians have contributed to the construction and perpetuation of national narratives and in many cases have been active participants in nationalizing projects. Even critical historians seeking to challenge nationalist historiographies have often invoked a ‘methodological nationalism’ that neglects many topics that cannot be encompassed by the national framework (Wimmer and Schiller 2003, 577–8). The ‘transnational turn’ thus has particular significance for historians as their discipline has arguably had a greater investment than most in national frameworks and the shaping of national imaginaries. This chapter assesses the uses of transnationalism in recent historiographies of modern and contemporary Europe and discusses its potential for producing novel interpretations of the recent European past. In particular, the chapter focuses on the ways in which transnational approaches elucidate the dynamics of nationhood and nationalism in the European past and present, an essential theme of European historiography in the twenty-first century. It begins by discussing how historians have understood transnationalism and what approaches they have developed to study it. It then draws on the historiography of Central and Eastern Europe to demonstrate the utility of transnational approaches in elucidating a key concern in modern European historiography: the nationalization of society. Finally, the chapter turns to contemporary Europe to discuss the continuing relevance of nationhood for the construction of identities and collective memories. Despite the acceleration of Europeanization in the past decade and a half, nationhood still plays a strong role in defining social and political 153

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belonging and in constructing narratives about the past. Although this discussion engages a wide variety of social and political contexts at different historical moments, one dominant theme that emerges is the role of transnational relations within civil society in the process of constructing and perpetuating discourses of nationhood.

Transnationalism and the transnational turn in European historiography Practitioners of the political, social, cultural, and diplomatic history of modern Europe alike have greeted the transnational turn as a productive move, and it has so far elicited very little controversy, leading one scholar to term it ‘an emergent new consensus’ (Geyer 2006). This is surprising given the heated debates that accompanied the introduction of women’s and gender history, the cultural and linguistic turn, history of everyday life approaches, and postmodernism. Although historians for the most part acknowledge that a transnational approach has the potential to transform understandings of the past two centuries, they are divided over the question of how radical that potential might be. Transnationalism itself is nothing new and certainly there are precedents for transnational history to draw on within the literature. The emergence of interest in transnationalism reflects contemporary historians’ recognition that their experience of the world does not fit into existing conceptual maps. For Europeanists, one of the main progenitors of this shift was the fall of communism. This rupture meant that the conventional competing master narratives that framed historiography (nationalist, modernization theory, and Marxist) were not adequate to explain the contemporary turn of events (Jarausch and Geyer 2003, 37–108). A second catalyst is that, in an age of globalization, scholars are much more conscious of the impact that external forces can have on nations and nation-states (Geyer 2005, 194–5). Transnationalism may not be a novel phenomenon, but it certainly has intensified in the contemporary moment, leading to more awareness of its significance. This contemporary intensification of transnational relations has encouraged historians to reflect on the role of transnationals and transnational interactions in earlier periods. In its most basic meaning, transnationalism refers to relations that extend beyond the nation-state. Some historians would subscribe to political scientist and international relations theorist Thomas Risse-Kappen’s (1995, 3) definition of transnational relations as ‘regular interactions across national boundaries when at least one actor is a non-state agent or does not operate on behalf of a national government or an intergovernmental organization.’ Risse-Kappen’s definition certainly reflects the approaches of practitioners of the new international history who move beyond a focus on one particular country’s foreign archives to engage in multi-archival research, drawing

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on the files of international and nongovernmental organizations (Granieri 2006; Ludlow 2005). The work of many economic historians could also be framed in this regard, since economic interactions have almost always been transnational in their implications in the modern period (Frank 2009). Historians of migration, too, have increasingly expressed interest in the transnational experience of many migrants, not just focusing on what happens when migrants leave their homeland or the processes of integration into host societies, but also elucidating their ongoing ties in both their land of origin and their land of destination and the transnational networks that connect them (Schönwalder 2007, 160). Certainly, given the extent of both voluntary and forced migration in Europe in the twentieth century and the continued flow of migrants to and from Europe at the present, this will continue to be a productive approach (Ahonen et al. 2008). Other historians who use the term transnationalism apply it more broadly, extending it to encompass any approach that challenges the epistemological hegemony of the nation-state and breaks open national containers to study the ways in which the nation is very much entangled with the wider world. To be sure, social historians of nationhood and nationalism have long been aware of the gaps that nationalist historiography has left. Studies of nationalist mobilization, especially those that employ gender and history of everyday life approaches, have complicated understandings of the emergence of a Europe of nations and have forced historians to question many assumptions about the timing of national development and the extent to which European populations (particularly the peasantry) identified with modern conceptions of nationhood (Stauter-Halsted 2001). However, transnational historians suggest that the internal diversity that exists within nation-states is also shaped by external forces and is interconnected with broader social processes; thus categories such as gender, race, ethnicity, religion, and class, which are so central to the articulation of modern forms of nationhood and identity more generally, are shaped by discourses that cross national borders (Geyer 1989, 317–18). Transnational history has emerged at the same time as the new global history, and although the two overlap and interact, they are not identical. The aim of global history is to provide a history of the ‘the global human community’ and to explore the social, cultural, and political interconnections between and within different parts of the world (Manning 2003, 3). The perspective of the researcher, even if looking at regional or local events, is global, exploring the ways in which global processes such as the growth of markets, trade networks, religious and social movements, and migration impact diverse areas of the world differently. The ‘new’ global historians seek to give historical depth to the phenomenon of a globally interconnected world, with a particular emphasis on the modern and contemporary periods (Geyer 2005, 194–5). With its focus on processes that span national boundaries and transcultural interactions, global history is by its very

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nature transnational. However, not all transnational relations are necessarily global, even when structured in a global system of relations. For example, transnational exchanges can be limited to particular areas of the world or even between individual nations. Thus, while there is overlap between the two approaches, they nonetheless represent distinct areas of study. Practitioners of comparative history have also developed approaches that have moved beyond the nation-state. However, most comparative history has also taken the national level of comparison as the dominant framework of analysis. National-level comparisons are not problematic in and of themselves and can indeed be very fruitful. Yet, more often than not, the comparative method as employed by historians has also tended to reify perceptions of national difference that structure nationalist discourse itself. National distinctiveness is always defined by implicit comparison with other nations and these discourses have often framed the research questions of comparativists (Sluga 2004, 104–8). Like comparative history, transnational history is concerned with processes that cross and transcend national boundaries. However, although transnational history can be comparative in practice, its practitioners tend not to assume that developments in one national context are necessarily products of national distinctiveness. National differences certainly emerge in transnational analysis, but commonalities and mutual influences between the objects of comparison tend to receive more attention (Ther 2003, 47–52; Cohen and O’Connor 2004, xi–xii). Practitioners of transnational history have also developed a more sophisticated understanding of their role as researchers in shaping their inquiry and register the necessity to be self-reflexive about the assumptions and cultural perceptions they bring to their analysis (Werner and Zimmermann 2006, 48–50). The ‘trans’ in transnational implies a sense of moving beyond, spanning, or crossing the boundaries of the nation, and in some usages indicates a more activist stance of transcending the nation-state itself. Transnational relations do not leave the nation itself untouched; rather, the very act of boundary crossing transforms the nation (Ong 1999, 4). What the ‘national’ in transnational implies, however, is less clear. In most usages, especially in the social sciences, the implication is that the national boundary being traversed is that of the nation-state. Most scholars of nationhood and nationalism, however, employ the term nation to refer not to the state but to the people, in the sense of an ‘imagined political community’ that is the source of sovereignty (Anderson 1991, 6). There is some conceptual slippage as to whether what is being transcended is the nation as a form of imagined community or the nation-state as a territorially bounded political unit. For historians the ‘national’ within transnational also raises the potential for anachronism when applied to earlier periods. Since the term transnational assumes the existence of the ‘national’ and is often defined in opposition to the nation-state, historians might exercise caution in applying the term proleptically to earlier periods. This is not to deny that before

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modernity there were social forces that could be considered transnational in the sense of crossing the borders of states and affecting diverse polities simultaneously (e.g., religious movements, intellectual trends, trade relations, diasporas, disease, etc). One key assumption concerning the workings of the modern nation-state, namely that, in Maier’s (2006, 48) words, ‘ “identity space” was coterminous with “decision space”,’ does not always apply to earlier periods and state forms. As Eley (in Palmowski et al. 2008, 85–6) has noted, transnational in this anachronistic usage has the potential to project the nation back onto periods in which, as historians of nationhood and nationalism have shown, nationhood was not the dominant framework for understanding the social world and in which the nation-state as a political institution was nonexistent or only emerging. These caveats notwithstanding, evidence of transnationalism is everywhere in social life in the modern period, so it is clear that by using the concept, historians can make a radical claim to recast the historiography of modern Europe. Nations and nation-states have always been engaged with the world, and the forces and movements outside the nation-state have always acted within the borders of nation-states. Historians thus can also contribute to correcting the tendency to view transnationalism as a teleological development in which transnational identifications eclipse the national and challenge the hegemony of the nation-state. This is not to deny the liberatory potential of transnationalism and transnational studies, but it is also important to recognize that transnationalism can work for different ends and that transnationals themselves can also make accommodations with global capital and nation-states. Indeed, transnationalism can strengthen as well as abate national identifications (Ong 1999, 14–16). Historians might also question the tendency in some literature on transnationalism to assume that nation-states are becoming increasingly integrated into transnational economic, cultural, and social flows that might undermine the very institutions of the nation-state. Again, this is not to deny the tension between the projection of a national imaginary of nations as sovereign over what goes on inside their territories and the reality of transnational flows and global forces that are beyond their control. But these tensions are not new. Transnationalism has the potential to place limits on national sovereignty but also to produce a nationalist backlash that calls for increasing demands of national autonomy and protectionism, resulting in a move away from integration to more autarkic relations (Osterhammel and Petersson 2006, 63–83). If transnational relations are much more ubiquitous in modern history than implied in the existing nationally framed historiography, then historians need to develop analytical approaches to make sense of transnationalism. In an address to the German Studies Association, historian Michael Geyer (2006) outlined three strategies for researching transnational history. The first involves moving outward from the nation to the world, to

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provide insight into what Geyer terms the ‘transnational horizon of the nation.’ This concept emphasizes the fact that nations are always engaged with – and national imaginaries serve to mediate – the world around them. But it also suggests that transnational ideas and social forces affect the very construction of nationhood itself. Geyer’s second strategy involves moving from the outside in. Here the focus is much broader, placing the nation-state in the larger context of the modern world state system. The main issue in this framework is to understand why the nation form emerges as the dominant one in the modern period, not just in Europe but globally. Finally, the third strategy involves the study of transnationals themselves, that is, goods, people, ideas, and other forces that cross national boundaries. As Geyer’s schema suggests, a transnational approach entails a willingness to think outside the box or at least remove national blinkers, a valuable exercise for any historian. This approach does not, however, mean abandoning the merits of historians’ training, including an in-depth knowledge of the language and culture of the area they are studying. Certainly, deep immersion in particular local and national contexts will remain central to historians’ work. However, when doing transnational history, historians have to be willing to go outside their comfort zone and extend to areas in which they may not have the same depth of knowledge as compared to their particular area of specialization. Transnational historiography also does not mean that nations and nation-states are no longer important topics of historical inquiry; indeed, they remain central to the workings of the modern world system, especially in Europe, despite the advances in Europeanization. However, as this chapter shows, moving beyond the nation allows a richer understanding of the ways in which nations and nationalisms work in practice, opening up a number of questions that could not be addressed solely from within a national framework.

Beyond linear narratives of national development in Central and Eastern Europe National frameworks have informed the work of historians since the professionalization of the discipline in the nineteenth century. This was particularly the case in Central and Eastern Europe, where nationalist historians attempted to construct longer-term narratives of ‘nations’ as subjects – historiographies that were often written in opposition to the nonnational empires in Central and Eastern Europe. For nationalist actors, whether in nationalizing states or as activists in multiethnic dynastic empires, history came to be written as national history. This attachment of historians to the nation was methodologically rooted in the primacy of national archives as the key source for national history. National historians not only helped construct the nation in moments of nation building, but also engaged in efforts to maintain and sustain nations thereafter (Berger 2007, 55–68).

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The older historiography on nationhood and nationalism drew on a history of ideas approach that continued to inform political and social histories of Central and Eastern Europe until the 1990s (Sugar 1995). Although national ideas were imagined to have traveled, having been diffused from their sites of origin and adapted to different circumstances in diverse societies, this was generally seen as a process by which a nationalist seed was planted and from which eventually a national tradition grew. More often than not, in Central and Eastern Europe, these seeds were viewed as having been planted on bad soil. Such a perspective also informed approaches inspired by modernization theory in that the more exclusionary national forms that emerged in the region corresponded to more backward social, political, and economic conditions (Berend 2003; for critiques, see Todorova 2005; Wingfield 2004). Thus while acknowledging borrowing and imitation (which in fact are probably much more common than those desiring to present a pure and unique national history would suggest), such approaches tended to focus on the internal development of nations and did not examine external forces that influenced them. Nationalist historians constructed linear narratives that presented nations as unified subjects whose essence had remained unchanged over time (Duara 1995, 1–2, 17–50). When historians consider the practice of nationalist mobilization both in nation-states and in nationalist movements in multiethnic empires, however, it becomes clear that the practice of nationalist activity was very much one in which nationalists were observing each other and sharing ideas, methods, and tactics. Many of what have been studied as parallel but separate processes of the emergence of national movements were in fact transnational processes in which the movements were engaged in considerable interaction; thus the objects of analysis were not separate and developing along their own particular paths, but rather they engaged and interacted with each other. These interactions – the lateral connections between these movements – are essential to understanding the successes and failures of different nationalist actors in propagating their particular conception of how to define a nation (Ther 2003, 53–67). Snyder’s (2003) The Reconstruction of Nations is a good example of a study that captures some of these transnational dynamics. In this synthetic work, he looks at the processes by which four different nationalist movements emerged in the territories that had once been part of the early modern Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. His narrative does much to challenge the developmental thrust of nationally framed historiography or of theories of nationalism, such as Hroch’s (1993) influential three-stage model. For example, he shows that transnational connections across the three European multiethnic empires that had partitioned Poland (Prussia, Russia, and Austria) were generally a positive development for nationalist movements, since the presence of a diasporic community or center of population

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in one state could often be used to thwart restrictions on nationalist publications and organization in another state. Thus Vilnius, a city that was predominantly Polish and Yiddish speaking until World War II, sprouted Polish, Jewish (autonomist), Belarusian, and Lithuanian national movements, each of which claimed Vilnius as theirs. On the face of things, the Belarusian national movement was best situated in terms of numbers to be a successful national movement, as most of the surrounding countryside consisted of speakers of Belarusian. The Lithuanian national movement, by contrast, had only a small minority of Lithuanian speakers in the city and also a minority in the countryside. Polish nationalists were able to circumvent tsarist censors by publishing in Habsburg Galicia, and Lithuanian nationalists were able to do the same in Prussia. However, the Belarusian movement was unable to do so given the lack of Belarusian speakers outside the borders of the Russian Empire. The lack of transborder connections was a disadvantage for the Belarusians, whereas the facts of partition and dispersion worked to the advantage of the Polish and Lithuanian nationalist movements (Snyder 2003, 44–7). Approaches such as that developed by Snyder do not completely discard older narratives of modernization and national development in the region. However, they grant a greater role to individuals, particular events, contingencies, and chance in determining which nationalist movements were able to establish nations, and in some cases obtain statehood, and which ones were not. Arguably the most significant set of transnational interactions that shaped the political boundaries of Central and Eastern Europe was World War I. As Roshwald (2001) has shown, nationalist mobilization during this time was remarkably transnational. Much of Eastern Europe was occupied by Russian and then German and Austro-Hungarian forces for the duration of the war, and the policies of the occupiers heightened ethnic identification among the occupied. In particular, after the Russian Revolution, German forces increasingly allowed movements for cultural autonomy in an effort to gain the loyalty of the occupied in a context in which both Wilson and Lenin were advocating national self-determination. German officials’ cultivation of Lithuanian nationalism to offset Polish nationalism led in 1917 to the creation of a Lithuanian national council, the Taryba, which a year later, against the intentions of the occupiers, proclaimed an independent Lithuania, that would become the basis of the postwar Lithuanian state. Nationalist groups in exile, such as the Czechoslovak National Council, Polish National Committee, and the Yugoslav Committee in London, could develop a considerable public following in Allied countries, giving added weight to their claims for national autonomy and even influencing Allied expectations for what the postwar map of a Europe organized along national lines would look like (Roshwald 2001, 116–55). These examples demonstrate how a transnational approach can serve to illuminate many of the dynamics of nation and state building in the region.

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Historians of Central and Eastern Europe have also taken up the stimulating theoretical interventions that Brubaker (1996, 4) made in Nationalism Reframed. Brubaker became interested in studying the nationalism that emerged from the redrawing of political boundaries and the ‘nationalization of political space,’ focusing on the interwar period and the breakup of the Soviet Union in the 1990s. This work opened up the study of the transnational framing of nationalism in the context of competing and interacting nationalizing nations. For most of the nation-states established in the aftermath of the breakup of the Habsburg, Romanov, and Ottoman empires, the imagined national community did not correspond to the territorial boundaries of the state itself. Thus officials and civil society actors within nationalizing states became interested in populations beyond their borders who could be imagined as fellow members of the ‘nation.’ Populations who found themselves to be a minority within other nationalizing states could make their own claims to national autonomy and the external national homeland could also advocate on their behalf (Brubaker 1996, 4, 56–63). Building on Brubaker’s approach, historians have begun to illuminate these transnational dynamics of interwar nationalism. Although nationalist state or civil society actors increasingly attempted to claim populations who spoke their language or shared cultural affinities outside the boundaries of the nation-state (as well as the territory upon which they resided) as belonging to the nation, minority populations in neighboring states did not always share this sense of national belonging. Indeed, as Judson (2005) has argued in the case of German-speaking populations in the successor states of the Habsburg Empire, most did not identify with the nationalism of the German nation-state or see themselves as part of a broader German diaspora. It was only in response to tensions and hostilities within the nationalizing states in which they found themselves that a German nationalism oriented toward the German nation-state began to become attractive to them, a development that dovetailed with National Socialists’ expansive understanding of the boundaries of Germanness in the 1930s and 1940s (Judson 2005, 219–23). Another innovative aspect of Brubaker’s (1996, 13–22; 2005, 7–27) work has been his conceptualization of nationhood as a contingent event. This move challenged an older historiography, whose practitioners assumed the existence of national groups rather than seeing nationalist agitation as producing the nationalist conflict of the period. In other words, much of this historiography was informed by an anachronistic understanding of nationalist movements that obscured the dynamics through which European societies came to be nationalized (King 2001, 123–30). Drawing on theorists such as Brubaker, historians have revised the older frameworks that projected proleptically a nationalist imaginary of later periods onto the nineteenth century and first half of the twentieth century. Studies that explore everyday life, particularly in areas of mixed settlement, have shown that

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considerable segments of the population were bilingual or multilingual and did not necessarily identify with one particular national group unless they were pressured by their employers or nationalist activists who wanted their children to go to particular schools. Indeed, most inhabitants defined their sense of belonging primarily in nonnational terms of dynastic loyalty, regional, religious, local, or class identities (King 2001, 118–23; Judson 2006, 1–11). Thus, the assumption that national identities were predominant is largely ahistorical and does little to elucidate the social world before the nation-state and arguably even after its foundation. Such findings also problematize the assumption that it was the ethnic and linguistic diversity of Central and Eastern Europe that was the cause of its supposed delayed path to modernity and the nationally informed conflicts in the region. For example, Zahra (2008) has applied a transnational and comparative approach to the study of French and Czechoslovak policies of national classification of German populations in their borderlands. National classification was a central part of the efforts of postwar European nation-states to reestablish order after World War I. Against the assumption of an East–West binary, her study shows that French policies of national ascription in Alsace were more radical than those used in Czechoslovakia. In the French case, the policies were aimed at excluding Germans from the French nation, whereas the Czechs sought to assimilate German speakers in border regions by classifying them as Czech and forcing them to attend Czech-language schools. Indeed, despite France’s more universalistic understanding of nationhood, which has generally been defined in civic terms, the French identity promoted in Alsace was one based on a racial understanding of the French nation that excluded Germans. Indeed, 200,000 people categorized as Germans were forcibly deported back to Germany because of their Germanness. Zahra (2008, 137–65) emphasizes that the diversity of the borderlands itself did not create these conflicts. Rather, state officials and actors in society promoted such a nationalist way of thinking in their discussions of who belonged to each nation. Although regional particularities and differences played a role in these cases, they did not always follow a clear pattern as implied by schemas that employ a rigid division between Western civic and Eastern ethnic nationalism. The interwar period was also a moment in which Europeans became increasingly aware of the transnational forces around them that appeared as challenges to the nation-state. World War I, the Russian Revolution, and the Russian civil war resulted in large waves of refugees and migrants desiring to move westward. Responding to both left-wing revolutions at home and the success of Bolsheviks in taking power in Russia, fears of a new transnational enemy, Bolshevism, were prevalent across the region. Indeed, it was in response to Bolshevism and also to the growing sense of challenges to Europe’s hegemonic position in the world in its overseas empires that a European identity came to be articulated during this period (Frevert 2005,

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97–102). As Hanebrink (2008, 58) has shown, national identities could be linked to a greater project of defending a Christian Europe against fears of transnational Bolshevism (a discourse that often was inherently antiSemitic). National regeneration and renewal after the war thus dovetailed with the need to place national development in a broader transnational framework. It is also important to recognize the role that historians themselves played as nationalist actors in interwar Europe. Transnational academic networks constructed in the interwar period were in part funded by nongovernmental organizations. Despite the intentions of some of the organizers, however, such networks were often used to propagate nationalist politics (Rietzler 2008). Historians became active in the nationalist struggles over border regions and attempted to prove that contested territories had always belonged to their particular nation, countering the claims of historians and officials in neighboring states. In Nazi-occupied Europe during World War II, such nationalist advocacy took on a different role as historians and other social scientists helped to plan and legitimize forced population transfers, acts of ethnic cleansing, and genocide (Haar and Fahlbusch 2005). Thus transnational relations are central to understanding the nationalization of European societies, an often violent process in which both state and civil society actors – including nationalist historians – played a key role.

Transnationalism, Europeanization, and the persistence of the nation in postwar and contemporary Europe Transnationalism also has much to offer in terms of rethinking the historiographies of postwar and contemporary Europe. Despite the remarkable social convergence and intensification of the interweaving of politics, societies, and cultures in the postwar period (Kaelble 2001, 53–94), the nation did not disappear, but rather continued to shape identities and collective memories. Yet, in contrast to the national myopia that has often characterized European history and memory cultures, the construction of national memory and national history has in fact been framed by significant transnational interactions between associations in civil society, scholars, media, governments, and international and supranational organizations. By attending more closely to these transnational processes, historians can enhance their understandings of the workings of national cultures of remembrance and their continuing role in constructing national identities. Nationally framed historiography played an important role in legitimizing postwar European states and was the dominant form of writing postwar histories (Lagrou 2007, 69–77). In sharp contrast to the unparalleled movements of populations across borders and borders across peoples during the war and early postwar period – events in which many prominent postwar historians had in fact participated – postwar historiography placed

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an emphasis on the continuous presence of nations residing in a particular territory over time. With a few notable exceptions, transnational topics such as the mutual Polish and Ukrainian ethnic cleansing that was undertaken by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and Polish defense units in 1943 in Volhynia, and the flight and forced deportation of ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe at the end of the war, largely escaped the attention of historians and were not subjects of public or official commemoration (Snyder 2003, 154–78; Ahonen et al. 2008, 145–51, 155–8). Even more striking from the perspective of the twenty-first century is the almost complete absence of the genocide of the Jews from the postwar European historiography until the 1970s and 1980s and in some cases even later. Such silences obscured the extent to which European societies had been destroyed and remade from the late 1930s to the late 1940s, a history that proved difficult to integrate into the usable pasts of postwar nation-states. Nationally framed historiography, even in the hands of more progressive and critical voices, often portrayed the nation in homogenous terms, downplaying the contributions of religious and ethnic minorities in shaping the past and present of the nation. Such methodological nationalism also extended to the historiography of European integration. Although the Europeanization of society, politics, and culture in postwar Europe is certainly a transnational topic, the historiography of European integration has until recently remained an isolated subfield written largely from the perspective of diplomatic history. Historians viewed European integration as a project mobilized by the national governments of larger member states, neglecting European institutions and smaller states and all but ignoring actors in civil society (regardless of whether they acted domestically or in transnational networks). As historians follow other social scientists in moving beyond the intergovernmentalist paradigm, some of these omissions are being corrected, helping to illuminate the important role of smaller states in European decision making as well as that of European institutions that now appear as actors in their own right and not as mere surrogates of powerful member states (Ludlow 2005, 369–71; Kaiser 2006, 191–6, 202–8). However, the area in which transnational history has shown the most promise is in the study of the emergence and workings of a transnational civil society (Jarausch and Lindenberger 2007, 14–16). Work in this area has the potential to expand knowledge of the processes of European integration beyond the institutional dimensions, focusing on the active role that organizations and movements in European civil society played and continue to play in constituting Europe. One result of this interest has been to extend the history of European integration backward in time, illuminating the ways in which transnational networks that developed in interwar Europe between officials and organizations in civil society were sustained through the war and into the postwar period (Passman 2008, 110). Another productive move has been to broaden the scope of the historiography of

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European integration eastward. This entails framing the Europeanization of Central and Eastern Europe as a longer-term process extending well before the fall of communism. Transnational networks in civil society were never completely cut off by the Cold War. Rather, dissidents, opposition figures, and social movements in Eastern Europe learned from their Western counterparts and vice versa. Transnational connections were particularly evident in the growth of civil society organizations that contributed to the end of communist rule (Kenney 2004). Such a reintegration of Central and Eastern Europe into European historiography thus would extend the narrative of Europeanization beyond its focus on ‘Core Europe.’ Postwar processes of Europeanization have not seen a lessening of national identification; instead, they arguably have contributed to its intensification, especially in recent years. The persistence of national identity despite Europeanization is no more apparent than in the many public controversies concerning collective memory in Europe – especially concerning memories of World War II. Public and official discourses of national memory found ways to represent Europeans’ experiences of confronting the mass death of civilians during the war. These discourses of national memory generally focused on the suffering that had been inflicted on members of one’s own nation while forgetting or neglecting the violence that was inflicted on other groups both within and external to the national community. Collective forms of remembrance tended to be selective, commemorating experiences of victimization but not exploring more complex issues such as collaboration with occupiers and participation in violence against others. In both official and public national discourse, certain memories of the wartime experiences were appropriated by the nation while others were marginalized or excised all together (Moeller 2005). There is of course now a large and sophisticated literature on collective memory and national identity in Europe, including the history of memory, that is, how discourses of collective remembrance have changed over time. However, much of this literature still retains an internal national focus, and the roles of transnational actors and forces in such contestations over memory have yet to be analyzed. For example, media have played a central role in the emergence of Holocaust memory around the world since the 1960s through the coverage of postwar war crimes trials (especially the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem) and the broadcast of television series or films that dealt with the Holocaust (such as the ABC mini-series Holocaust, Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah, and Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List). In many European countries, such media events facilitated internal discussions that challenged the dominant discourse of national remembrance (Levy and Sznaider 2001, 120–34). Similarly, commemorative sites such as the Auschwitz memorial complex in Poland have been the focus of transnational contestations that were shaped by Cold War rivalries, Polish government officials, academics and curators, international associations representing former prisoners and survivors, and the Vatican (Huener 2003, 145–84, 227–45).

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More attention could also be given to the role of European institutions and civil society organizations in shaping memory politics. For example, in Poland the controversy surrounding the Jedwabne massacre was quite constructive in producing critical debates about the country’s past (Shore 2005, 360–6, 371). But such critical reflection is easier to achieve in countries where civil society is well established. In Poland, for example, civil society builds on the foundation formed by opposition movements such as Solidarity. In contrast, in Ukraine, which is not part of the European Union and where national identity and state sovereignty seem more tenuous, such critical debates are only in their beginning phases (Kenney 2006, 94–8; see also Bartov 2007). These examples concerning controversies over conflicting memories of World War II suggest it would be productive to employ a transnational approach to national memory formation, drawing attention to the role of global media, external actors, and European institutions in shaping memory. Such an approach would move the historiography of memory beyond the exploration of internal national narratives and show how national memory cultures are products of transnational interactions.

Conclusion As this chapter has shown, transnational approaches to the recent European past have great potential to elucidate historians’ understandings of the development of nationhood and nationalism in Europe, phenomena that have been central to the histories of both Western and Eastern Europe in the past two centuries. Transnational historiography promises to greatly enrich understandings of the development of nationhood and nationalism as a pervasive form of social and political organization in the modern world. Emerging transnational historiography suggests that endogenous factors alone do not suffice in explaining the formation and reproduction of modern European nations. To be sure, a transnational approach does not mean the end of national history or that nations will no longer play a role in international affairs. Although nation-states may be giving up aspects of their sovereignty to preserve themselves in a new age of transnational global capitalism, there do not seem to be any newcomers to the scene that might challenge the nation’s hold over conceptions of political belonging. Thus, while transnational approaches go beyond the nation to help to understand the nation, they do not herald the end of nationhood itself. Rather, scholars may find that it is precisely in transnational interactions that the ‘nation’ emerges.

References Ahonen, P., G. Corni, J. Kochanowski, R. Schulze, T. Stark, and B. Stelzl-Marx (2008) People on the Move: Forced Population Movements in Europe in the Second World War and its Aftermath (Oxford: Berg).

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Historicizing the Nation 167 Anderson, B. (1991) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, revised edn (London: Verso). Bartov, O. (2007) Erased: Vanishing Traces of Jewish Galicia in Present-Day Ukraine (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Berend, I. T. (2003) History Derailed: Central and Eastern Europe in the Long Nineteenth Century (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press). Berger, S. (2007) ‘Writing National Histories in Europe: Reflections on the Pasts, Presents, and Futures of a Tradition’ in K. Jarausch and T. Lindenberger (eds.) Conflicting Memories: Europeanizing Contemporary Histories (New York: Berghahn). Brubaker, R. (1996) Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Brubaker, R. (2005) Ethnicity without Groups (Cambridge: Harvard University Press). Cohen, D. and M. O’Connor (2004) ‘Comparative History, Cross-National History, Transnational History – Definitions’ in D. Cohen and M. O’Connor (eds.) Comparison and History: Europe in Cross-National Perspective (New York: Routledge). Duara, P. (1995) Rescuing History from the Nation: Questioning Narratives of Modern China (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press). Frank, A. (2009) ‘The Petroleum War of 1910: Standard Oil, Austria, and the Limits of the Multinational Corporation’, American Historical Review, 114(1), 16–41. Frevert, U. (2005) ‘Europeanizing German History’, History and Memory, 17(1/2), 87–116. Geyer, M. (1989) ‘Historical Fictions of Autonomy and the Europeanization of National History’, Central European History, 22(3–4), 316–47. Geyer, M. (2005) ‘World History and General Education: How to Bring the World into the Classroom’ in H. Schissler and Y. N. Soysal (eds.) The Nation, Europe, and the World: Textbooks and Curricula in Transition (New York: Berghahn). Geyer, M. (2006) ‘Where Germans Dwell: Transnationalism in Theory and Practice’, http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=h-german&month=0610 &week=b&msg=6Ipa/qqNnOPa4EWRx1UksA&user=&pw=, date accessed April 30, 2008. Granieri, R. J. (2006) ‘Crossing Borders: Transnationalism, Diplomatic History, and the Future of German Studies’, http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx= vx&list=h-german&month=0601&week=c&msg=ToDYPFCwzj6J6VOVWcEO%2b w&user=&pw=, date accessed April 30, 2009. Haar, I. and M. Fahlbusch (eds.) (2005) German Scholars and Ethnic Cleansing, 1919– 1945 (New York: Berghahn). Hanebrink, P. (2008) ‘Transnational Culture War: Christianity, Nation and the JudeoBolshevik Myth in Hungary, 1890–1920’, Journal of Modern History, 80, 55–80. Hroch, M. (1993) ‘From National Movement to Fully Formed Nation’, New Left Review, 198, 3–20. Huener, J. (2003) Auschwitz, Poland, and the Politics of Commemoration, 1945–1979 (Athens: Ohio University Press). Jarausch, K. H. and M. Geyer (2003) Shattered Past: Reconstructing German Histories (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Jarausch, K. H. and T. Lindenberger (2007) ‘Contours of a Critical History of Contemporary Europe: a Transnational Agenda’ in K. H. Jarausch and T. Lindenberger (eds.) Conflicting Memories: Europeanizing Contemporary Histories (New York: Berghahn Books). Judson, P. M. (2005) ‘When Is a Diaspora not a Diaspora? Rethinking Nation-Centred Narratives about Germans in Habsburg East Central Europe’ in K. O’Donnell,

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R. Bridenthal, and N. Reagin (eds.) The Heimat Abroad: the Boundaries of Germanness (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press). Judson, P. M. (2006) Guardians of the Nation: Activists on the Language Frontiers of Imperial Austria (Cambridge: Harvard University Press). Kaelble, H. (2001) ‘Social History’ in M. Fulbrook (ed.) Europe since 1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Kaiser, W. (2006) ‘From State to Society? A Historiography of European Integration’ in M. Cini and A. K. Bourne (eds.) Palgrave Advances in European Union Studies (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan). Kenney, P. (2004) ‘Opposition Networks and Transnational Diffusion in the Revolutions of 1989’ in G. Horn and P. Kenney (eds.) Transnational Moments of Change: Europe 1945, 1968, 1989 (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield). Kenney, P. (2006) The Burdens of Freedom: Eastern Europe Since 1989 (London: Zed Books). King, J. (2001) ‘The Nationalization of East Central Europe: Ethnicism, Ethnicity, and Beyond’ in M. Bucur and N. M. Wingfield (eds.) Staging the Past: The Politics of Commemoration in Habsburg Central Europe, 1848 to Present (West Lafayette: Purdue University Press). Lagrou, P. (2007) ‘Between Europe and the Nation: The Inward Turn of Contemporary Historical Writing’ in K. H. Jarausch and T. Lindenberger (eds.) Conflicted Memories: Europeanizing Contemporary European Histories (New York: Berghahn Books). Levy, D. and N. Sznaider (2001) Erinnerung im globalen Zeitalter: Der Holocaust (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp). Ludlow, N. P. (2005) ‘The Making of the CAP: Towards a Historical Analysis of the EU’s First Major Policy’, Contemporary European History, 14(3), 347–71. Maier, C. (2006) ‘Transformations of Territoriality 1600–2000’ in G. Budde, S. Conrad, and O. Janz (eds.) Transnationale Geschichte: Themen, Tendenzen und Theorien (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht). Manning, P. (2003) Navigating World History: Historians Create a Global Past (New York: Palgrave Macmillan). Moeller, R. G. (2005) ‘Germans as Victims: Thoughts on a Post-Cold War History of World War II’s Legacies’, History and Memory, 17(1/2), 47–94. Ong, A. (1999) Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality (Durham: Duke University Press). Osterhammel, J. and N. Petersson (2006) Geschichte der Globalisierung; Dimensionen, Prozesse, Epochen (Munich: C. H. Beck). Palmowski, J., D. Blackbourn, G. Eley, S. Marchand, and H. W. Smith (2008) ‘Forum: The Long Nineteenth Century’, German History, 26(1), 72–91. Passman, E. (2008) ‘Civic Activism and the Pursuit of Cooperation in the Locarno Era’ in C. Germond and H. Türk (eds.) A History of Franco-German Relations in Europe: From ‘Hereditary Enemies’ to Partners (New York: Palgrave-Macmillan). Rietzler, K. (2008) ‘Philanthropy, Peace Research, and Revisionist Politics: Rockefeller and Carnegie Support for the Study of International Relations in Weimar Germany’, GHI Bulletin Supplement, 5, 61–79. Risse-Kappen, T. (1995) ‘Bringing Transnational Relations Back In: Introduction’ in T. Risse-Kappen (ed.) Bringing Transnational Relations Back In: Non-State Actors, Domestic Structures, and International Institutions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Roshwald, A. (2001) Ethnic Nationalism and the Fall of Empires: Central Europe, Russia and the Middle East, 1914–1923 (London: Routledge). Schönwalder, K. (2007) ‘Integration from Below? Migration and European Contemporary History’ in K. H. Jarausch and T. Lindenberger (eds.) Conflicted

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Historicizing the Nation 169 Memories: Europeanizing Contemporary European Histories (New York: Berghahn Books). Shore, M. (2005) ‘Conversing with Ghosts: Jedwabne, Zydokomuna, and Totalitarianism’, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, 6(2), 345–74. Sluga, G. (2004) ‘The Nation and the Comparative Imagination’ in D. Cohen and M. O’Connor (eds.) Comparison and History: Europe in Cross-National Perspective (New York: Routledge). Snyder, T. (2003) The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569–1999 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press). Stauter-Halsted, K. (2001) The Nation in the Village: The Genesis of Peasant National Identity in Austrian Poland, 1848–1914 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press). Sugar, P. F. (ed.) (1995) Eastern European Nationalism in the Twentieth Century (Washington, DC: American University Press). Ther, P. (2003) ‘Beyond the Nation: The Relational Basis of a Comparative History of Germany and Europe’, Central European History, 36(1), 45–74. Todorova, M. (2005) ‘The Trap of Backwardness: Modernity, Temporality, and the Study of Eastern European Nationalism’, Slavic Review, 64(1), 140–64. Werner, M. and B. Zimmermann (2006) ‘Beyond Comparison: Histoire croisée and the Challenge of Reflexivity’, History and Theory, 45, 30–50. Wimmer, A. and N. G. Schiller (2003) ‘Methodological Nationalism, the Social Sciences, and the Study of Migration: An Essay in Historical Epistemology’, International Migration Review, 37(3), 576–610. Wingfield, N. M. (2004) ‘ “The Problem with “Backwardness”: Ivan T. Berend’s Central and Eastern Europe in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries’, European History Quarterly, 34, 535–51. Zahra, T. (2008) ‘The “Minority Problem” and National Classification in the French and Czechoslovak Borderlands’, Contemporary European History, 17(2), 137–65.

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10 Managing Ambivalence and Identity: Immigration Discourses and (trans)national Identities in the European Union Robert Gould

As the literature on the topic and contributions to this volume show, transnationalism is a useful, but not altogether unproblematic, concept. Debate exists concerning its exact scope, while other discussions turn on its applicability to various realms of human (including political) activity. This chapter concentrates on political activity, particularly in relation to public statements on questions of national identity, made by significant political actors at the European Union (EU) or national level, as they apply to resident transnational populations. The statements represent the EU and the larger nation-states in a complex process of consultation and interaction; both the EU and many of its member states are adapting their immigration policies and practices with regard to third-country immigration and the resulting transnational populations and phenomena arising from such movements. As the difficult passage of the new German Citizenship Act in 1999 and the German Immigration Act in 2004 showed, national responses to such transnational processes and situations are unlikely to be straightforward. This chapter examines one aspect of this phenomenon: the intersection of public statements by national and EU actors and notions of national and European identities. This intersection is particularly problematic and sensitive as it is likely to deal with the rejection of certain values and practices of transnational populations, or, conversely, with the acceptance of transnational practices of immigrants, which, however, are likely to be rejected by significant numbers of the autochthonous population. This chapter considers on-the-record public statements made over the course of an eight-month period in 2007–8 by four national politicians who were at the center of the processes of managing immigration and integration in their respective countries: the United Kingdom, France, and Germany, the three largest EU member states. These are examined in 170

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relation to a speech delivered by the EU Commissioner for Justice, Freedom and Security, Franco Frattini, on September 13, 2007. Delivered at important junctures in the processes of adapting legislation or practices regarding migration movements and labor market needs, these speeches represent authoritative statements of the governmental positions of the three countries and the EU. The national politicians in question represent roughly comparable ministries in the three countries, specifically those dealing with migration, integration, and border security issues. Two figures are included from Germany, since these functions are shared between two distinct agencies, whereas in the United Kingdom and France they fall under one ministry. The speeches analyzed were delivered in Germany by Maria Böhmer, Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Migration, Flüchtlinge und Integration (Federal Commissioner for Migration, Refugees and Integration) and also Staatsministerin im Bundeskanzleramt (Minister of State in the Federal Chancellor’s Office), and Wolfgang Schäuble, Bundesminister des Inneren (Federal Minister of the Interior); in the United Kingdom by Liam Byrne, Minister of State for Borders and Immigration at HM Treasury and Home Office; and in France by Brice Hortefeux, ministre de l’Immigration, de l’Intégration, de l’Identité nationale et du Codéveloppement (Minister of Immigration, Integration, National Identity, and Co-Development). Over the previous decades each of the three countries had received significant numbers of immigrants and had followed different (im)migration and settlement policies. However, under the pressure of continuing immigration and shifting popular attitudes, the governments of each of the three countries felt obliged to rethink their strategies and policies. Germany, for example, moved from proclaiming ‘Deutschland ist kein Einwanderungsland’ (Germany is not a country of immigration) to ‘wir sind inzwischen mehr als ein Einwanderungsland: Wir sind ein Integrationsland’ (since then Germany has become more than a country of immigration: we are a country of integration) (Böhmer 2008). Likewise, the French Minister of Immigration, Integration, National Identity, and Co-Development Brice Hortefeux (2007a) admitted to the French Senate that long-held assumptions and practices concerning the integration of immigrants had failed.

Methodology and concepts The notion of discourse is broad and flexible. In this chapter it is used in the sense outlined by Wodak (2004, 381), who defines it and asserts its centrality to the phenomenon of societal governance in the following way: Political discourses produce and reproduce beliefs, opinions, and ideologies; moreover, political discourses serve persuasive ends and construct alliances and membership. Furthermore, they are in themselves the very

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stuff of politics – they are political actions without which ‘politics’ in the sense human societies understand it would not exist. Other compatible views of discourse relating to the political sphere are to be found, for example, in Busse and Teubert (1994), who define the range of texts to be considered as constituting a discourse (see also Jung et al. 1997), and Schöttler (1989), who points to the important phenomenon of ‘Wissensnormierung’ (standardization of knowledge). As Fowler (1991, 94) puts it, ‘Language provides names for categories and so helps to set their boundaries and relationships; and discourse allows these names to be spoken and written frequently, so contributing to the apparent reality and currency of the categories.’ The statements investigated here are part of a broader discourse on the topic of identity, immigration, and integration and can be considered as forming a component of a Europe-wide discourse, as they have a common topic, operate in a common time frame, and demonstrate semantic links and intertextualities. They also have the shared functions of indicating a government’s thinking and desire to influence popular thinking, of promoting similar concepts, and of dealing with a common wish to promote economic growth in the face of a shrinking workforce and increasing challenges from globalization (Jung 1996). At the same time, the speeches are also intended to guide the listeners’ thinking on the broader questions of the pressures of population movement toward Europe, whether in the form of workforce migrants, refugees, migrants seeking family reunification, or undocumented persons. The speeches were selected because they are recent (delivered between September 2007 and May 2008), authoritative, provide roughly equal amounts of text, and cover the question of currently resident and future inward-moving transnational populations in the respective countries. In addition, they were fully representative of the respective ministerial positions and were made at significant moments in the development of new immigration practices and policies. Moreover, as indicated by Hortefeux in his speech of January 23, 2008, they were, at least in part, the fruit of policy consultations between all four named ministers and Commissioner Frattini. In this chapter transnationalism refers broadly to the multiple ties and interactions linking peoples or institutions within or across the borders of nation-states. These systems of ties, relationships, and values function intensively and in real time. Transnationalism, as understood here, presents significant challenges to existing national identity statements and narratives for both receiving and mobile populations (Vertovec 1999, 447). These challenges arise also as a result of the other meaning of ‘trans,’ such as in transformation, that is, the changes wrought by processes, whether resulting from movement or not (Ong 2008, 448). In this connection, Ong employs the term transnationality. It will be seen that the notion of the transformation

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of the ‘native’ has to be incorporated into the discussion. This concept takes both the conceptualization and the discussion beyond the ‘challenges’ pointed out by Vertovec and specifically infuses the notion of identity with fluidity. Taking this viewpoint, transnationalism impacts both individual identity and national identity. As such, it naturally impinges on the definitions of citizenship and the state, making any notion of transformation associated with transnationalism particularly sensitive. This chapter begins by showing the extent to which basic concepts concerning immigration and transnational workforces communicated in the speeches are transnationally embedded at the European level in what I call the ‘Brussels discourse,’ a term sometimes contested. Most aspects of the inward movement of third-country citizens into the Schengen area are now regulated by the European Parliament or the Council of the EU. This has given rise to the Brussels discourse. Pressures from different sides to adopt a common policy concerning such movements and conditions have led to an array of European Commission documents and statements on the matter. Questions concerning the genesis of terminology and argumentation in such texts – for example, how much is top-down or bottom-up – are quite beyond the scope of this chapter. Equally beyond the scope of this chapter is the problematic matter of influence: how much Commission documents influence national discourses and vice versa. However, the working hypothesis here is that there is indeed a Brussels discourse, even if its origins and impact may be disputed. The hypothesized Brussels discourse is represented principally by an important policy speech by Commissioner Frattini (2007), the only document among those analyzed in this chapter that did not emerge solely from the forces of national politics. Frattini refers frequently to past and future Commission documents1 and his positions are congruent with those Commission documents published in the months following the speech. This speech provides an EU reference point for the analysis of speeches from the three member states that are the focus of this study. In examining these texts, particular attention is given to how immigration is contextualized (e.g., in relation to other priorities and fields of social and political life), how national and European identities are constructed (particularly in relation to newcomers), and how these identity constructs relate to the broader understanding of the state in the three countries. This analysis will fill some of the knowledge gaps about ‘the ways in which global and transnational issues are picked up, how they accommodate with cultural traditions, and which counter-discourses might even have been or are established’ (Wodak 2005, 368). This can now be done on the basis of both supranational and national texts representing related discourses. As will be seen, in the case of Brice Hortefeux’s speeches, the intra-European referentiality is quite explicit in respect to other named European ministers with immigration and integration responsibilities and

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also to practices and activities permitted or required by law in other EU countries. In the case of Commissioner Frattini, the referentiality is more discreet, but still present. When speaking about immigration and how to manage it, national politicians are inevitably also dealing with national identity, or in the case of Commissioner Frattini, with European identity. Two points are striking here. First, themes of identity and differences are intermingled with discourses of, inter alia, fundamental rights, social inclusion, economic prosperity, and work. This is particularly marked in Commissioner Frattini’s speech, where the issues seem to be totally inseparable, as the promotion of societal cohesion is a key element of the European social agenda, as well as the agendas of some EU member states. Second, currently, some national and European identity discourses appear to be coalescing and moving away from the incompatibilities and difficulties outlined in the last decade of the twentieth century, for example, the apparent incompatibilities between European and national identities (Garcia 1993) and the problematization of ‘fuzzy frontiers’ (Cohen 1994, 7) and ‘dual loyalties’.

The Brussels discourse Commissioner Frattini’s speech has two fundamental poles. The first pole is embodied in the statement that ‘migration is a complex issue and has become one of the most visible challenges posed by globalization.’ The second pole is represented in the counterbalancing statement that ‘European identity [is] based on full respect for universal principles and fundamental rights.’ The thrust of the argument is that only the larger polity of the EU is capable of dealing adequately with the potentially destabilizing phenomena of immigration and transnational populations. The potential for destabilization is seen to come from two directions: (1) any unchecked movement of people and (2) the undermining of key European values if member states fail to implement aggressive and effective integration policies to encourage or enforce full respect for principles and rights, which, it is implied, transnational populations do not possess or respect. At the same time, the macroeconomic context of the speech and discourse is the knowledge-based economy. Commissioner Frattini says, ‘Our [European] job market is mainly led by technology and information. This means that the future structure of Europe’s job market will depend on technological changes, which tend to be swift, extensive and hard to predict.’ For the European economy to remain competitive, he continues, it needs an extremely flexible, mobile, and highly-skilled workforce to allow Europe to adapt swiftly to rapidly changing demands. Frattini is thus attempting to establish, for the EU as a whole, parameters whereby both the EU and the member states enable business to succeed by creating conditions for competitiveness in a global economy.

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As mentioned, this speech is one (very representative) example drawn from what can be called the Brussels discourse on immigration. One may say that Commissioner Frattini wishes the speech to be seen as part of a nodal or master discourse (Jessop 2004) within the EU. He achieves this through repeated references to a series of past and future Commission or Directorate General documents on questions of immigration and integration, which also reinforces his authority and legitimacy in the matter.2 What he is also doing here, as occurs in the other documents, is shifting the scale of the construction of immigrants and the way they should be received, from the more spatially limited individual member states to the level of the EU as a whole (Vasta 2007). Frattini points to a fundamental problem: first, he defines immigration as a negative value, which has to be overcome, but then he refers to it as an ‘enrichment’ and as ‘inevitable.’ The gravest problem, he states, lies in the dependence of the EU’s competitiveness strategy on immigrants, on the one hand, and ‘our multicultural approach,’ on the other, which has ‘allowed cultural and religious groups to pursue an aggressive strategy against our values.’ The targets of this so-called ‘attack’ are individual rights, gender equality and respect for women, and monogamy: in other words, a set of alien values ‘can destroy the fabric of our societies.’ Put bluntly, he is saying that the European in-group needs transnationals, but not their values. Or to put it a different way, the existence of the transnationals’ alien values within the European space is a very real threat and danger to what he calls in his speech ‘the principles we inherited from our founding fathers.’ The conceptual boundaries of this speech, and of the discourse, are thus demarcated by dependence and distrust on the one hand and by notions of inside and outside the EU on the other. Frattini is speaking of shared European values, which represent the foundation of a common European identity. This identity is clearly transnational in nature: it is not particular to any individual member state. Similarly, the phrase ‘the principles we inherited from our founding fathers’ carries the implication that this identity is harmonious, in the sense that these values are shared equally across all 27 member states. Factually, this is questionable, but rhetorically it serves the important function of distinguishing more clearly between inside and outside. From Frattini’s perspective there is a transnational European identity and a very distinct, equally undifferentiated, non-European transnational identity. In reality, it is quite clear that in certain policy areas (e.g., pertaining to protecting autochthonous or transnational populations) the notion of a broadly consensual transnational European identity and shared value system breaks down. For example, some states are ‘far from implementing the June Council’s conclusions on strengthening integration policies in the EU by promoting unity in diversity.’ In general Frattini’s strong insistence on the creation of minimal Europe-wide legal standards to ensure fair and equitable treatment for third-country nationals might be read as shaming

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(without naming) those member states that have been unwilling to put such protections in place. However, it remains clear that Frattini is adhering to the three goals or dimensions identified by Wodak (2007, 75) as fundamental parts of EU identity discourses: making meaning (the idea of Europe), organizing Europe (how it is to be achieved), and drawing borders (inside and outside). All of this is part of a legitimation process, including the emphasis on standardized continent-wide values to be implemented internally and in transnational populations, setting the EU apart from those outside. But importantly, this also implies certain transformations of national identities.

The ministerial speeches The speeches in question were presented by the ministers in the United Kingdom, France, and Germany responsible for integration and immigration and were delivered between October 2007 and May 2008. While each of the ministers was acting as a spokesperson of a particular national government, the speeches should be placed in the context of a European discourse. In a speech to the Délégation de l’Union européenne à l’Assemblée Nationale (the National Assembly Delegation to the EU) on January 23, 2008, the French minister Brice Hortefeux spoke of his intensive and far-reaching discussions (‘des échanges très nourris’) with Franco Frattini and a number of other European ministers, including the ministers from the United Kingdom and Germany, whose speeches are analyzed here. This analysis examines how the speakers address the manner in which identities are constructed for nationals and transnationals as well as the management of existing and future transnational populations. The speakers and where and when they made their statements are as follows: Liam Byrne to the Local Government Association (LGA) concerning immigration on February 6, 2008 and to staff of the new United Kingdom Border Agency on April 3, 2008; Brice Hortefeux to the Senate on October 2, 2007 and to the National Assembly on October 23, 2007 in connection with the ‘projet de loi relatif à la maîtrise de l’immigration, à l’intégration et à l’asile’ (bill concerning immigration control, integration, and asylum); and Maria Böhmer to the Bundestag in the debate on the federal government’s integration policy on February 22, 2008 and Wolfgang Schäuble also to the Bundestag in the debate on the Migrationsbericht 2006 (2006 Migration Report) on May 9, 2008. Liam Byrne: Immigration discourse from the United Kingdom Liam Byrne’s (2008a, 2008b) speeches are part of a discourse of control, but they also pay significant attention to economic concerns affecting both the individual and nation. At the same time they incorporate important elements of a threat topos relating to a range of topics affecting the security

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of the British population and laws (e.g., pornography, weapons, drugs, and terrorism). Byrne echoes Frattini’s ambivalent depiction of immigration, and he also argues, as does Frattini, for ‘carefully controlled migration.’ Nonetheless, there is no mention of EU guidelines, documents, and discourse, nor is there any reference to policies, practices, and border agencies in other EU member states. Byrne implies he is discussing purely British initiatives, which do not need (or heed?) external impulses, from whatever source, in the control of transnational movements, although these have certainly played a role. Likewise, in the speech to the LGA, Byrne (2008a) repeatedly describes his authority in this matter as deriving from the British people. Cabinet directives, or Commission policies, are not mentioned. He emphasizes his frequent consultations, all over the country, with ‘the people’ and ‘the public.’ It is the public that demanded the changes to the immigration system in the first place, and it is their values and ideas – whether presented to him in meetings, or emerging in talk ‘in a pub, down at the shops, or at the school gate’ – that are the driving force behind the new initiatives. ‘The public has called for big changes to Britain’s immigration system,’ he says. These changes must incorporate the British value of ‘fairness’ to provide positive self-representation for immigrants alongside new powers to prosecute and deport offenders. The images projected by Byrne of the United Kingdom Border Agency, and of the country it is to protect, shift identity significantly in the direction of a business entity. The Border Agency exists and its powers have been strengthened to protect the United Kingdom, seen as a center of global business or, in Byrne’s words, as a ‘global hub where capital and ideas and people meet’ (2008b) and as a ‘global hub of global talent’ (2008a). According to Byrne (2008b), the Border Agency has a ‘business plan’ (mentioned twice) with a series of deadline targets; ‘its reach is global’; its activities can be described quantitatively – it exceeded its ‘target of removing over 4,000 foreign national prisoners’; it has ‘efficiency targets’ but needs ‘tougher targets.’ Terms used by Byrne (2008a) to describe the management of immigration (e.g., impact on ‘productivity,’ ‘boost GDP per capita,’ ‘level of vacancies,’ ‘government receipts,’ ‘growth,’ ‘net fiscal impact’) are suggestive of a business prospectus or annual report. And, as with business enterprises in general, a United Kingdom plc (public limited company) is explicitly depicted as being in competition with others for its market share and ‘global talent.’ The discussion of transnational phenomena thus relies strongly on topoi of autonomy and national identity defined in business terms, including prosperity. Statements concerning the regulation and control of transnational populations, and increases in their size, are not explicitly placed within the framework of the EU and its value-oriented discourse. On the other hand, in relation to national identity, there is no hostility expressed

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toward non-British identities and individuals; in fact the prospect of citizenship for newcomers is invoked twice in the speech to the LGA. The central argument is one of ‘benefits’ to the nation and the individuals (shareholders?) who compose it.3 In sum, references to national and personal self-interest but not to European partners respond to the British public’s relatively high level of distrust in the EU and its policy proposals. Notions of parliamentary supremacy or sovereignty as the foundation of the British state lead Byrne to completely ignore whatever external political factors have pushed the United Kingdom in this new direction. However, the marked instrumentalization of foreigners and transnational populations, also perceptible elsewhere in this Europe-wide discourse, establishes a set of norms that on the surface seems to be in some measure conducive of social cohesion, but is also highly problematic from at least three points of view: (1) what is economically ‘beneficial’ is always open to dispute, (2) it reinforces the notion of the ‘national’ as the standard, and (3) consequently it legitimizes the gap between definitions of the national and transnational. Brice Hortefeux: Immigration discourse from France Thematically the speeches of Brice Hortefeux (2007a, 2007b) to the Senate and the National Assembly overlap with those of his British counterpart in a number of areas: protection for the victims of human trafficking, presented as a twenty-first-century slave trade; prosecution of the employers of undocumented workers; the modernization of immigration practices and policies; increased deportations of undocumented persons; ‘the national interest’; acquisition of the national language; respect for obligations to refugees; the availability of citizenship; deportation of ‘rule-breakers’; and respect for national laws and traditions (referred to as ‘valeurs de la république’). However, Hortefeux constructs national identity very differently from Byrne. First, legislative initiatives on immigration in France have come from the top down. The bill on immigration, integration, and asylum is now accepted (or about to be accepted) by the National Assembly and the Senate based on a wide consensus across party lines, but it came from the cabinet following the initiative of the President of the Republic.4 The president and his office are referred to frequently in the speeches, as are the cabinet and the particular responsibilities conferred by the president on the speaker. The minister presents himself as an agent of the state, not the people. Hortefeux’s argument proceeds from two fundamental premises, which are both explicit: the existing French integration model has failed5 and the birthrate is at the level of replacement. The argument is also based on principles of human rights (occasionally made explicit, but not always): the protection owed by the state to law-abiding people, including immigrants and transnational populations; the protection of existing populations from communautarisme (parallel societies); the preservation of the separation of

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church and state; and notions of ‘co-development’ and the avoidance of ‘pillage des cerveaux’ (brain robbery; 2007a). The climax of Hortefeux’s (2007b) speech to the National Assembly is a vision of the France to be created, ‘une France diverse mais unie, riche de son harmonie’ (a diverse but united France, enriched by its harmony), which repeats Frattini’s European ideal of ‘unity in diversity.’ As in the British and Brussels cases, the discourse is one of control; however, it does not foreground the theme of economic advantage. Rather, the notion of control is presented, repeatedly, as the only fundamentally responsible course of action possible for the French people and legal immigrants, protecting them from abuses (distortion of the labor market) while preserving certain fundamental French principles. As already indicated, these initiatives come from the very pinnacle of the French state. At the same time, they parallel the thrust of the Brussels discourse. These references demonstrate a conception of national identity quite distinct from that contained in the British speeches. There the policy emerges from, and after significant consultation with, the British people; here Hortefeux (2007a) states the initiative was taken by the president following his commitment to create ‘une immigration choisie et concertée’ (a selective and coherent immigration process). Following the pattern of EU discourse and distinguishing himself from his British counterpart, Hortefeux makes multiple references to the integration of resident transnational populations and methods of achieving this. Principal among these, and in conformity with the EU discourse, is the acquisition of French-language competence before the immigrant arrives in France. Second, there is ‘l’intégration par le travail’ (integration through work; 2007b). In addition, families will have to sign an ‘integration contract’ and attend courses on the fundamental rights and responsibilities of life within French society. These frequent references arise out of the stated conviction that previous French practices and policies for integration have failed.6 The logic is clear: French identity is threatened by present and future transnational populations, and consequently the propagation of national values must continue. Both the distance and the direction to be traveled are indicated in the very numerous references to ‘we,’ ‘us,’ and ‘our’ (i.e., French people and French values, laws, practices, and habits). This frequent and absolutely consistent practice emphasizes difference to the disadvantage of whatever is non-French. However, this is balanced by the explicit but in some ways paradoxical statement concerning the availability of citizenship to the migrant, which will in its way contribute to the stated goal of ‘la cohésion de notre communauté nationale’ (the cohesion of our national community; 2007a). Such a statement about the availability of citizenship, which is also a statement concerning national identity, associates this discourse with the British one and sets it apart (as will be seen) from the German one.

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However, the fundamental ambivalence within this French (and European) discourse remains very evident. On the one hand, and as represented particularly in the speech to the Senate, these French examples strive to anchor themselves firmly in European practices concerning transnational populations. This is done through Hortefeux’s references to consultations with his European counterparts, to European jurisprudence on the detention of refugee claimants, to Dutch and German practices in relation to language and information testing, to the European Convention on Human Rights, to British and Italian practices regarding long-term residence permits, and to consultations with Brussels, particularly concerning DNA testing to establish family relationships. With all of these references, Hortefeux is, as Wodak (2007, 75) puts it, making and organizing Europe and drawing borders between inside and outside. But, as has just been indicated, the values to be propagated are national rather than transnational. Thus, there is an attempt to undertake the difficult task of melding the two sets of identitydefining values. The result is a move toward the transformation of identity. Maria Böhmer and Wolfgang Schäuble: Immigration discourse from Germany The division of ministerial responsibilities in Germany, which splits integration (lodged in the Chancellor’s Office) from (im)migration (Federal Ministry of the Interior) necessitates examining speeches by two different ministers. The speeches reveal an important degree of overlap between the two mandates. For example, Minister of the Interior Schäuble (2008) initially foregrounds questions of inward migration, but then discusses integration as the inseparable concomitant of immigration. Unlike the national discourses already discussed, these speeches do not overtly involve a discourse of control. Such concerns do not fall within the ambit of Federal Commissioner for Integration Böhmer, and while they have formed part of the discourse and responsibilities of the Minister of the Interior over the past 25 years, Minister Schäuble draws attention to other themes. The repeated statements on ‘integration’ and the redefinition of Germany as an ‘Integrationsland’ (Böhmer 2008) reflect current concerns about its urgency, as indicated by the very frequent use of these concepts at both the federal (e.g., Bundesministerium des Inneren 2008) and state (Land) level. At the same time, it would be legitimate to wonder whether integration (discussed further below) is perhaps not also a cover for the not unproblematic concept of a ‘[deutsche] Leitkultur’ (defining [German] culture; see Hentges 2002; Pautz 2005), still employed in the program of the Christlich-Demokratische Union Deutschlands (CDU) for 2007 onward and oriented toward the predominance of a tradition-oriented national identity. In the German speeches, the proximity to the Brussels discourse is evident in a series of shared themes: integration and an admission of the need for labor market immigration, the development of newcomers’ acceptance

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of local values, avoidance of ‘parallel societies,’ responsibility toward sending countries (though no mention of return migration), the importance of language acquisition, repression of human trafficking, and an awareness that these political processes and options are shaping the future of Europe. All of these themes figure prominently in the EU discourse, though this is not mentioned in the German speeches. Alongside these concerns, German-specific issues stand out: the question of citizenship, the attempt to reduce any inward migration through increasing the current transnational populations’ rate of workforce participation, and the teaching of religion in schools. On the first of these, Böhmer (2008) avoids the topic completely. In contrast, Schäuble (2008) devotes time to stating once more the government’s (in actual fact, his party’s) refusal to accept dual citizenship for transnationals from third countries who wish to become German through naturalization on the grounds that it prevents ‘Integration, Anpassung’ (adaptation) and ‘Heimischwerden in der neuen Heimat’ (developing a feeling of being thoroughly at ease in one’s new homeland). Neither Hortefeux nor Byrne evoke any such restriction, as long-standing practice in their respective countries accepts dual citizenship (in France at least since 1927 [Weil 2002] and in the United Kingdom even longer) and does not view it as problematic. Arguably, those countries’ more open practices and accompanying discourses have positive repercussions for the definition of ‘foreign’ and ‘transnational,’ which impacts both the self-definition of transnationals and attitudes among the autochthonous population. On the second point, Böhmer (2008) points to the lack of job training for younger segments of the transnational population and the current government’s actions to increase the number of available training positions. This touches on the question of integration through work (also advocated in France). But in addition, the higher the workforce participation rate, the lower the need for workforce immigration, which in the current climate would have clear political advantages in Germany. In some measure, national identity is shaped by constitutional values and the promotion of practices permitted by such values. In Germany the Constitution explicitly authorizes the teaching of religion in schools. Beginning in the 1990s Muslims, present for the first time to a significant degree in Germany, struggled to achieve recognition of their equal rights as citizens or denizens (Willems and Minkenberg 2003, 15). This struggle disturbed the long-held and strongly held conception of postwar German identity, anchored in nineteenth-century thinking and expounded in Chancellor Konrad Adenauer’s initial policy statement (Regierungserklärung) to the Bundestag on September 20, 1949, in which he asserted his commitment to ‘dem Geist christlich-abendländischer Kultur’ (the spirit of Christian occidental culture; Lein-Struck n.d.; Süß 2009).7 Consequently, Schäuble is significantly modifying a particular view of German identity

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when he draws attention to the fact that, in conformity with Article 7 of the Constitution, the government has taken measures to include Islam as an ordentliches Lehrfach (a recognized subject) that can be taught under the category of religious instruction in schools.8 This is a step on the way toward conferring on Islam what Koopmans (1999, 635–6) has called ‘a position of high symbolic value and public visibility’ with a ‘positive cultural and political connotation.’ The announcement and promotion of this policy represents a striking repudiation of the CDU/CSU’s9 carefully fostered discourse in 2004, which presented the possible wearing of headscarves by civil servants as totally incompatible with German identity.10 Also notable is the fact that the two German ministers do not make reference to clichéd but powerful notions of national identity comparable to the French ‘valeurs républicaines’ or British ‘fairness.’ Likewise, they do not refer to the ‘christliches Abendland’ (Christian Occident) and other emotion-laden concepts such as ‘nationales Zusammengehörigkeitsgefühl’ (feeling of belonging together as a nation) and ‘Solidaritäts- und Schicksalsgemeinschaft’ (community of solidarity and fate), terms used very frequently by their party (CDU) in the identity debates and manifestos in the previous 10 to 15 years (see, for instance, CDU 2001, 2002; Gould 2000, 2005, 2008). The redefining of Germany as an ‘Integrationsland’ since the Integrationsgipfel (integration summits) of 2006 and 2007 and the Nationaler Integrationsplan (National Integration Plan) of 2007 have necessitated these important transformations in the identity discourse away from a certain cultural specificity toward inclusiveness, and with the important reference to constitutional values. The national identity that emerges is one of an inclusive and economically competitive society. The uneasy cohabitation of these qualities arises from the dependence on immigration, which, at least initially, must create a transnational population. The long-standing resistance to acknowledging that certain immigrant groups are likely to become permanent residents and to the question of their incorporation into the mainstream indicates the difficulty in admitting that economic competitiveness may be tied to these processes. The recent shift in the public political discourse reflects a recognition of the necessity to adapt not just to a shared European position but also to the circumstances and imperatives resulting from globalization (see Hay and Watson 2003; Jessop 2004).

Conclusion The common background to the discourses analyzed here is the broader objectives of the EU, such as the development of a European social model capable of facing economic globalization and the realization of the Lisbon Strategy to increase European competitiveness. Commissioner Frattini (2007) stated that ‘migrants are a crucial part’ in realizing this strategy.

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The efforts of the five speakers in constructing and reconstructing the identities of the autochthonous populations and of the transnational populations in their countries and across the EU can be described as managing ambivalence – the ambivalence resulting from the necessity of accepting newcomers on economic, social (family reunification), humanitarian, and political grounds and the awareness of the present and future transformations in national practices and attitudes required to deal adequately with this situation. Analysis of Frattini’s speech reveals, on the European level, support for a continent-wide culture and the desire to promote certain cultural and social values, among both EU citizens and immigrants. Implicitly, the discourse suggests a commitment to effect a transformation of discriminatory national policies, practices, and values. The way that individuals or groups of newcomer-actors are portrayed by national or supranational actors represents the application of political language to reinforce, propagate, deny, or, most important for this paper, develop certain notions of identity. This implies a process of othering non-EU citizens and their values, as well as processes of cultural self-reflection and reenvisioning by politicians within Europe, which on occasion and significantly can include a move toward transformation. All of these processes result from perceived changes in the social and political dynamics in the policitians’ respective jurisdictions. These processes form part of the concepts of transnationalism and transnationality, which imply not only the movement of newcomers in space across demarcation lines or frontiers, but also metamorphoses, including shifts in individual and group identity – which arise from the now overt policies of immigration. Although not always admitted to be such, transnationalism in today’s Europe should be understood as a reciprocal process of adaptation. To take Bauböck’s (2003, 6) position, The integration of immigrants depends crucially on four conditions: economic opportunities, legal equality, cultural toleration and recognition, and an inclusive and pluralistic public culture. Economic opportunities for immigrants must allow for upward social mobility within and between generations. Legal equality can be achieved through combining extensive rights for settled noncitizens with guaranteed access to formal citizenship through naturalization or at birth. These approaches now form part of the discourse represented by the speeches analyzed in this chapter. Even though none of the speakers used the term transnational, they all implied to some degree a transnationalization of identity: rights previously restricted to citizens are being conferred on noncitizens, and changes in national practices are being advocated along with increased openness toward others. This is taking place as ‘an attempt to provide a coherent discourse of social solidarity in a Europe characterized by

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social diversity, plurality, contestation and fragmentation, on the one hand, and the breakdown of previously rigid divisions, such as state/market, state/ society, domestic/foreign on the other’ (Delanty and Rumford 2005, 108). The ‘implications of Europeanization’ in the title of Delanty and Rumford’s monograph, from which the quotation is taken, apply to the European social model, but this model has had the perhaps not entirely unintended consequence of encouraging the transformation and transnationalization of aspects of identity through the ‘breakdown of previously rigid divisions’ between ‘domestic’ and ‘foreign.’ Finally, it is helpful to consider the traditional conceptions of citizenship and national identity in the three countries concerned. These have been characterized in the following ways: the United Kingdom possesses a system of ‘parliamentary sovereignty,’ France one of ‘national sovereignty’ (referring to the sovereign will of the nation) with a strong state, and Germany one of ‘constitutional sovereignty’ with a strong role for the law (Hurrelmann 2005). Elements of these systems are perceptible in the ministers’ speeches. This is particularly the case for the statements by Hortefeux, who emphasized that the legislation was introduced on the initiative of the President of the Republic and also that the final version of the bill has very broad party support and so consequently represents the will of the constituent nation. When Schäuble referred specifically to Article 7 of the Constitution in connection with the teaching of Islam in German schools, he rendered this measure unassailable and also shifted German identity by incorporating this ‘new’ and transnational religion into German administrative and real-life practices, placing it on the same level as Christianity and Judaism. For Byrne, one can only speculate that an awareness of parliamentary supremacy lies behind his exclusive attention to domestic shifts in British immigration and integration policy. The overall conclusion that can be drawn is that in each case the fundamental identity discourse pertaining to the nature of the state and the relationship of citizens to it has been left untouched. At the same time, however, though in different degrees and against the significant background of a parallel and strong Brussels discourse, transnationalism was being incorporated into such questions of identity. This appears the weakest in the United Kingdom with the continuing emphasis on the traditional virtue of ‘fairness’ and the definition of the country as a commercial enterprise. It is stronger in Germany in relation to the sensitive and significant changes in the relationship between religion and the state; as Abromeit (1995, 60) notes, the German system of constitutional sovereignty certainly ‘contain[s] the answers to [ ... the] socio-political question[s] of day-to-day life.’ It is strongest in France from the point of view of the incorporation of factors and practices from Brussels and a wide range of European countries in the shaping and justification of practices and policies relating to transnational persons. Here the strong state and the sovereign will of the nation

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are presented as fully compatible with the transnational institutions of the EU acting across national borders.

Notes The author would like to thank the editors of this volume for their helpful suggestions during the writing of this chapter. 1. These include the European Council’s Global Approach to Migration (December 2005), the European Commission’s Policy Plan on Legal Migration (December 2005), Framework Directive on the Basis of Socio-Economic Rights of all ThirdCountry Workers (October 23, 2007), Directive on the Admission of Highly-Skilled Migrants (also October 23, 2007), Third Annual Report on Migration and Integration (September 11, 2007), Summary Report on Integration Policies in EU-27, Proposals to Develop Cooperation with Third Countries (May 2007), and EC Directive to Harmonise Sanctions against Employers Who Offer Work to Illegally-Residing Third-Country Nationals (May 2007). Future documents Frattini mentions include ‘a general Framework Directive on the basic socioeconomic rights of all third-country workers’ (October 23, 2007), ‘Directive on the admission of highly-skilled migrants’ (also October 23, 2007), and ‘Proposals for Directives on the admission of seasonal workers, remunerated trainees and intra-corporate transferees’ (2008). 2. See note 1. 3. For further examples of this, see Home Office (2007). 4. No doubt the bills presented to the Westminster parliament came from the Cabinet Office and had received the approval of the prime minister, but that is never mentioned. 5. ‘Osons regarder la vérité en face; le système français d’intégration a échoué’ (Let us have the courage to face the truth; the French integration system is a failure) (Hortefeux 2007a). 6. For further views of this, see Weil (2005), particularly Chapters II and III. 7. The full text is available in the online archives of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung at http://www.kas.de/wf/de/33.820/ 8. An ordentliches Lehrfach is a subject taught by a state-certified teacher, and the grades of which are part of the student’s permanent record. 9. The CSU (Christlich-Soziale Union) is the Bavarian sister party of the CDU, which does not operate in Bavaria. 10. For an overview of this, see Gould (2005, 2008).

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Wodak, R. (2004) ‘The Power of Language in Political Discourse’, Journal of Language and Politics, 3(3), 381–3. Wodak, R. (2005) ‘Global and Local Patterns in Political Discourses – “Glocalisation” ’, Journal of Language and Politics, 4(3), 367–70. Wodak, R. (2007) ‘ “Doing Europe”: The Discursive Construction of European Identities’ in R. Mole (ed.) Discursive Constructions of Identity in European Politics (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan).

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11 Integrating Migrants beyond the Nation-State? The Paradoxical Effects of Including Newcomers in a European Social and Cultural Community Oliver Schmidtke

The field of migration studies has been fundamentally shaped by a system of national categories. In its most basic terms, immigration is commonly understood as a process by which individuals or groups move to and take permanent residence in a new country. The decisive reference point in regulating and managing migration is the nation-state, which defines the rules based on which nonnatives can move to a country and gain access to employment and citizenship status. The nation-state is both the gatekeeper and the community of which newcomers are expected to become part. In this latter respect, the conceptualization of integration processes – as developed prominently in the tradition of the Chicago School (Park 1928) – is also essentially shaped by notions of a given nationally defined and territorially demarcated community into which newcomers are included in social, economic, and cultural terms. Traditionally in migration studies the very idea of ‘integration’ is constitutively bound to the presence of a community, defined by the territorial, ethnic, or cultural markers of a nationstate (Faist 2000; Bauböck 2003; Wimmer and Glick Schiller 2003; Wimmer 2007). Most prominently, transnationalist practices have contributed to a social reality that no longer seems to fit the categories of long-established migration research. The transnationalist perspective invites migration scholars to conceptualize more fully the connections that migrants establish between countries and how these practices might have a critical impact on how we are to understand processes of migration and integration. First, the idea of immigration as a single, almost irreversible act of moving from one country to another hardly reflects the conditions under which many 189

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migrants operate. Due to a heightened sense of mobility across national borders and new opportunities in a globalized economy, more resourceful migrants in particular pursue careers in a multitude of national arenas. In moving from one country to another – whether for personal or professional reasons – people encounter far fewer obstacles than in the past; the migration process has become increasingly multi-optional and subject to short-term strategic decisions. Research in this field has come up with terms such as ‘brain circulation’ (Saxenian 2005) or ‘brain exchange triangle’ (Devoretz and Zhang 2004; Devoretz and Pivnenko 2008) to capture how professional careers tend to be pursued and driven by opportunities in transnational environments. The internationalization of the political and economic spheres has also been accompanied by a cultural transformation of the popular symbolic meaning assigned to national borders: the challenge to the hitherto takenfor-granted quality of national borders lies, essentially, in deconstructing the myth of the congruence of a certain territory and an ethnically or culturally identifiable nation. The upsurge in cross-border mobility alludes to an important general point, namely, the growing incongruence of societal life, on the one hand, and a nationally defined political domain, on the other. The degree of cross-border migration, communication, and cultural consumption and interaction beyond the confines of national territories challenges the rationale of a world neatly divided into exclusive political communities (Schmidtke 2001). Along the same lines, research on immigration has forcefully pointed to the transnational character that shapes the social practice and self-perception of increasingly important groups of migrants. Their practices have fundamentally challenged an established sense of borders and loyalties to nationally distinct communities. The growing ethnic–cultural plurality of modern societies questions the very myth of national homogeneity and exclusiveness (Kivisto 2001; Kymlicka 2004). However, the effects of this transformation are far from evident. To what degree do these transnational practices and identities shape migration and processes of integration? Research on the conceptual link between transnational practices and patterns of international migration has primarily focused on the formation of cross-border networks. In particular with respect to the mobile and resourceful group of highly-skilled migrants the attention has been on how such networks change channels of skilled labor migration and shape its socioeconomic outcome (cf. Meyer 2001). This chapter investigates the role of these networks; yet the focus is primarily on the structural effects they have with respect to establishing modes of inclusion and recognition beyond the national arena.1 This chapter approaches the general debate on the significance and effects of transnationalism from a particular perspective. It focuses on the scope, meaning, and effects of transnational practices and identities in regard to the labor market inclusion of highly-skilled migrants in Europe.2

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This chapter concentrates on those migrants whose education and professional experiences make them prone to rely on and benefit from transnational networks. The assumption is that their ‘cultural capital’ – most prominent, their educational titles and professional experiences – become transferrable between national contexts and that transnationalism lessens the exclusionary effects of an exclusive national community and encourages more inclusive modes of integration in a critical arena such as the labor market. The process of European integration with its commitment to the unrestricted mobility of labor across borders seems to provide an institutional and cultural context that is most conducive to reducing the exclusionary effects associated with national labor markets (legal requirements as well as forms of racially motivated discrimination). Two dimensions of transnationalism are at stake here: first, social networks that cut across national borders and provide critical resources to migrants; second, forms of collective identity that can exert considerable modes of social exclusion. This text relies on the results of a research project that analyzed migrants’ transition into the labor market from a comparative transatlantic perspective on the basis of over 200 narrative interviews with skilled migrants.3 Their life stories, together with expert interviews in those countries, allow for a reconstruction of the degree to which transnational practices and identities became meaningful in their lives and a structuring feature of managing the challenges of migration. Labor market inclusion is a critical vehicle for social integration and as such it promises to shed light on the effects of transnationalism on processes of migration and integration. The first part of this chapter introduces the concept of cultural capital, which helps to understand how migrants are subject primarily to a nationally defined system of recognition of their degrees and skills; simultaneously migrants can seek to take advantage of transnational modes of recognition and inclusion to circumvent modes of national closure. Second, this chapter spells out the sometimes paradoxical effects of transnational practices and identities on the labor market inclusion of highly-skilled migrants. This dynamic is discussed primarily with a view to the effects of European integration and the emergence of an allegedly more inclusive and accommodating European identity. On this basis some, more generally, conclusions are drawn about how transnationalism has changed the structural and cultural conditions under which migrants pursue their professional careers.

Cultural capital and its recognition in national and transnational arenas One critical aspect shaping the experience of migrants is that they have to adapt to the regulations and expectations of the host society in pursuing their professional careers. This process is far more complex than suggested in the simple idea of ‘human capital,’ which sees education and skills primarily

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as a matter of monetary investment and return (Reitz 2001; Chiswick and Miller 2009). Indeed, the success and failure of highly-skilled migrants in finding adequate employment is not only dependent on the rational expectations of the labor market, but is also structured by processes of collective bargaining about the value of specific skills and knowledge. The culturally shaped expectations of both employers and employees, routines and habits in the labor market, and practices of inclusion, exclusion, and discrimination based on the construction of ethnic difference are also of critical significance for the process of labor market integration. In order to more adequately capture the factors shaping the labor market inclusion of migrants, the analytical concept of cultural capital is used. By developing the concept of cultural capital, Bourdieu (1986) drew attention to those aspects of culture that structure patterns of social inequality and access to societal resources. He distinguishes three forms of cultural capital, of which two are important for this research. First, incorporated cultural capital (e.g., mental schemes and action orientation, language, value, competences) is tied to a particular person, who acquires knowledge and skills through long socialization and educational processes. This type of cultural capital is closely related to the habitus, the incorporated culture. Second, institutionalized cultural capital refers to the set of skills and knowledge that is formally recognized and certified (such as educational titles, professional degrees, etc.). With respect to these two components, cultural capital is constitutively dependent on being recognized in societal and institutional practices – practices that traditionally have almost exclusively been defined in national terms. Through migration, the context for defining the content and value of cultural capital changes dramatically, even in professional fields that assume the full international convertibility of educational titles and skills. Those migrants who have acquired knowledge and skills abroad and then entered the country of their future residence face the differences between foreign and local cultural capital when pursuing their professional careers. When knowledge and skills obtained abroad are reevaluated in the country of immigration, implicit or explicit standards and expectations become relevant, which are not likely to be congruent with those of the country where the migrants were educated. This is the background against which the task of integrating immigrants into the fabric of society is perceived to be an increasingly pressing issue, in particular in Europe. While being propelled by severe demographic changes to attract increasing numbers of migrants, most European societies face severe difficulties in promoting their successful social and cultural integration. Low levels of achievements in the labor market and the education system are indicators of how challenging this process of integration often is and how persistent patterns of social exclusion prove to be across the continent (Kogan 2007). When highly educated migrants seek jobs in the labor market of their host country, recognition of their cultural capital is precarious. Or more

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precisely, migrants cannot be certain whether their stocks of knowledge and skills will be recognized in the labor market as cultural capital at all. Thus, there is concern over the relation between the persons with their incorporated knowledge and skills on the one side and the organizations present in the labor market with their expectations on the other. This relation is of course influenced by many other factors, chiefly the nation-state and struggles about symbolic exclusion. It is also structured by the educational organizations in which persons have received knowledge and skills, whether certified or not. In this sense, cultural capital is a relational category in the full sense (see Weiß 2005; Schittenhelm forthcoming 2011). Two aspects are of importance here. First, cultural capital is critically dependent on being recognized. It is no fixed entity or value that migrants can rely on; rather it has to be ‘realized’ under specific institutional and social circumstances. Second, the concrete meaning of cultural capital – in terms of entitlements and privileges – is context dependent in a constitutive sense. Traditionally this context is defined by the nation-state, its legislative framework, and sociocultural expectations. These legal norms and cultural expectations are enshrined in – nationally structured – institutional systems such as the education system. Gellner (1993) has argued convincingly that industrialization has depended on the generalization of reliable cultural standards in larger areas, which in turn prompted the development and success of the nation-state. And the value of knowledge and skills as cultural capital depends on their recognition, which is structured by struggles about social closure and the institutionalization of their results by the state (Parkin 1979). Hence cultural capital is dependent on context not only in its functionality, but also in its recognition. One decisive dimension of this process is the symbolic recognition of migrants’ cultural capital. Following this reasoning, this chapter seeks to conceptualize the effects of racial discrimination and stereotyping in the labor market. In this respect it builds on Bourdieu’s (1984, 1986) idea that symbolic systems play an essential role in the structural reproduction of inequality and domination.4 The symbolic recognition of cultural capital in its various forms can be seen as a critical determinant of success in the labor market. Cultural capital is essentially dependent on recognition and thus subject to symbolic fights over its actual meaning and ‘value’ (see also Gunn 2005). Weiß (2005) distinguishes between transnationally recognized cultural capital and location-specific cultural capital. In its content the latter is connected to specific locations. And some location-specific cultural capital has become hegemonic while other forms of cultural capital remain of secondary importance; for example, a native knowledge of English is valuable in many locations beyond English-speaking countries. Mostly, however, the value of location-specific cultural capital (such as knowledge of particular languages) is marginal beyond the limits of a specific location. The empirical question then is, first, which part of a migrant’s knowledge

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and skills are transnationally acknowledged and thus can be considered to be transnational cultural capital and which parts are location specific? For this purpose the research focuses on migrants whose cultural capital is prone to be internationally ‘transferable’ and thus recognized in most national contexts (e.g., managers, computer specialists, medical doctors, etc.). Second, the ways in which migrants succeed in improving the value attributed to their knowledge and skills so as to valorize their cultural capital is analyzed.

Transnational cultural capital and highly-skilled migrants in the labor market: Paradoxical effects of transnational communities What does transnationalism mean for the labor market inclusion of highlyskilled migrants? Do the above-described broad changes in terms of transnational mobility and identity formation structure processes of integrating newcomers into the social fabric on the ground? This analysis focuses on three aspects of the role that transnationalism plays in this respect: the power of regulative agencies, transnational identities, and ethnic cleavages as they play out in Europe. Beyond the national domain? The recognition of foreign credentials and work experiences Highly-skilled migrants face a seemingly paradoxical situation when seeking to gain recognition of their cultural capital and convert it into professional positions that reflect their training and experience. On the one hand, national agencies still play the role of gatekeepers, regulating the recognition of social capital and, as a result, access to professional positions. This alludes to more informal processes of recognizing cultural capital and to specific professional groups whose institutionalized cultural capital, that is, credentials and professional titles, are dependent on the explicit approval of state agencies. Indeed for some of these groups the acceptance of foreign academic titles is the indispensable requirement for labor market inclusion. In particular, highly regulated professions such as medical doctors, engineers, and teachers are subject to a certification process that is administered through national (educational or professional) agencies. Most importantly, the recognition of degrees still follows predominantly national standards and procedures. Highly-skilled migrants are often required to redo much of their education to be certified as doctors or engineers. However, there are also more informal modes of enforcing national standards in recognizing cultural capital in individual professional fields. Most important, the requirement of domestic work experience can function as an informal mode of devaluating foreign cultural capital and excluding newcomers from specific professional fields.

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On the other hand, there are clear trends indicating an increasingly important transnational context for evaluating cultural capital; the educational system widely follows international standards and curricula and often training is based on textbooks and research that are developed as part of a global scientific and professional community. For instance, professional fields in the natural sciences and medicine are often fundamentally shaped by transnational networks and collaboration. Careers are formed and nurtured in these networks. Scientific journals function as vehicles for international recognition and essential modes of advancing the value of cultural capital in the national labor market. In the same vein, the Bologna Process in the European Union is a prominent example of how institutionalized capital is increasingly subject to an internationally standardized educational system and professional benchmarks. In this respect, educational degrees become more easily transferable across national boundaries and cultural capital recognized in a way that is binding for national educational and labor market institutions.5 One prominent reason cultural capital becomes more and more independent of formal and informal recognition of migrants’ cultural capital in the national context is the diminishing role of state institutions in regulating particular professional fields. In the case of those whose knowledge and skills prove to be transnational from the beginning – that is, independent from the place of acquisition – one usually finds a labor market that itself has undergone a thorough transnationalization process. For instance, migrants in the world of international business and information technology have consistently provided evidence of forms of recognition that are widely emancipated from national legislative or cultural scripts. Their expertise is essentially seen as transferable across national contexts. These highly skilled migrants operate in a professional environment that, through the very mode of operating in a global market or cyberspace, is not compartmentalized along national borders. The modus operandi of big international corporations has fundamentally reshaped the evaluation of cultural capital; the expectation for highlyskilled migrants is to be able to operate in and across different national contexts. Transnational mobility becomes an asset rather than an impediment for success in the labor market. To put it in rather simplistic terms, it is more advantageous professionally if one’s qualifications and work experience are less tied to individual nation-states. Skills must be applicable on the ground and responsive to local circumstances but at the same time they need to adhere to international standards and modes of interaction. As a result, corporations often are no longer oriented toward hiring their workforce based on nationally certified forms of cultural capital. For more experienced employers, cultural capital is recognized and evaluated primarily on the basis of professional codes of efficiency and success, rather than tied to nationally specific educational certificates or work experiences.

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In this international environment, cultural capital is not likely to lose much of its value by being transferred from one national context to another. On the contrary, although for many migrants the recognition of their cultural capital becomes precarious, migrants working for international companies can use the transferability of their cultural capital – their familiarity with different national contexts – as a vehicle for promoting their careers. Under these circumstances the legal endorsement of credentials and the cultural recognition of skills and experiences are widely decoupled from national institutions or identity frames. Rather, nationally or locally specific cultural capital becomes an additional professional resource that might become advantageous as a marketable skill.6 Transnational identities – beyond national closure? The gradual decoupling of nationally specific and legally codified standards for recognizing cultural capital can also be detected in relation to processes of symbolic inclusion and exclusion. Historically, symbolic exclusion has been based primarily on ethnic, cultural, and linguistic identity markers that originated from the nation-state.7 With respect to evaluating migrants’ social capital, these identity markers function as lenses through which the merits of migrants’ work are judged and, in the perspective of many of the interviewees, their value diminished. Stereotypical judgments are attached to identity markers and employed to justify differential access for various groups to prestigious professional positions. In the European context, identity is widely perceived as a vehicle for symbolic exclusion and as a significant obstacle to educational and professional success. At times the interviewees reported individual incidents of racial discrimination and referred to experiences that demonstrated how negative images have become part of institutional practices. The most important identity markers identified from the interviews related to language and linguistic skills. An individual’s limited command of the host society’s language, or even of particular dialects, is often interpreted as a symbolic indicator of professional incompetence. Language and its pronunciation are here less important as a medium for communication and more indicative of a symbolic in- and out-group distinction. Beyond its functional aspect, language carries a strong classifying weight: limited linguistic capabilities and accents are often subject to negative connotations and serve as a basis for stereotypical judgments (e.g., stupidity, incompetence, etc.). In this regard the cultural (de-)appreciation of incorporated cultural capital emerges as one of the most important determinants of how well highly-skilled migrants fare in the labor market (Nohl et al. forthcoming 2011, Ch. 5). This chapter cannot discuss in detail the range of social practices that make the symbolic recognition of cultural capital so critical for the fate of highly-skilled migrants in the labor market. Instead it draws attention to how, in the European context, transnationalism has contributed to

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modifying the effects of national identity markers. One recurrent theme in the narrative interviews was the notion of an emerging European identity layer. In terms of both its legal dimension (recognition of degrees) and its cultural meaning (symbolic recognition), Europe increasingly provides a benchmark for judging the legitimacy of a migrant’s cultural capital in the labor market. Even if forms of symbolic exclusion were still widely described as constructed on the basis of a national/nonnational binary code, Europe adds an additional and highly important layer. Interviewees in Germany and the United Kingdom repeatedly provided narratives of how ‘being European’ contributed to a positive acknowledgment of migrants’ social capital. To illustrate this point, here is an example. A young doctor of Turkish origin described how in her new position she was appreciated as long as her counterparts believed she was from one of the Mediterranean EU member states. When it became apparent she was originally from Turkey, her qualifications were openly questioned and she experienced a belittling treatment by staff and patients. In cases such as this, whether one is perceived as European or non-European essentially changes patterns of cultural acceptance and recognition of incorporated cultural capital. In an increasingly integrated Europe it becomes more difficult to mobilize negative stereotypes and justify the symbolic exclusion of fellow European citizens. From the interviews there is persistent evidence to suggest that Europe is more than an abstract legal and political entity. With a view to the labor market inclusion of highly-skilled migrants, Europe also constitutes an identity frame within which to attribute equal recognition to the social capital of people from other EU member states. In this respect the greater transnational mobility promoted through European integration is accompanied by a devaluation of national closure, which migrants experience as discrimination or exclusion from equal opportunities in society. However, the integrative power of a transnational European identity has also produced a paradoxical effect: the EU is – to a certain degree unintentionally – part of a dynamic that reproduces negative stereotypes that drive xenophobic and discriminatory practices toward outsiders. Although the EU seeks to promote a more tolerant and inclusive society and spearheads antiracism programs in Europe, it is also a driving force in fortifying external borders and distinguishing between EU citizens and migrants from nonmember states. One could argue that a European community necessarily depends on enforced borders and a collective identity that reifies a strong sense of insiders and outsiders. In this respect the process of European integration is likely to reproduce exclusionary effects similar to those of the nation-state in the nineteenth century. Yet, while the EU is not likely to escape this logic in a world divided by borders, it has played a critical role in devaluing the cultural capital of migrants from outside its member states.

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In sum, what can be seen is a deep ambivalence in terms of the ‘liberating’ effects of an emerging European identity. This new identity frame has the potential to provide an environment in which traditional modes of social closure and discrimination against the allegedly inferior ‘other’ become less and less acceptable as social and political practice. In the labor market, national identity markers can no longer easily be used to symbolically exclude non-European migrants and their cultural capital. At the same time, the normalcy of a transnational community in the European workforce has also produced the notion of the extra-communitari or étrangers extra-communautaires, the non-EU, non-Western migrant, whose status is defined largely by a newly emerging pejorative identity. In a nutshell, in the European context there is a partial transnationalization in terms of identity formation. Although fellow EU citizens have gained in status and find easier venues to convert their cultural capital in the Europeanized labor market, third-country migrants face a renewed sense of symbolic exclusion and obstacles to seeing their skills and experiences accepted. Transnational networks and ethnic enclaves: Empowering, but also limiting A related yet distinct issue that sheds light on how transnationalism has a structuring effect on migrants’ labor market integration is the role of social and economic ethnic enclaves. Transnationalism is often considered to have critically contributed to the viability and significance of ethnic economic and labor market enclaves (Wong 2002; Hiebert and Ley 2006; Marger 2006). These enclaves are hubs for transnational economic activities and social ties between communities around the globe. With respect to the labor market inclusion of migrants, these enclaves play an important role in providing access to jobs and professional experience. The transnational character of these ethnic enclaves allows migrants to find comparatively simple entry points into the labor market and recognition of their cultural capital. Migrants’ institutional and incorporated capital is effortlessly appreciated as it often caters to the nature of businesses and services run by such ethnic enclaves. Some research has suggested that migrants often rely on the assistance of their own ethnic communities or pursue their professional careers in ethnic niche economies in order to make their way into the labor market. However, in scholarly debates, the impact of these niches on the professional careers of migrants is described in highly ambivalent terms. On the one hand, these niches are said to provide immigrants with a crucial support network, which empowers them to eventually overcome social exclusion in the new society. Such niche economies are depicted as facilitating the transition into the mainstream labor market. In this interpretation there are no insurmountable barriers between the ethnic niche economy and the economy of the host society; rather the cultural capital acquired in the

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former is said to constitute an entry point into the latter (Logan et al. 2003). On the other hand, some scholars have forcefully argued that such ethnic niche economies can have a detrimental effect on the careers of migrants. To be employed in this sector runs the high risk of perpetuating forms of exploitation, in particular among less-qualified workers, widening the gap between the niche economies and the mainstream economy. Light (1972) called this effect a form of ‘blocked mobility’ that many migrants have to endure (Min and Bozorgmehr 2003). Although professional marginalization through integration into such ethnic niches is a relatively rare phenomenon among highly-skilled migrants, there is a related process that was observed regularly in the study sample. For some interviewees, relying on their own ethnic community or on migrants as a general group proved to be a feasible option to promote their careers. For instance, providing services for these groups or using their linguistic skills for professional purposes helped to overcome obstacles in the passage into the mainstream labor market. In addition, the ‘ethnic attribution’ of segments of the labor market is a considerable force structuring the labor market integration of migrants. Ascribing professional niches or positions based on belonging to an ethno-cultural group works on at least two levels. First, there is the ethnic stereotyping commonly associated with exclusionary effects and, second, there are real opportunities for employment resulting from services catering to specific groups or immigrants in general. With respect to the latter aspect an ascribed group identity can function not only as a vehicle for domination but also for empowerment. An identity can become a resource that can be used strategically under socially favorable circumstances. For the European context transnational networks of migrants have taken on a qualitatively new role in providing opportunities for labor market access. This has two dimensions: First, more affordable and accessible modes of communication and travel across the continent allow for close transnational ties and forms of economic exchange, in particular for immigrant communities from within Europe. Given the growing degree of economic integration on the continent an increasing number of businesses operate on a European scale and are dependent on transnational networks and competences of their staff (linguistic and cultural abilities in more than one national context). In particular migrants from EU member states have been able to set up networks of information and assistance that provide entry points into the labor market in another country. The considerably large group of Polish workers in the United Kingdom is a good example: Full legal access to the British labor market, relatively inexpensive commutes from one country to the other and a well-established support structure have created an almost truly transnational labor market. Employment and travel agencies cater to the needs of these migrants, allowing many of them to live and work in two countries at the same time.

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Second, immigrant communities have grown recently to a degree that they are able to provide an increasingly important access to employment in a sector catering to particular minority groups. Under these circumstances being also rooted in a minority culture has the potential of upgrading one’s cultural capital – an experience that in the European context has traditionally been reserved for a small, privileged professional group (for instance in management or the banking sector). A positive impact of an ‘ethnicized cultural capital’ associated with one of the minorities is a relatively new phenomenon in Europe. The life story of a young medical doctor who came from Turkey as a child and completed her education in Germany illustrates this changing social and cultural reality well: After she graduated from medical school, she had to complete one year of an internship before she could become assistant doctor and then finally receive the full professional license. She started her internship at a hospital with, as she put it, ‘a high proportion of foreigners, that is to say a high Turkish proportion.’ Her perception was that although her performance was evaluated as excellent during her internship, her prospects for further employment as an assistant doctor were affected by her ethnic background. With a shortage of Turkish-speaking doctors, she was happy to take a position in the hospital where she could serve the Turkish population. Even when she received her full professional license she agreed to become a researcher in a project on sterile Turkish couples. However, she also expressed ambivalence about the practice of turning to her with all issues related to patients of Turkish descent. In her case, accepting an ‘ethnic ascription’ as an entry ticket into her professional field also led to limiting career options; essentially she became marked as an expert for Turkish patients. The story of this highly-skilled migrant sheds light on the sometimes paradoxical effects that transnational networks and communities are likely to have on the labor market inclusion of highly-skilled migrants. Ethnic niche economies and transnational networks provide migrants with privileged access to rare professional opportunities. In these contexts the cultural recognition of their cultural capital is largely unproblematic. Ethnic enclaves create a form of recognition and appreciation that defies the standards of the predominant national context. In this respect transnational networks generate a context in which national-specific codes of recognition are partly replaced by transnational forms of ethnic acknowledgment, solidarity, and mutual support. However, these ethnic enclaves can simultaneously be limiting on their own terms because of their reliance on a rigorous in-group logic. Overcoming social exclusion based on national closure can result in self-exclusion from the mainstream labor market. When cultural capital becomes ethnicized in terms of an ascription of particular skills and competences, it is likely to establish prevailing forms of social exclusion on its own terms.

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Conclusion: Transnationalism and migrants in the labor market Transnationalism has a notable effect on the process of including highlyskilled migrants in the labor market. It involves networks and a cultural sense of belonging across national borders and has substantially contributed to overcoming traditional forms of national closure. Legal and cultural modes of social exclusion that migrants regularly encounter when entering the labor market tend to lose their social base. Yet these benefits to newcomers vary considerably according to professional segments of the labor market. Although migrants in more regulated professional fields such as medicine and engineering are subject to an institutional set of significant barriers to finding qualified employment opportunities, other groups are more successful in taking advantage of transnational structures and networks. In the latter case, modes of recognizing migrants’ cultural capital can become essentially decoupled from national legal scrutiny and cultural orientations. This observation can be reformulated through the conceptual lens of Bourdieu’s studies on cultural capital: the recognition and appreciation of cultural capital becomes precarious through migration and its value is specific to a particular context. Traditionally these contexts were defined by the nation-state, its legal framework, and its cultural norms. However, transnationalism can transcend these territorially defined contexts and allow for the reproduction of transnationally recognized cultural capital. In this respect transnationalism has a liberating effect in providing an additional layer of recognition for migrants’ cultural capital and balancing the sometimes severe obstacles that result from national legal regulations and cultural expectations. A similar logic can be observed with regard to collective identities and their cultural modes of inclusion and exclusion. The degree of transnational mobility and exchange in an increasingly integrated Europe seems to provide a promising context for overcoming the legacy of exclusion associated with the nation-state: migrants can often rely on transnational social networks and communities that are no longer restricted by the confines of national societies. In the same vein, Europe promises a form of cultural integration free from the exclusivist tradition of national identities. As much as these transnational patterns of social and cultural integration have a liberating and empowering effect on migrants in Europe, there is a paradoxical outcome in terms of reproducing an exclusionary logic at the European level. An emerging European community necessarily depends on enforced borders and a collective identity that reifies a strong sense of insiders and outsiders. The result is a new social and cultural exclusion justified by the divide between Europeans and non-Europeans. These findings challenge both traditional approaches in migration research and political responses to managing migration in policy terms.

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First, migrants can increasingly rely on transnational networks and modes of recognizing cultural capital, which, at least for more privileged professionals, changes the very parameters of conceptualizing notions of integration and equality (Joppke 2007), generating new forms of inclusion and exclusion beyond the nation-state. In this respect, transnationalism constitutes an essential new reference point in understanding how migrants are included in the fabric of society and what kind of challenges and opportunities they encounter in the process. The literature on methodological nationalism has indicated the far-reaching changes this will require in terms of revamping the analytical tools for migration research. Second, there are also critical consequences for an appropriate policy approach: new forms of transnationally generated social exclusion and inequality need to be taken into account to ensure the equitable and effective integration of newcomers (Weiß 2006; Zolberg 2007; Schmidtke and Ozcurumez 2008). In particular, in the European context it is likely that obstacles to the transferability of cultural capital across national contexts will need to be addressed from a transnational perspective. In this respect, the Europeanization of migration and, more importantly, integration policies (Rosenow 2009) is only in its very early stages.

Notes This article is based partly on the findings of the international research project ‘Cultural Capital in Migration,’ which is led by Arnd Nohl, Karin Schittenhelm, Oliver Schmidtke, and Anja Weiß and funded by the German Volkswagen Foundation (2006–10). For more details, see http://www.cultural-capital.net/ 1. One recurrent theme found in studies of such questions, however, is the huge divide between the attitudes of well-educated elites and popular sentiments. Although the former show distinct loyalties toward forms of cultural and political belonging at the sub- and supranational level, the latter are still widely attached to a primary allegiance to the nation(-state) (see Favell 2008). In most parts, such studies are based on interviews with members of the former group identifying key practices and identities extending beyond national borders. 2. This perspective follows one of the transnationalism literature’s main conceptual premises (Vertovec 1999), namely to inquire into how modes of social and cultural modes of reproduction (for instance in the labor market) drive and, at the same time, are critically shaped by trans-border interactions and identities. 3. The interviews were conducted in Canada, Germany, Turkey, and the United Kingdom and systematically analyzed with the help of the documentary method (for the methodological approach, see Nohl et al. 2006). 4. Lamont and Lareau (1988, 156), for example, developed what is probably the most widely cited operational definition of cultural capital: ‘widely shared, high status cultural signals (attitudes, preferences, formal knowledge, behaviors, goods, and credentials) used for social and cultural exclusion.’ 5. The European Union (EU) has its own recognition guidelines that affect immigrants from within the EU, but do not apply to non-EU immigrants. This creates in effect a two-tiered recognition process, making it easier for one group

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of highly-skilled immigrants (EU ‘insiders’) to integrate into the domestic labor market than for others (third-country nationals). 6. In this respect it is not surprising that the interviewees described their cultural capital in terms of a competitive advantage in the job market or did not address the issue altogether. 7. Clearly, subnational divides such as strong regional or local identities can also provide the social context for modes of symbolic exclusion; the North–South divide in Italy is a case in point.

References Bauböck, R. (2003) ‘Towards a Political Theory of Migrant Transnationalism’, International Migration Review, 37(3), 700–23. Bourdieu, P. (1984) Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste (Cambridge: Harvard University Press). Bourdieu, P. (1986) ‘The Forms of Capital’ in J. G. Richardson (eds.) Handbook for Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education (New York: Greenwood). Chiswick, B. R. and P. W. Miller (2009) ‘The International Transferability of Immigrants’ Human Capital’, Economics of Education Review, 28, 162–9. Devoretz, D. and S. Pivnenko (2008) ‘The Immigration Triangle: Quebec, Canada, and the Rest of the World’, Journal of Immigration and Integration, 9(4), 363–81. Devoretz, D. and K. Zhang (2004) ‘Citizenship, Passports and the Brain Exchange Triangle’, Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis, 6(2), 199–212. Faist, T. (2000) The Volume and Dynamics of International Migration and Transnational Social Spaces (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Favell, A. (2008) Eurostars and Eurocities: Free Movement and Mobility in an Integrating Europe (Oxford: Blackwell). Gellner, E. (1993) Nations and Nationalism (Oxford: Blackwell). Gunn, S. (2005) ‘Translating Bourdieu: Cultural Capital and the English Middle Class in Historical Perspective’, British Journal of Sociology, 56(1), 49–64. Hiebert, D. and D. Ley (2006) ‘Characteristics of Immigrant Transnationalism in Vancouver’ in V. Satzewich and L. Wong (eds.) Transnational Identities and Practices in Canada (Vancouver: UBC Press). Joppke, C. (2007) ‘Beyond National Models: Civic Integration Policies for Immigrants in Western Europe’, West European Politics, 30(1), 1–22. Kivisto, P. (2001) ‘Theorizing Transnational Immigration: A Critical Review of Current Efforts’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 24(4), 549–77. Kogan, I. (2007) Working through Barriers: Host Country Institutions and Immigrant Labour Performance in Europe (Dordrecht: Springer). Kymlicka, W. (2004) Politics in the Vernacular: Nationalism, Multiculturalism, and Citizenship (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Lamont, M. and A. Lareau (1988) ‘Cultural Capital: Allusions, Gaps and Glissandos in Recent Theoretical Developments’, Sociological Theory, 6(2), 153–68. Light, I. (1972) Ethnic Enterprise in North America (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press). Logan, J., R. Alba, and B. Stults (2003) ‘Enclaves and Entrepreneurs: Assessing the Payoff for Immigrants and Minorities’, International Migration Review, 37(2), 344–88. Marger, M. (2006) ‘Transnationalism or Assimilation? Patterns of Sociopolitical Adaptation among Canadian Business Immigrants’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 29(5), 882–90.

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Meyer, J-B. (2001) ‘Network Approach versus Brain Drain: Lessons from the diaspora’, International Migration, 39, 91–108. Min, P. and M. Bozorgmehr (2003) ‘The United States: The Entrepreneurial Cutting Edge’ in R. Kloosterman and J. Rath (eds.) Immigrant Entrepreneurs: Venturing Abroad in the Age of Globalization (Oxford: Berg). Nohl, A.-M., K. Schittenhelm, O. Schmidtke, and A. Weiß (2006) ‘Cultural Capital during Migration – a Multi-Level Approach for the Empirical Analysis of the Labor Market Integration of Highly Skilled Migrants’, Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 7(3), http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/142, date accessed February 15, 2010. Nohl, A.-M., K. Schittenhelm, O. Schmidtke, and A. Weiß (forthcoming 2011) Cultural Capital in Migration: The Labour Market Integration of Highly Skilled Migrants. Park, R. (1928) ‘Human Migration and the Marginal Man’, American Journal of Sociology, 33, 881–93. Parkin, F. (1979) Marxism and Class Theory: A Bourgeois Critique (New York: Columbia University Press). Reitz, J. G. (2001) ‘Immigration Skill Utilization in the Canadian Labour Market: Implications of Human Capital Research’, Journal of International Migration and Integration, 2(3), 347–50. Rosenow, K. (2009) ‘The Europeanization of Integration Policies’, International Migration, 47(1), 133–59. Saxenian, A. (2005) ‘From Brain Drain to Brain Circulation: Transnational Communities and Regional Upgrading in India and China’, Studies in Comparative International Development, 40(2), 35–61. Schittenhelm, K. (forthcoming 2011) ‘Pathways to Qualified Labour: Career Trajectories of the Second Generation’ in M. Wingens and M. Windzio (eds.) Migration and Life Course Research (Dordrecht: Springer). Schmidtke, O. (2001) ‘Trans-National Migration: A Challenge to European Citizenship Regimes’, World Affairs, 164(1), 3–16. Schmidtke, O. and S. Ozcurumez (eds.) (2008) Of States, Rights, and Social Closure: Governing Migration and Citizenship (New York: Palgrave). Vertovec, S. (1999) ‘Conceiving and Researching Transnationalism’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 22(2), 447–62. Weiß, A. (2005) ‘The Transnationalization of Social Inequality: Conceptualizing Social Positions on a World Scale’, Current Sociology, 53(4), 707–28. Weiß, A. (2006) ‘The Racism of Globalization’ in D. Macedo and P. Gounari (eds.) The Globalization of Racism (Boulder, CO and London: Paradigm). Wimmer, A. (2007) ‘How (Not) to Think About Ethnicity in Immigrant Societies: A Boundary Making Perspective’ in K. Schittenhelm (ed.) Concepts and Methods in Migration Research, http://www.cultural-capital.net/reader/Concepts-and-Methods. pdf, date accessed February 15, 2010. Wimmer, A. and N. Glick Schiller (2003) ‘Methodological Nationalism, the Social Sciences, and the Study of Migration: Theorizing Society and Polities in a Global Era’, International Migration Review, 37(3), 576–610. Wong, L. (2002) ‘The Emergence of Small Transnational Enterprise in Vancouver: The Case of Chinese Entrepreneur Immigrants’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 26(3), 508–30. Zolberg, A. R. (2007) ‘The Changing Nature of Migration in the Twenty-First Century: Implications for Integration Strategies’ in G. Yurdakul and Y. M. Bodemann (eds.) Citizenship and Immigrant Incorporation: Comparative Perspectives on North America and Western Europe (New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan).

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12 Muslim Migration, Institutional Development, and the Geographic Imagination: The Aga Khan Development Network’s Global Transnationalism Karim H. Karim

Ismaili Muslims are an example of a transcontinental group that comprises indigenous and migrant communities located in various parts of the world. Many of the global Ismaili community’s key institutions are headquartered in Europe, and they engage with European, as well as other, states and international organizations. This community, like many other ‘transnations’ (Appadurai 1996, 172), traverses the borders of Europe, belying standard notions of a clearly demarcated continent with apparently fixed ideas about Europeanness. The concept of Europe, which has come to be used frequently as a synonym for the European Union (EU), has a deceptive stability that conceals a long-standing ambiguity. The continent’s outlines seem more clearly defined at its Atlantic edges, but less so along its Balkan and Eurasian marches. Nevertheless, the political geographies of Europe (like those of other territorial constructions) tend to operate within a fictional standardization of boundaries and the labeling of institutions within them as ‘European.’ The study of Europe in such constructs then becomes a largely unquestioned scholarly exercise that usually does not leave contingent the ambiguities of its geopolitical constitution. Said (1978) describes a similar academic and political construction, that of the ‘Orient,’ a primary Other of Europe. By examining the experience and geographic constructs of Ismaili Muslims, a transnational community present in Europe but not limited to or ‘of’ Europe, this study highlights some less conventional understandings of the importance of transnationalism in the EU. It supplements existing literature on the participation of non-state actors in cross-border activities (e.g., Keck and Sikkink 1998; Stasiulis and Bakan 2005) as well as research on diasporic 205

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media that has sought to demonstrate how communal networks collaborate culturally over vast distances (e.g., Cunningham and Sinclair 2000; Karim 2003). This chapter argues that standard analytical frameworks of political geography are inadequate in enabling a proper understanding of the transnationalism of communities such as the Ismailis. An appreciation is needed of the parallel cartographic conceptions that serve as the frameworks for the institutional links that they sustain around the world. Just as a certain geographic imagination upholds the integrity of a particular way of understanding what constitutes that which is called Europe and other places, other ways of knowing terrestrial space produce different perceptions of the connections and separations between specific parts of the world. Transnationalism challenges the dominant political cartographies that have emerged over the past few centuries, particularly the notions of fixed national and regional territories and the identities that are attached to them. The global networking of transnational communities means that such communities do not fit into categorizations that view them only as European (or Asian, Middle Eastern, etc.). Notwithstanding the increasingly inclusionary policies of individual European states and the EU toward migrant communities and people of non-Christian backgrounds, global diasporas resist the limitations of such geographic identities through transcontinental networking. The Ismaili community’s public institutions are grouped largely under the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN; Daftary 1998, 208–9). But despite the location of the Ismaili leadership’s primary home and institutional headquarters in Europe, terming the AKDN as ‘European’ would be a misnomer due to its strong links with North America, Africa, South Asia, the Middle East, and Central Asia. Nor would another regional appellation be more appropriate; it seems more apt to refer to the multinational, multiethnic community and its worldwide network as globally and transnationally pluralist. Nevertheless, even cosmopolitan individuals and communities necessarily have to abide by local circumstances and regulations and to operate within the continental and certainly the national norms of their places of operation. This is particularly true of laws and regulations pertinent to such matters as the transborder operation of organizations and the employment of expatriates. In this sense, the Ismaili experience in Europe is modulated by the continental, national, and municipal contexts in which it is geographically located. The category of Europe, therefore, does remain relevant in examining the operation of the AKDN. The roots of the intercontinental AKDN are to be found in the efforts of a relatively small Ismaili Muslim community to improve the social and economic welfare of its marginalized community in nineteenth-century India. What began with the promotion of the primary health and education of Ismailis in South Asia and their emigrant communities in Africa resulted

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within a century in an institutional infrastructure that operates in both the southern and northern hemispheres, serving the international Ismaili community and others. The AKDN employs large numbers of non-Ismailis at all levels of the organization; ‘the fulcrum of the Network’s activities, however, remains the Ismaili Community – its traditions of volunteer service, self-reliance, generosity and the leadership of the hereditary Imam’ (AKDN 2007, 5). Some of the community’s unique sociological factors include its ethnic diversity and its status as a religious minority in the national states where it is present. This indigenous and migrant group of a few million people scattered over numerous countries is led by a religious leadership that invokes a definitive sense of history and a mandate to address the community’s material needs. As leaders of a minority community, the Aga Khans have pursued an apolitical approach of engaging nationally and transnationally with governments and nongovernmental organizations. In addressing the interests of their followers, they have adopted a policy of promoting the development of the larger societies in which their followers live. This is expressed in a humanitarianism that has made the AKDN into an effective collaborator with a variety of partners. Examination of the AKDN is particularly appropriate to a broader study of transnational diasporas because of the extensive reach of the organization. Whereas most migrants establish institutions in places of settlement, the Ismailis appear to be unique in the scale and sophistication of their international organizational network. Their global institutional activities certainly seem to go far beyond the communication linkages of other transnational Muslim communities that maintain contact through media such as the Internet (Bunt 2009) as well as religio-commercial networks like those of the West African Murids (Diouf 2002). The Ismaili community’s global institutional structures appear to be even more rigorous than those of other non-Muslim groups, including diasporic Jews (Stratton 2000; Lévy and Weingrod 2005). Such networks are an integral part of globalization, even though they are largely ignored by scholars of this phenomenon. Globalization in the context of Europe is usually studied at the state or corporate level and generally account is not taken of ‘globalization from below’ (Falk 1993). This chapter views the latter as manifested by communities whose networks extend transnationally and tests the state-centered analysis of Europe as the means to understand contemporary global relationships. Even though financial, labor, and migratory regulations place limits on cross-border mobility, transnational communities are managing to develop viable international linkages. Whereas some of these networks operate outside the law, it is not possible to sustain publicly recognized institutions that function illegally – especially given the regimes of scrutiny instituted following the attacks of September 11, 2001.

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A brief account of Muslim migration The affinities produced by colonial languages and cultures as well as preferential immigration regimes have influenced the movements of migrants from the former colonies of Britain, France, Portugal, Spain, and the Netherlands in Africa, Asia, and Latin America to the ‘mother countries.’ Since the midtwentieth century, Muslims and other peoples have moved from South Asia to the United Kingdom in large numbers, as have those from the former French colonies to France and those from previous Portuguese possessions to Portugal. Others from the southern reaches of the former Soviet Union are also settling in Russian metropolitan areas. Ismailis have been a part of these migrations. Migration is a primary motif in Islamic consciousness. The Islamic calendar’s starting point is the Prophet Muhammad’s hijrah (migration) from Mecca to Medina in 622 CE, which marks the establishment of the first Muslim community. The metaphor of hijrah has been commonplace over the last 14 centuries in the literary and cultural imagination of Muslims around the world. It has been used as a physical and spiritual symbol of a passage that usually connotes movement to better conditions for individuals or groups. Muslim history is punctuated by a series of major and minor migrations, which have reshaped the religious, cultural, and political geography of large parts of the world. Inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsula had been engaged in outward expansion before the advent of Islam. Following the death of the Prophet, a major movement began into neighboring lands. Within a century, Arab forces and their allies had reached as far as Spain in the west and the borders of China in the east. Arabia’s population was relatively small and therefore the number of people who settled in other lands was not numerically significant. But the lasting effect of this migration is manifested in the spread of Islam, the Arabic language, and Arab culture. Whereas the religion had a much broader influence, Arabic as a common language did not survive beyond what today is called the ‘the Arab world.’ In effect, this region has been the mainstay of the diaspora that originated in the Arabian Peninsula. The history of some other Muslim peoples is also characterized by great migrations. The Turks expanded westward from East Asia into lands under Muslim rule. Following a period of confrontation, they converted to Islam and eventually became part of the ruling classes. The Ottoman Empire extended the Muslim domain into Central Europe and had a long-lasting effect on that region’s culture. By the nineteenth century, the Turkic diaspora spanned Asia Minor, Central Europe, Central Asia (including presentday eastern China), and parts of the Arab world and South Asia. Another feature of Islam that has shaped migration and the formation of diasporas is the pilgrimage to the Arabian city of Mecca in both its forms: the

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grand annual hajj, which occurs in the month of Dhul Hijjah of the Muslim calendar, and the umrah, which takes place at other times. Performance of the pilgrimage from the various places where Muslims lived to Mecca generated a culture of long-distance travel. Overland and seafaring journeys familiarized travelers with the environs and cultures of other Muslims and of other peoples, among whom they occasionally settled. Pilgrimage often coincided with trade; indeed Mecca had been a trading center long before Islam. Caravanserais and other facilities for travel made journeying convenient and led to the growth of trading networks such as the Silk Route. Islam was spread to southern India and Southeast Asia as well as East and West Africa by Arab merchants, some of whom made homes for themselves in these places. Sufi teachers and other preachers also traveled large distances to extend the reach of the faith. The transnational presence of Muslims came to be viewed as consisting of one community, the ummah, in their geographic imagination. This encouraged the growth of lateral links across continents and fostered a cosmopolitan outlook. Muslims share a long history with Europeans. Tariq ibn Ziyad’s crossing of the Strait of Gibraltar in 711CE at the head of an expeditionary force heralded the arrival of Muslims in Europe. Succeeding centuries saw episodes of conflict and coexistence between the two peoples. In addition to establishing a major Muslim state in Iberia, Arabs periodically held principalities in France, Italy, and other European locations along the Mediterranean. Crusaders ruled parts of the Holy Land from the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries. Despite periods of war, trade and cultural exchange flourished. The very concept of a unified European Self distinctly characterized as Christian arose in contrast to the Muslims, whose homelands were to the south and east of the continent (Rodinson 1979, 10–11; also see Hentsch 1992). In contemporary times, this self-image may be contributing to resistance on the part of some Europeans in admitting Turkey to the EU (The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life 2005). Europe benefited vastly from the transfer of knowledge produced by Muslim scientists and philosophers in the centuries leading up to the Renaissance. Even as they passed the torch of learning westward, Muslims began to slide into what became their own dark ages as intellectual conformity increasingly replaced critical thought and innovation. Muslim penetration of Europe was limited at this time, but movement began into the Americas. However, these migrations did not see the permanent formation of a Muslim presence in the New World. The existence of Islamic architecture in locations of early Spanish settlement may have been a residual outcome of the strong Muslim presence in Spain until the eve of the voyages of discovery. Large numbers of West African Muslims were transported on slave ships and made to give up their faith. Attempts by the Ottoman navy to claim parts of the Americas also came to nothing. European colonization in Africa and Asia led to the subjugation of almost all Muslim

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domains. Colonial expansion around the world produced constraints but also extended the locus of travel for Muslims. In the nineteenth century, communities of Indian Muslims began to form in West Indian colonies such as Guyana and Trinidad as a result of British colonial ventures that transported indentured laborers to work on plantations. There was also movement of Indian Muslims to other parts of the British Empire, including eastern and southern Africa, Malaya, Hong Kong, and Fiji. They also traveled to the colonies of other European powers. However, migration to Europe or to ‘white’ dominions (Canada, Australia, New Zealand) was largely barred. Muslims from the Ottoman Empire, including Arab lands (particularly Syria and Lebanon), did manage to travel to the United States, Canada, and Latin America and began to constitute what are probably the foundations of contemporary Muslim communities in North America. Several factors in the contemporary world are reshaping the nature of migration and the formation of Muslim diasporas. Relatively cheaper air travel has permitted people to have significantly higher mobility than in the past. The growth of dual citizenships around the world has facilitated further Muslim migration, especially because many Muslim-majority countries do not permit emigrants to give up their citizenship. Media technologies, particularly the Internet, cheaper international telephony, and satellite television have enabled better communication between families and other kinship groups, allowing for wider mobility and maintenance of intercontinental diasporic connections (Karim 2006). The contemporary networks of Muslims have given rise to postcolonial geographic cartographic conceptions, which mark out the transnational pathways along which interactions between themselves and others take place. These pathways are, however, modulated by particular limitations to the free movement of Muslims due to restrictions imposed following the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Diasporic Muslim institutions and networks European Muslims have set up numerous organizations to address their religious and social needs (Al-Azmeh and Fokas 2007; Amghar et al. 2007). Mosques and other Muslim places of worship are usually the first to be established in a place of settlement and often also serve as centers for social and intellectual activity. Some of the larger ones have facilities for children’s religious education, libraries, offices, meeting rooms, and social halls. These institutions are usually run by committees made up of Muslims living in the area. Educational organizations, including those offering higher education diplomas; charitable foundations; Islamic banks; garment stores selling ‘Islamic’ clothing; bookstores with literature on Islam; and butcheries, grocery shops, and restaurants offering halal fare are to be found in the larger settlements where Muslims have been present for a substantial period of

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time. The locations of these organizations and businesses become significant in the maps that Muslims living in various European cities chart in their communal lives. Most European countries have nationally based Muslim councils that oversee the running of institutions. In some countries, competing organizations vie for support from migrant Muslims. Many tend to be based on sectarian, national, and ethnic affiliations and run parallel services for their adherents. Funding from majority-Muslim states, particularly Saudi Arabia and Iran, and the patronage of respective European governments influence the ideological leanings of some bodies. Certain organizations seek to coordinate activities on a continent-wide basis. These include the Islamic Council of Europe, the Federation of Islamic Organizations in Europe, the Council of European Jamaats, and the European Council for Fatwa and Research. Many of the national and continental Muslim institutions also maintain a web presence (Bunt 2009). Several Sufi orders are transnational in their following and, like other Muslim groups, have adopted contemporary communications technologies to maintain contact with their European and worldwide membership. This use of such technologies, which are particularly useful for organizations whose members are scattered over large areas, has enhanced their conceptualization of participating actively in a far-flung community. Several Muslim diasporas have developed transnational institutional structures of varying scope that go far beyond the religious character of the respective groups. These include the Ismailis, the Senegalese Murids, and the Ithna Ashari Khojas. Whereas literature on the first two groups has been growing, it is difficult to find material on the latter. Noted sociologist Ernest Gellner wrote an article in 1973 for Daedalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, which presented Indian Ismailis and the Senegalese Murids in their ‘post-traditional’ contexts. Although Gellner’s understanding of Islamic history, theology, and spirituality was limited, he was able to bring his social scientific insight to bear in his observations of the two very different Muslim groups. He noted that the combination of their respective religious outlooks and engagement with the social conditions of modernity had led to notable economic successes in the contemporary world. The Murids are a Sufi order founded in the nineteenth century in colonial Senegal by Amadou Bamaba. Most members of the brotherhood come from the homeland of the Wolof, the largest ethnic group in Senegal. The French colonial forces’ destruction of the traditional religious and aristocratic structures in the region had made it possible for other indigenous social forms to emerge. Murids were able to maintain their distinct status by adopting a political and economic strategy that, on the one hand, integrated colonial agriculture and, on the other, retained autonomy from the colonial state. Their religious practices were less scriptural than those of

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other Muslims in the region. Central to their internal organization was the personal relationship between the disciple and the marabout, who received his authority from the Murid hierarchy. As a result of the loyalty generated from this relationship, the latter was able to mobilize labor for the production of peanuts, Senegal’s key export crop, as well as for the distribution of manufactured agricultural products (Diouf 2002, 111–18). After success in Senegal, the Murids began to expand to other parts of Africa as traders. In more recent decades, they have also established themselves in Europe, the Americas, Asia, and Australia (Diouf 2002, 119). Murids maintain religious and cultural practices from the homeland in their new environments, and they have melded their entrepreneurship with the loosening of trade restrictions in various regions of the world. With their particular ways of globalizing from below, the Murids’ international trading connections have enabled them to compete successfully in various consumer markets. This network includes centers in France: [A]t Strasbourg in the east, in contact with Germany and the wealthiest European tourists; at Marseilles in the south, near the French and Italian beaches crowded during the summer; and at Paris, at every season. ... They compete aggressively with Strasbourg merchants whose most lucrative activity is selling plastic or plaster storks to tourists, especially German tourists, during the summer season. Using their global connections, the Murids are able to obtain these same products in the Chinese neighborhoods of New York at prices their Strasbourg competitors cannot match. (Diouf 2002, 122–3) Murid merchants also trade in electronics acquired from Asia, but are particularly known for their monopoly over the sale of cosmetic products in many European cities. In their innovative application of contemporary systems of global commercial distribution, they are postmodernist in orientation (see Hall 1997). Despite their cosmopolitan practices, the Murids nevertheless organize themselves socially in exclusive areas in the places where they relocate. They are concentrated in particular sites within cities. They symbolically recreate the Senegalese environs of their origins and perform Murid rituals established by the order’s founder. Many still make an annual pilgrimage to the city of Touba in Senegal. Murids appear therefore to be relatively resistant to the type of cultural assimilation generally associated with globalization. The strength of their postmodernist transnational connections is paralleled by the resilience of their post-traditional cultural practices; Hall (1997, 184–7) notes that ‘the global postmodern ... is an extremely contradictory space.’ Despite the fact that the Murids’ relatively successful integration into the European economic system had its origins in their response to French colonialism, their transcontinental networks and geographic

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linkages extend beyond a European framework of analysis. Ismailis share a few characteristics with the Murids, but differ in many ways.

Ismaili migration and institutional development Like the Murids, the engagement of Ismailis with modernity has been shaped by the colonial experience. Prior to the colonial era, numerically significant indigenous (Nizari) Ismaili Muslim communities were found in Syria, Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, China, and India. This broad geographic spread and ethnic diversity was due largely to the Ismaili branch of Shia Islam’s historical conversion trends (Daftary 1998). Large-scale migration became important after the mid-nineteenth century. Significant Indian Ismaili communities emerged in eastern and southern African countries by the late-nineteenth century, partially as a result of the British administration’s encouragement of Indian migration to its African colonies. Settlements also developed in Mozambique (a colony of Portugal); the Congo, Rwanda, and Burundi (colonies of Belgium); and Madagascar (a colony of France). Hereditary Ismaili leadership, the Imamat, moved from India to Europe in the early twentieth century. Aga Khan III (Sultan Mohamed Shah), who was Imam from 1885 to 1957, managed to establish strong organizational structures for the communities in South Asia and Africa; however, he had limited access to communities in the Middle East, Soviet Central Asia, and China. Aga Khan III was an energetic and visionary modernizer, who led a community of traditional small-scale farmers and shopkeepers into the twentieth century. Following his physical move to Europe, he frequently sent letters and telegrams from Geneva, Paris, and Marseilles to his mainly non-European followers and these messages were read out at communal gatherings. This most likely had a profound effect on their transnational geographic imagination, which began increasingly to include Europe. During his 72 years as Imam, Aga Khan III was instrumental in transforming the social conditions, capabilities, and global outlook of his followers: ‘The metamorphosis of a moribund society from the depths of degradation to its proud position in modern civilization during the course of only about half a century, is a saga of success with probably no other parallel in history’ (Thawerbhoy 1977, 19). His community built a network of social, health, and educational networks in European colonies that had rudimentary public services. This locally focused social and economic infrastructure provided the basis for the emergence of a global development network in the Imamat of Aga Khan IV. Aga Khan III combined a long-term vision with a step-by-step approach to community development. His emphasis during the early period of his Imamat was on fostering entrepreneurship (Thawerbhoy 1977, 20). The first objective was to promote wealth generation within his community to support its growth and the gradual enlargement of its institutional structure.

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Broad-based early and primary education was favored at this time. The Imam also established health clinics for his followers, specifically promoting prenatal and early childhood care. Primary female education was vigorously encouraged; he saw it as having the potential for a broad and long-term impact on the family. Hospitals, high schools, and scholarships to study at European universities came later, benefiting from the funds that economically successful Ismailis ploughed back into the community. In addition to educational and health care institutions, the cradle-to-grave organizational network included housing societies, sports facilities, insurance schemes, and a banking system. Communally run structures were also established by the Aga Khan, so that ‘every aspect of community life came increasingly under the direction of the various committees’ (Thawerbhoy 1977, 21–2). These institutional structures were largely nationally based, but they were part of an intercontinental organizational network, of which the Europebased Imam was the head. Ismaili Muslims’ religious allegiance to the Imam of the time was at the basis of this transnational structure. Ismaili Imams in the past had been administrative heads over various territories. Sultan Mohamed Shah was very familiar with this heritage. At the commemoration of the Diamond Jubilee of his Imamat in 1946, he encouraged his followers to emulate the glorious achievements of the Ismaili past (Aga Khan III 1955, 48). The next Imam would expand Aga Khan III’s community-based transnational infrastructure into one of the world’s largest nongovernmental organizations.

Ismaili migration to the West Upon the death of Aga Khan III in 1957, his grandson, Karim Al-Husseini, was designated as the next Imam of Ismaili Muslims. He combined in himself attributes of both the East and the West. A descendant of the Prophet Muhammad and Fatimid Caliphs, Aga Khan IV was born in Geneva of an English mother and educated in Switzerland and at Harvard. The young Imam inherited not only the religious leadership of a transnational Muslim community but also the responsibility for its material well-being in locations that were increasingly within Western societies. He describes this responsibility as flowing ‘from the mandate of the office of the Imam to improve the quality of worldly life for the concerned communities’ (Aga Khan IV 2008, 126). While the bulk of the transnational Ismaili community remains in Asian and African countries, some members moved to Europe to study and settle there in small numbers in the early twentieth century. London and Paris became the primary centers of Ismaili activity in Europe. Aga Khan III made his home in France. He was in regular touch with his followers, and periodically visited South Asia and Africa. His followers in locations such as Syria, Iran, and Afghanistan were less accessible, and those in Soviet Central Asia

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and China were almost completely cut off. The Cold War split the transnational community. The Imam sought to develop working relationships with the governments of the countries in which his community resided. He advised his followers to be good citizens and loyal to the administrations that were responsible for their security and well-being. Political allegiances were made distinct from religious ones. This approach served well in not compromising community members when various governments clashed with each other. A centuries-long presence of the community in the mountainous crossroads of Badakshan, which straddles the disputed Kashmir region, northeastern Afghanistan, southeastern Tajikistan, and the Xinjiang province of China, as well as in South Asia, demanded careful navigation through the stormy waters of regional and big power quarrels. The particular geographic placements of Ismailis have necessitated ongoing transnational diplomacy on the part of the Imamat. Perhaps it was no coincidence that Aga Khan III served as a president of the League of Nations, and had one son who was Pakistan’s ambassador to the United Nations and vice-president during a session of the General Assembly and another who was the United Nations high commissioner for refugees and a candidate for the post of secretary general. The recent release of the previously sealed archives of the British government make clearer the diplomatic engagement of the Ismaili Imamat with European governments (van Grondelle 2009). Instability in postindependence African countries such as the Congo led to migration to locations such as Paris. The intensification of apartheid caused emigration from South Africa. But it was the expulsion of Indians from Uganda in 1972 that prompted the largest exodus of East African Ismailis to the West. Many settled in the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States. These communities were augmented by significant additions from other parts of Africa, India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. Mozambique’s long-running war led to the growth of the community in Portugal. Some Ismailis from Syria, Iran, and Tajikistan have also settled in Europe and North America. The Imamat’s advice to Ismailis regarding the acquisition of European education and European languages served significant numbers of Ismaili migrants in seeking employment. The Imamat’s guidance was to maintain adherence to Islamic beliefs and practices while integrating into the countries where they settled. Whereas some other Muslim migrant groups have maintained a conservative attitude to Western societies, Ismailis have generally sought to develop an Islamic approach to modernity (see Karim 2010). This has assisted their settlement and institutional development in Europe and other parts of the West. The prominence of the physical placement of the primary national darkhana (Ismaili place of worship) in the central districts of metropolitan London and Lisbon, respectively, are symbolic of the community’s engagement with the public spheres in these countries.

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This approach differs markedly from the social isolationism of the Murids, discussed above. Structures of communal governance that had developed in Asia and Africa were adapted to Western settlements. While most European countries do not have their own national council, they are present in the United Kingdom, France, and Portugal (Aga Khan IV circa 1998). The national councils comprise a range of major jamati (communal) institutions, including the Tariqah and Religious Education, (secular) Education, Health, the Grants and Review, and the National Conciliation and Arbitration boards. The structures involve a significant level of bureaucratization in the religious and worldly aspects of life. Unlike the institutional arrangements in developing countries, there is a substantially lesser role in industrialized countries for the community’s economic planning, education, health, housing, social welfare, and sports organizations. The Ismaili self-governance structures appear to allow for engagement with local situations and needs as well as communal coherence at a transnational level. Such institutional structuring of a migrant community’s life at the global scale seems to go far beyond that of other Muslim and non-Muslim diasporas.

The Aga Khan development network Early in his Imamat, Aga Khan IV began to establish new institutions that were situated outside the communal Ismaili infrastructure. The Nation Media Group, which dates back to 1959, began as a newspaper company in colonial Kenya and has expanded into an East African media conglomerate (Loughran 2010). Ismaili schools, hospitals, and financial institutions were opened up to non-Ismailis. The declared purpose, beyond tending to the needs of community members, was to contribute to the development of countries in Asia and Africa. Aga Khan III had been engaged in promoting the welfare of all Muslims, helping establish the Aligarh Muslim University in India and founding the East African Muslim Welfare Society. His successor embarked on a course that began a broader engagement with the public sphere even in countries where his community did not have a significant presence. In an address to the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Aga Khan IV (2008, 16) said, When I became Imam in 1957, I was faced with developing a system to meet my responsibilities in an organized, sustainable manner that was suited to the circumstances, demands and opportunities of the second half of the twentieth century. In a period of decolonization in Asia and Africa, the Cold War and its disastrous impact on developing countries, and painful progress towards a global movement for international development, it became essential that the Imamat’s economic and social

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development efforts be broadened beyond the Ismaili community to the societies in which the community lived. Presently, the Ismaili community of approximately 15 million resides in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Europe and North America. Mobilizing international resources, particularly from developed states, has been a key aspect of AKDN’s strategy. Even though the Aga Khan’s secretariat is located on his estate north of Paris and several key AKDN agencies are headquartered in Geneva, the AKDN cannot be viewed as European. Its transnationalism is global in scope, inclusive of Europe but fanning out far beyond it. The Aga Khan Foundation is the lead agency engaged in the AKDN’s social development activities. It describes itself as seeking ‘sustainable solutions to long-term problems of poverty, hunger, illiteracy and ill-health, with special emphasis on the needs of rural communities in mountainous, coastal and other resource-poor areas’ (AKDN 2007, 23, also see Kassam 2003). The Aga Khan Foundation has affiliates in various continents. Those in the United Kingdom and Portugal have cultivated relationships with European institutional partners, which have included governmental, nongovernmental, and private sector agencies in Denmark, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. European development interests in geopolitically sensitive countries such as Afghanistan are well served by the foundation’s local networks in that country. Another major social development initiative of the network is postsecondary education. The international Aga Khan University, which is headquartered in Pakistan, has campuses in Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, and the United Kingdom. Its London-based Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilizations conducts research and offers instruction to graduate students and diplomats in various Western countries (Aga Khan University 2006, 41). The university collaborates internationally with partners in the EU, the United Kingdom, France, and Sweden. A planned campus in London that will include student residences and the academic facilities of the Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilizations and the Institute of Ismaili Studies will lend a stronger profile to the AKDN in the British capital. (Lisbon is the site of the landmark Centro Ismaili and the Delegation of the Ismaili Imamat, which has been accorded the status of a diplomatic mission by the Portuguese government.) Agencies of the Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development are concerned with industrial promotion, tourism, finance, aviation, and media. This institution ‘works in collaboration with local and international development partners to create and operate companies that provide goods and services essential to economic development’ (Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development 2005, 4). Its European partners are located in France, Germany, Monaco, the Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom; it

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employs 30,000 people around the world and has annual revenues ‘in excess of US$ 1.5 billion’ (Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development 2005, 5). Similarly, the Aga Khan Trust for Culture has several European collaborators (Aga Khan Trust for Culture 2007, 37), which contribute to its efforts in running a historic cities program, an award for architecture, a music initiative, museum projects, architectural research programs, and a digital archive in various parts of the world. The AKDN is exhibiting a global transnationalism, which is at the same time a feature of present-day globalization and a reflection of Ismaili history. The very barriers that European colonialism presented to indigenous development also appear to have given impetus to and a social context for contemporary Ismaili institutions to emerge. Similarly now, the regulatory restrictions of European states and the EU, while placing administrative burdens on the AKDN, have not prevented the latter’s transnational growth. Indeed, the European location of the network’s head offices may have been a key factor in the success of AKDN’s global operations – primarily due to the continent’s centrality in terms of global communications connections. Furthermore, an accord between the Ismaili Imamat and the Portuguese parliament, signed in 2008, enables the Imamat to enter into agreements ‘internationally, particularly, but without restriction, within the European Union and in the Portuguese-speaking countries.’

Conclusion: Institutions and maps European history of the past 500 years has had a huge impact on the formation and dynamics of diasporas. The large migrations of the preceding centuries were largely a consequence of Europe’s colonization of other continents. Between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries, the extensive movements of slaves, indentured laborers, and settlers displaced indigenous political, economic, and social infrastructures, substantially reshaping Asia, Africa, Australasia, and the Americas. After slavery and indentured labor were outlawed, the flows from southern countries were stopped by immigrant-receiving countries whose governments favored only European newcomers. In the 1950s and 1960s, with the official elimination of racebased restrictions to immigration, people from the southern hemisphere began once again to relocate to the north, including Europe. Some cultural studies and postcolonial perspectives have tended to view transnations as a manifestation of ‘the empire’s subjects striking back’ at global and national hegemonies. Stratton and Ang (1996, 383–4) suggest that for the postcolonial immigrant to Britain, ‘what the diasporic position opens up is the possibility of developing a postimperial British identity, one based explicitly on an acknowledgement and vindication of the “coming home” of the colonized Other.’ Despite having left the old nation, the migrant finds it difficult to become completely a part of the new nation;

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diaspora existentially becomes the cultural border between the old country and the new one – Bhabha’s (1994) ‘third space’ – with intense, cutting-edge creativity born out of the migratory angst of not feeling at home either here or there. The artistic production as well as the institutions of diasporas appear to exist in such a transnational third space or what Scholte (1996) calls ‘supraterritoriality.’ The abiding cultural power of European imperialism has been such that African and Asian children educated in many former colonies tend to know more about the fauna and flora of ‘mother countries’ than that of their own lands. They are steeped in the details of European history. The old colonial capitals remains central and the rest peripheral in their minds. But the dominance of this geographic imagination is being increasingly challenged in the contemporary cultural production of diasporas. Egerer (2001) comments on the writing of Hanif Kureishi (who has Pakistani ancestry and was born in England), saying that he remaps London as he travels through it in his narrative. He superimposes a postcolonial reading on the metropolitan center, producing a new geography and new modulations of cultural power. Similarly, for Ismailis in London, the routes between the prominent Ismaili Centre in South Kensington, the various other jamatkhanas in the metropolis, Aga Khan Foundation offices, and the planned campus of the Aga Khan University and the Institute of Ismaili Studies provide an institutional locus that is superimposed upon the established cartography of the British capital. This mapping is interconnected with those of other institutional locations in Europe and elsewhere in the ‘Ismaili world.’ This world is also traveled virtually through various communal, Imamat, and AKDN websites. Diasporic ‘supraterritoriality’ (Scholte 1996) is created and sustained by imaginatively transforming a milieu – not necessarily a physical place; it can be an existential location dependent continually on the resonance of cultural and institutional practices. Transnations account for space as an existential location as they seek to redefine and transform their existence from under the historical conditions of colonialism and the current exigencies of national and supranational states. These dynamics of spatialization are imaginative; they do not involve the appropriation of territory but they necessarily engage in modulating dominant cartographies. The transnation exists virtually in the relationships maintained in a global milieu, held together by and in the intercontinental ‘space of flows’ (Scholte 1996, 597) produced by personal and institutional connections. The transnational organizations of Ismaili Muslims enable them to imagine their pluralistic global community existing both within nations and across them. The geographic and political presence of Europe does not disappear; it continues to exist alongside the community’s institutional network, which maps transnationally over nations and continents. Diasporic re-imaginings of space, while articulating other ways of understanding global relationships, coexist with dominant forms of geography.

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Europe, in this context, is only one conceptual layer among many. Like diasporic transnations, it is also an ‘imagined community’ (Anderson 1983) that is constructed and held together by the repeated institutional practices of individuals who believe it to exist. Of course, European national and transnational institutions are much more elaborate than those of diasporas. Researchers who engage in European Studies apply the framework of Europe as an existential geopolitical entity; their understanding of international relations tends to be largely state centered. Those people who engage in diasporic activity live out a form of transnationalism and globalization that is very different from that of state and corporate actors. They have to abide by the exigencies of globalization from above, but they have also been able to produce other imagined communities. Their transnationalism is not neatly transposed over state-centered cartography but cuts across it, even as it engages with state agencies. This is a reality that has remained largely invisible to those social scientists and policy-makers who subscribe only to dominant worldviews. They would benefit from treating state-centric geographies as being only one way of understanding transnational relationships.

References Aga Khan III (1955) Mowlana Hazir Imam’s Guidance and Advice in Spiritual and Worldly Matters to Ismailis of Africa (Mombasa: Shia Imami Ismailia Associations for Africa). Aga Khan IV (circa 1998) The Constitution of the Shia Imami Ismaili Muslims, n.p. Aga Khan IV (2008) Where Hope Takes Root: Democracy and Pluralism in an Interdependent World (Vancouver: Douglas and McIntyre). Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) (2007) AKDN (Geneva: Author). Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development (circa 2005) Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development: An Agency of the Aga Khan Development Network (Geneva: Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development). Aga Khan Trust for Culture (2007) Aga Khan Trust for Culture: The Cultural Agency of the Aga Khan Development Network, n.p. Aga Khan University (circa 2006) The Aga Khan University: Progress Report 2006 (Karachi: Aga Khan University). Al-Azmeh, A. and E. Fokas (eds.) (2007) Islam in Europe: Diversity, Identity and Influence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Amghar, S., A. Boubekeur and M. Emerson (2007) European Islam: Challenges for Society and Public Policy (Brussels: Centre for European Policy Studies). Anderson, B. (1983) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso). Appadurai, A. (1996) Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota). Bhabha, H. (1994) The Location of Culture (New York: Routledge). Bunt, G. (2009) Muslims: Rewiring the House of Islam (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press). Cunningham, S. and J. Sinclair (eds.) (2000) Floating Lives: The Media and Asian Diasporas (Brisbane: University of Queensland Press).

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Daftary, F. (1998) A Short History of the Ismailis (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press). Diouf, M. (2002) ‘The Senegalese Murid Trade Diaspora and the Making of a Vernacular Cosmopolitanism’ in C. Breckenridge, S. Pollock, H. Bhabha and D. Chakrabarty (eds.) Cosmopolitanism (Durham: Duke University Press). Egerer, C. (2001) ‘Ambivalent Geographies: The Exotic as Domesticated Other’, Third Text, 55, 15–28. Falk, R. (1993) ‘The Making of Global Citizenship’ in J. Brecher, J. Childs and J. Cutler (eds.) Global Visions: Beyond the New World Order (Boston, MA: South End Press). Gellner, E. (1973) ‘Post-Traditional Forms in Islam: The Turf and Trade, and Votes and Peanuts’, Daedalus, 191–206. Hall, S. (1997) ‘The Local and the Global: Globalization and Ethnicity’ in A. McClintock, A. Mufti and E. Shohat (eds.) Dangerous Liaisons: Gender, Nation, and Postcolonial Perspectives (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota). Hentsch, T. (1992) Imagining the Middle East (Montreal: Black Rose Books). Karim, K. H. (ed.) (2003) The Media of Diaspora (London: Routledge). Karim, K. H (2006) ‘Nation and Diaspora: Rethinking Multiculturalism in a Transnational Context’, International Journal of Media and Cultural Politics, 2(3), 267–82. Karim, K. H. (2010) ‘At the Interstices of Tradition, Modernity and Postmodernity: Ismaili Engagements with Contemporary Canadian Society’ in F. Daftary (ed.) Ismailis in Modern History (London: I.B. Tauris). Kassam, T. R. (2003) ‘The Aga Khan Development Network: An Ethic of Sustainable Development and Social Conscience’ in R.C. Foltz, F. M. Denny and A. Baharuddin (eds.) Islam and Ecology (Cambridge: Centre for the Study of World Religions, Harvard Divinity School). Keck, M. and K. Sikkink (1998) Activists beyond Borders (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University). Lévy, A. and A. Weingrod (2005) Homelands and Diasporas: Holy Lands and Other Places (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press). Loughran, G. (2010) Birth of a Nation: The Story of a Newspaper in Kenya (London: I.B. Tauris). The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life (2005) ‘Does “Muslim” Turkey Belong in “Christian” Europe?’ http://pewforum.org/events/?EventID=66, date accessed February 13, 2010. Rodinson, M. (1979) ‘The Western Image and Western Studies of Islam’ in J. Schacht and C. E. Bosworth (eds.) The Legacy of Islam (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Said, E. (1978) Orientalism (New York: Pantheon). Scholte, J. (1996) ‘The Geography of Collective Identities in a Globalizing World’, Review of International Political Economy, 3(4), 565–607. Stasiulis, D. and A. Bakan (2005) Negotiating Citizenship: Migrant Women in Canada and the Global System (Toronto: University of Toronto). Stratton, J. (2000) Coming Out Jewish (London: Routledge). Stratton, J. and I. Ang (1996) ‘On the Impossibility of a Global Cultural Studies: “British” Cultural Studies in an “International Frame” ’ in D. Morley and K. Chen (eds.) Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies (London: Routledge). Thawerbhoy, E. (1977) ‘The Imam of the Socio-Economic Revolution’, Ilm, 3(2), 18–26. van Grondelle, M. (2009) The Ismailis in the Colonial Era: Modernity, Empire and Islam, 1839–1969 (London: Hurst and Company).

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13 The Social Lives of Borders: Political Economy at the Edge of the European Union André Simonyi and Jessica Pisano

In the myriad stories about the border that circulate in communities near and connected to the outer eastern edge of the European Union (EU), one narrative resurfaces repeatedly. According to this narrative, a ruse brings would-be immigrants from their home countries to a spot in the forest in the west of Ukraine, where a fake border has been constructed. Bidden by their guides, they cross over the barbed wire or other artifice and believe they have arrived in the EU. Shortly thereafter, by prior arrangement with the coyotes who have arranged the travelers’ passage, Ukrainian law enforcement officials arrest the travelers and detain them for lack of proper documentation or authorization to be in Ukraine. For these would-be immigrants – whether they are mythological expressions of social beliefs about foreigners, borders, and law enforcement officials or players in real-life dramas – the state border is far more than a line to cross. In this story, it might be imagined that in the moments that elapse between crossing and arrest, the border represents freedom, possibility, and a new life in a land of opportunity. The would-be immigrants believe they have crossed into the EU, and their brief, illusion of success is the product of the border as it exists in their minds and shared experience. It is only once representatives of state authority arrive, and they learn that the border is not where they had thought, that they discover the flaws in their previous knowledge of power arrangements along the demarcation. The Ukrainian state meets the eastern edge of the EU at precisely the same place where, for the second half of the twentieth century, the Soviet Union abutted the states of the Warsaw Pact. In the early twenty-first century, the border between the EU and Ukraine may be said to demarcate not only the territory of states, but also the limits of political and economic worlds. However, for the people who live in the EU borderlands, the meaning of the border, as well as its physical demarcation, follows neither a straight line nor the contours of mountains or rivers. Beyond the physical demarcation 222

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separating the ‘East’ and the ‘West,’ people define and redefine the social meaning of bounded national communities through transborder exchanges of commodities and ideas. Those exchanges, in turn, order social relations in ways that transcend state boundaries (Harvey 2009, 88). Even as borders territorially inscribe national communities, the instruments of border control and surveillance encourage individual human contact. The result is the development of a particular set of transnational social relations in which economic and social exchange engender both more permanent transnational communities and cloakroom communities (Bauman 2000).1 This chapter argues that, paradoxically, in the context of a hardened border, the apparatus of state security itself contributes to the formation of local and transnational networks, ultimately rendering the border in its cognitive form more porous. This chapter advances its argument through a set of narratives that reflect upon the paradoxes of strong surveillance at the demarcated line and, as the story of would-be immigrants to the EU suggests, the contours of national imagination that extend beyond it. It observes that beyond the internationally recognized boundary, there is a transborder space shaped by the daily interactions of people on either side – a world that may not be legible (Scott 1998) from the perspective of Brussels or Kyiv, or to the casual tourist or visitor. This chapter embarks on a micro-level foray into how people experience and understand space and time in the EU borderlands, seeking to observe and understand the fluid, rather than the permanent, meanings of the border (Harvey 2009, 43) – meanings that in turn reconfigure, from the grassroots, the political realities of a transnational Europe.

The state of the border How do contemporary accounts ordinarily describe the outer EU border zone? A central preoccupation of the literature about the EU border is the metaphor of an impermeable wall – Festung Europa (‘Fortress Europe’) – in reference to European mid-twentieth-century nationalism. This recurring trope emphasizes border-crossing restrictions and the causal relationship between the softening of internal borders and the hardening of external ones (Snyder 2005). Related accounts highlight contradictions between EU border regimes and broader trends of economic and political change. For example, Blank (2004, 352) observes the current impermeability of international borders in towns such as Chelnochovsk (‘city of shuttle traders’) as the obverse of globalization. Other work focuses on the structural bases of inequality in and around the border zone. As Bigo and Guild suggest (2003), this border is both instrument and object of the creation of value differentiation of individuals: visa regimes allow citizens of EU member states to cross eastward freely while most Ukrainian citizens must obtain visas to make the same passage

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westward. Because of sometimes dramatic differences in economic opportunity between the two sides of the border, the borderlands are also a site of social and economic arbitrage (Zelei 1997), embodying, reflecting, and reproducing overall contours of East–West inequality – even as the border offers opportunities to and constrains individuals on both sides. Finally, authors analyzing the EU border often focus on the relationship between the border and nation-making in adjoining states, where transnational contact may foment (Sahlins 1991), extend (Allina-Pisano 2009a), or soften nationalist preoccupations, as Szmagalska-Follis argues in this volume. Such accounts are primarily concerned with borders delimiting the contours of national or supranational projects, shaping and reshaping the meaning of units such as ‘Europe’ or ‘Ukraine.’ Borders, in this sense, give meaning to what lies within them. This chapter conceptualizes borders differently. It acknowledges the hardening of eastern borders as states accede to the EU, as well as the economic inequality that prompts exchange in the borderlands and the institutional rules that structure passage for different categories of people in different ways. However, while recognizing the very real limits imposed on movement from east to west by international and national institutions, it is interested primarily in individuals’ reinvention and renegotiation of rules, institutions, and infrastructure in the interstices (Szmagalska-Follis 2008).2 Additionally, it explores the ways in which communication and acquisition of local knowledge frustrate the divisive intentions of international border making and erode reified notions of impermeability in ‘Fortress Europe.’3 Finally, in analyzing the social meaning of the EU–Ukraine border, it shifts away from the emphasis in the literature on the relationship between the border and nation making and focuses instead on how the border contributes to transnational community. This chapter suggests that instruments of border control and transborder commodity exchange together prompt the formation of social ties and the creation of shared knowledge and practices in border zones. The relationships between surveillance, exchange, and social ties are conditioned by three characteristics of the EU border, as viewed from the east: segmentation, multiplicity, and porosity. The border is segmented; portions of the line of demarcation may be differentiated and isolated from one another. It is multisited, existing not only in official international boundaries but reaching far into the interior of states. And it is porous to a certain degree, even where it is not meant to be. Each element shapes the nature of the international border as a zone of engagement and contributes to the specific ways in which transnational exchange conditions the social meaning of the border. Although the physical terrain observed in this chapter extends along the border between Ukraine and three other states, the field of vision and analysis in this chapter include territories outside the demarcated border

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and drive deep into different regions of the countries observed. As in the narrative of disappointed would-be immigrants presented in the introduction, the idea of borderlands extends well beyond arrangements in physical space. Above and beyond geographical expanses, the border engages the realm of the virtual: where the mind may be dislocated from the body, crossing borders in the imagination without physically moving, and where the mind, through contact with ideas from across the border, brings a part of that other world to the place where the body resides.

Epistemology and method In conducting the research for this chapter, we endeavored, insofar as possible, not to constrain our observations by prior rigid theoretical commitments. Although no observation is theory-neutral, the following narratives follow from a research approach in which we remained agnostic on the question of what the border is for as long as possible. We adopted an interpretive stance, starting from the idea that the border is a concept that takes many different shapes and forms. Without establishing narrow guidelines, we observed movement in, through, and near the official line of demarcation: people, their actions, and the symbols that give meaning to the idea of the border. We thus take seriously the notion of ethnography as a ‘liminal, visceral practice (art?)’ (Ries 2002, 725). Our approach is intersubjective (Burawoy 1998, 14) and we regard reflexive participation in the practices being studied as a crucial component of research. In studying the border, the ‘uncontaminating distance’ required by some epistemic approaches and critiqued by practitioners of reflexive ethnography (Yanow 2006; Pachirat 2009) would have obscured precisely the processes we sought to uncover. The border represents more than the site of the creation of an inside–outside relationship. It is a translation of a Foucauldian conceptualization of biopouvoir and requires an understanding of both the political institutional apparatus and social interaction. We use the understanding of the structural aspects of the border to analyze practices; from this latter analysis emerges the possibility of theorization (Bourdieu, 1972, 256). The observations and fieldwork-based vignettes presented here were accumulated in a long series of cross-border passages by train, car, foot, and bicycle, moving from the EU to Ukraine and vice versa. We gathered observations from within Ukraine and in visits to all border-crossing points between Ukraine and Slovakia and between Ukraine and Hungary.4 We also include in this chapter illustrations drawn from our visits to the border and border crossings between Ukraine and Romania. Finally, statistical data, legislation, and press materials in Ukrainian, Hungarian, Russian, and other languages likewise form a part of the evidentiary base that has informed the interpretations presented here.

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We communicated with others in three languages spoken in the region – Hungarian, Ukrainian, and Russian (each language is spoken fluently by one member of the team, and both authors are able communicate in both Hungarian and one or two of the Slavic languages) – with some communication in Slovak (understood by one of the authors). We allowed the choice of language to be dictated by our interlocutors, with code switching depending on who participated in the conversation.

Segmentation: Compartmentalized space Segmentation – the conscious or unconscious isolation of portions of the border zone for the purpose of controlling the flow of people and goods – fosters communication and contact in the border zone. For train passengers travelling from Chop, Ukraine, to Záhony, the nearest city in Hungary, the international crossing begins at a small door in a corner of the cavernous main hall of the railway station. It continues, segmented and compartmentalized like a Taylorist production line, until the passengers arrive on the territory of the Hungarian state.5 Passengers cannot see from one stage of the passage to another; like schoolchildren in a Soviet museum, once they embark upon the crossing they must inexorably move forward. Here, the human experience of border crossing is not a mere step across a line. In Chop, people with their baggage bid farewell to those accompanying them as they queue to step through a door into a large room. Their passports are checked and their luggage hoisted onto low counters and thoroughly inspected for cigarettes, alcohol, and any other controlled goods. The lines for passport and visa control follow, after which passengers are funneled into a waiting hall where half a dozen seats accommodate the most elderly, infirm, or defiantly entitled young. Everyone else stands or sits on their suitcases as the long wait for the train begins. There is no real queue for the train: it pulls up alongside the doors, and people walk from the waiting room out onto a short stretch of asphalt to board it. Once aboard, the trip is short and slow, as the train inches across the border into Hungary. At the demarcated territorial border, the lone train wagon from Chop joins a longer train bound for the Hungarian interior. There is sometimes confusion, because customs control procedures do not always end at the train station: some passengers know the Ukrainian train will be inspected, while others suggest it is Ukrainians themselves who will be searched and, Hungarian passports in hand, move to another car. A few minutes later, customs officials on the Hungarian side board the train car that has come from Chop. They search the seats and the floor, bringing on board mirrors, a ladder, and a power screwdriver. While passengers watch, they dismantle the interior ceiling panels, visually inspecting every crevice of the train car for contraband cigarettes, which are cheaper and taxed at a lower rate in Ukraine than in EU countries. Ukrainian-speaking passengers sometimes

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wonder aloud if this is an exercise meant primarily to humiliate them. When the customs officials are satisfied that today there are no cigarettes in the car from Chop, they reassemble the interior and depart. A few minutes later, passengers debark in Záhony. In the case of a train crossing, agents of the state exercise power at every closely guarded and controlled stage of the passage. But for those who move from Ukraine into Hungary in a car, the dynamic of power can be reversed. At another border crossing along the southern edge of Zakarpattia, the region of Ukraine that borders Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania, the noman’s land is structured differently. There, travelers – provided they are well embedded in local social networks and familiar with the use of small premiums that are insufficient to legally qualify their recipient as corrupt but nonetheless smooth the passage – are able to operate beyond the gaze of state officials. A covered parking lot in the no man’s land between the Hungarian and Ukrainian sides allows drivers to exchange passengers and goods: trunks may be opened and objects of commerce hidden, or passengers may be picked up who can be used to account for goods that exceed the legal allowance one person may bring back. The contours of control in the passage from one state to another thus depend in large part on the arrangement of infrastructure within the border crossing itself and on the method of transportation people use to move from one state to another. However, even where the infrastructure of surveillance is less developed, the particular organization of space around the border nonetheless permits or encourages control of human movement. For example, in eastern Zakarpattia, a border crossing near a village called Kistarna in Hungarian (Khyzha in Ukrainian) leads to Romania. Approaching the border crossing proves arduous: there are few road signs indicating the passage, and arrival at the border requires not only skillful knowledge of map reading but also the willingness of village residents to tell inquirers where to find it. Once near the border, approaching on foot, one sees on the right a high observation tower staffed by an officer observing the surroundings. At first intimidated, one tries to act inconspicuously, not to draw the gaze of the man in the tower. After a period of time has passed, if one stays long enough, one realizes the uniformed soldier many meters above is not a human being, but a mannequin – a scarecrow protecting a field not from birds, but from humans. Although recent maps show the border crossing as active, the passage at Kistarna has been closed for some time. Local residents walk about all the way to the wired fence, busying themselves with their crops. However, without the knowledge that it is a mannequin that staffs the watchtower, one might be deterred from undertaking any action, illegal or not, in this border zone. Spatial arrangements and surveillance along the border between the EU and Ukraine thus vary from the Soviet-era train station at Chop, recently

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built automobile passages, and the mannequin in the tower in the hills overlooking Romania. All are compartmentalized, and all involve a degree of explicit or implicit surveillance by state or social actors: arrival at the point of passage is impossible without first passing through a series of spaces where human interactions occur. To negotiate these compartments adequately, and to at least feel somewhat at ease, one needs knowledge of the spatial arrangement. More importantly, one needs to be aware of the power structure in place and its repartition in the spatial arrangement in order to go through the border at all. In Aristotelian terms, passage across the border requires both phronesis, a normative knowledge of context, and techne, an understanding of how to perform certain actions that can be acquired only through practice.6 Acquisition of both varieties of knowledge requires extensive social interaction and communication: states construct the infrastructure of the demarcated border, but people often determine the contours of its control. Power is thus structured in multiple, varying ways in the interstices between states. The border regime establishes a social and economic system that allows for the movement of humans and goods. Whether it is a Ukrainian merchant moving goods from car trunk to car trunk in a covered parking lot between the two countries, the Romanian day tourist buying a quicker passage back home after purchasing mineral water and laundry detergent in Ukraine, or money changers walking alongside border guards while selling their services to waiting cars, the socioeconomic construct of the border is built around well-defined space and power arrangements, where local, unwritten knowledge is crucial, even if one simply needs to go through.

Multiplicity in space and time Even as the border may be fixed in space – and done so at great expense and with the efforts of a cast of thousands in government and international organizations – there are important dimensions of the demarcation that are nonlinear in people’s everyday experiences.7 The border exists in multiple locations, both in material terms and in local imaginaries, which may be observed along the dimensional definitions of length, depth, and time. These three dimensions have specific implications for the social life of the border in its two manifestations – the meaning people give to the border and the character of the human interactions the border fosters. This first dimension, length, represents the demarcated border along which the apparent continuity and permanence of the ‘line’ gives way, upon closer examination, to uneven and shifting social meanings: although the demarcated border itself may remain static, the social and economic meanings along the line vary. The meanings of the border fluctuate between a political boundary across which travel occurs, and a line dividing one

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currency regime from another, signifying economic opportunity. At the EU’s edge, several new border crossings have been opened since the implementation of the Shengen visa regimes in 2004. Each time a new border crossing is opened, trade gravitates toward it. In the summer of 2008, the village of Nevetlenfalu on the Ukraine–Romania border attracted lines of cars more than a hundred deep, as Hungarian-speaking Romanians traveled to Ukraine to purchase washing powder, soda, and other commodities they would return to Romania to sell. But on the Ukraine–Hungary border a few hours’ drive away, commercial establishments outside the village of Asztély had been nearly abandoned. What once had been a vibrant border crossing became a near-deserted road at the end of a street. In the village, virtually the only signs of trade were lone jars of raspberries atop the single stools set outside village houses. One of the only remaining commercial merchants, selling ice cream and beer to the occasional traveler, bemoaned the fact that ‘it’s not the border it used to be. ... Before we ate sausage; now it’s bread and butter. In two months it’ll be just people coming to visit family and friends’ (field notes, June 25, 2008). The policing of borders occurs in the interior as well as at the edges of states (Balibar 2005), and the depth of this policing helps determine the nature, shape, and extent of exchange across and along the border. Physically perpendicular to the border at any given point, the dimension of depth carries the socioeconomic meaning of Ukraine and the EU deep into the other territory. One clear depiction of this dimension is the multiple-visa regime that regulates the movements of Ukrainians well within Hungary. In the context of the EU’s eastern outer boundary, Hungarian document and customs checks occur both at the crossing itself, a few hundred meters into Hungary, and in Nyíregháza, a city approximately 60 kilometers in the interior that is the western limit of movement for Ukrainian citizens with local traffic visas for Hungary (field notes, July 28, 2008). In practice, such checks in the interior are performed on automobiles only; for those on bicycles or on foot, the border is also multisited, but Nyíregháza is not a place where the border exists. Thus, on the Hungary–Ukraine border, people’s common experiences of passage are conditioned not only by citizenship or visa categories, but also by mode of transportation.8 And so, when Zsófia sets off to visit her relatives in Nyíregháza, she brings her visa, which allows her to go no farther into the Hungarian interior. Almost every time Zoltán drives from Beregszász (Berehove in Ukrainian) to Budapest, his bright yellow car is subject to an inspection by customs officers well past a few hundred meters from the official border. For Sándor, depth means opportunity, even if he has to deal with all the red tape related to acquiring a visa. He learns the ropes to make it as efficient as possible; the important thing for this former construction worker, who leaves the country regularly and for long periods of time to make a living, is to pick up his

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clients in Budapest and to drive them deep into the Carpathian Mountains. For him, the border is a welcome friction: the time spent acquiring the permission is well worth the ‘rich’ clients from the west coming to explore the beautiful edges of Europe. The multiplicity of border locations refers not only to borders’ physical demarcations, but also to their social meaning. Lászlo, a resident of the southwestern Ukrainian city of Berehove, who speaks Hungarian and self-identifies as Magyar, has a visa permitting travel to Hungary. He sends his child to a school where the language of instruction is Hungarian, buys Hungarian goods, watches television broadcasts from Hungary, and takes his family to a cinema in Hungary on Saturday evenings. For him, crossing the international border between Ukraine and Hungary may constitute no more than a simple administrative hassle and mark no appreciable change in his personal cultural or linguistic landscape. For Lászlo, a more meaningful border may exist in the interior of Ukraine, on the road to Mukacheve, where Magyar cultural space begins to fade into a more predominantly Slavic political and linguistic landscape. Because the border is nonlinear in space, its relationship to time is not constant in people’s experiences. Time – the third dimension of multiplicity treated here – is particularly elastic in the borderlands, where state surveillance, more than distance, is meant to obstruct movement, disrupting modern, rationalized expectations of the relationship between space and time. In the village of Kisszelmenc, for example, an international border crossing currently allows EU and Ukrainian citizens to walk into Slovakia (see AllinaPisano 2009a). However, residents of Kisszelmenc wishing to visit their relatives on the other side must first travel to Uzhhorod to obtain a passport for foreign travel and then apply for special permission to visit Slovakia. The distance from Marika’s house to the cemetery in Slovakia where her family is buried is less than a kilometer and 20 minutes travel on foot. The total actual distance and time she must travel in order to arrive there to lay flowers on a grave, however, is closer to 100 kilometers by bus and several days or weeks of paperwork and waiting. The elasticity of time in the borderlands takes on another form along the Ukraine–EU border. In parts of southwestern Ukraine, time plays a particular role in delimiting national space in the practice of everyday life. There, two different time zones – and their associated geopolitical imaginaries – operate within the same space. In the borderlands town of Berehove (Beregszász in Hungarian), any meeting or transaction must be planned not only with reference to the time of day, but also with an additional specification: local time or Kyiv time. Without this additional information, or without a shared understanding about the time zone in which the two particular individuals in question consider themselves to live, there is risk of confusion and disruption of exchange: local time is Budapest time, one hour earlier than Kyiv time.

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Time practices in Berehove are not unique to that municipality. The same discourse exists in surrounding villages, where some people make reference to ‘mountain time,’ explaining the existence of this time zone by its convenience to farmers, given the movement of the sun across the valleys. However, if one travels just a few dozen kilometers northwest (toward the time zone in which Budapest is located) to the now predominantly Ukrainian city of Uzhhorod, Kyiv time is the standard. The use of the two time zones within the same space, which dates from the Soviet period (field notes June 16, 2008; see also Stroschein 2009), corresponds roughly to ethno-linguistic identity: establishments catering to a Hungarian-speaking clientele post their hours in local time, while Ukrainian or Russian speakers use Kyiv time (which itself bears a complicated historical relationship to the Moscow time in use in the region for decades). Some businesses announce their hours according to both, in separate signs, and some state institutions post official notices in Kyiv time but operate verbally according to local time. The practice of attaching separate time systems to different communities itself acts as a border; time itself is a marker distinguishing geographically intermixed ethnic communities from one another. This practice regulates the organization of economic life and contributes to the multiple and overlapping character of social borders – social borders that resemble, but do not mirror, those of the states that claim to enclose particular people and territory.

Porous material and virtual borders In late May 2008, Mykola spent three hours waiting by his aging purple Lada under a sweltering afternoon sun in the no-man’s land between northwestern Hungary and Ukraine. The trunk of his car was full of carrots, and he had exceeded the limit for the weight in vegetables that one person can legally bring into Ukraine from the EU. The Ukrainian border guards had been reasonable, if one put aside the heat, inconvenience, and mild humiliation of waiting in a border zone while others passed through unmolested. Rather than confiscating the carrots or turning him away, the guards had suggested he wait for pedestrians looking for a lift. If he could find two passengers, they reasoned, he would have enough people in the car to account for all of his carrots. Despite heavy state surveillance – not only do guards, watchtowers, and barbed wire characterize the physical geography of the outer EU border, but also soldiers, cameras, mirrors, and dogs – the border is a site of social reproduction. In other words, in this context, human connection is a byproduct of the surveillance that accompanies commodity exchange; informal networks are made in the border. People crossing through official points of passage seem not to fear association with others, readily forming temporary and even more permanent relationships through the negotiation of commodity

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exchange at the border. Mykola was thus able to find several passengers to accommodate his vegetables, and everyone finished off the day at his or her intended destination. Nearly a year earlier, also in the summer heat, Csaba had made one of his frequent trips into Hungary from the town of Chop and was returning home. That voyage had been primarily to buy provisions: those corners of his socialist-era station wagon not already occupied with fishing equipment and blankets were filled with diapers for a nephew with a newborn, as well as Debreceni sausages for himself, his wife, and a number of friends and relatives who lived in the predominantly Hungarian-speaking villages surrounding Chop. To carry the sausages across without trouble, he had picked up four passengers, who each held their allowed portion on their laps for the customs officials to see. The border guards knew him and waved him and his passengers through. The anxious time usually allotted to inching warily through the surveillance process thus was instead devoted to driving and discussing the plans of the driver and passengers. At Záhony, Csaba’s crossing point in Hungary, the border crossing is open only to vehicles. Pedestrians wishing to cross into Ukraine to the town of Chop wait by the side of the road or on a nearby street, where passing cars collect them. They do not pay to be transported – at least not in money. As in the case of Mykola’s carrots, the exchange is quid pro quo: those crossing the border must do so in a car, and drivers transporting their purchases from Hungary into Ukraine frequently require additional people in the vehicle to legitimize the volume of goods they are transporting across the border. Passage across the border between the EU and Ukraine thus involves goods and people in a mutual relationship, and the transportation of goods helps establish the social structure of the border. However, where goods primarily flow out of, rather than into, Ukraine, the shape of human interaction changes. At one vehicle border crossing between Ukraine and Slovakia, for example, pedestrians are not able to find transportation across except by prior arrangement: drivers from Slovakia may carry most goods into their country without volume restrictions and thus have little incentive for accepting passengers. Commodity trading and social interaction at the border thus can be mutually reinforcing, or excluding, depending on the circumstance. Day traders, border guards, and pedestrians create a social microcosm that is founded upon a mutually recognized necessity to allow commodities to travel across. And as described above, some human travel, it seems, depends on commodity exchange: where only vehicles are permitted, symbiotic relationships form between pedestrians and transporters of goods requiring warm bodies to make those goods legal. The virtual porosity of borders, in which ideas, identities, and symbols traverse national spaces, is also itself in part dependent on cross-border material exchange. Mykola’s generously subsidized European carrots, purchased

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in Hungary because they were less expensive than carrots grown in Ukraine, carried more than a culinary significance in their journey. For those who boil them in their soup, carrots consumed in Ukraine are vessels for numerous social meanings. They may serve as reminders of geopolitical imbalances of power, of agricultural subsidy regimes that advantage Europeans but put Ukrainian farmers out of business, and of political bickering in Kyiv that holds up distribution of loans for Ukrainian farmers. They are also reminders of the sad fact that Ukrainian carrots are more expensive and yet perceived as less ‘civilized,’ though they are often of higher quality than the orange industrial monoculture brought from the EU. Csaba’s sausages, likewise, constitute the type of material exchange that contributes to the displacement of virtual borders and the reproduction of ethno-linguistic communities whose boundaries do not match those of states. Traffic by both EU citizens and Ukrainian citizens with local transit visas promotes the exchange and maintenance of kinship and ethnolinguistic networks. Upon arriving in Ukraine, Csaba immediately visits the family members for whom he has purchased Hungarian goods. They are geographically dispersed within a few dozen kilometers, and they are part of the ethno-linguistic community of Magyars that remained outside the borders of the state of Hungary after the Treaty of Versailles (Trianon). The symbolic valence of the goods delivered – the language of the labels, the Hungarian-ness of those particular sausages – brings Hungary to Magyar communities beyond the state border. For some, this is a way of reclaiming their social heritage, of replacing something lost. In physically visiting multiple members of his extended family across different settlements and in greeting each of their neighbors, Csaba participates in the reproduction of a more cohesive sense of Magyar identity. Between the EU and Ukraine, cross-national inequality amid a shared value of liberal entrepreneurship establishes a social system that is organized around commodity exchange. And through this exchange, ideas travel across the border. Some of those ideas form a basis for national and transnational political action, as policies, rules, and regulations are discussed in cafés and homes and eventually become claims for change and action. And others, as in Csaba’s sausage route or Mykola’s carrot dilemma, assist in the production and reproduction of social circles that are sustained by the very division and inequality created or reified by the border’s presence.

Conclusion On summer weekends, busloads of heritage tourists from Hungary come to the town of Beregszász in Ukraine. They visit local monuments, walking past the old Hungarian state theatre on the way to the town square. There, some of them, perhaps seeing in local faces the imagined shared Hungarian

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past narrated by their tour guides, take pictures of the local women who squat next to the church to sell their fruit. For the tourists, time and space may seem to shrink in those brief interactions, as imagined worlds overlap in spaces beyond the barbed wire and surveillance cameras of the official EU border. For the women selling fruit, meanwhile, the foreigners who speak their language not only represent revenue, but also are a reminder of administrative and economic barriers to their own mobility. The transnational meaning of the border likewise may be found across the town square, in the open markets of Beregszász. There, local shoppers as well as tourists from the EU and Russia enter a world where, as along the demarcated EU border, exchange takes multiple forms. The older part of the post-socialist market, composed of rickety booths selling sundry goods in a riot of colors and odors, is arranged as a labyrinth of alleys in which someone unfamiliar with the market could become easily lost. Directly adjacent to the open market stands a brand new, state-of-the-art building meant to accommodate the ‘new’ market. On the main floor, a sterile ambiance reigns, and the eyes of those who wander through meet expensive stores advertising the latest fashions. Here, the borderland of the EU and Ukraine is, in one of its many iterations, the meeting place of two worlds, a site of both transnational separation and linkage. This chapter has shown that, paradoxically, instruments meant to control people’s movement and separate nationally defined spaces also prompt communication among people, disrupt notions of homogenous space, and contribute to the formation of transnational linkages. Further, it has suggested that the reconfiguration of social relationships around and by the border may be best understood and analyzed through political ethnography; the broader transnational social dimensions of borders are not always discernible except through participant-observation research.9 The eastern edges of ‘Fortress Europe’ do not resemble high-walled medieval castles, but rather a series of outposts where exchanges happen far from the scrutiny of the center. Under the guise of a well-established system of control, informal human interactions occur daily. To the traveler passing through or to the official from Kyiv or Brussels, the social micro-system in place may be invisible and nonexistent. But when Péter the day trader passes customs, he greets all the guards and discreetly promises not to forget them in his daily business. As this chapter has argued, Péter’s capacity to negotiate his passage is based on his knowledge of the power structure present in one specific border-crossing point – a point that is part of a larger, multidimensional system. Ground-level observation of such outposts illuminates a world of interaction and social meaning in which the demarcated border not only determines sovereignty through inclusion and exclusion, but also provides a venue for social and economic exchange. That exchange reconfigures social relations and supports transnational linkages under the aegis of exclusion and separation.

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This paradox, in which the border not only separates but also encourages contact, is reproduced constantly, as people and goods flow over the heavily guarded demarcation line. The border also runs deep into both the EU and Ukraine, and it takes on a variety of meanings for those who travel through it. The boundary is at once a dividing wall and porous membrane, a fragmented, multilayered space through which the passage of people and commodities redefines social meanings through daily interaction and creates complex webs of human relationships. Further, through exchange and the human interactions that accompany it, the thin line between public and private, formal and informal, becomes difficult, if not impossible to discern. Despite, and at times because of, the vast institutional apparatus that segments and controls the border, unintentionally giving rise to a multiplicity of human relationships, the boundary between Europe and Ukraine is less a line than a vanishing point, more difficult to fix in time and space the closer one approaches. Historically, the borders that now separate Ukraine from the EU have moved, dislocating kinship groups and reshaping allegiances. More recently, the demarcated border itself has remained relatively stable, but the social and economic transactions that traverse it have undergone dramatic transformations mirroring those of the broader society: the installation of political and economic liberalism and the integration and alteration of that liberalism as a function of existing local knowledge, practices, and traditions. For now it is no longer the border that moves. Instead, people create the flow of movement through exchange, trade, and information (Bauman 1998, 2). This process seems to create as much rupture as unity, and what Bauman (1998, 2) describes as a ‘space-fixing process’ reconfigures traditional understandings of social organization and the ways in which transnationalism is understood. Finally, as Rumford has noted in this volume, transnational studies, while attending to spatial aspects of transborder activity, has to date paid relatively little attention to borders themselves. As this chapter suggests, borders may be best understood outside the rubrics of national studies, as it may be precisely the concept of transnationalism that is best suited to the study of both demarcation lines and their social lives. Such an analytical lens allows us to see beyond the work borders do for states, permitting nuanced analysis of the ways in which borders make, and are made by, the communities that live in, around, and through them.

Acknowledgments The authors thank Nancy Ries and Sherrill Stroschein for helpful comments on earlier drafts. Colleagues at the Slavic Research Center and the Center for Applied Ethics and Philosophy at the University of Hokkaido, Fumiki Tahara of the University of Tokyo, as well as colleagues at the Graduate Institute

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of Russian Studies at Heilongjiang University in Harbin, provided valuable feedback. We also thank Cédrik and Sarah Simonyi, as well as friends and acquaintances in Zakarpattia whom we cannot mention by name here, for their contributions to the project. The staff of the ‘Rossiya’ library in Yalta provided a helpful and productive environment in which to write. MarieEve Bélanger provided able research assistance. Research for this chapter, and for the broader research project to which it is linked, was supported by the National Council for Eurasian and East European Research and the Social Sciences Research Council of Canada, neither of which are responsible for the views expressed here.

Notes 1. For an exploration of this theme in greater detail, see Simonyi (2009). 2. State boundaries are often cast primarily as lines of rupture (Filler 2008) – walls that keep people out (Snyder 2005) or hold people in (Scott 2009) – which can prompt urban and other development (Buursink 2001). This chapter conceptualizes the border as a zone of engagement, where both exclusion and contact are possible. 3. For a discussion of the fortress metaphor in border studies, see Simonyi (2011). 4. The border between Ukraine and three EU member states examined – Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania – are governed by bilateral agreements between member states and Ukraine, as well as by nationally particular rules and practices. However, EU membership defines the broader contours of economic and social inequalities around the border. Furthermore, the three border areas share a common nineteenth- and twentieth-century history and certain ethno-linguistic characteristics: all were part of Hungary prior to the Treaty of Versailles (Trianon). Finally, on the Ukrainian side, local discourse usually describes the border as ‘with the EU’ rather than with individual member states. For these reasons, and because for our purposes here local variation between individual border-crossing points is more significant than systematic differences between national stretches of the border, we have chosen to treat the three national border zones as a single continuum. Here, we attend more to the specificities of individual border crossings than to the comparison of the national borders as such. 5. For an insightful discussion of this logic applied to another economic production line, and an analysis of the politics of sight, see Pachirat (2009). 6. See Scott (1998) and Flyvbjerg (2001) for discussions of this distinction. 7. Dorion (2006, 15) writes, ‘Boundaries are everywhere, even in the most trivial situations. You stop at a red light and you experience in a few seconds at least three boundaries: a spatial boundary (the line not to cross); a temporal boundary (the minute that the red light lasts); a boundary between statuses (you stop, you are on this side of the law; you pass, you are outside the law).’ 8. Kunth and Thorez (2005) suggest similarly that transnational networks between formerly Soviet states differ according to the mode of transport used: maritime networks function relatively free of national boundaries, while trains are bound by them. 9. For a discussion of the advantages of political analysis of ethnographic research relative to other forms of qualitative research, see Allina-Pisano (2009b).

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238 André Simonyi and Jessica Pisano Szmagalska-Follis, K. (2008) ‘Repossession: Notes on Repossession and Redemption in Ukraine’s Western Borderland’, Cultural Anthropology, 23(2), 329–60. Yanow, D. (2006) ‘Neither Rigorous nor Objective? Interrogating Criteria for Knowledge Claims in Interpretive Science’ in D. Yanow and P. Schwartz-Shea (eds.) Interpretation and Method: Empirical Research Methods and the Interpretive Turn (New York: M. E. Sharpe). Zelei, M. (1997) ‘Subcarpathia: Bridgehead or No-man’s Land’, The Hungarian Quarterly, 38(146), http://www.hungarianquarterly.com/no146/p38.shtml, date accessed February 19, 2010.

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14 The Awkward Divide: Paradoxes of Transnationality on the Polish–Ukrainian Border Karolina Szmagalska-Follis

The art of government has been highly responsive to the challenges of transnationality. (Aihwa Ong, 1999) That the nation-state is a leaky vessel these days is hardly news to anyone. Some of its cracks and holes, however, are seen as more threatening than others; thus the sustained efforts to mend, fix, and strengthen particularly alarming fissures have become a persistent political theme of our times. Scholars of transnationalism have argued since the mid-1990s that the lives of increasing numbers of people – whether in networks, relationships, families, or workplaces – can no longer be understood just by looking at what goes on within national borders (Kearney 1995; Appadurai 1996; Hannerz 1996; Ong 1999; Levitt and Glick Schiller 2004; Kaiser and Starie 2005; Knorr Cetina 2005; Favell 2008). Nation-states, once conceptualized as essentially containers for society, have ceased to define citizens’ personal identities and histories. They no longer have the monopoly on imposing economic orders, but rather they are forced to adjust to global capital markets. Discussions of new transnational phenomena (such as migration, commerce, activism and advocacy, crime and terrorism, as well as transfers of knowledge, policy, and expertise) have focused on new connectivities forged between people and places irrespective of national borders. Often the implicit or explicit assumption in these analyses has been that it is the loosening or growing irrelevance of national boundaries that has contributed to the emergence of transnational linkages (e.g., Lash and Friedman 1992; Appadurai 1996). On the other hand, much of the newer literature on borders coming out across disciplines in response to international security preoccupations, resurgent anti-immigrant sentiments, and the rise of biopolitical border controls offers a contrasting emphasis. From that perspective, state borders are understood to entail at once ‘concrete physical manifestations and more 239

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ethereal – but no less present – metaphoric fixations’ (Blank 2004, 354). This scholarship points to the ways in which contemporary regimes of mobility and migration produce individual and collective hardship and perpetuate various forms of inequality, exclusion, and discrimination. It challenges the notion that the global world is a world somehow unbounded (Andreas and Snyder 2000; Bigo 2002; Walters 2002; Coutin 2003; O’Dowd 2003; Blank 2004). Given this disjuncture, how can the insights of transnationalism scholarship and those of critical border studies be brought together into a productive contribution to the study of the European Union (EU)? And more specifically, what happens in a vibrant field of transnational exchange when a border that divides it is reaffirmed and reinforced rather than abolished? This chapter approaches these questions ethnographically to show the particular forms of transnational contacts and relationships on EU’s eastern frontier. It discusses people and places on the border between Poland and Ukraine and presents a threefold analysis of the links and movements that have developed there over the course of the past two decades. The first part shows how the post-socialist unleashing of exchange and traffic forged transnational connections between formerly isolated areas, leading to the emergence of a vast economic ‘gray sector’, that is, a sphere of mobility and transactions unsanctioned by either of the bordering states. Among the effects of these developments has been the subduing of Polish–Ukrainian nationalist tensions. The second part discusses how these transnational ties and interactions relate to the supranational process of the EU’s formal expansion. It shows how Poland’s accession to the EU introduced troubling paradoxes into the field of newfound Polish–Ukrainian proximity. As the Polish border with Ukraine was turned into an external EU boundary (and, before long, into the outer limit of the Schengen zone), it became clear that constructing it would not be a unilateral enterprise. It is perhaps the greatest irony of the whole venture that it could not be accomplished without the cooperation of those whom the new border most immediately excludes. A particular case, involving a Polish training program for Ukrainian border service personnel organized by a nongovernmental organization, shows that Polish and EU officials had to engage their counterparts in Ukraine in the project of reconstructing the boundary in order to successfully re-border Europe. While doing so, they have tapped into the existing robust transnational networks and gazed toward Ukraine with suspicion, seeing it as a source and transit country for EU-bound illegal immigrants. This incongruous combination of dependence and distrust, as argued in the third part of the chapter, has had a profound distancing effect on those who live near and across borders. It makes the outer frontier of the EU a key site for examining the human consequences of political, economic, and social divisions in an era of transnational interconnectedness.

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The politics of the ‘gray sector’ In a 1998 article the anthropologist Chris Hann described the city of Przemyśl (Peremyshl in Ukrainian) on the Polish–Ukrainian border as a prominent site for the reemergence of Polish post-socialist nationalism. Like all urban centers in the region, before World War II it was home to Poles, Ukrainians, Jews, and small numbers of other ethnic minorities. After the war, with the once-strong Jewish presence wiped out and all but a small minority of Ukrainians expelled, it became an ethnically homogeneous provincial center 10 kilometers west of the barbed wired boundary of the Soviet Union.1 In his work Hann analyzed the 1991 case of an intractable property struggle between Ukrainian-minority Greek Catholics and Polish Roman Catholics over the rights to a Carmelite Church.2 He described the feud between bishops and their respective Polish and Ukrainian supporters as an example of aggressive nationalist ‘politics of the past,’ a fomenting of a climate of mutual distrust and intolerance verging on the threshold of a violent outburst (Hann 1998, 853). The eventual resolution of the conflict was unsatisfactory for the inherently weaker Greek Catholic community. They were granted rights to a different church, while the Roman Catholics appropriated the one initially at stake and removed its dome in order to rid it of any traces of the Greek rite. Hann (1998, 842) argued the conflict took a dangerous turn because far from withering (or ‘freezing’) under socialism, [nationalism] continued to grow in this period: overt promotion of political nationalism of the sort that typified the interwar period was precluded, but rigid control of education and culture helped to ensure that the nation, rather than any kind of sub- or supra-national entity, became the dominant focus of loyalty and identity. Above all, it suited the Roman Catholic Church to promote the nation as the basic principle of cultural ordering. There is little to dispute in this diagnosis. Indeed, the current resistance displayed by Polish politicians and the public to some of the more radical forms of European integration indicates that the nation as a source of identity remains more politically potent than any other type of a political community.3 But the more site-specific conclusion of Hann’s (1998, 862) Przemyśl case study, namely that the borderland climate of post-socialist nationalism precludes the Ukrainian minority from openly practicing their identity, appears to require an update. Over the weeks that I spent in Przemyśl in the early summer and fall of 2005, I noted some isolated and subdued signs of the old Polish–Ukrainian hostility. A local bookstore carried anti-Ukrainian publications describing the massacres carried out by UPA (Ukrainska Povstanska Armiya, i.e., Ukrainian Insurgent Army) in Volhynia in 1943.4 A washed-out piece of

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graffiti saying ‘Ukrai ńcy do domu’ (Ukrainians go home) was visible on the side of a blockhouse in a neighborhood on the outskirts. Were these signs of a brewing conflict or only vestiges of a receding anti-Ukrainian prejudice? As I pursued vernacular accounts of the city’s recent past, one of the people I encountered was Jacek, a local radio reporter in his late forties. A passionate chronicler of local events, he invited me to his home studio and showed me an album of clippings and fliers documenting the past two decades in Przemyśl and the region. Jacek described how before Poland’s EU accession and the introduction of the visa requirement for Ukrainians, Belarusians, and Russians, the border was virtually open. Between 1991 (the year of Ukrainian independence) and 2003 (the last year of visa-free traffic) passports and cash were required, but it was rare for the guards to return anyone from a crossing (see also Iglicka and Rybicki 2002). The traffic moved in both directions. Poles went to Ukraine for cheap liquor, tobacco, and gas. Ukrainians, in addition to bringing those goods for sale, also came to Poland for work. The customs authorities performed the spectacle of fighting contraband, but only a fraction of the smuggled goods was confiscated.5 The mundane shuttling across the border emerged as an activity that intensified mutual contacts and economically sustained not only the inhabitants of impoverished rural Western Ukraine, but also people in the eastern districts of Poland. The post-1989 changes were harsh on these borderland regions, which remain among the poorest in the EU.6 The ability to transact in informal markets, commonly referred to as szara strefa – the gray sector – provided a lifeline for the local unemployed and underemployed. In his account of the play of the past in the present, Jacek connected the post-socialist emergence of economically driven cross-border connections to the easing of local Polish–Ukrainian tensions: Szara strefa is strong and developed here. I think that szara strefa fixed the relations between Poles and Ukrainians at this lowest level, between people. When the Ukrainian state was being established, it was the beginning of the 1990s, Polish–Ukrainian relations at the state level were excellent, the presidents kissed, gave each other bear hugs, but here ... the Balkans were in the making. In 1991–92 [because of the Church property conflict] blood could have flowed here. Jacek suggested that the intensity of traffic and exchange revealed that the nationalists most vocal in the conflict were out of touch with the present. After the border was opened, he said, the old specters of Ukrainian retribution ceased to inspire fear. It turned out that ‘the UPA was not coming back after all’ and that it was not going to ‘slaughter’ the Poles: There was this stereotype here of a Ukrainian bandit who would come with a wooden saw and would hack women and children in half. This

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is how people were raised here, on the literature about [the] 1943 [killings ... .]. With that came the nostalgia for Lviv, the city that was taken away. ... They thought in the early 1990s that Lviv could still return to Poland. ... Yes, it was really dangerous here. And this danger, among other things, was relieved by szara strefa. Because people noticed that instead of beating each other they could smuggle vodka, cigarettes. ... Poles could build a house for cheap with Ukrainian labor. Ukrainians could build one for cheap with materials smuggled from Poland. Kurwy [hookers] started coming because they saw there was money to be made off Polish businessmen. Everything now could be arranged more cheaply. So what’s the point of fighting? Men and women traveled back and forth. Cross-border relationships and marriages began to form. And finally, Jacek said, referring to the interwar and Hapsburg periods, ‘like before, blood started to blend.’ In other words, unregulated activity around the procurement of basic goods and services (including sexual ones) recouped, according to Jacek, some of the prewar heterogeneity of the border area. Older linguistic and ethnic ties were revitalized and with them the capacity to engage in peaceful and pragmatic, if often brazenly illegal, transactions. But just like the ‘before’ he had in mind, the present was far from idyllic. The specific causes and forms of symbolic and physical violence were different; they did not emerge from within the terror of virulent nationalism, but from the uncertainty and insecurity of illicit cross-border exchange. Przemyśl had been a gray sector hub before Poland’s EU accession and has remained one since. In 2005 and 2006 five buses per day departed for Lviv from the local bus terminal, in addition to countless minibuses (known as busiki in Polish, marshrutki in Ukrainian) shuttling between Przemyśl and the border crossing in Medyka located 10 kilometers away. The ride to the border was two złote (at the time approximately 60 cents) and the inhabitants of Przemyśl and local villages, both on the Polish and on the Ukrainian side, often made the trek across a few times per day. The price difference on cigarettes allowed for up to 50 percent profit, and even if each time a carrier (usually a woman) brought only the allowed one carton bought in Ukraine for 20 hryvnia (15 złote, then about US$5), she could still make up to 15 złote by immediately selling it to the local mafia buyers for 25 to 30 złote, depending on the state of supply and demand on a given day. (Legal cigarettes of comparable quality would cost about 55 to 60 złote.) At the unmarked minibus stops and onboard the minibuses, people traded information about the guards and customs officers on duty on a given day. Ukrainians referred to them as pohranychnyky, an old way of referring to soldiers on border duty. The Poles used a similar category of wopki (from WOP, the acronym for the long-gone socialist Borderland Protection Forces). There was one street lamp near the spot where the rides to the border departed and on which people posted notes every day that listed the names and aliases of

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officers who were currently on duty at the checkpoint: ‘Monday, 7am–1pm: Baska, Ruda (Redhead), Gruby (Fatso).’ These notes served as warnings for the border crossers who, intimately familiar with the habits and idiosyncrasies of the personnel, could infer from the schedule if the day was going to be one of hassles and possible trouble or one of smooth sailing. In this way the trajectories of Ukrainian vendors, tobacco pushers, and itinerant workers appeared as cautious but thoroughly routine. This chapter does not intend to argue that Poles in Przemyśl (or anywhere else for that matter), in spite of Hann’s observations, suddenly shed ethnic and national prejudice and became rational economic actors focused on profit and tolerant of other identities. But even though that has not been the case, the dramatically altered political economy of the region and the opening of the Polish–Ukrainian border upset the dyadic ‘us versus them’ dynamic of neighborly relations and provided a new context for making sense of ethnic, linguistic, and religious difference. The emergence of the gray sector between Poland and Ukraine can be conceptualized as a historically and geographically situated transnational process ‘anchored in and transcending one or more nation states’ (Kearney 1995, 548) and relying on ‘the condition of cultural interconnectedness and mobility across space’ (Ong 1999, 4). Ong (1999, 4) parses the term transnationality in order to tease out its multiple meanings and robust analytic potential: Trans denotes both moving through space and across lines, as well as changing the nature of something. Besides suggesting new relations between nation states and capital, transnationality also alludes to the transversal, the transactional, the translational, and the transgressive aspects of contemporary behavior and imagination that are incited, enabled and regulated by the changing logics of state and capitalism. Indeed, the end of Soviet-era constraints coupled with the launching of the free market did open the space for individuals and groups to engage in transactions, translations, and transgressions, all of which profoundly altered relationships between people on both sides and shaped the cross-, or rather transborder economy. For better or worse, migrants, vendors, and other participants became embedded ‘in multi-layered, multi-sited transnational fields, encompassing those who move and those who stay behind’ (Levitt and Glick Schiller 2004, 1003). As Ukrainians forged new work and personal connections on the Polish side of the border, they usually remained in constant touch with families back home, sustaining emotional ties and providing material support. Poles venturing into business in Ukraine would locate their financial interests there, but still keep their homes on the Polish side. Parallel to these changes surfaced a more elite discourse of Polish– Ukrainian partnership. It involves writers, students, artists, and activists

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and draws on the embattled but venerable tradition of the progressive alliance of Polish and Ukrainian antitotalitarian intellectuals and politicians (dating back to the early twentieth century). Its influence gradually intensified, spurring a vast field of cross-border cultural and educational practices, tourism, entrepreneurship, and nongovernmental organization and local government collaboration and culminating, in late 2004, in the unprecedented support of the Polish public for the Ukrainian Orange Revolution. As a result, in Przemyśl and elsewhere, the late 1990s and early 2000s were a time when Ukraine ceased to be associated primarily with the prewar ethnic tensions and mass killings perpetrated in the region during World War II. Instead, collective perceptions of Ukrainians came to be shaped first by the petty traders and immigrant workers coming to Poland in ever-greater numbers, and second by the media images of Ukraine as a proximate and welcoming place like Poland in many ways, only somewhat more backward economically and more scathed by its Soviet experience. (Hand in hand with claims of backwardness came the potent Arcadian trope of Ukraine as more ‘authentic’ and unspoiled by fast-paced capitalism.) Summing up, through the daily interactions set off by mercantile exchange, employment, and other relationships, Poles began to develop a new intimacy with their neighbors, which transcended the border and complicated the nationalist narrative of lasting hostility, on the one hand, and the simplistic government- and church-driven claims of ‘Polish–Ukrainian reconciliation,’ on the other. Competing nationalisms by no means disappeared, but they ebbed into the background. Claims of irreconcilable differences continued to be uttered and retained their destructive potential, but were increasingly drowned out by a powerful new narrative where benevolent (if overly romanticized) notions of commonality intertwined with pragmatic claims of shared economic, political, and strategic interests.

EU integration and the thickening of the border An account of the vibrant field of transnational interactions across the Polish–Ukrainian border would not be complete without a discussion of how they relate to the supranational process of EU formal expansion. Critical in this regard is the role of European regulators and agents of the Polish state in charge of remaking the border into an external EU boundary. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, plans for Poland’s accession produced concerns about the excessive permeability of its eastern border and about Ukraine (and to a lesser extent Belarus) as a source and transit country for EU-bound illegal immigrants. People who lived off the gray sector had sensed that the border would not always resemble a ‘crooked fence with holes in it’ (as one of my tobacco-smuggling informants once put it). Long before Poland actually entered the EU, baffled reports of the anarchic practices on the former Soviet frontier gave way to a discourse of ‘reinforcing’ and ‘modernizing’

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the boundary. Media and politicians began to circulate unease and suspicion via claims about illegal migration, corruption, and other assorted perils of open borders. Combating those ills was presented as an imperative stemming from Poland’s responsibilities as a candidate for EU integration. Integrating new member states into the common ‘area of freedom, security and justice’ was a key issue in negotiating and planning the enlargement. The ‘area of freedom, security and justice,’ first declared as the EU’s goal in the Treaty of Amsterdam (1997), accelerated the abolition of checks on internal borders between member states and the reinforcement of external EU borders, which had been planned as part of the Schengen Accords since the 1980s.7 New modes of policing were introduced (for example, enhanced surveillance of the interior, increased border guard powers at external borders, international police cooperation) that were to compensate for the open borders (see for example Grabbe 2000; Lavenex 2001). The freedom of movement within Europe had been designed for Europeans (Maas 2007; Favell 2008), but the elimination of passport controls between member states implicitly extended it to ‘third-country nationals.’ This caused a great deal of anxiety in Western Europe on the eve of EU’s eastern expansion. Politicians, media, and especially representatives of immigration-weary constituencies asked if the new members were fit to defend and protect the external boundaries of Europe.8 Or would the new members be a weak link, allowing an uncontrolled influx of criminals and illegal immigrants into EU territory? The challenge faced by the Polish state was as clear as it was intractable. The border had to be both physically and legally reinforced without alienating Ukrainian partners of Polish organizations and government. The perception that cross-border transactions flourish on corruption and lawlessness had to be eliminated without entirely suffocating the local economy. Finally, the migration of Ukrainian workers had to be brought under control without depriving Polish employers of access to cheap labor. The governmental strategy in response to these challenges was to emphasize the ‘civilizing’ power of the new border regulations. The government asserted that advanced surveillance technology and ramped-up policing targeted illegal immigrants, suspected terrorists, and criminal smuggling organizations (as opposed to ‘regular people’ and ‘neighbors’). It painted the new policies and top-notch technology and infrastructure as expressions of Poland’s modernity and Europeanness. For example, in response to protests that the EU-mandated visa policy would stifle traffic between Poland and Ukraine, one well-known political commentator endorsed the governmental approach as follows: For the negative view on visas we have to substitute a positive one: of the new rules as a means of introducing to Eastern Europe urgently needed elements of order, legality and predictability applied to the movement

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of people. A person ... arriving at the border ... should know that if she or he has her passport and visa in order, she or he ... won’t be subject to humiliating questioning and arbitrary decisions. Consulates are not only offices for issuing visas; they are ... centers for obtaining and spreading information, also about economic opportunities for both sides. Given the painfully wide civilization gap between the EU and the three countries in question [Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia], consulates ought to serve also as exhibition windows and places of breaking fresh ground. (Najder 2003, 5) This rhetoric of a ‘friendly border’ went hand in hand with promoting tourism, cultural exchange, and economic cooperation. At the same time it sidestepped issues of labor migration, although a few observers did remark that the introduction of visas was going to substantially complicate the lives of Ukrainian workers in Poland (Boratynski 2002; Batory Foundation 2004). The key agents involved in reinforcing the border were Polish governmental regulators and such agencies of law enforcement as the Border Guard, Customs Service, and Police. Representatives of the European Commission oversaw the changes in the course of repeated monitoring missions and independent experts were called upon to study, assess, and issue recommendations for the continued efforts of improving border security. But given the intensity of traffic between Poland and Ukraine alongside the EU’s general approach to protecting borders in partnership with third countries, the strengthening of the border could not be accomplished without the cooperation of Ukrainians themselves. The agents of the Ukrainian state were drawn into the very project of re-bordering Europe that ultimately left them on the outside looking in. This process provides a useful lens on the specific ways the art of government adjusts and intervenes in transnational fields.

The nexus of expertise During the 15 years between 1989 and 2004 (the year of EU accession), the so-called transition in Poland was an arena for a vigorous transfer of Western aid and expertise. All manner of American and European trainers and consultants came under private and governmental aegis to spread the gospel of free markets, civil society, and good governance. As students of ‘transition’ within anthropology have observed, these transient actors accomplished unequivocal and at times problematic results (Sampson 1996; Wedel 1998; Berdahl et al. 2000; Dunn 2004; Chivens 2006). However, in the period leading to Poland’s entry into the EU, this form of assistance was deemed to be no longer needed, and the wave of ‘consultancy tourism’ subsided (Aksartova 2006). At last, after years of being coached in the difficult arts of development and democracy, Polish officials and nongovernmental organization personnel were poised to take the torch and carry it eastward.

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It was as though through EU accession Poland had graduated to a higher rank of civilization. This advancement of status, combined with the Polish commitment to partnerships with the Ukrainian government and nongovernmental organizations, furnished the context for a border services training project organized in January and February 2006 by the joint forces of one Polish and one Ukrainian think tank and sponsored with EU funds.9 This series of encounters between Polish experts and Ukrainian trainees was emblematic of the paradoxical logic of re-bordering that demands the complicity of those left behind in constructing and maintaining the conditions of their own exclusion. The force behind the training on the Polish side was Mariusz, an affable 30-something research affiliate of the think tank, who confidently called himself an ‘expert.’ On the Ukrainian side, the leader and expert authority was Mykola, a retired general of the Ukrainian border service who worked as a consultant for the Kyiv think tank. The participants were an assorted, overwhelmingly male group of about 30 border service personnel and officials representing central and regional divisions of the Ukrainian border and immigration service. Among them was an architect who would design new detention facilities for illegal immigrants apprehended while crossing the border into Poland and returned to Ukraine. Also, the Ukrainian office of the International Organization for Migration had sent a young associate to participate in the training. She was Canadian but spoke fluent Ukrainian due to her family background and was eager to represent her organization in civilizing the country’s immigration standards.10 I was admitted to the training as an ‘independent researcher’ and allowed to observe the proceedings and participate in the study visits throughout the first and second part of the project (the final event happened after I had left Europe). The first part consisted of a three-day seminar at the think tank’s offices in Warsaw, supplemented with a visit to the Aliens Bureau. This spree of lectures, PowerPoint presentations, discussions, and meal and coffee breaks was followed by a two-day field trip to a detention center in Podleśnica (approximately 80 kilometers east of Warsaw) and to a border crossing and deportation facility in Ptaszyn nad Odrą on the Polish–German border (approximately 450 kilometers west of Warsaw, on the Oder). The second part took place three weeks later in the city of Uzhgorod, in the southwest of Ukraine. Uzhgorod is the capital of Zakarpatska Oblast (Transcarpathia). It has a population of slightly over 100,000 and is located on the Ukrainian–Slovakian border (the borderline is 3 kilometers west of the city limits). The Hungarian border is 15 kilometers away to the south, and the Polish border is 45 kilometers to the north. The organizers chose this location because one of the main routes of illegal immigration from Asia is said to lead through Transcarpathia. The town of Vysoky Horod sits 30 kilometers southeast of Uzhgorod, and nearby is the village of

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Ivanovo, the site of Ukraine’s main facility for the detention of unauthorized migrants, the vast majority of whom were apprehended en route to the EU.11 The training program in Uzhgorod included meetings with Slovakian and Hungarian border guards and a visit to Ivanovo.12 Visits to all of these places were occasions for discussion about running the intricate machinery of the EU’s external border, from the mundane management of checkpoints to secretive surveillance targeting illegal border crossing and the smuggling of people. I focus on one particular presentation where the specific stakes of the Ukrainian contribution to the policing of the EU’s border were made particularly clear.

Connected vessels Ten a.m. might not seem like a brutal hour, but on a January morning in snow-covered Warsaw it turned out to be a little early to begin a day of lectures and consultations. Except for the organizers, I was the first one to arrive at the Polish partner’s offices, located in the heart of the city, in one of the rare prewar apartment buildings where the interior had been gutted and converted into office space. Over the next three days meetings were held in a modern conference room on the fifth floor. Together with Mariusz, Agata (the composed and professional-looking interpreter), and a couple of other staff members, I waited for the Ukrainian delegation to arrive from a nearby hotel. ‘It’s okay,’ the coordinator said, unfazed by the delay. As she wondered whether to adjust the morning schedule for the following days, the participants started arriving. Amid greetings and apologies for the holdup, a warm atmosphere of Polish–Ukrainian amity began to emerge. ‘We are not in a hurry,’ said Mariusz. ‘We can do it at our pace. After all we’re all Slavs here.’ He was referring to what he later told me he perceived as a cultural commonality between ‘our two nations.’ He thought that Poles and Ukrainians understood each other, the only difference being that Poland was about ‘ten years ahead.’ The chitchat in Polish and Ukrainian, occasionally interlaced with Russian, gradually died out as the speakers took their microphones to begin the proceedings. After the requisite welcomes Mariusz gave the opening presentation entitled ‘Polish Migration Policy,’ which was meant to introduce the audience not just to the subject matter, but also to the further agenda of the training. He was an engaging speaker with a penchant for rhetorical questions and firm assertions. He stressed that the meeting was ‘not about politics’ and that the issue of Ukraine’s potential EU accession would not be discussed. At stake rather were Ukraine’s ‘international commitments’ to maintain control over border traffic, which must be fulfilled. To this end, he said, the organizers had made an effort to provide the participants with two perspectives on the ‘Polish experience’: a ‘view from the center’ and ‘from the field.’ Mariusz spoke in Polish and Agata provided

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concurrent interpretation in Ukrainian, but the timing of the audience’s nods and comments suggested that mutual understanding was independent of the translation. In talking about the early 1990s, when after German unification Poland first came to border a Western country, Mariusz confidently crafted a narrative of symmetry and commensurability. The experience of adjusting border policies to match the needs of the German side had to be ‘shared’ with Ukraine. It was the ‘Polish lesson’ that could now be transferred wholesale 700 kilometers to the east. The key element of this experience was introducing readmission, that is, an agreement between the border services of two neighboring countries to transfer between them illegal migrants who have violated the shared border. (Although in principle mutual, the German– Polish case of readmission primarily protected Germany from incursions from the east). Ukraine already had a readmission agreement with Poland, which stipulated that Ukrainian authorities would accept any Ukrainian citizen or third-country national apprehended after having illegally crossed the border from Ukrainian territory into Poland. Ukraine was now about to negotiate a readmission agreement with the EU as a whole. Some preparation was required and this is where the training was intended to help. According to Mariusz’s narrative, Poland in 1991 wanted to sustain an open and friendly western border. The new democratic government wished also for visa-free travel. Thus, it had to also assume responsibility for controlling migration from and via Poland to Germany. It had to ‘put a dam’ to border trespasses. This meant not only swiftly taking charge of its own citizens who illegally crossed the border, but also citizens of third countries who did the same. Readmission agreements, Mariusz explained, are just that: ‘technical arrangements between competent services’ that help order flows of people and maintain control over borders. With readmission arrangements in place, anyone apprehended while crossing the border could be immediately sent back. According to Mariusz, the necessary ‘operational cooperation’ between Polish border guards and the German Grenzschutz had ‘built trust,’ which now facilitated ongoing integration into the Schengen zone. These changes overlapped with the reformation of the guards from socialist army dinosaurs into a modern, European police-like force. It was critical to change how people perceived the service. Functionaries had to acquire the trust of ‘regular people’ so that, among other things, they could recruit informants. Tips from such protected sources became key to policing the smuggling of ‘illegals,’ trafficking in persons, and other cross-border crimes and misdemeanors. ‘I apologize for saying this,’ Mariusz said, ‘because it’s obvious. Under communism we all thought it was enough to watch the borderline. But this no longer works!’ To this, the audience responded with knowing laughs. They were on the same page. Mariusz began listing elements of policy and practice that emerged as indispensable after readmission came into effect: improved forgery-proof

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passports for improved tracking of influx and outflow, electronic databases for registering entry and departure, civilized asylum procedures and reception centers, a humane system for the detention of illegal immigrants, and professional management of deportation. Ukraine would need to develop all of these, following the Polish example, in order to manage in a ‘proper and modern’ way the stream of unauthorized third-country migrants and asylum seekers traveling westward through Ukraine. In return for making a commitment to police these undesirables, the EU would (maybe) lift some of the restrictions on the travel of Ukrainians into the EU. It would (probably) not lift the visa requirement, but it could ‘simplify’ the process and begin granting more visas to ‘certain categories’ of travelers. With his metaphors of flows, streams, and dams, Mariusz conjured for his Ukrainian audience an image of the complex hydraulics required for the effective regulation of human waves washing over nation-states and the EU. After his talk was over, I was left with a picture of the connected vessels used in physics classrooms to demonstrate hydrostatic equilibrium: liquid added to one cylinder does not spill but flows into the next one. It was as though migration engineers imagined that such equilibrium could be accomplished at the borders of Europe – that illegal migrants, rather than ‘flooding’ the EU, could be contained within the connected vessels of neighboring states. The talk also made it apparent that crafting a border regime is an elaborate game of give and take, wherein the more affluent side, although it enjoys the upper hand, still has a serious stake. For admitting certain kinds of unwanted people, less affluent governments can negotiate a slight opening of the tide-gates to their own citizens. In July 2007, over a year after the training took place and only a few months before Ukraine’s neighbors were admitted fully into the Schengen zone without checks on internal borders, the visa facilitation and readmission agreements between Ukraine and the EU were finally signed. They contained provisions for easier access to visas for students, business travelers, and participants of cultural and scientific exchanges. Moreover, visa fees applied by Schengen member states were fixed at €35 (still a steep price amounting to one fifth of an average monthly salary in Western Ukraine in 2007). The agreement on readmission stipulates ‘the obligations and procedures for the authorities of both Ukraine and the respective EU Member State as to when and how to take back people who are illegally residing on their territories. These obligations cover nationals from Ukraine, the EU Member States and those from third countries and stateless people.’13

Conclusion: Contingent mobility and the paradoxes of transnationality Franco Frattini, former Vice-President of the European Commission responsible for the area of Freedom, Security, and Justice, was quoted as having said at the signing of the agreements between the EU and Ukraine that

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‘these agreements are particularly important [because] facilitating peopleto-people contacts can greatly help in increasing mutual understanding and improving our relations in all fields.’14 But the official notion of what precisely entails such contacts is out of sync with how they are actually forged, maintained, and multiplied on the ground. Ukrainian students, business travelers, and participants of cultural and scientific exchanges are, certainly, important actors in transnational networks and deserving candidates for Schengen visas. But within the web of connections transcending the Polish–Ukrainian border the ultimate embodiment of people-to-people relations is the gray sector and the everyday economy it enables. Visa and readmission policies (as well as the elusive work permits the Polish government began to issue to Ukrainian workers in 2007) are interventions that aim to organize and bring order into this field. And indeed they might have introduced some measure of such order and transparency. However, they have primarily complicated traffic for those who do not belong to the categories named in the visa facilitation agreement, playing into the hands of the massive visa fraud and forgery industry and exacerbating the uncertainty experienced by persons whose livelihood depends on their ability to cross the border. Thus, since the EU’s expansion, life in the towns, villages, and border crossings on the eastern side of the borderland between Poland and Ukraine is characterized increasingly by what Blank (2004, 350) aptly calls ‘a condition of contingent mobility.’ In her account of life in a town whose economy disintegrated after the Soviet Union’s collapse, she observes that ‘with the end of state socialism in Ukraine, the restrictions on exiting national borders came to an end. Yet to leave, one must have somewhere to go’ (Blank 2004, 352). Those fortunate enough to have a viable destination have already left. Others attempt to find their way in the new and volatile capitalist economy by staying active in the increasingly obstructed gray sector. The livelihood of these transnational actors depends on their ability to circumnavigate Europe’s new border regime. Inhabiting an area directly across the border from the now-proximate but, due to growing immigration restrictions, increasingly inaccessible Europe, residents of the borderland are intimately familiar with the opportunities and foreclosures at work in their region. They are as much aware of the jobs available to them directly on the other side and farther west as they are of the tenuous status that awaits them abroad, and the risks involved in illegal border crossing and employment. This uneasy sense of stunted opportunity permeates the day-to-day experience of inhabiting a field that is transnational but nonetheless rigidly bordered. Meanwhile, some of the transnational links and connections that had begun to develop are thriving in spite of current border policies, while some of the other ones appear to have fallen victim to the restrictions on movement. For example, nongovernmental organization and business activities remain quite robust in the field of economic cooperation. Such connections suggest the pragmatism of shared interests shall continue to

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fuel relationships between entrepreneurs, development workers, and local officials and politicians from both sides of the border. On the other hand, there is no small amount of anecdotal evidence that informal arrangements such as cross-border ‘man and a van’ operations, construction crews, and semi-illicit import–export ventures have collapsed in the aftermath of the introduction of Schengen. (Although, in fairness, in accounting for such effects there is the difficulty of having to tease apart the consequences of rigid border policies from those of the 2008–9 economic crisis). In light of such developments, the question scholars ought to be posing now is about the specific kinds of transnationality the EU and its neighbors can sustain at their borders, and – no less important – what kinds are most desirable. As to the notion itself, transnationalism as a concept and transnationality as a category of experience are useful analytic tools precisely because they contain within them – as Ong (1999) pointed out – the vital prefix ‘trans.’ It does not presuppose the scope of a relationship (the way supranational or intergovernmental do), nor does it determine its scale (as global and globalization do). It alerts us to multiple micro-movements in all directions that share one thing in common – they refuse to be contained within national boundaries. Together they make up the complex social landscape that becomes, in the EU and elsewhere, the awkward and unaccustomed subject of governance. Juxtaposing the experiences of the contingently mobile with those of the experts and officials who took part in the collective project of reorganizing traffic across the Polish/EU–Ukrainian border reveals that transnationality, with its transactions, translations, and transgressions, fuels contradictory processes. Cross-border contacts and partnerships as well as immaterial values such as trust, understanding, and favorable disposition can be harnessed for the purposes of governance – as in the effort to draw Ukrainian officials into crafting the EU border regime – as well as to build networks and relationships that defy those very same borders. This paradox is not resolved easily, for fear of a return to Soviet-style frontiers and the logic of combative nationalisms, which abhorred ambiguity and stood in the way of the formation of both productive and illicit cross-border relationships. For the time being, the talk about ‘friendly’ borders where people-to-people contacts are not obstructed amounts to mere rhetoric. Giving it the benefit of the doubt, it can be regarded as a hopeful expression of an agenda for the future. For now, however, more than anything else, it obfuscates a reality of hardship and economic insecurity.

Notes 1. Przemyśl has a population of 70,000. In the 1990s approximately 2,000 of its inhabitants declared themselves Ukrainian (Hann 1998, 846). 2. The Greek Catholic Church, also known as Uniate Church, was established in 1596 based on an agreement between a splinter group of Orthodox bishops and

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3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9. 10.

the Roman Catholics. The Greek Catholics recognize the authority of the Pope and are bound by Catholic dogma, but they retain autonomy in matters of rite and tradition. This means they follow the Byzantine rather than the Latin rite. Today Greek Catholicism remains strong mainly in the Ukrainian part of Galicia, where it reestablished itself in the late-twentieth century after the so-called catacomb period of over 40 years of underground existence in the Soviet Union. The 2005 turn to the right in Poland precipitated such examples of this resistance through the discourse of ‘Polish exceptionality,’ which demands being honored in the future EU Treaty by having permission to withdraw unilaterally from provisions concerning ‘morality and the family’ (a coded reference to gay marriage and abortion). In 1943 in the villages of Volhynia, UPA partisans perpetrated mass killings of Polish inhabitants of local villages. The numbers of victims are contested; the historian Hrytsak (2000) estimates 60,000. These events, and the subsequent Polish retaliation, exacerbated borderland hostility, which had been intensifying since the launch of the Polish state’s 1930s interwar policies designed to intimidate the Ukrainian minority. Soviet socialism silenced accounts of these killings, effectively pushing them into the realm of private family history. In 2003 the Finance Ministry launched a campaign to curtail corruption in the Customs Service. Before then, according to Zbigniew Bujak (personal communication, June 29, 2004), a former dissident and one of the first reformers of customs after 1989, the problem of corruption and lax enforcement of the eastern border was an intractable problem. Colluding with the smugglers’ networks provided incomparably better income than being paid as an employee of the state. According to EU statistics, Lubelskie and Rzeszowskie, the two regions adjacent to the border, have a GDP per inhabitant less than 30 percent of the average for the 25 member states of the EU (European Commission/Eurostat 2006). The original Schengen Agreement was signed by France, Germany, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands in 1985. It established common rules regarding visas, asylum rights, and checks at external borders to allow the free movement of persons within the signatory states. Under the Treaty of Amsterdam (1997) the Schengen legislation was incorporated into the European acquis communautaire. Today most EU states and some non-EU ones (Norway, Iceland, and Switzerland) are parties to the convention. The United Kingdom and Ireland are not. Especially in the years preceding accession, the eastern border issue received a lot of attention, notably in Germany. On March 1, 2000, the Deutche Presse Agentur ran the headline ‘Hundreds of thousands of foreigners are poised outside Poland’s eastern border waiting to enter illegally on their way to the western Europe.’ These fears resurfaced in 2007, as the final border checks on the new members’ western borders were being abolished. In order to protect the anonymity of informants, the names of some places and all persons and institutions have been changed or omitted. The International Organization for Migration is an intergovernmental organization whose mission statement says it is ‘committed to the principle that humane and orderly migration benefits migrants and society’ (http://www.iom.int). It is involved in policy research, migrant health assessment, ‘voluntary assisted returns,’ counter-trafficking, and ‘technical cooperation on migration management and capacity building.’ In Ukraine it is particularly active in the latter two domains. (‘Capacity building’ translates, among other things, into the development of detention centers.). Human rights organizations have criticized it for lack of transparency and accountability and for serving powerful economic

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12.

13. 14.

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interests (Amnesty International 2004; Human Rights Watch 2005; Noborder Network, n.d.). Smaller detention facilities are also located in Mostyska near the Polish border and in the vicinity of Kyiv. Two other centers were in the planning stages at the time of my research and the International Organization for Migration was the government’s partner in their construction. According to Svetlana Marintseva, an Amnesty International human rights advocate in Lviv, in many places in Ukraine asylum seekers and persons deemed to be ‘illegal immigrants’ are held in regular jails. The third and final installment – the project’s concluding conference – was not scheduled until several months later, and it took place in Kyiv. The main event of the concluding conference, which gathered a high-profile assembly of security specialists and experts from Ukraine and some guests from Poland, was the presentation of the White Paper on Ukraine’s migration policy (International Centre for Policy Studies and Institute for Public Affairs 2006). More details of the agreements are available at http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/07/849&format=HTML&age See http://ec.europa.eu/commission_barroso/frattini/media/default_en.htm

References Aksartova, S. (2006) ‘Why NGOs? How American Donors Embraced Civil Society after the Cold War’, International Journal of Not-for-Profit Law, 8(3), 15–21. Amnesty International (2004) ‘Amnesty International Statement to the 88th Session of the Governing Council of the International Organization for Migration (IOM)’ (New York: Author). Andreas, P. and T. Snyder (eds.) (2000) The Wall around the West: State Borders and Immigration Controls in North America and Europe (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield). Appadurai, A. (1996) Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press). Batory Foundation (2004) Monitoring Polskiej Polityki Wizowej, Research Report (Warsaw: Author). Berdahl, D., M. Bunzl, and M. Lampland (eds.) (2000) Altering States: Ethnographies of Transition in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press). Bigo, D. (2002) ‘Security and Immigration: Toward a Critique of the Governmentality of Unease’, Alternatives, 27, 63–92. Blank, D. R. (2004) ‘Fairytale Cynicism in the “Kingdom of Plastic Bags”: The Powerlessness of Place in a Ukrainian Border Town’, Ethnography, 5(3), 349–78. Boratynski, J. (2002) ‘Nie odgradzajmy sie od sasiadow ze wschodu’, Rzeczpospolita, 4, February 7. Chivens, T. (2006) ‘Intervening Gender: The Policing of Domestic Violence between the United States and Poland’, paper prepared for the Biennial Conference of the European Association of Social Anthropologists, Bristol, UK, 12–15 September. Coutin, S. (2003) Legalizing Moves: Salvadoran Immigrants Struggle for US Residency (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press). Dunn, E. C. (2004) Privatizing Poland: Baby Food, Big Business, and the Remaking of Labor (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press). European Commission/Eurostat (2006) Regions: Statistical Yearbook 2006 (Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities).

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256 Karolina Szmagalska-Follis Favell, A. (2008) Eurostars and Eurocities: Free Movement and Mobility in an Integrating Europe (Malden: Blackwell). Grabbe, H. (2000) ‘The Sharp Edges of Europe: Extending Schengen Eastwards’, International Affairs, 96(3), 481–514. Hann, C. (1998) ‘Postsocialist Nationalism: Rediscovering the Past in Southeast Poland’, Slavic Review, 57(4), 840–63. Hannerz, U. (1996) Transnational Connections: Culture, People, Places (New York: Routledge). Hrytsak, Y. (2000) Historia Ukrainy 1772–1999: Narodziny nowoczesnego narodu (Lublin: Instytut Europy Srodkowo-Wschodniej). Human Rights Watch (2005) ‘Ukraine: On the Margins. Rights Violations against Migrants and Asylum Seekers at the New Eastern Border of the European Union’ (New York: Human Rights Watch). Iglicka, K. and R. Rybicki (2002) ‘Schengen: Consequences for National Migration Policy’, Policy Report (Warsaw: Institute for Public Affairs). International Centre for Policy Studies and Institute for Public Affairs (2006) White Paper: Ukraine’s Policy to Control Illegal Migration (Kyiv: International Centre for Policy Studies). Kaiser, W. and P. Starie (eds.) (2005) Transnational European Union: Towards a Common Political Space (London: Routledge). Kearney, M. (1995) ‘The Local and the Global: The Anthropology of Globalization and Transnationalism’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 24(1), 547–65. Knorr Cetina, K. (2005) ‘Complex Global Microstructures: The New Terrorist Societies’, Theory, Culture and Society, 22(5), 213–34. Lash, S. and J. Friedman (1992) ‘Introduction’ in S. Lash and J. Friedman (eds.) Modernity and Identity (Oxford: Blackwell). Lavenex, S. (2001) ‘Migration and the EU’s New Eastern Border: Between Realism and Liberalism’, Journal of European Public Policy, 8(1), 24–42. Levitt, P. and N. Glick Schiller (2004) ‘Conceptualizing Simultaneity: A Transnational Social Field Perspective on Society’, The International Migration Review, 38(3), 1002–39. Maas, W. (2007) Creating European Citizens (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield). Najder, Z. (2003) Political Consequences of the Post-Enlargement Implementation of Schengen Rules, Policy Report (Warsaw: Institute for Public Affairs). Noborder Network (n.d.) ‘The IOM, Spies and Migrant Hunters: Campaign to Combat Global Migration Management’, http://www.noborder.org/iom/index.php, date accessed july 17, 2007. O’Dowd, L. (2003) ‘The Changing Significance of European Borders’ in J. Anderson, L. O’Dowd, and T. M. Wilson (eds.) New Borders for a Changing Europe: Cross Border Cooperation and Governance (London: Frank Cass) Ong, A. (1999) Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality (Durham: Duke University Press). Sampson, S. (1996) ‘The Social Life of Projects: Importing Civil Society to Albania’ in C. Hann and E. C. Dunn (eds.) Civil Society: Challenging Western Models (London: Routledge). Walters, W. (2002) ‘Mapping Schengenland: Denaturalizing the Border’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 20, 561–80. Wedel, J. R. (1998) Collision and Collusion: The Strange Case of Western Aid to Eastern Europe, 1989–1998 (New York: St. Martin’s Press).

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15 Conclusion Joan DeBardeleben and Achim Hurrelmann

Transnational interactions are a defining feature of contemporary Europe. The chapters in this volume have provided ample evidence of the range of their impact, including the normative promise and problems associated with them, and the differentiated ways in which they affect politics, societies, and economic relations. Transnationalism is a concept used to capture a phenomenon that, as Casteel’s chapter documents, has affected Europe in a significant way for at least the past century, but at the same time seems to be taking on a decidedly new nature under the influence of European integration and within the larger context of globalization. The studies in this volume have also shown, however, that transnationalism as an analytical concept has not penetrated academic research on Europe to the same degree, neither in the relatively well-defined discipline of European Union (EU) Studies nor in the more heterogeneous field of European Studies more broadly conceived. In light of the empirical results of this volume, this concluding chapter will make the case for incorporating the concept more systematically into both of these research agendas. The Introduction contrasted two traditions for understanding the notion of transnationalism, one emerging from the field of international relations (IR), the other from the sociological and anthropological literature. The former contrasts transnational phenomena with the operations of nationstates and international organizations (thus introducing a vertical dimension), whereas the latter sees transnationalism as more fundamentally involving ‘horizontal interconnectedness’ between societies. The contributors to Part I of this book spell out these understandings of transnationalism in more detail, and sketch their implications for research in European Studies. For Hurrelmann (see Chapter 2), a political scientist, transnational relations in Europe encompass ‘all connections that link the society of an EU member state, or parts thereof, to (1) the society of at least one other member state, (2) an EU institution, or (3) the government of another member state.’ With this definition, he makes room for intersocietal linkages as well as vertical ones that involve state or EU institutions. This political 257

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definition, applied to the EU context, contrasts with Rumford’s more sociological approach, which sees transnationalism, in its clearest form, as having to do with ‘social connectivity’ that comes about through ‘bottom-up’ processes, with particular attention to its cross-border and spatial aspect and no special reference to the EU. The ‘transitive,’ or transborder, and horizontal aspects of transnationalism are particularly important to Rumford, as is the manner in which those cross-boundary interactions reflect back on the nation or on the societies from which they emerge. In Parts II and III of the book, both the vertical and the horizontal features of transnationalism, and their implications for European governance and society, are discussed in a number of empirical studies. These adopt a range of methodological approaches, reflective of the disciplinary diversity in the volume. Representing a range of political science approaches, authors of chapters in Part II utilize policy analysis, content analysis, case studies, analysis of court rulings, and examination of economic policies and their quantitative outcomes. Authors of the Part III rely more heavily on qualitative methods that involve direct contact with social actors, including interviews and ethnographic approaches, as well as discourse analysis. This methodological diversity mirrors the transdisciplinary nature of the literature on transnationalism and allows the authors to collectively capture its multidimensional impacts. The eclectic mix of methodologies in this volume also reflects the fact that transnationalism is a fledgling concept (at least in the field of European Studies) rather than a full-fledged theory; accordingly, the researcher does not have a body of hypotheses to test or draw on which define expected patterns of causality. Research strategies are thus largely inductive rather than deductive. In this sense the volume is charting the terrain, providing guideposts for how the notion of transnationalism may enrich European and EU Studies. One of the most obvious and immediate contributions of transnationalism that becomes evident in the volume derives precisely from the distinction between vertical and horizontal aspects of the phenomenon, which – when applied in the European context – increases awareness of the fact that the development of social interconnections may relate in different ways to European integration: transnational interconnections may extend beyond Europe and take place in parallel, but be only peripherally connected to institutional integration, or in other cases develop in direct relation to the EU. Rumford (see Chapter 3) emphasizes how the concept helps ‘Europeans to see Europe from a global perspective’ by ‘foregrounding the non-European drivers of European change.’ More broadly, it raises the question of the extent to which these processes are European and whether they are products of institutional integration or have their roots elsewhere. This may explain why some of the dynamics analyzed in this book seem one or more steps removed from key landmarks in the EU’s evolution, such as treaty making, institutional reform, and monetary union. These processes

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run alongside and in parallel to the EU’s development, they may reinforce or challenge the trajectory of European integration, and in some cases they seem largely peripheral to EU institutions; they may, in other words, be in Europe, but not of Europe. The Muslim diaspora organizations that Karim analyzes, for instance, do not appear to interface intensively with the European integration process, and the imagined diasporic community of their members is not limited to Europe, even though important parts of it may be located there. In other cases, transnational identities are formed alongside the integration process and are indirectly related to it. For example, Schmidtke (see Chapter 11) discusses transnational identities that are being forged among groups of highly skilled migrants, identities that can elicit ‘new forms of inclusion and exclusion beyond the nation-state’ and that run parallel to processes of European integration. In still other cases, such as the ones analyzed by SzmagalskaFollis and by Simonyi and Pisano, institutional developments in Europe – in this case enlargement and the extension of the Schengen zone – impact the nature of transnational societal (and economic) interactions in a very direct way. Thus the spatial borders (both real and virtual) that map transnational social relations in Europe may be quite different from those of the EU in some cases and correspond quite closely to them in others. On the other hand, transnational interactions do not necessarily occur as a result of autonomous actions of social forces and organized interests, but may be explicitly nurtured by EU institutions. The concept of transnationalism helps to understand such policies of the EU from a new perspective. Tömmel’s analysis suggests that the European Commission actually encourages transnational linkages as a way to compensate for roadblocks in its ability to bring about the adoption of unified policy approaches. The existence of transnational networks and forums, transnational interactions encouraged by Community programs, and Europe-wide interest associations, in her analysis, serve to ‘compensate for the comparatively weak authority of the supranational institutions’ (Tömmel, see Chapter 4). The attention to top-down elements in this argument provides a necessary counterpart to Rumford’s bottom-up perspective. In a similar vein, Gould, who also looks at positions of officials of both the EU and key member states, concludes that while the discourse coming out of the European Commission in Brussels legitimizes the rights of transnational immigrants in the EU explicitly, change is also underway in individual member states that, to differing degrees, is generating adaptations of national identities to reflect the increasing presence of transnationally mobile population groups. A second contribution of transnationalism consists of the insights that the concept may provide into the interplay between economic forces and social and political relations in Europe. Research on economic interaction in Europe, the key driving force of the European integration project, often neglects broader societal aspects of these interactions. By the same token,

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more sociological analyses do not always pay adequate attention to the economic origins of Europeanized social relations. Even though both the IR literature on transnationalism and its sociological/anthropological counterpart emphasize political and cultural aspects of transnationalism and tend to take its economic dimension for granted, the concept of transnationalism in principle is well suited to overcoming such compartmentalization. In this volume, the contributions by Bohle and Lillie highlight how an economically integrated Europe can generate new forms of transnational social and political dysfunctionality. For Bohle, the transnational movement of capital into the new EU member states, while producing some immediate economic and political benefits, served to undermine many of the gains made on the path to the stabilization of democracy in the face of the global financial crisis. Lillie’s study indicates that transnational capital can act more easily and effectively than transnational labor; he further argues that this asymmetry may elicit a negative reaction on the part of the European labor force, reigniting class conflict in Europe and undermining the legitimacy of European integration. Both of these contributions illustrate the potential that European economic integration may have for fueling a national or transnational backlash against the EU. These types of unintended consequences also highlight the importance of Hurrelmann’s admonition that if the concept of transnationalism is to be optimally useful in understanding European reality, it must pay attention to systemic and non-intentional forms of transnationalism. The cross-border connections occurring in the context of European integration may privilege the logics of some societal spheres or subsystems (such as the economy) over those of others (such as politics); at the same time, they expose social actors (workers, consumers, or professionals) to non-intentionally transnational experiences that might become politically significant in the future. The third key contribution that transnationalism may bring to the field of European Studies is its ability to highlight some intriguing paradoxes inherent in European societal transformations. The most striking is the manner in which certain social groups engaged in Europeanized interactions may find their relative political influence weakened rather than strengthened by their status as European actors. Different social groups and forces enjoy uneven access to benefits that organizing on a European basis may engender, due both to unequal organizational capacities and to differential access promoted by institutions such as the EU. Transnational activities seem to be much less empowering for groups or interests that have relatively few resources and are poorly organized than they are for more privileged elements of society. Statham, for example, concludes that powerful actors have more chances to participate in transnational media debates than do civil society actors, and that broader civil society forces are disadvantaged by the shift of policy competencies from the national to the European level. Chabanet’s conclusions are along the same lines. Transnational mobilization of protest in the EU seems to be the most difficult for disadvantaged

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groups that are negatively affected by the breaking down of national boundaries. Perhaps surprisingly, migrants are a prime example. While they are quintessentially transnational social actors, their transnational essence is disempowering rather than empowering. This is not only because they generally have few political resources to mobilize, but also due to the complexity of the transnational societal, policy, and legal environment in which they find themselves. Within the multilevel reality of European integration, policies relating to migrants take on a ‘complexity and opaqueness’ (Chabanet, see Chapter 6) that can defeat even the well informed. At the same time, policies in this domain still rest largely with the member states, even though the referent group, migrants, is decidedly transnational in its character. Even a group such as the unemployed, which under the influence of global economic forces takes on an increasingly transnational character, has trouble exerting effective political influence. The interests of the unemployed are frequently eclipsed, even within movements they have helped to initiate, by what Chabanet, drawing on Tarrow, calls ‘rooted cosmopolitans,’ that is, more educated groups with larger antiglobalization agendas. Chabanet’s concern that social exclusion and poverty, which have an increasingly transnational character, are not addressed effectively by the European integration process, may feed support for the alter-globalization movement, which challenges the underlying liberal agenda of the EU. Lillie’s research brings additional evidence that transnationalization can disadvantage transnationally mobilized groups that have few resources or institutional advocates, in this case posted workers, based on their restricted rights to organize collectively to achieve conditions matching those gains established by labor unions in the host countries. Tömmel agrees that at the current time elites and experts are the ones most involved in transnational interactions in the policy sphere, but she expects that broader circles of civil society will be drawn in over time, a hope echoed by Chabanet in his concluding comments about receptiveness on the part of the European Commission to some of the movements’ grievances. Another paradox of transnationalism relates to processes of re-bordering. Just as European integration seems to have expanded the potential for transborder interactions, new social divisions are reinforced by re-bordering processes, affecting in a particularly adverse manner those outside the EU’s new external borders. The chapters by Szmagalska-Follis and by Simonyi and Pisano demonstrate that the benefits of EU policies to promote transnational interactions (in this case visa facilitation between Ukraine and the EU following the inclusion of several Central and East European countries into the Schengen zone in January 2008) have aided mostly more privileged sectors of society – namely businesspeople, students, experts, and participants in various types of cultural exchanges. Less powerful groups residing outside of the EU’s eastern borders are doubly disadvantaged. Not only do

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they lack resources to react effectively to re-bordering processes, but they have a marginal legal standing in trying to acquire rights. Those in the small trade sector or people simply wishing to reap the benefits of economic opportunities that a more open border previously had provided are often pushed into the margins of illegal transnational practices. These conclusions are echoed by Schmidtke in his analysis of the exclusionary potential that accompanies the emergence of new European transnational professional identities. Ironically, as Szmagalska-Follis notes, efforts to share ownership of the new re-bordering policies may draw the excluded into the process of enforcing exclusion. Or in terms of transnationalism, the creation of transnational linkages for law enforcement may serve to enforce new limits on cross-border connections. A final paradox has to do with the phenomenon addressed by Casteel in his historical account, namely that transnational activities may serve to strengthen national identities rather than weaken them. As noted above, transnational phenomena appear in some cases to generate their antithesis. Sometimes this takes the form of a national backlash against outside intrusions, for example in the form of nationalist anti-immigrant movements and parties. In other instances transnational forces have quite different impacts in diverse national contexts. For example, as Bohle’s research illustrates, post-communist countries that entered the EU in May 2004 reacted quite differently to the challenges that market reform and transnational capital brought. Tömmel notes that, despite commonalities in understandings of problems that emerge across transnational policy communities, experts and elites have demonstrated the capacity to adapt responses in such a way as to maintain the specificity of national contexts. Gould’s research confirms this finding, at least on an official level, suggesting that the manner in which new transnational migrants are integrated into traditional understandings of national identity exhibit significant consistency with the unique understandings of citizenship in the particular members states. The three key contributions of transnationalism that have been highlighted – providing insights into (1) the relationships between institutional integration processes and societal interconnectedness; (2) the interplay between economic, political, and other societal connections in Europe; and (3) some of the paradoxes of closer connections between European societies – make the concept valuable both for refining the theoretical apparatus of EU Studies and for providing a focal point for broader interdisciplinary debates in European Studies. For EU Studies more narrowly understood, transnationalism can help generate hypotheses that challenge and/or enrich the dominant theoretical paradigms of the field, intergovernmentalism and neo-functionalism. In relation to intergovernmentalism, transnationalism draws attention to the interactive processes whereby institutional developments on a European level unleash societal forces that operate outside the control of both the member states and EU institutions and that may either

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push institutional integration forward or generate opposition to it. Neofunctionalist theorists have already taken account of such indirect dynamics with their concept of ‘spillover,’ but did not pay adequate attention to the societal backlash that intentional integrationist moves might produce. While transnationalism cannot be given the status of a rival theory to compete with these approaches, for as yet it has generated few, if any, explanatory propositions of its own, it challenges them to provide a more careful account of how institutional developments interact with societal ones, and to expand the range of independent variables that are considered in explaining EU institutionalization. With respect to the broader project of European Studies, the most important benefit of transnationalism lies in the fact that it is accessible to, and meaningful for, the various academic disciplines on whose contributions this interdisciplinary endeavor relies. As this volume has demonstrated, transnationalism provides a useful analytical framework for authors writing from diverse disciplinary backgrounds and focusing on a broad range of themes. This observation might sound trivial, but its significance for interdisciplinary research can hardly be overstated: Such research depends on concepts that allow the contributing disciplines to talk to each other. Transnationalism is such a concept. In addition to being useful in EU Studies, it promises to provide the broader, interdisciplinary research agenda of European Studies with some clearer conceptual contours. Certainly, transnationalism does not suggest a single trajectory for the development of European society. What it does offer, however, is a perspective for drawing attention to a broad range of interconnected dynamics and paradoxes that affect social life and identity change in Europe and that are, intentionally or unintentionally, occurring both under the influence of European integration and alongside it.

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Index advisory committees, in EU politics, 59, 64–7 Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN), 13, 206, 216–20 Aga Khan III, 213–14, 216 Aga Khan IV, 216–17 Alliance for Lobbying, Transparency and Ethics Regulation-EU (ALTER-EU), 96, 105–7, 109 alter-globalization movement, 11–12, 102–9, 261 Amsterdam Treaty, 99 Antall, J., 135 ‘area of freedom, security, and justice’, 9, 246, 251 asylum seekers, 98–102 Austria, 139, 159 Barnard, C., 125 Belgium, 96, 103 Böhmer, M., 171, 176, 180–2 Bologna Process, 72, 195 border-crossing activities, 27 borderless world, 37 borders, 46–7, 190, 222–35 control of, 223, 226–9, 247 external, 14, 197 juxtaposed, 48–9 multiplicity in space and time of, 228–31 Polish-Ukrainian border, 239–55 porosity of, 231–3 segmentation of, 226–8 thickening of, 245–7 transnational, 48–9 virtual, 231–3 bottom-up networking, 37–8 Bourdieu, P., 192, 193, 201 Brubaker, R., 147n2, 161 Byrne, L., 171, 176–8, 184 capitalism, 5, 115, 130–5, 138, 143–4, 146–7, 245 cartoon protests, 45

Castells, M., 43 Central Europe, see East-Central Europe Chicago School, 189 citizenship, 44, 83, 121–2, 179, 181, 184, 262 civil society, 79, 84, 86, 87, 92 European, 50, 164–5 global, 50 mass media and, 11 transnational, 164–5 civil society actors, 2, 4, 73, 78, 86–9, 92, 103, 161, 163, 260 class conflict, 114–16 collective identities, 13 collective memory, 165 colonialism, 8, 13, 212, 218, 219 The Commission of the European Communities v. Luxembourg, 119–20 Committee for Economic and Monetary Union, 64–5 committees, in EU politics, 64–7 Common Agricultural Policy, 98 Commons, J. R., 123 communication flows, 79–82 communism, fall of, 12, 132 Community Initiatives, 68, 69 community programs, transnational cooperation in, 67–9 comparative history, 156 competition policy, 66–7 cosmopolitanism, 44 counter-summits, 98, 108 ‘country of origin principle’, 19, 30, 118 credentials, recognition of, 194–6 cross-border connections, 5, 6, 22–3, 31–2, 243, 260 cross-border cooperation, 68 cross-border mobility, 190, 207, 239–55 cultural capital, 191–201 cultural globalization, 41 Czechoslovakia, 162 democracy, 7, 25–7, 95–6, 108–9, 134, 139–40, 147 265

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266

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demonstrations, 95–109 Denmark, 177 Danish cartoon protests, 45 Deutsch, K., 23, 79 Devji, F., 45 diasporas, 13, 159–61, 205–13, 216, 218, 219–20, 259 Dirk Rüffert v. Land Niedersachsen, 119 discourse concept of, 171–2 immigration, 174–82 Djelic, M.-L., 1, 41 East-Central Europe, 12 see also individual countries dilemma of simultaneity in, 133–7, 145–7 Europeanization of, 165 national narratives in, 158–63 social contracts in, 135–45 transformations in, 130–47 economic crisis (2008–9), 12 economic integration, 114, 131, 199, 259–60 economic transnationalism, 25 education system, 193, 195 Eichmann, A., 165 ERASMUS program, 9 Estonia, 118–19 ethnic enclaves, 198–200 ethnic minorities, 164 ethnography, 225 EU institutions, 27–32, 57–8, 166 EU policy-making, 11, 21–2, 57–73 Euro, Eurozone, 8, 46, 65 Europe see also specific countries concept of, 205 as ‘imagined community’, 220 interwar period, 162–3 in mass media, 80–2 postwar, 163–6 re-bordering of, 47, 261–2 transnationalism in, 8–10 European Anti-Poverty Network, 102 European Central Bank, 65 European citizenship, 121–2 European Citizenship Action Service, 100 European civil society, 50

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European Commission, 21, 26, 57–63, 65, 72, 109, 113, 259 European Council, 98, 108 European Council on Refugees and Exiles, 100 European Court of Justice (ECJ), 87, 113, 115, 116–20, 125. See also individual decisions European governance, transnationalism in, 57–73 European history, transnational approaches to, 153–66 European identities, 13, 27, 32, 44, 79, 170, 174–6, 197–8 European imperialism, 219 European integration see also integration transnational labor markets and, 113–27 European integration theory, 1, 10, 19–33 descriptive theories, 19, 21–3 explanatory theories, 19, 23–5 institutional definition, 23–4 intergovernmentalist theories, 24–5 neofunctionalist theories, 23–4 normative theories, 19, 25–7 political institutions and, 27–32 societal environment and, 27–32 Europeanization, 13, 29, 48, 62, 67, 72, 80–91, 95–102, 108, 132, 146, 153, 158, 163–6, 184, 202 European Marches against Unemployment, Job Insecurity and Exclusion, 96, 102–5 European Parliament, 19, 86, 98–9, 106 European Round Table of Industrialists, 63 European Social Forum, 104, 105 European society, 77–8 European Studies, 1–2, 10, 37–8, 44–7, 50, 257, 262–3 European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), 19, 62, 63, 103, 126 European Transparency Initiative, 106–7 European Union (EU) see also EU institutions, EU policymaking accession conditions, 132–3

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Index 267 European Union (EU) – continued borderlands, 14, 222–35 globalization and, 38, 42–5 institutional structure, 57–8 labor markets in, 113–27 in media discourses, 11 nature of, 21–3 protest movements in, 11–12, 19, 95–110, 260–1 public sphere in, 77–93 studies of, 1 transnational identities in, 170–85 transnational society in, 12 European Work Councils, 123–4, 126, 127n4 Finland, 103, 118 Fligstein, N., 77 forums, in EU politics, 59, 64–7 France, 81, 96, 103, 162, 170–1, 178–80, 181, 184, 208, 209, 212, 216, 217 Frattini, F., 171, 173–6, 182–3, 251–2 free movement, 116–22 Frontex, 48, 49 functional integration, 30–1 functionalism, 114–16 Gellner, E., 193 Germany, 96, 103 117, 162, 170–1, 180–2, 184–5, 197, 200, 217, 250 Geyer, M., 157–8 Giugni, M., 96 global cities, 45 global civil society, 50 global history, 155–6 globalization, 4, 37, 50, 207, 257 cultural, 41 EU and, 38, 42–5 transnationalism and, 38–42 Global Studies, 40, 41–2, 50 glocalization, 42 governance, 47, 48, 50, 57–73, 79 ‘governance turn’, 47 government actors, 86, 88 Gyurcsany, F., 143 Haas, E., 23 Habermas, J., 30–1 habitus, 192

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Hann, C., 241 hegemony, 7 higher education, 72 highly-skilled migrants, 194–200 history comparative, 156 global, 155–6 Muslim, 208–10 transnational approaches to, 153–66 Hoffmann, S., 23 Holocaust, 165 horizontal interconnectedness, 2, 4 horizontal relations, 2, 4, 31 horizontal transnationalism, 22, 23, 61–2, 257–9 Hortefeux, B., 171, 172, 173, 176, 178–80, 184 human capital, 191–2 Hungary, 14, 130, 131, 135, 136, 138–40, 143–4, 225, 229, 232–4, 236n4 ‘hyper-consensus polity’, 21 ideational transnationalism, 31–2 Imig, D., 96, 97, 110n2 immigration discourses, 176–82 immigration issues, 98–102, 170–82, 189–203 see also migrants; migration industrial relations, 115–16 inequalities, 7 institutional development, 23–5 institutionalization, 4, 44, 47, 50, 58, 60–2, 193, 263 integration economic, 114, 131, 199, 259–60 functional, 30–1 of migrants, 189–203 transnational labor markets and, 113–27 integration theory, 1, 19–33 intentionality, 31 interest groups, in EU politics, 59–64, 259 intergovernmentalism, 24–5, 72 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 130 International Organization for Migration, 254n10 International Relations (IR), 2–3, 4, 6, 257 International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF), 118–19

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268 Index INTERREG, 68 interwar period, 162–3 Islamic Council of Europe, 211 Ismaili Muslims, 13, 205–20 Italy, 81, 103, 201, 217 journalists, 89–91 Justice and Home Affairs, 72 juxtaposed borders, 48–9 Kadar, J., 135 Kaiser, W., 1, 24–5 Kallas, S., 106–7 Kearney, M., 239, 244 Keohane, R., 3, 20, 25, 31–2, 78, 92 Keynesianism, 139, 140–2 Khagram, S., 1, 39, 40, 41 knowledge migrants’, 191–200 standardization of, 172 knowledge-based economy, 174 Kureishi, H., 219 labor councils, 60 labor markets, 13, 113–27, 191–202 labor migrants, 120–2 labor mobility, 116–23 labor movements, 12 language skills, 196 Latvia, 130, 131, 135–7, 140–2, 144–5 Laval un Partneri v. the Swedish Construction Workers’ Union and Swedish Electrical Workers’ Union, 119, 124 Levitt, P., 1, 39, 40, 41 Lithuania, 160 localization, 42 Luhmann, N., 29, 58, 73 Luxembourg, 120 Maastricht Treaty, 63, 64 Maier, C., 157 market economies, in Eastern Europe, 131–47 markets, regionalization of, 8 mass media, 11, 78–82, 89–92 media, 88 mass, 11, 78–82, 89–92 national, 22

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member states, 21–5, 57–73, 99, 101, 103, 170, 173–7, 246 memory politics, 165–6 methodological nationalism, 22, 40, 153, 164 Meyer, J. W., 41, 42, 43 migrants, 83, 91–2, 107–8 borderlands and, 222–35 cultural capital of, 191–201 ethnic enclaves of, 198–200 highly-skilled, 194–200 integration of, 13, 189–203 mobilization in support of, 98–102 regulation of labor of, 120–2 social capital of, 196–8 migration, 13, 114, 155 discourse on, 174–6 labor, 120–2 Muslim, 205–20, 259 Migreurop, 101 Moravcsik, A., 21, 24, 26 multilevel governance, 46 multinational corporations, 13, 195 Murids, 211–13 Muslim councils, 211 Muslim migration, 205–20, 259 national identities, 13, 79, 162, 163, 165, 170, 174, 177–8, 181–2, 184, 197, 201, 262 nationalism, 156–7, 159, 161 methodological, 22, 40, 153, 164 national media, 22 national remembrance, 165 national space, bordered, 5, 7–8, 14 nation building, 12, 25 nationhood, 12, 153–4, 159, 161–2 nation-states, 41, 46, 48, 79, 153, 157, 166, 189, 239 negative integration, 114–16 neofunctionalism, 24–5, 114–16, 263 neoliberalism, 48 Netherlands, 81, 102, 208, 217 network Europe, 46 networks, 59, 60, 64–7, 198–202 nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), 79, 83, 91–2 nonstate actors, 22, 83–9 normative theories, 25–7

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Index 269 Norway, 217 Nye, J., 3, 20, 25, 31–2, 78, 92 Ong, A., 5, 116, 244 Open Method of Coordination (OMC), 59–61, 69–71 ‘Orient’, 205 Papadopoulos, D., 47–8 parallel societies, 178, 181 Passy, F., 96 personhood rights, 44 Poland, 14, 159–60, 165, 166. See also Polish-Ukrainian border policy-making, 11, 21–2, 57–8 forms of transnationalism in, 58–62 practice of transnationalism in, 62–73 Polish-Ukrainian border, 239–55 political debates, national, 22 political discourses, 171–2 political elites, 13 political geography, 206 political institutions, 27–32 political power, 7 Political Science, 10 political spaces, 46 political transnationalization, 22, 23 politics domestic, 12 memory, 165–6 polycentricity, 46 popular inclusion, 89–90 Portugal, 208, 213, 215, 216, 217 posted workers, 113, 114, 116–17, 121, 122–5 Posted Workers Directive, 117, 120, 126, 127n4 ‘post-liberal sovereignty’, 47–8 ‘post-national citizenship’, 83 post-national rights, 44 postwar Europe, 163–6 privatised Keynesianism, 139, 140–2 Prodi, R., 86 professional credentials, 194–6 Protected Designation of Origin (PDO), 49, 51n1 Protected Geographical Indication (PGI), 49 protest, externalization of, 104

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protest movements, 11–12, 19, 95–110, 260–1 ALTER-EU movement, 105–7 alter-globalization movement, 102–5, 108–9 Europeanization of, 96–8 European Marches against Unemployment, Job Insecurity and Exclusion, 102–5 in support of migrants, 98–102 public policy debates, nonstate actors in, 83–9 public sphere, 11, 77–93 mass media and development of, 89–92 transnational, 78–80 re-bordering, 47, 261–2 regime transformation, in East-Central Europe, 130–47 Reising, U., 96 religious minorities, 164 Risse-Kappen, Thomas, 154–5 Romania, 14, 130, 225, 227, 229, 236n4 Rucht, D., 96, 97, 110n2 Rumford, C., 1–2, 184 Russian Revolution, 162 Sahlin-Andersson, K., 1, 41 Said, E., 205 Sandholtz, W., 24 Scharpf, F. W., 115 Schäuble, W., 171, 180–2, 184 Schengen Agreement, 8–9, 46, 173, 240, 246, 250–3, 254n7, 259, 261 Schmitter, P., 24 segmentation, 226–8 September 11, 2001, 207 Services Directive, 19, 30, 31, 116, 117 simultaneity, dilemma of, 133–7, 145–7 single market, 8–9, 43–7, 62–3 Slovakia, 14, 225–7, 230, 232, 236n4, 248 Slovenia, 103 Snyder, T., 159–60, 164 social capital, 196–8 social connectivity, 37–40, 48–50 social contracts, 135–45 Social Europe, 114–15, 125–6 social integration, 30–1

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social movements, 92 social relationships, 260 destabilization of, 5 horizontal, 2, 4, 22, 31 social solidarity, 27, 31 social spaces, 12 societal actors, 3–4, 22–3 societal environment, 27–32 society civil. see civil society European, 9, 77–8 theory of, 11, 38, 42, 58, 73 transnational, 12, 20 ‘world’, 29 sociological literature, 257 sovereignty, 115–16, 184–5 Spain, 81, 103, 208, 209 ‘spatial turn’, 38, 45–9 ‘spillover’, 263 Starie, P., 24–5 Stone Sweet, S., 24 strikes, 95, 109n1, 113, 126 Structural Funds programs, 59, 67, 68, 71 structural transnationalism, 30–1 supranational actors, 86 supranationalism, 72, 83–4 supraterritoriality, 219 Sweden, 110, 217 Switzerland, 81, 90, 214, 217 systemic transnationalism, 28–30 system integration, 29–30 Tarrow, S., 1, 96, 97, 110n2, 261 territorial cohesion, 46 time zones, 230–1 trade barriers, regionalization and, 8 trade unions, 19, 30, 31, 60, 62, 116, 120, 122–7 transformation, 172–3 transgovernmentalism, 3, 21–5, 59, 72 transnational actors, 131, 165, 166, 260–1 in Eastern Europe, 12, 133, 137, 143, 144, 252 political impact of, 4 transnational borders, 48–9 transnational communities, 194–200 transnational cooperation in community programs, 67–9 transnational governance, 11, 57–73

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transnational historiography, 153–66 transnational identities, 8, 170–85, 196–8, 239–55, 259 transnational interactions, 3–4, 257, 259 transnationalism as characteristic of EU system, 21–3 concept of, 1–6, 20, 154–5, 172–3, 257–8, 260 as driving force of European integration, 23–5 in Eastern Europe, 130–47 economic, 25 effects of, 189–203 in Europe, 8–10 European integration theory and, 19–33 in European policy-making, 62–73 EU studies and, 44–5 forms of, in policy-making, 58–62 in framework of OMC procedures, 69–71 globalization and, 38–42 horizontal, 22, 23, 61–2, 257–9 ideational, 31–2 limits of, 8 normativity of, 6–8 political sociology and, 37–50 as precondition of European democracy, 25–7 societal aspects of, 10–11 structural, 30–1 systemic, 28–30 vertical, 61–2, 257–9 transnationality, 172, 183 transnationalization thesis, 132–4 transnational labor markets, 113–27 transnational networks, 59, 60, 64–7, 198–202 transnational organizations, 3 transnational public sphere, 11 transnational relations, 28 transnational society, 12 transnational sovereignty, 47–8 Transnational Studies, 1, 40, 41–2, 45–9 Treaty on European Union, 44 Ukraine, 14, 166, 222–3, 225–9, 232–5, 236n4, 239–55. See also PolishUkrainian border unemployed, mobilization of, 102–5, 108, 261

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Index 271 Union des Industries de las Communauté Européenne (UNICE), 62, 63 United Kingdom, 49, 87, 103 113, 118, 126, 171, 176–8, 184, 197, 199, 208, 215, 216, 217 Val Duchesse Dialogue, 63 vertical transnationalism, 61–2, 257–9 Vertovec, S., 4, 39

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Viking Line v. the Finnish Seaman’s Union and the International Transport Workers’ Federation, 118–19 virtual borders, 231–3 welfarist social contract, 135, 138–40 work experiences, 194–6 World War II, 163, 165, 166 Zahra, T., 162

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