Education, Europeanization and Europe’s social integration. An introduction

Keywords:

• education
• Europeanization
• European society
• sociology of Europe
• Social integration
• European integration

Introduction

For quite some time, the process of European integration has largely been taken for granted and widely perceived as an irreversible trend. Politicians, administrations, and executives on the national and European levels have driven this process forward and given it its specific shape, while large parts of the European population appeared to welcome the idea of an integrating Europe. Political scientists have referred to this attitude on the part of the European public as a “permissive consensus” (Lindberg and Scheingold 1970, 41).

Because of these efforts to promote integration from above and the fact that they have largely gone unchallenged, European integration has had a profound influence on the various EU member states and their societies. This process of change has been referred to by scholars as “Europeanization” which either denotes national changes towards European standards and compliance with a supranational entity (Olsen 2002; Radaelli 2003) or relates to the socio-structural foundations of European integration and its societal consequences (Favell and Guiraudon 2009).

However, public sentiment has come a long way since the label “permissive consensus” was first applied. In light of the concurrent processes of Europeanization and denationalization, both of which are also linked to general globalization, and of the numerous crisis phenomena that took place during the past decade, the situation has changed. European integration, the institutions of the European Union (EU), and even “Europe” as a more general frame of reference have turned into contentious objects of political and societal conflict in a multitude of EU member states. This can be seen, most clearly, by the rise of Eurosceptic political parties across the continent. As a result, calls to continue working towards European political and/or economic integration are often met with overt and fundamental opposition (on the grounds that the EU constitutes a neoliberal project or subjects nation-states to “foreign rule,” among other positions).

In sharp contrast to this conflict-laden political situation, the realms of culture and education are still conceived of as bringing people together in a European spirit, thus contributing to Europe’s social integration. Over the years, this view has led to a number of policy initiatives and measures, set in motion both at the national and the European level.¹ These include – to mention just a few prominent examples – the so-called Bologna process, which aims to ensure the comparability of higher education qualifications, the creation of a common European Higher Education Area (EHEA) and a European Research Area (ERA), and the introduction of mobility programmes (for example, the Erasmus programme for students or the Marie Skłodowska-Curie scheme for researchers). Other relevant examples in this context are the revision of school curricula, which seeks to include a “European dimension” in various teaching subjects (Council of the European Communities 1988), and, in some EU countries, the institutionalization of schools that have a specifically “European” orientation due to extensive foreign language teaching and corresponding school activities (in Germany, for example, these are state schools called “Europaschulen”; in other EU countries, like the Netherlands, schools implemented certain educational standards; cf. European Platform 2013; Hornberg 2010).

All of these actions aim to strengthen the “European dimension” in education and thus to bolster its Europeanization. Simultaneously, this aim is linked to the idea that a Europeanized education will provide a “common ground” for all members of the European population, be it in terms of language skills, shared values, mutual understanding, or a shared sense of the past. More recent examples of this belief in the socially integrative potential of education can be found, for example, in Emmanuel Macron’s plea, voiced in his speech at the Sorbonne in September 2017, to create “European universities,” or in the European Council’s emphasis on the role of education “in bringing Europeans together and building our common future” (European Council 2017, 2). As these examples indicate, education is seen as a means not only of increasing economic competitiveness, but also of fostering a shared sense of belonging or “European identity” (cf. European Commission 2017). Thus, the Europeanization of education is perceived as contributing fundamentally to Europe’s social integration. This is clearly an up-to-date variation on a classical sociological theme (cf., for example, Durkheim 1956; Parsons 1959), and based on education’s historic role in creating nation-state societies by enforcing a shared standard language and creating a shared sense of belonging to one “nation” (cf. Anderson 2006; Hobsbawm 1990). Given these far-reaching expectations regarding the assumed relation between education, Europeanization and European social integration, the central question is, of course, whether the past 60 years of European integration have produced any actual empirical evidence for such an interrelation.

Previous research directions focusing on education, Europeanization and Europe’s social integration

A review of the scholarly literature suggests that, in general, only two elements of the thematic triad of education, Europeanization and Europe’s social integration have been examined to date. There is a comprehensive body of research (stemming, inter alia, from educational research and political science) that focuses mainly on the consequences of Europeanization for national education systems, particularly with regard to higher education. Studies in this vein usually adopt the aforementioned view of Europeanization as a process of change and adaption that originates at the European level and raises questions about its implementation at the national level. As a result, this line of research has revealed the often contested and unevenly evolving processes of adaptation and harmonization of national education systems which result from Europeanization efforts in the domain of education (cf., for example, Maassen and Musselin 2009; Marginson and van der Wende 2009; Theiler 1999).

However, these analyses have confined themselves in two ways. First, they remain limited to the sphere of education, without considering the wider implications for society which such changes could bring about. Second, even studies that follow a comparative, cross-country research design start and end with the nation-state as the central unit of analysis. Hence, while this research provides valuable insights into convergence processes of national educational systems, it fails to investigate whether societal structures that reach beyond the nation-state model are also emerging (cf. Eigmüller and Mau 2010; Trenz 2011).

Second, a multitude of sociological research analyses how Europeanization processes contribute to the social integration of Europe or even to the emergence of a distinctly European type of society (cf., exemplarily, Delanty 2016; Delhey and Deutschmann 2016; Favell and Guiraudon 2011; Mau and Verwiebe 2010; Outhwaite 2014). Here, not only “vertical” instances of Europeanization are taken into account – processes primarily initiated and driven forward by the EU (and/or national governments) in a more or less top-down fashion –, but also cases of “horizontal Europeanization” which are initiated at the level of the European population. Such instances of “horizontal Europeanization” are related to the manifold cross-border (inter-)actions and relations of people, such as those brought about through transnational communications, migration/mobility, town twinning, friendship or family relations (cf. Beck and Grande 2007; Eigmüller 2013; Mau and Mewes 2012). Within this second line of research, education is acknowledged to play an important role in the social integration of Europe. However, whether the expectations associated with that role are actually accurate, how this relation between Europeanization, education and the formation of a European society precisely works, and why resulting societal changes might not turn out quite as envisaged are rarely discussed in any detail.

Lastly, there is a third direction of social science research focusing on the link between education, on the one hand, and attitudes or identifications related to Europe or the EU, on the other, which concentrates, so to speak, on the first and third element of the triad we have been discussing (such attitudes or identifications serving as an indicator for European social integration). This research – which often, but not exclusively, is related to the topic of Euroscepticism – has repeatedly shown the level of individual education as being one of the most important factors influencing attitudes on and identifications with Europe (Fernández and Eigmüller 2018; Fernández, Eigmüller, and Börner 2016; Fligstein 2008; Hakhverdian et al. 2013; Hobolt and de Vries 2016; Kuhn 2011, 2015; Kuhn et al. 2016). Hence, more highly educated individuals tend to display more positive attitudes towards and have more positive identifications with Europe, whereas less educated individuals tend to be more nationally grounded in their attitudes and identifications and to be more negative when it comes to Europe. This consistent finding has even led some researchers to argue that we can observe a new societal cleavage emerging in many EU member states, dividing a more highly educated, cosmopolitan and Europe-oriented elite from a less educated, nationally grounded and, tendentially, Eurosceptic population (Fligstein 2008; Hooghe and Marks 2018; Kriesi et al. 2012; Teney and Helbling 2014).

In this vein, education does not necessarily constitute a socially integrative force within Europe. This is hardly surprising considering that national educational systems were originally tasked with creating a nation out of people. However, this last line of research still fails to consider whether the Europeanization of education has an effect on Europe-related attitudes and identifications; rather, it focuses on education in general. In so doing, the role of education is predominantly interpreted as a question of individual educational levels (which are usually measured as a function of the highest educational degree obtained or the number of years spent in educational institutions, cf. Fligstein 2008, 159; Hakhverdian et al. 2013, 530; Kuhn 2011, 821). Based on this approach, determining whether and how Europeanization processes in the area of education affect European social integration or society formation remains challenging.

Contributions to this special issue

Against this background, this special issue aims to fill a gap in existing research by offering a sociological analysis of the wider implications of Europeanization in education for the social integration of Europe and, possibly, for the formation of a European society. To this end, the articles presented here focus on numerous examples of Europeanization instances within the area of education and employ a variety of theoretical approaches and empirical methodologies to explore whether and how new forms of transnational relations, identifications and structures take shape and their potential contribution to Europe’s social integration.

In the first article, Slootmaeckers and O’Dwyer (2018) start with the observation that Europeanization processes are not just about the implementation of specific legal and policy changes. The EU also seeks to promote certain values, ones it regards as constitutive for its community. The authors thus raise the important question of whether Europeanization also leads to societal change in the sense of a change of individual attitudes towards certain norms and values. Their interest here is in changes that occur not only at the elite level of society, but also among the wider population and they also ask which role education might play in this regard. They focus on attitudes towards homosexuality as an indicator for the diffusion of EU minority-rights norms and use cross-sectional data from the Integrated Value Survey (IVS) from 28 European countries (none of which were EU member states prior to 2004) for the time period 1995–2014. Based on this data, they analyse whether attitudes towards homosexuality changed in these countries due to their increasing entanglement with the EU framework over time (either as a result of their entry into the EU as a member state, candidacy for entry into the EU, or involvement in EU-led networks and policy processes without seeking membership). Slootmaeckers and O’Dwyer (2018) conclude that neither a country’s EU accession status nor its length of time as an EU member state directly influence people’s attitudes towards homosexuality; however, they point to an indirect effect of Europeanization on attitudes, one mediated by education and one that intensifies as a country’s enmeshment with the EU increases. Based on world polity theory as well as theories that stress the socializing functions and cognitive effects of education, the authors suggest that this mediated impact of education might be interpreted as the result of national education institutions increasingly teaching and diffusing so-called European norms and values to their students as a country moves closer to the EU. Slootmaeckers and O’Dwyer (2018) therefore see national education systems as an indirect pathway, complementing and coexisting with the institutional European integration process, through which Europeanization can affect individual attitudes, thereby possibly contributing to the social integration of Europe.

Moving from the geographical outskirts close to the heart of the EU, the study by Drewski, Gerhards, and Hans (2018) focuses on a European School in Brussels. This type of school is there to provide the children of EU employees with a multicultural and multilingual education, thus effectively aiming at the creation of future “Europeans.” Given this specific educational setting, the authors start from the assumption that forms of “othering” and symbolic boundary construction based on nationality should be rather unlikely in such a strongly Europeanized educational environment. Using qualitative group interviews with students that come from different European countries, they find that, at first glance, students indeed do not use nationality as a criterion when evaluating others. Instead, they draw symbolic boundaries based on youth culture-related criteria only (referring, for example, to specific lifestyles, ways of dealing with academic demands, or political values). However, a closer look reveals that this kind of categorisation is also used when talking about the different national groups and language sections into which the students are organized at the school, thus effectively reproducing symbolic boundaries along lines of nationality, albeit indirectly and unwittingly. In this way, the authors argue, a status hierarchy is reproduced between students (with Scandinavian students enjoying a positive reputation and Eastern European students a more negative one), one that conforms to a more general distribution of the symbolic capital attributed to certain countries and nations. Thus, Drewski, Gerhards, and Hans (2018) conclude that even in such highly Europeanized educational contexts, it seems that national forms of identification and classification persevere, creating symbolic distinctions that elevate the status of some while lowering it for others.

The third contribution, by Van Mol (2018), changes the setting again by focusing on the area of higher education and, more specifically, on the role of student exchange programmes in fostering a shared sense of European identity and citizenship – which is, after all, one of the main claims of such EU-funded programmes (with the most well-known of these probably being the ERASMUS programme). As the author points out, previous empirical studies on this matter have produced contradictory results; surprisingly, though, only rarely have studies used a panel design to address this issue. For this reason, Van Mol (2018) uses data from a specially designed online survey conducted in two consecutive years among non-exchange and exchange students from thirteen European countries. Drawing on intergroup contact and transactionalist theory, he first asks whether participation in such programmes is related to changes in students’ identification levels (either with Europe, as a European citizen, or as a European) and then asks whether such changes can be explained via the type of social contacts students have during their stay abroad (that is with local, other international, or co-national students). However, he finds no statistically significant differences over time within and between the groups of exchange and non-exchange students. Neither do identification patterns seem to be influenced by a given student’s type of social network abroad. Thus, Van Mol’s study lends further empirical weight to the conclusion that study abroad programmes do not significantly contribute to the fostering of a European identity, since students who participate in such programmes are already quite likely to have a positive stance towards Europe before their departure.

While retaining the overall focus on transnational mobility as an instance of Europeanization in education, Carlson (2018) points to yet another discussion about its assumed societal effects which is the proposition that such mobility can act as a mechanism to advance the formation of a European society. Asking how exactly mobility might contribute to such an outcome, he approaches this question through a Bourdieuian field-theoretical perspective that considers European society as a set of transnational fields. Empirically, he draws on biographical-narrative interviews with young, highly-skilled German professionals who graduated abroad, in order to examine their ensuing mobility trajectories. Contrary to the image of a pan-European labour market in which educational qualifications, skills and knowledge – that is, “cultural capital” – are unproblematically recognized, the analysis reveals that these “free movers” had rather different experiences. For some, the transfer of their cultural capital turned out to be relatively easy, whereas others experienced difficulties. As Carlson (2018) argues, this can be ascribed to the varying degree of transnationalization occurring in the professional fields associated with these “free movers.” While more transnationalized professional fields allow for smooth career progressions across borders, rather nationally grounded professional fields seem to complicate cross-border movements somewhat. The author then draws on field theory to conclude that, contrary to the aforementioned expectation, mobility only furthers the formation of transnational fields – and, by extension, that of a European society – in two ways. One is that individual actors become active within specific transnational professional fields, thus contributing through their actions to the reproduction of those fields. Another is that they try to “fight” to change some of the underlying rules upon which national professional fields rest, thereby contributing to the transnationalization of those fields from within. However, if “free movers” move between national professional fields and adapt to their inner logic, their actions instead serve to reproduce such nationally-orientated structures.

The fifth contribution, by Lueg (2018), addresses the organizational level of Europeanization processes within higher education. Based on an in-depth case study of a German university in which the author analysed qualitative interviews, documents, and short questionnaires, she focuses on the intra-organizational struggles over the university’s official Europeanization strategy and the various organizational narratives and counter-narratives that appear in this context. In so doing, Lueg (2018) maps out the various frictions between university professors and university governance generated by diverging interpretations of what Europeanization should mean in terms of academic standards and organizational power relations. Departing form neo-institutionalist theory, the author highlights the inherently contested nature of Europeanization as a term that has no fixed given meaning, but rather allows for different interpretations and courses of action. Lueg (2018) concludes that, as the Europeanization of higher education is subjected to such intra-organizational struggles, the development of a homogeneous European academic field with a consensual understanding of its “raison d’être” is unlikely; since actors fight over interpretations in the field, she suggests that we should rather expect different understandings of and narratives about Europeanization to continue to exist.

Finally, Hoenig (2018) concludes this special issue by focusing on the wider structural and symbolic changes occurring within the emerging European field of higher education and research as a result of Europeanization processes. Her starting point is the observation of a fundamental shift in the way research funding is organized in the EU. EU efforts in this area were originally geared towards promoting the transnational integration of and collaboration between scientists from different EU member states. Since about 2000, however, with the creation of the European Research Area (ERA) and the European Research Council (ERC), the focus has shifted towards the promotion of “excellence,” enforcing a market-based competition between researchers and universities. Combining semi-structured interviews with researchers who obtained an ERC grant (“early career” or “advanced”) and who come from different countries and academic disciplines with an analysis of statistical data on ERC funding and using a historical comparative approach and an institutional analysis of universities, the author aims to highlight the various consequences arising from this shift. For this, she applies a Mertonian theoretical perspective that stresses the underlying social structures, mechanisms and opportunities for action. Hoenig (2018) concludes that, despite some beneficial effects for individual researchers who receive ERC grants, the wider implications for the field of European higher education and research are severe. Due to the way the current European funding system operates, there are clear indications that existing disparities between countries and academic disciplines continue to deepen and that a new, transnational scientific elite, driven forward by processes of cumulative advantage and social closure – that is, a concentration of material resources and symbolic reputation among few research institutions – is forming. Thus, even if the change in European research funding was originally merely intended to increase competitiveness and “innovativeness,” Hoenig (2018) clearly shows the wider societal implications associated with such a shift in how Europeanization in higher education and research is promoted.

Implications for future research

In light of the guiding question of this special issue – whether and how the Europeanization of education contributes to the social integration of Europe – the overall answer that comes out of the various studies offered here seems to be quite reserved. Even if these studies are only a first step towards a more detailed analysis of the relation between education, Europeanization and European social integration, the various findings rather caution against theoretical (or political) expectations that assume a direct, unequivocal link between the Europeanization of education and European social integration or society formation. And this seems to hold true, regardless of whether one looks at instances of Europeanized education and stresses their role in conveying certain skills, dispositions, values, norms, identifications, experiences or educational qualifications that are then supposed to further European social integration, or whether one focuses on processes which occur within Europeanized educational domains that might play a role in this regard (such as processes of identity formation, mutual classification, meaning-making and the construction of narratives and counter-narratives). As some contributing authors have argued, in some cases it even seems that the Europeanization of education exacerbates existing disparities or creates new cleavages, thus creating more conflict which to some extent runs counter to the often-found association of “integration” with “consensus.”

This bleak conclusion might now be interpreted as a sign that those high-flying hopes for the integrative potential of education in Europe were somewhat unrealistic from the start and that it might be better, for example, to focus on giving European citizens equal economic, political and social rights in order to achieve a more socially integrated Europe. While this is one possible deduction that could be made, we would like to foreground a somewhat different interpretation, one that opens up further research avenues on this topic.

After all, as Lueg (2018), Slootmaeckers and O’Dwyer (2018) and Van Mol (2018) have pointed out, a noticeable change in identifications and narratives is apparently taking place, one that somehow gives these a more “European” character. Even if the precise role played by Europeanization and education in this regard is still unclear, it seems worthwhile to explore in more depth the causes of this change. To take just one example, even if studying abroad does not really further the extent to which students identify as European, as Van Mol (2018) argues, how can we explain the considerable number of students who seem to identify with “Europe” even before they go abroad? Is this change the result of more global developments and/or of general cognitive modifications that result from continued education, as Slootmaeckers and O’Dwyer (2018) suggest? Does it reflect what happens inside educational institutions – that is, whether and how “Europe” is treated as a topic at school – or is familial socialization more important in this regard? How do such different factors intertwine, reinforce or contradict each other over time and in different societal contexts? As these questions indicate, it thus seems premature to dismiss altogether the Europeanization of education as a factor contributing to European social integration.

This points to a second research caveat. Some of the articles in this special issue suggest that Europeanization processes in education are entangled with changes in other societal areas, such as politics, professional domains, or funding structures (cf. Carlson 2018; Hoenig 2018; Slootmaeckers and O’Dwyer 2018). One working hypothesis which follows from this observation is that Europeanized education contributes to European social integration or society formation if it is actually met by or translates into similar developments and conditions in other spheres. In a certain sense, this reiterates our initial call for scholarly analysis of the wider implications of Europeanization in education, beyond the limited sphere of education itself. Focusing on the level of individuals, one might ask, for example, what happens once students (who have received a certain amount of “Europeanized” education at school, university, during an apprenticeship or in other settings) move on to the labour market and into a new life phase in which they are subject to other influences and experiences? Which role does education continue to play at that point, with respect to their European-related identifications and attitudes? Similarly, but from a more macro-sociological vantage point, one might investigate how the Europeanization of education intersects with or is contradicted by developments in other societal domains, such as Europeanization, globalization, marketization etcetera, and how this either furthers European social integration or fosters the emergence of new societal cleavages.

Furthermore, it seems necessary to find out more about why the Europeanization of education seems to promote Europe’s social integration only in a limited way, if at all. One important answer to this seems to be the enduring potency of national structures and “heritages,” perceived in a broad sense, as indicated by Carlson (2018), Drewski, Gerhards, and Hans (2018) and Hoenig (2018). Rather than taking place in an empty societal space, the Europeanization of education occurs in one already filled by contrasting notions of what education is supposed to be and to achieve. Thus, it is not surprising in a way that conflicts arise in this domain, as Lueg’s study (2018) reminds us. From this, the question follows: are there other “legacies” (besides “the national”) that potentially impede the ability of education to further European social integration and society formation? Can we also observe instances within as well as outside of educational spheres in which national conceptions no longer prevail or have been significantly reconfigured? What do these instances then mean for Europe’s social integration? Or, as Drewski, Gerhards, and Hans (2018, 429–448) phrase it, “how [do] concrete social actors actually draw and tackle persistent symbolic boundaries of nationality on a daily basis and within their ordinary social settings”?

Finally, one could question the underlying one-sided understanding of social integration that, as stated before, equates “integration” with the absence of conflict. This notion is particularly prevalent in EU thinking, as noted in the beginning of this introduction. However, as Simmel (1992) argued already in 1908, conflicts can also have an integrative effect because they bind together people who previously had merely coexisted in mutual indifference, thereby giving rise to new arrangements and institutions in society (cf. also Vobruba 2014). Thus, if the Europeanization of education produces conflicts – whether among individuals, organisations or social fields, as the studies by Carlson (2018), Lueg (2018) and Hoenig (2018) suggest – these might be interpreted as a sign that social integration in Europe is actually increasing. The decisive question, then is: what kind of new institutions, narratives, field rules or general structures are these conflicts producing? When viewed this way, the prospects of fostering European social integration and society formation via the Europeanization of education do not look so bleak after all.

ORCID

Klarissa Lueg http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1120-1057

Notes

1. This development is quite surprising, given that education originally was not a central policy area within the European integration process and the fact that competencies for education and culture still rest primarily with the EU member states, with the EU’s own role being limited to that of encouraging cooperation or support. Nevertheless, education has become an important field for a considerable number of initiatives and reforms, as testified by the given examples.