Europe, Dead in the water

People die every day in the Mediterranean. Parents risk the lives of their children and sometimes send them unaccompanied to another continent at an age where they should be accompanied to a school nearby. There, amidst “crisis”-ridden, and often hostile, majorities, refugees will struggle to obtain any precarious legal status and to step on the bottom rung of the social ladder. All this, to avoid the violent consequences of wars waged between autocrats and metaphysical believers. We live four centuries after the onset of the Enlightenment, two centuries after the French revolution, one century after the Russian revolution, seventy years after the defeat of Nazism. How is it possible that Europe lose its capacity for extroverted and innovative thinking? What is happening to us?

The postindustrial world proves to be politically inefficient. Wealth is not a problem but its uses are, work is not a problem but social inclusion is, individual liberty is not a problem but collective decision-making is. We live in societies that cannot apply their proven capacities and ethical values to the benefit of their members. When social issues re-emerge, we need to become aware of the prestidigitation of history, so well exposed by Castel in the Transformation of the Social Question (2002). What used to be a subservient status assimilated to slavery (in that case waged labour) became the vehicle of social progress; and previous forms of sound independent socioeconomic existence (such as the status of craftsmen and tradesmen) descended the echelons of social hierarchy. The time may now have come for social inclusion to be articulated around other forms of contribution than waged labour. Will that materialise in the form of the “leisure society” that appeared so close in the 1970s? Will “unemployment” turn into assertive free time put to social use? Will “growth” – both material and financial – become unnecessary and be replaced with other forms of value-based social contributions? Of course, no one knows; but what we all come to discover is that contemporary political systems in capitalist societies have reached their limits. They balance interests defensively and cultivate citizen helplessness indifferently. This does nothing for the people who wither in tower blocks because they cannot do anything to prove that they are wanted and for the people who die on our shores because where they come from is even worse. European societies cannot make bold decisions and governments do not rock the boat as they seek re-election. But the waves will not stop and Europe will hopefully abandon its silent malaise and change once more.

It is a matter of time before the subject of the recent ESA conference in Prague – “Differences, inequalities and sociological imagination” – demonstrates its relevance. Hundreds of sociologists expressed the detailed causes and consequences of the lack of sociological imagination in our times. There is no doubt that the greatest social force is inertia, but we did not create reflexive societies simply to remain inert. There was a strong message in Prague. We are ready as a community of scholars to propose new avenues of collective existence. In fact, we are more than ready, we are frustrated that we are not being heard because it is obvious to us that contemporary governance is rather obsolete and the means to update it are within our capacities. A glance at the programme of the conference (http://esa12thconference.eu/programme) leaves no doubt.

Back to the causes and consequences, this journal has its finger on the pulse of Europe. Starting from the end, in her review of Recchi's book on intra-EU mobility Triandafyllidou observes that he challenges “the assumption that a stronger sense of belonging should necessarily lead to a more active sense of citizenship”. Individual freedom, information and mobility are not enough to generate active citizens. Still, they contribute to a stronger European identity, which as Scalise shows, is built from below and depends closely on “effective social policies [that] need to be implemented to combat social exclusion”. Büttner, Leopold, Mau and Posvic research the field of EU affairs, a major maker of such policies, which are being produced not only by “Eurocrats” but also by a long series of implementing agencies, expert groups, interest representatives, and lobbyists that gravitate around EU institutions. Whether the structure of this field serves itself more than the societies of the EU “remains an open question” that needs to be researched. Assirelli’s sophisticated demonstration deals with an issue that symbolises current socio-political impasses, the link between (over)education and jobs. “The strictness of employment protection, the level of professional services regulation, and the capacity of the welfare state to hire skilled workers” do not affect tertiary graduates in a homogeneous way across the 18 countries researched.

Struggling to keep socially afloat is a complex and collective operation as Vlase shows. When welfare measures are weak, many households strive to achieve a level of “precarious decency” that allows for adequate self-consideration, which has become the cornerstone of social survival. As a 45 year old unemployed Romanian woman told Vlase: “It obsesses me, because the days pass and you feel like … an insignificant human being. To no avail, you have no joy. You keep on waiting, it eats you away”. One is then prepared to go down the route of “informal employment” and it is no wonder that Romania tops the list in Williams’s article, which can be read as a demystifying proof against the omnipotence of self-adjusting markets: “[…] wealthier and more equal CEE [Central and Eastern European] societies, CEE countries with less public sector corruption, with higher levels of taxation, social protection and more effective redistribution via social transfers, are significantly correlated with a lower prevalence of informal employment.” Schulz’s original article goes in the same direction as it shows that the occupational – hence social – mobility of women in the late 19^th and early 20^th century is to be attributed not to the logic of industrialism but to the development of … bureaucracies and the availability of office clerk positions.

Occupational female migration did not exist then but it has now become a feature of mobility in care-related work. Bahna suggests that Slovak elder female care workers in Austria manage to achieve a balance of satisfaction in their role of providing a decent income for their families back home. Unlike migrant carers from developing countries, they do not passively undergo their status as migrant workers. As most migrants know, agency and empowerment can stem from one's subordination in the form of benefits for one's family. Family is in fact so important that women in Spain and Italy will not have children in conditions of uncertain employment. Barbieri, Bozzon, Scherer, Grotti and Lugo provide evidence that this effect is stronger for better educated women and that only reliable social protection will convince women to decide otherwise. Collective female strategies are also dependent upon institutional opportunities and constraints as shows the difference between the participatory and transactional activism of Polish and Czech women's movements. Korolczuk and Saxonberg explain that a single law that allows people to propose legislation can radically affect how women organise and mobilise in order to seize opportunities in social change. And this is precisely a major objective if Europe is to be politically energised again. We need institutions that inspire broad, swift and efficient citizen participation.