Click the star to add/remove an item to/from your individual schedule.
You need to be logged in to avail of this functionality.
Log in
- Convenors:
-
Alexandra Schwell
(University of Klagenfurt)
Orlanda Obad (Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research)
- Location:
- A228
Short Abstract:
This panel scrutinizes the utopian/dystopian projections, myths and narratives of "Europe" at the core, the periphery and beyond the margins. We seek to uncover imaginaries that cross-cut this discursive space and simultaneously yield practical and tangible consequences for individual actors.
Long Abstract:
"Europe" has become a focal point for definitions of concepts such as "modernity" and "civilization", and it is also often held synonymous with notions such as "soulless bureaucracy", "gated community", "space of anxiety", and "island of the privileged". Today, European political and economic unity seems to be unfolding in parallel realities which occasionally intertwine in unexpected ways: from the intricate practices of officials within Brussels' European Quarter to the rise of Euro-sceptic parties, from crisis-ridden societies of Southern Europe to the deadly plights of migrants and asylum seekers.
In this panel, we scrutinize the various ways in which "Europe" functions as a template for utopian/dystopian projections and imaginaries at the core, the periphery and beyond the margins. In order to avoid a sense of "geographic egoism" (cf. Maxwell 2011), which is present even in the critical theoretical approaches, we seek to open the dialogue between these multiple perspectives. We intend to focus both on hierarchies which create divisions within Europe as well as power asymmetries which arise in core/periphery relations. We seek to uncover utopian/dystopian imaginaries that cross-cut this discursive space and simultaneously yield practical and tangible consequences for individual actors. What is the future of the European imaginary?
Accepted papers:
Session 1Orlanda Obad (Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research)
Paper short abstract:
Based on semi-structured interviews with EU officials from Croatia, this paper examines processes of Europeanization through a "vertical", class-related axis.
Paper long abstract:
Brussels' European Quarter, in which a string of EU institutions are placed, may be the appropriate place to examine the realm (and range) of the European dream. Following Croatian accession in 2013, a number of highly educated Croatian citizens were employed, through an extensive and demanding procedure, in various EU institutions. From the perspective of the current job market in Croatia - as well as many other European countries which are experiencing a deep economic crisis - the unified and high salaries, stability, meticulously defined rights and obligations, and various privileges in EU institutions may seem like a dream job come true.
This paper is based on a set of semi-structured interviews which were conducted with EU officials in Brussels and Zagreb in 2014 and 2015. By following their career trajectories and examining qualifications required to obtain jobs within EU institutions, this research delineates the profile of winners of Europeanization processes, while simultaneously raising a set of class-related issues. Through such a focus, the paper will also observe the ways in which power asymmetries stemming from economic, political and cultural tensions between European core(s) and peripher(ies) play out within EU institutions.
This study is part of my long-term research into perceptions of the European Union in Croatia, which was principally focused on the "horizontal" axis of gradations of Europeanness (Kuus 2004). In this part of the research the importance of a "vertical", class-related axis within processes of Europeanization is more closely examined.
Paweł Lewicki (University of Pittsburgh)
Paper short abstract:
In this paper I show how "Europe" and "modernity" creates class distinctions among Polish EU civil servants in Brussels.
Paper long abstract:
In the world of EU bureaucracy notions of "Europe" and ideas about "modernity" are both intertwined tools of power that are strategically applied by people from old member states in order to marginalize those coming from new member states. Being "European" in EU bureaucracy is a matter of taste, that is "a match-maker; it marries colours and also people, who make 'well-matched couples' initially in regard to taste" (Bourdieu, 2010, p. 239). However, such "Europe" and "modernity" becomes also visible in the struggle, among subalterns, to become "modern" and "white European" (Buchowski 2006, Fanon 1991) and thus generates (class) divisions among Poles in the EU-apparatus. In this paper I show how this "modernity" permeates the imaginations of Poles working in EU institutions and creates tensions, making them either perform "practices of deserving" in order to expel or dilute their own, nationally constructed, stereotypically marked and "un-modern" habitual representation or making them super sensitive about their national representation. Both these practices rest on taste, an implicit mechanism of division-making in everyday life, creating classes of those "European" and those "not-really-European" Poles. In an environment where national networks are crucial, these allegedly "Europeanizing" practices in fact reinforce subordinate position within the bureaucratic apparatus in twofold way: by revealing "undistanced" and thus in local terms "non-European" attitude towards national representation and by jeopardizing collective national action within EU bureaucracy.
Alexandra Schwell (University of Klagenfurt)
Paper short abstract:
By scrutinizing how Polish state officials aim at positioning themselves on the mental map of an imagined EUtopia, this paper shows that they attempt to escape the cultural pattern of negative stereotyping and mistrust by using a functionalist narrative of efficiency.
Paper long abstract:
This paper explores how the fluctuating cartography of East and West and the varying degrees of perceptive Europeanness influence everyday practices of the people working in Polish state bureaucracies, who professionally advance European integration within a national framework. While an important part of their self-image is formed through the dissociation from cultural 'Eastness' and the backwardness they ascribe to fellow citizens, they still experience negative stereotyping and mistrust from the part of the EU-15 'Westerners'. Consequently, East-Central European state officials oscillate on the continuum between cultural 'East' and 'West' and constantly negotiate distance, relatedness, and thus their own liminal position. By scrutinizing how Polish state officials aim at positioning themselves on the mental map of an imagined EUtopia, this paper shows that they attempt to escape the cultural pattern of negative stereotyping and mistrust by using a functionalist narrative of efficiency. This is a rhetorical strategy employed to cope with existing asymmetries. It is not a practical, but rather a 'magical' solution: the reference to a European 'efficiency-speak' seems to offer an escape from the liminal zone; simultaneously, the magical belief in the power of 'objective' measures mirrors existing insecurities and the lack of informal knowledge in the European game.
Alexandra Oancă (KU Leuven)
Paper short abstract:
The European Commission and its experts are an important frontline unit in the translation of “Europeaness” and of cultural policies. By focusing on the competition for the European Capital of Culture 2016 title, the paper analyses the centrality of European expertise and its limits.
Paper long abstract:
The paper argues that the European Commission is an important frontline unit in the translation of "Europeaness" and of cultural policies in Europe and beyond. This institution and its experts are key players in the diffusion of particular urban cultural policies. By focusing on the competition for the European Capital of Culture 2016 title in which 16 Spanish cities participated, the paper analyses the centrality of non-local European experts and of their skills and interrogates where does this preference come from, what is the role of external experts in the process of bidding for the ECoC and what sort of product and service are "European" experts offering which "local" experts cannot. In this process, external experts and/or their requirements and rules are central. The requirements and rules to win the title, especially the creation of the European dimension, are perceived by the actors involved in the bidding process as external, constraining and imposed from above. Moreover, this perception of requirements and of "Europeaness" as "external" is linked with their legality and codification in legislation. The development of the selection criteria, their codification in the law and other structural conditions led to the production of a highly polarized field of expertise and to the production of the "local - European expert" dichotomy. The paper documents the power and materiality of this dichotomy: the complex division of labour, responsibilities, benefits and disadvantages which are produced by this dichotomy and which also reinforce it.
Duško Petrović (Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb) Romana Pozniak (Institute for Ethnology and Folklore Research)
Paper short abstract:
Focusing on utopian imaginary of Europe among refugee population the paper questions its construction in the public discourse and dystopian effect in the actual life of the migrant Other.
Paper long abstract:
This paper is concerned with the utopian vision of Europe mainly focusing on asylum and migration issues in the context of the EU. It questions the construction of the ideal image of Europe created within the immigration population, and the one politically proclaimed in the public discourse. It is based on a research conducted with asylum seekers in Croatia.
The first level investigates the extent to which the arrivals of asylum seekers at the borders of Europe have been motivated by the utopian imaginarium of Europe as a space dominated by human rights and a space that can provide a better life. The second level focuses on the possible changes to that vision after the arrival. Finally, the paper questions if the utopian vision of Europe as a desirable destination and its dystopian reality is a product of the ongoing and anticipated contact with the migrant Other.
Rahela Jurkovic (Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb)
Paper short abstract:
The paper will examine what Europe means to asylum seekers retained in Croatia, comparing their narratives with discourse analysis of local newspapers’ articles that, mostly anecdotally, describe how Croatians, “new EUropeans”, look at new neighbours in their local communities: asylum seekers.
Paper long abstract:
On July 1st 2013 Croatia became a member of the European Union (EU), which also meant that the EU got new external borders, with countries of, what is in EU jargon called, "Western Balkans": Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Serbia. EU membership brought a new meaning to Croatia; it is now a country that is more than before attractive to illegal migrants, refugees and asylum seekers, as an entry point to EU richer countries. Goal of this paper is to analyse meaning of Europe to asylum seekers that entered in this new border EU member state and temporary live in the Reception Centre for Asylum Seekers in Zagreb. Methodologies used in the research will be asylum seekers' oral narratives derived from field interviews, and analysis of discourses created by Croatian media, depicting asylum seekers' life in Zagreb, on one hand, and, on the other hand, perceptions that Croatians have regarding new "foreigners" in their neighbourhood. That would shed a light into how people at new margins of the European Union live ("implement") one of core stipulations of the EU Treaty: "The Union is founded on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities." Proposed title of the paper originates from a local newspapers' article which describes, in an anecdotal manner, "newcomers" and how they are seen by local inhabitants of Zagreb, in vicinity of the asylum seekers' detention centre.
Paul Stubbs (The Institute of Economics, Zagreb) Noemi Lendvai (University of Bristol)
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores 'joining social Europe' as a post-colonial encounter or 'contact zone' reframed within a set of narrative turbulences and fragile performative practices, fictions and frictions.
Paper long abstract:
While, for a long time, European integration has been seen as a highly modernist project with associated progressive catch-up, convergence and mutual policy learning, there is an increased recognition, deriving from post-structuralist and post-colonial theory, that Europeanisation is a misplaced, catch-all term for multiple and discontinuous regimes and practices of disciplinarity, translation, knowledge, and power. In this sense, governmentalised Europe can be seen, inter alia, as both a highly mediated post-colonial encounter (a 'contact zone') and as the enactment and embodiment of performative fictions and frictions. By exploring how the domain of 'the social' is re-assembled and re-constructed in and through space and time, we offer a radically different register and narrative to a dominant epistemic modernist discourse on 'Europeanization' and 'social policy'.
We explore the multi-scalar restructuring of and in Europe creating variegated peripheralisations, reframing the social within a set of narrative turbulences and fragile performative practices, encompassing fictions and frictions. In this sense, the social has become a rather unstable floating signifier in the context of diverse 'elsewheres', culminating in the current moment of fiscal austerity seeking to contain the idea of "joining social Europe" within a techno-managerial frame. Exploring social Europe forces us to address complex narrative turbulences, in which different configurations of nationalism, populism, and authoritarianism, on the one hand, and movements for direct democracy, social justice and decommodification, on the other, become central to the contested dynamics of Europeanisation and its variegated impacts.
Giuseppe Tateo (ICUB University of Bucharest)
Paper short abstract:
Taking into account two newly developed gated communities, Coliseum Palace and Renaissance City, this paper shows how the ongoing process of Europeanization in the Moldovan capital actually unfolds in its real estate market.
Paper long abstract:
Like in many other post-communist cities, the urban real estate market in Chişinău is currently undergoing a stark financialisation. The consequent rapid differentiation of housing supply is partly exemplified by the exploitation of a distinctly European symbolism. Thus it has become popular among the Moldovan elite to opt for estates built in such architectural language and literally separate it from the rest of the urban fabric. Similar communities have often been described through the concept of utopia, highlighting the teleological nature of their construction.
Aiming for difference is definitely a core aspect of gated communities, but I argue that the Moldovan examples offer complexities beyond this. Evoking different spatial and/or temporal locations, these developments are heterotopias, (and heterochronias) in the Foucauldian sense. European Renaissance or Ancient Rome are imaginary settings that become blueprints for the present in these locations.
Utopia cannot grasp the messiness of spatial and temporal orientations present in these communities, where the proposed future can easily be someone else's imagined past. One of the most important commodities provided by recent gated communities is precisely their potential to make customers feel in another location as opposed to a vaguely defined paradise. Using the two above mentioned sites I will analyse how developers utilise images of Europe to create such heterotopias.