Search results for "european Union"

Politics of solidarity in the context of European heritage : The cases of the European Solidarity Centre and Hambach Castle

2019

This article explores the politics of solidarity in the framework of constructing a common cultural heritage of the European Union. The politics of solidarity stems from the notion of solidarity embedded to European heritage. We use critical heritage studies as a theoretical approach that understands heritage as an inherently dissonant social construct, produced by various actors according to political, economic and social interests. The study analyses empirical data from the European Heritage Label (EHL), a flagship heritage action of the EU that communicates shared values and a sense of identification to European citizens. Our empirical data includes ethnographic observation as well as in…

Politics of tangibility, intangibility, and place in the making of a European cultural heritage in EU heritage policy

2016

The EU has recently launched several initiatives that aim to foster the idea of a common European cultural heritage. The notion of a European cultural heritage in EU policy discourse is extremely abstract, referring to various ideas and values detached from physical locations or places. Nevertheless the EU initiatives put the abstract policy discourse into practice and concretize its notions about a European cultural heritage. A common strategy in this practice is ‘placing heritage’ – affixing the idea of a European cultural heritage to certain places in order to turn them into specific European heritage sites. The materialisation of a European cultural heritage and the production of physic…

¿Movilidad inclusiva o accesibilidad inclusiva?

2017

<p>“La movilidad inclusiva” es parte de las prioridades políticas definidas por numerosos países europeos para referirse a la dimensión social del transporte o las políticas de movilidad cotidiana. De forma general, la inclusión se refiere a la cohesión social, que ha sido uno de los objetivos declarados de la Unión Europea desde el inicio de los años 2000. Como mecanismo para facilitar el acceso a las oportunidades (empleo, comercio, servicios, etc.), la movilidad individual es actualmente considerada un prerrequisito necesario para la participación de las personas en las actividades sociales. En contraste, la inmovilidad o “ausencia de movilidad” sería un factor de exclusión social.…

Politics of affect in the EU heritage policy discourse : an analysis of promotional videos of sites awarded with the European Heritage Label

2017

European cultural heritage is discussed with affective rhetoric in current European Union (EU) policy discourse. How does affect contribute to the meaning-making of a European cultural heritage and how are the workings of affect used by the EU to promote certain meanings of heritage and effect thereupon? The analysis focuses on recent promotional videos of sites awarded with the European Heritage Label by the EU. In the videos, affective textual, visual, audible, and narrative tropes intertwine with the tropes of EU policy rhetoric, increasing its capacity to impact and ‘move’ the receivers. The ethos of a European cultural heritage in the videos is based on a paradox: the history of the se…

Multilayered perspectives on language policy in higher education : Finland, Estonia, and Latvia in comparison

2016

This article analyses language policies in higher education (HE) in Finland, Estonia, and Latvia, as well as the European Union (EU). We take a multilayered approach to language policies in order to illuminate the intertwined nature of local, national, and international language policies in HE. We are particularly interested in the construction of national language(s) and the language(s) of internationalisation in our case countries. Finland, Estonia, and Latvia share common features as relatively small non-Anglophone countries in the Baltic region, while simultaneously having somewhat differing political and cultural histories. The results of our discursive analysis indicate that while the…

Macro-regional strategies of the European Union, Russia and multilevel governance in northern Europe

2017

The European Union’s Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region (EUSBSR): improving multilevel governance in Baltic Sea cooperation?

2017

ABSTRACTMacro-regional strategies – such as the ones for the Baltic Sea, the Danube, the Ionian-Adriatic, and the Alpine regions – constitute new elements of European Union (EU) Cohesion Policy and territorial cooperation. In a nutshell, these strategies aim at building functional and transnational ‘macro-regions’ involving the EU, its member states, as well as partner countries within the EU’s system of multilevel governance (MLG). As the oldest macro-regional strategy, the EU Strategy of the Baltic Sea Region has been in operation since 2009. Drawing on the theory of MLG, this contribution assesses the effects on the political mobilization and interplay between international, intergovernm…

The “Big Bang” of the populist parties in the European Union: The 2014 European Parliament election

2018

A significant number of voters are turning their backs on traditional parties. The stability of European party systems is being defied by a growing number of (new) radical parties, whose presence i...

The nested games of the UK’s EU referendum: ruptures, reconfigurations and lessons for Europe

2021

The 2016 decision by the United Kingdom to withdraw from the European Union was a seminal one for both parties. In this special issue, we consider the extent to which the inter-penetration of the national and the European arenas produced significant opportunities for recasting political action. The nesting of these two levels matters firstly in allowing for the politicisation and mobilisation of domestic actors around European issues and secondly in explaining why seemingly sub-optimal or counter-productive actions are taken. The tensions this generated reached a critical juncture with the referendum, a rupture that highlights the extent to which a nominally second-order vote can have funda…

Politics of Cultural Marking in Mini-Europe: Anchoring European Cultural Identity in a Theme Park

2012

Mini-Europe—a theme park in Brussels morally supported by the European Commission and the European Parliament—consists of around 350 models of different buildings and heritage sites from all the member states of the European Union. In addition the park includes an exhibition named the Spirit of Europe. The article explores how the European cultural identity is constructed and ‘sold’ in Mini-Europe, and how history, geography and local and regional traditions are intertwined into a politics of cultural marking, an ideology of European integration and a creation of shared symbols. European cultural identity has often been generated through appeals to an ancient or classical past, which is pro…