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This book provides a major empirical analysis of differing attitudes to European integration in three of Europe's most important countries: Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom. From its beginnings, the European Union has resounded with debate over whether to move toward a federal or intergovernmental system. However, Juan Díez Medrano argues that empirical analyses of support for integration--by specialists in international relations, comparative politics, and survey research--have failed to explain why some countries lean toward federalism whereas others lean toward intergovernmentalism. By applying frame analysis to a unique set of primary sources (in-depth interviews, newspaper articl...
Nationalist movements in both the Basque Country and Catalonia are embedded in the context of Spanish rule, but they differ profoundly in their goals, strategies, constituencies, and success in marshaling public support. In a pathbreaking work of historical sociology, Juan Diez Medrano examines these differences for the first time. He provides not only a rich political history of the two cases but also a new explanation for why some nationalist movements adopt separatism or violence. Diez Medrano compares the formation of cultural identity in Catalonia and the Basque Country in an investigation that starts in the seventeenth century. For each region, he looks at patterns of industrialization...
Inter-marriage both reflects and brings social change. This book draws on a unique survey of randomly selected samples of national and European binational couples to demonstrate that the latter are core cells of a future European society. Unrestricted freedom of movement has enabled a rise in the number of lower-class and middle-class binational couples among Europeans. Euro-couples fully integrate in their host cities but secure less support in solving everyday problems than do national ones, partly because of a relatively small network of relatives living close-by. Embeddedness in a dense international network and a cosmopolitan outlook also distinguish them from national couples. The book...
An ambitious volume which asks why hopes are fading for a single European identity, despite decades of European integration.
Drawing on unique research and rich data on cross-border practices, this book offers an empirically-based view on Europeans’ interconnections in everyday life. It looks at the ways in which EU residents have been getting closer across national frontiers: in their everyday experiences of foreign countries – work, travel, personal networks – but also their knowledge, consumption of foreign products, and attitudes towards foreign culture. These evolving European dimensions have been enabled by the EU-backed legal opening to transnational economic and cultural transactions, while also differing according to national contexts. The book considers how people reconcile their increasing cross-border interconnections and a politically separating Europe of nation states and national interests.
How is the European Union framed in national intellectual debates? How is the evolving polity conceived? In answer to these questions, European Stories develops a comparison between intellectual narratives of European integration across twelve national cases in order to offer a wide range of contrasting intellectual contexts.
Contributors to this volume address such topics as how Europeans now see themselves in relation to national identity, whether they identify themselves as citizens of a particular country or as members of a larger socio-political entity, how both natives and immigrants experience national and transnational identity at the local level, and the impact of globalization on national culture and the idea of the nation-state.
The book investigates the diverging visions of Europe within the EU institutions and European elites. It also explores the consequences of the presence of so-called Eurosceptics for the EU and its institutions. This book was originally published as a special issue of Journal of European Integration.
Societies around the world have experienced a flood of information from diverse channels originating beyond local communities and even national borders, transmitted through the rapid expansion of cosmopolitan communications. For more than half a century, conventional interpretations, Norris and Inglehart argue, have commonly exaggerated the potential threats arising from this process. A series of firewalls protect national cultures. This book develops a new theoretical framework for understanding cosmopolitan communications and uses it to identify the conditions under which global communications are most likely to endanger cultural diversity. The authors analyze empirical evidence from both the societal level and the individual level, examining the outlook and beliefs of people in a wide range of societies. The study draws on evidence from the World Values Survey, covering 90 societies in all major regions worldwide from 1981 to 2007. The conclusion considers the implications of their findings for cultural policies.
Children constitute a large part of the population of developing countries. This text considers issues such as education, child labour, street children, child soldiers, refugees, child slaves, and the impact of environmental change and hazards on children.