Integration through Law and its Limits

The political, economic, and legal process of European integration is also sociologically relevant. This is not only the case because the integration process involves a social dimension in terms of how it affects the lifeworld of the people, their relations to each other, and their wellbeing. Rather, the European process of market- and polity-building also entails a more comprehensive process of society- building, or a re-ordering of societies on a transnational scale. Even though sociology has from the outset been concerned with phenomena of integration and disintegration, the field of European integration studies has long been dominated by economic, political, and legal theories. A key contribution of the sociology of Europeanization, this is outlined in this contribution, is to (re)interpret the integration process in terms of transnational social interaction and society-building. Integration through law forms part of this.