The Europeanisation of Societies? New Sociological Perspectives on the EU

Decades after the first scholars of European integration surmised that this process would not only entail economic interdependence but also intense social connections, we still grapple with the effects of European Union policies on the constitution of a European society and a growing sense of European belonging. Recently, events such as Brexit and other phenomena linked to Euroscepticism have questioned the social bases of European integration and highlighted the advent of a “permissive dissensus” and the relative indifference of Europeans towards the EU. Moreover, some scholars have emphasized the limits of the Europeanization, with social elites entangled in strategies that are more global and more disadvantaged groups less mobile and less incline to identify beyond local and national horizons. How should we understand Europe as a sociocultural space? In what ways are a European social structure and a European identity and culture emerging? Are we, in fact, seeing the renationalization and localization of social meanings and practices? This section invites paper, and especially, panel proposals that explore how and the extent to which individual cognitive, residential, professional and interpersonal biographies, individual and organizational networks, organizational structures and strategies in the political, economic, and social domains, and civil and political mobilization are transcending national boundaries and becoming more European, being rolled back, or being reinterpreted and renegotiated. What are the drivers of the Europeanization of societies? As new cohorts of Europeans come of age, are they the same as when this research agenda emerged? Are they different from the ways in which the European Commission and pro-EU actors conceive identification with Europe? We seek proposals from disciplines as diverse as demography (e.g. migration, family formation and dissolution), economic sociology (e.g. markets, corporate power and organization), stratification (e.g. social mobility, occupational structures, social classes and status groups), political sociology, social movements studies, and the sociology of culture (e.g. consumption, taste, values, identifications, inter-personal networks). We are also interested in perspectives from historical sociology that interrogate the traditional sequencing of European integration. We especially welcome theoretically and methodologically rigorous and innovative contributions (e.g. longitudinal, experimental) that explore causal connections between some of the transformations listed above and the role that European Union policies, as well as European-wide or global events and processes, play in bringing them about.