Bo Strath

Europe - Discourse - Politics - Media - History : constructing ‘crises’?

‘Europe’ has no essence per se, but is a discursive construct and a product of many overlapping discourses. Such hegemonic narratives (discourses) serve as part of the search for national (and European) identities. The narratives relate events and experiences from specific points of view, by selecting and foregrounding some events and relationships which suit the hegemonic positioning, and backgrounding others which are deemed less important (or indeed ‘sensitive or uncomfortable’) (Heer et al., 2008; Wodak, 2006; Wodak and de Cillia, 2007).

Contextualising immigration policy implementation in Europe

The end of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first century in Europe are marked by processes of social and economic change that seriously affect immigration policy design and implementation. Borders have become more permeable, partly because of the emergence of the European Union as a transnational entity without internal frontiers, but also because business has become transnational, transport has become cheaper and faster, and media communication has increased exponentially, embracing distant peoples into a global flow of information. Labour mobility has intensified and some segments of the industrialised countries’ labour markets have become accessible to foreign workers. Southern European countries, traditionally sources of immigrant labour force, have suddenly become host countries despite high rates of unemployment among native workers. The flexibility required by post-industrial forms of labour and the permeability of borders have transformed border controls. These are no longer carried out by guardians at the borders. They instead take place within national territories by administrative employees and welfare officers. Large corporations compete for the best-qualified workers while small firms and households take advantage of undocumented immigrant labour. Daily implementation routines of national administrations further complicate matters, while the pressure mounts for conformity with European directives concerning both immigration control and immigrant integration. This paper discusses the above issues, highlighting the context within which immigration policy implementation in Europe operates today. It points to the complexities of the overall picture as well as of individual country realities which are further analysed in the case studies presented in this special issue of JEMS.

Nordic Modernity: Origins, Trajectories and Prospects

Nordic modernity is often understood in terms of enlightened and progressive welfare politics and social equality. There is a more or less implicit connotation to images of a social democratic model. The aim of this article is twofold: to discuss the historical preconditions and construction of that model of progressive politics, and to discuss its relevance today and its future prospects. Concerning the first aim, the argument is that there is nothing historically predetermined of a progressive development path. Nordic modernity should not be understood as teleology or as given by a natural state of egalitarian peasant communities. Historically, all the Nordic societies except Iceland were under authoritarian or absolute rule. However, there were factors underpinning a more progressive and egalitarian development in the North, in particular the strength of the peasant freeholders and of the urban middle classes. The argument in this article is that these forces finally broke through in the 1930s as a response to the Great Depression. Everywhere in Norden redgreen Social Democratic-Farmers’ Party reform coalitions emerged in attempts to cope with the economic crisis, and extreme political alternatives were marginalized. The Social Democrats were, with the exception of Iceland, the larger party in the coalitions. In that sense there is a Scandinavian Sonderweg .

Comparing Cultures of Discretion

Our aim in this concluding paper is to provide a synthetic comparative approach to the four country studies included in this special issue. We therefore outline the main values and ideologies guiding the implementation practices of each service within each country ; and where relevant we identify the internal differentiation of such ideologies, in relation to different administrative services. We also highlight how these ideologies underpin and justify specific types of discretionary practices in each country. We thus identify the nationally specific ways of combining national preference with market ideologies at the micro level of immigration policy implementation. In this paper, we revise critically our initial comparative dimensions. These were based on the ‘old’ versus ‘new’ host countries; rational and efficient versus clientelistic and inefficient administration systems; and ethnic versus civic views of the nation. We propose an alternative set of dimensions paying attention, on the one hand, to the different interpretations of how immigration management can give national advantage in economic competition under conditions of globalisation; and on the other hand, to the prevalence of a market-driven ideology that puts emphasis on values such as efficiency, flexibility and user-friendly public service.

Ideology and history

Ideologies can be seen as cognitive structures with legitimizing functions. There is no principled or very clear demarcation between them and other knowledge structures, although there clearly are differences. In the old understanding ideology was seen in terms of some kind of representation. There was something behind the ideology, and the ideology made this ‘something’ reappear. The erosion of the concept of representation during last decades has concurred with the erosion of the concept of ideology. This is not to say that ideologies have disappeared. The language of globalization and the ideas of clashes of civilizations are sufficient evidence of the role of ideologies, in the form of master narratives, with totalizing ambitions or pretensions of being the explanation of the world. However, the analysis of ideologies has become much more complex. Instead of taking ideologies as pre-given they must be critically deconstructed and contextualized. Their emergence must be historicized and their appearance must be understood much more in terms of opposition, discontinuities and contradictions, internally as well as externally, than in terms of cohesion and continuity.

The Illusory Nordic Alternative to Europe

Debate and research on Nordic governmental cooperation has for long been premised on the assumption that the impelling forces behind such cooperation are to be found inside the Nordic countries themselves. Nordic cooperation has been regarded as an alternative to Europe. This article proceeds from the assumption that international or external factors have to be taken more into consideration. They form a framework for the political activities of the Nordic countries and could be characterized as long-term factors. Other relevant long-term factors are economic, industrial, and social structures of the Nordic countries. Considering these external and long-term factors does not imply disregarding internal factors and day-to-day events or current affairs, short-term factors. The three dichotomies external/internal, long-term/short-term, and economic/political factors are used as tools of analysis. A systematic use of the concepts leads to the conclusion that external political and economic long-term factors operate centrifugally on Nordic cooperation. Internal political factors have occasionally worked for Nordic cooperation. Yet these internal political factors, as a rule of a short-term kind, have been exceeded by the stronger external political and economic factors of a long-term kind. There has been no independent Nordic alternative to Europe. This conclusion is based on a long historical perspective.

Mitteleuropa From List to Naumann

This article compares the Mitteleuropa visions of Friedrich List and Friedrich Naumann, two liberal thinkers from two different centuries. Their conceptualizations demonstrate how fragile the connection is between free trade and democracy. Friedrich List was a liberal thinker in pre-revolutionary Germany who was very interested in the question of how to create a political economy based on a strong nation-state. List stretched the concept of Mitteleuropa to include an area from the Baltic and the North Sea to the Mediterranean and the Black Sea in the south. List was a typical liberal of that time with a belief in the combination of free trade, democracy and nationalism. Friedrich Naumanns goal was to reconcile the categories of state and economy, the Emperor and the working class, German and Slavic populations, understood as opposites by many in the debate of his time. The task he set himself was to reconcile these opposites and connect them to liberal thoughts about constitution and democracy. His utmost goal was to unify the national and the social, the Kaiser and the Volk. On this point, Naumann failed, as we know. As we also know, other forces then took up his search for ways to unite the national and the social.This article compares the Mitteleuropa visions of Friedrich List and Friedrich Naumann, two liberal thinkers from two different centuries. Their conceptualizations demonstrate how fragile the connection is between free trade and democracy. Friedrich List was a liberal thinker in pre-revolutionary Germany who was very interested in the question of how to create a political economy based on a strong nation-state. List stretched the concept of Mitteleuropa to include an area from the Baltic and the North Sea to the Mediterranean and the Black Sea in the south. List was a typical liberal of that time with a belief in the combination of free trade, democracy and nationalism. Friedrich Naumanns goal was to reconcile the categories of state and economy, the Emperor and the working class, German and Slavic populations, understood as opposites by many in the debate of his time. The task he set himself was to reconcile these opposites and connect them to liberal thoughts about constitution and democracy. His utmost goal was to unify the national and the social, the Kaiser and the Volk. On this point, Naumann failed, as we know. As we also know, other forces then took up his search for ways to unite the national and the social.

Futures Past: On the Semantic of Historical Time

Reinhart Koselleck, Futures Past: On the Semantic of Historical Time. Trans. and with an introduction by Keith Tribe. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004, 317pp. (inc. index), £46.50/US

Community/Society: History of the Concept

69.50, ISBN 0231127707 (hbk); £16.50/US

The Cultural Construction of Equality in Norden

24.50, ISBN 0231127715 (pbk) Kari Palonen, Die Entzauberung der Begriffe: Das Umschreiben der politischen Begriffe bei Quentin Skinner und Reinhart Koselleck. Münster: LIT Verlag, 2004, 368pp., €34.90, ISBN 382587222X (pbk)