Paper short abstract:

Municipal mergers are often experienced as drastic and material alterations of existing ways of being. The political narratives that happen around municipal mergers often mirror discussions around European integration and EU-skepticism, despite happening at very different 'scales'.

Paper long abstract:

Since the 1990s, Switzerland has seen a significant reduction of municipalities through municipal mergers and governmental reforms. For those living in affected territories, mergers are experienced as tangible and material alterations of existing ways of being. The narratives and discourses on which political actors draw within the context of municipal mergers in central Switzerland often mirror narratives on Swiss-European relations.

I argue that, to better understand the reservations towards EU-integration experienced by many people, researchers would do well to ground their analysis in the everyday. Once the material, consequences of a municipal merger are laid out, it becomes clear that discussions around identity and belonging are connected to tangible, quotidian factors of life.

In my presentation, I want to highlight how material consequences have shaped political discourse in one merged municipality in central Switzerland, and then point to lessons and similarities we can observe in political discourses at other 'scales'.

Paper short abstract:

This paper will revisit the concept of Euroland (Johler, 2002), apply it to a context of European disintegration; post-Brexit Britain; and will discuss how increasing disconnection between the local and the European affects perceptions of the nation, the European and the futures they offer.

Paper long abstract:

When the UK kickstarted European disintegration and the effects of Brexit started to be noticed in everyday lifeworlds, there appeared to be an increase in awareness of the locality of Europe, as well as its importance to local structures. This paper will ask how European disintegration affects the everyday meanings of Europe: both perceptions of its locality, as well as what Europe has to offer in terms of perspectives for the future.

To do this, the researcher will reflect on fieldwork he did for his PhD with members of the Scottish independence movement in Orkney, Scotland, during the Brexit transition period. Because a majority of Scottish voters chose to remain in the European Union, thereby putting the democratic imbalance in the UK into focus, the Scottish independence movement has also been faced with the question of how the future of independence fits within Europe. Brexit thus not only challenged the meanings of Europe but also those of the national: to some the central structure around which visions of the future are built, to others a banal but necessary connection between the local and the European.

Post-Brexit Scotland thus presents a situation in which links between the local and both the nation and the European are challenged and rethought. To tackle this fluid context, the paper will revisit the concept of Euroland; a space wherein the European becomes localised and the local becomes Europeanised; but applied to a context in which the local and the European are increasingly separated.

Paper short abstract:

The author discusses how the concept of Europe is defined, negotiated, and sometimes challenged by people’s everyday experiences. She deals with ways in which the notion of Europe is materialized in contemporary Croatian cityscapes. Her analysis is based on case studies related to Zagreb and Rijeka.

Paper long abstract:

This paper discusses how the concept of Europe – a term unavoidable in the country’s political and media discourses in the last three decades – is defined, negotiated, and sometimes challenged by the everyday experiences of people living in Croatia nowadays. The author approaches the everyday uses of the concept as mechanisms through which people construct memories of their pasts, address current uncertainties, and shape visions of their futures. She deals with ways in which the notion of Europe is materialized in Croatian cityscapes, thus becoming a part of people’s spatial practices.

The analysis is based on case studies related to two cities: Zagreb and Rijeka. The first example centres on one of Zagreb’s central squares – the European Square – restructured and opened to the public on the eve of the country’s accession to the EU in 2013. The square has become a venue for events that inscribe diverse, sometimes clashing, meanings of Europe in public space. The second example follows the remaking of Rijeka into a European Capital of Culture in 2020. It points to the European dimension of city-making processes triggered by the ECOC initiative, as well as to ways in which local inhabitants use the project to reimagine the futures in/of the city.

Finally, the author explores whether the approaches of critical (post-)area studies and current theories in the anthropology of space can be applied to re-examine the centre – periphery power relations that emerge in making sense of Europe in contemporary Croatian (and other) contexts.

Paper short abstract:

The paper examines how different kinds and levels of uncertainties (within and out of EU) co-exist together, ‘feed’ each other, and re/constitute the concept of Europe (or at least one of them). The paper traces the work of BiH transnational female care workers in EU countries.

Paper long abstract:

Proposed paper deals with the experiences of the Europe, from the perspective and practice of economic migrants from Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) in the EU. Coming from a country, where since the war of ‘90’s, over the continuing political conflict, and the difficult transition, the state of uncertainty has become almost a normalized state, the paper traces work of transnational female care givers in the Western countries.

Although in the constitution of today’s Europe, the structural inequality between West and the Rest cannot be avoided, the approach will not rely on the top-down relation between centre and the periphery only, but a nuanced exploration and interpretation of processes and discourses of Europeanization that circulate and frame people's actions, motivations, values, needs and responsibilities, affecting not only those who consider leaving BiH, but also those who stay. I want to rely not only on current EU policies regarding BiH, but on the imagination of BiH care givers of what ‘Europe’ is, what their place is within it, and how the ‘Europe’ fills the gaps within contemporary BiH, and vice versa. Relying on the critical Europeanization studies which focuses on actors and zones on the border of ‘Europe’, such as marginalized groups and Balkans, I aim to demonstrate how “these apparently peripheral actors and zones are much more important for the making of Europe than it is usually assumed.” Old and new uncertainties, and the ways of managing them are particularly good way to do it.

Paper short abstract:

Standardised European projects often entail eurocentric worldviews, fabricating discourses on the commonality of principles, moral values and social practices. Tourist performances may be assembled to display a more complex scenario beyond the uncertainty of fossilised Europeanisation techniques.

Paper long abstract:

Standardised European projects often entail eurocentric worldviews, fabricating discourses on the commonality of principles, moral values and social practices against the current conjuncture characterised by normatively regulated crisis and political fractures. The perceived state of living uncertainty and vulnerability of European institutions, create a space for the missing significance of current times and the emerging need to re-evaluate actors and network powers. Going beyond this apparently fixed framework where uncertainty is also given by fossilised Europeanisation techniques, other spaces may be investigated to question the significance of Europe outside its borders but, at the same time, conduct an analysis within of its physical and imagined boundaries. In this sense, tourist place/digital performances may be assembled to show a more complex scenario of what Europe may or may not be due to its internally disrupted societies in the post-pandemic future by following the tourists traveling through the unveiled (not eurocentric) emotional and material vision of how European people re-make Europe in their everyday life and the purposes that current Europeanisation may fulfil for future generations.