De Europa

Surviving crises – through education?

Eduardo Barberis, Marcelo Parreira do Amaral — Mon, 30 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0100

Introducing the themed issue on Surviving crises through education, this article puts education and youth policy in the EU in focus, as European countries have to face challenges in at least three domains: youth incorporation into the labour market; the political participation of young generations; the management of internationally mobile youth. The collection of articles in this issue shows that coordinated and effective outcomes are yet to come.

Citizenship in Times of Crises – Crisis of Citizenship?

Marcelo Parreira do Amaral, Jozef Zelinka, Sebastiano Benasso, Joseph König — Mon, 06 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0100

The article discusses recent developments that are impacting the understandings of citizenship in late modern societies. During the past decades, citizenship has been discussed in terms of its contributions to tackling effects of political, social and economic crises. Most prominent are those challenges deriving from processes of Europeanization and globalization, but also, digital technologies are said to impinge new requirements on individuals, thus calling for European, global or digital citizenship. Well beyond simply changing the traditional orientation towards a nation-state, new conceptualizations of citizenship gravitate heavily towards individual dispositions and subjective competencies, while legal-juridical features remain untouched and largely unrelated. This explains the strong emphasis on the role of education in cultivating – global, European, digital – citizenship among individuals. The contribution asks whether and if so, how changed understandings of citizenship may lead to ‘performative citizenship’, where individuals are burdened with the requirement of constantly enacting ‘good’ and ‘worthy’ citizenship. The paper is organized along three sections: First, we revisit the mainstream literature on citizenship and discuss the main elements in historical-systematic manner. Second, based on a thorough literature review we discuss recent developments that call for updated meanings and representations of citizenship, before, third, the paper deliberates on the performative nature on newer conceptions of citizenship by examining recent examples of so-called global universities. The article closes with a discussion of research avenues for the topic, including crucial questions as to the status, role and function of citizenship in times of crises.

Keywords: citizeship, crisis, globalization, representation

Youth political participation and inequalities: comparing European countries and different repertoires of engagement

Elisa Lello, Nico Bazzoli — Sun, 31 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0100

In recent years, research on Western European countries has shown that younger generations are less involved in political activities than a few decades ago. Several scholars have disputed claims of apathy or retirement into the private sphere of the younger generations, underlining that they prefer to engage in unconventional forms of activism and protest, or associations and voluntary work. Our work investigates the most recent youth political participation dynamics by analysing data from the 9th edition (2018) of the European Social Survey. The first aim is to explore the differences in youth political engagement levels among EU countries. On the other hand, the transformations involving the very nature of political participation also affect the relationship between socio-economic inequalities and political engagement. Notwithstanding the declining importance of the class dimension in structuring processes of collective identification, it may be argued that social class in itself keeps playing a crucial role in determining different degrees of access to political participation. The second objective, therefore, is to assess the impact of socio-economic inequalities on political engagement based on a quantitative and comparative approach, comparing younger cohorts with older ones, and electoral participation with unconventional engagement.

Keywords: youth political participation, European youth, social and economic inequalities, conventional/unconventional participation, social centrality, class

Degrees of hostility towards migrant solidarity: the case of Ceuta and Melilla

Valentina Marconi — Sun, 31 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0100

While European borders have increasingly hardened and proliferated since the so-called 2015 refugee crisis, practices of migrant assistance and solidarity by civil society actors have become a feature of contemporary border politics. On the one hand, across the European Union, local and international initiatives have often responded to needs of newcomers, by playing a pivotal role in doing humanitarian work; on the other hand, both organisations and individuals engaged in migrant solidarity and assistance have become the target of policies and practices of criminalisation. My analysis takes the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla as a case-study, drawing on data collected during a 2019-2020 fieldwork. The paper argues that in the Spanish enclaves’ local humanitarians belonging to a range of civil society actors face different forms of intimidation and indirect pressure, both by governmental and non-governmental actors. I show how the lack of acceptance
of the work of local humanitarians among some sectors of the local population lies with feelings of ‘fear’ and rejection towards some specific groups of migrants, such as unaccompanied minors from Morocco and young male migrants from Sub-Saharan countries. In addition, I describe how, along this EU external border, cases of harsher forms of criminalisation have been recorded as well. The paper concludes that tensions and hurdles that local humanitarians face in these EU border localities partially reflect a broader European trend and are a ‘sub-product’ of larger process of criminalisation of migrants and refugees travelling through ‘irregular’ routes.

Keywords: Humanitarian border, Migrant solidarity, Civil society organisations, Ceuta, Melilla, Criminalisation

School integration of refugee minors: An analysis of the barriers of education quality and continuity in Italian and Greek school systems

Gül Ince-Beqo, Yiannis Roussakis, Vittorio Sergi — Mon, 06 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0100

In recent years, the number of minor migrants, both accompanied and unaccompanied, arriving in European countries increased significantly. The impact of newcomers on the school systems of various European countries has highlighted problems in education continuity and in the accomplishment of educational goals. Relying on the preliminary data from the Erasmus+ KA2 project “Continugee” in Italy and Greece, this paper analyses the current policies and practices used in refugee children education. In addition to policy analysis, interviews with families, teachers and professionals operating in migrant shelters and schools were conducted, aimed to address both institutional and relational dimensions of schooling and to point out good practices in educational incorporation of refugee youth. Research shows that – notwithstanding a common concern throughout Europe, national and local regulations, and local practices do affect their access to quality education. Age limits, gender gaps, location of shelters, lack of adequate institutional educational facilities and of professional training make effective educational placement and continuity difficult. Schools have a very different level of effectiveness and European policy innovation is often jeopardized by lack of resources and staff motivation. Recognition of qualifications and skills, a supported participation into mainstream education, and a participatory approach with families and guardians are essential for effective school integration.

Keywords: refugee, minors, education, training, policy, European

Barred from Opportunity? How Newly-Migrated Youth in the European Union Find Access to Vocational Education and Training, or Not

Simon Morris-Lange, Lena Rother — Mon, 06 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0100

Young refugees and other 16-to-25-years-old newcomers represent more than a quarter of total EU migration. Most of them would like to work and earn money as soon as possible and for many, technical and vocational education and training (TVET) could be gateway to skilled and secure employment. However, little is known about their experiences in accessing TVET across Europe. To help expand our empirical understanding of salient barriers and access dynamics, we compared national and sub-national policies, followed by semi-structured
interviews with 40 newcomers and 82 teachers, employers, bureaucrats and other TVET professionals in four countries: Austria, Germany, Slovenia, and Spain. Our findings show that young newcomers face a plethora of regulatory and non-regulatory barriers to education. Unlike their non-migrant peers, newcomers have to navigate not only an education system which they do not yet know, but also an increasingly complex migration system, whose rules and regulations interfere with their individual ability to access TVET. Hence, most new-comers require extensive professional counseling and support en route to their desired TVET program. The teachers, employers, bureaucrats and other TVET professionals they encounter were found to play a pivotal role in migrants’ educational biographies as their (in)actions and discretionary decisions were found to effectively (re)shape education access policies on the ground.

Keywords: refugees, eu, migration, TVET, education, regulation

The Blurred Lines of Intercultural Mediation: Professional Recognition through Formal and Informal Practices in Italy

Claudia Cavallari, Elena Cecchini, Gloria Maria Avolio — Thu, 04 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0100

Over the past few decades, Europe has been feeding on a narrative of skepticism and crisis that has not spared the discourse on migration, highlighting states’ fragmentation over the adoption of common migration man-agement policies. Long-lasting difficulties in regional integration have been heightened and efforts to build a sound knowledge-based European society weakened. European states are meeting migration challenges and in so doing are inter alia confronted with the essential role played by intercultural mediation in the interaction between foreigners and host societies. Within such a framework, this article aims at contributing to the debate on the shortcomings of integrated mediation practices across Europe. It thus analyses the theoretical frame-work on mediation, with reference to instruments adopted by both the European Union and the Council of Europe, and accompanies such a review with reflections triggered by an empirical study on mediation conduc-ted at a local level in Italy. The country sets an interesting case study, as it faces well-known migration manage-ment issues that meet Eurosceptic and nationalist tones. The research explores the regional institutional system in place, or the absence thereof, and touches upon how this is perceived and experienced by mediation professionals operating in the asylum and reception field. It provides instances of how, despite some transna-tional coordination, those who operate at the national and local level have heterogeneous backgrounds and refer to sub-state institutional frameworks that are rather far from the idea of a regionally integrated profession-alisation of the role. Drawing thus parallels between the European and the local context, the contribution suggests the rethinking of the professional figure of the mediator and the possibility of grounding the role on common educational and training paths.

Keywords: Council of Europe, European Union, Intercultural Mediation, Cultural Diversity, Migration, European Social Inclusion

Il Gruppo Liberale e Democratico al Parlamento Europeo. Un profilo politico (1976-1985)

Guido Levi — Mon, 06 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0100

Il posto della guerra. E il costo della libertà

Stefano Quirico — Mon, 06 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0100

Choisir l’Europe. Le relazioni tra la Tunisia e la Cee (1969-1987)

Redazione De Europa — Mon, 06 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0100

Abstratcs and Keywords

Thu, 04 Jan 2024 15:37:23 +0100