scholarly journals Precarization of work and employment in the light of competitive Europeanization and the fragmented and flexible regime of European production

2020 ◽  
pp. 030981681990012
Author(s):  
Stefanie Hürtgen
Keyword(s):  
European Integration ◽  
Social Geography ◽  
Division Of Labour ◽  
Sociology Of Work ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Social Polarization ◽  
Technological Modernization ◽  
Integration Project ◽  
Integrative Social ◽  
European Production

In current debates on precarization in Europe, a transnational and more class-based perspective is demanded. While fully supporting this request, this article nevertheless notices that, often, when it comes to the economic logic of current Europeanization, scholars have only taken a one-sided look at financial capital and financialization. What is needed is a deeper conceptual understanding of European labour and production processes and how their transnational organization is interwoven with both the European integration project and rising precarization. In an inter-disciplinary approach, combining critical political economy, economic and social geography, and the sociology of work and industry, this article seeks to tackle the problem and develops three main arguments. The first is that, long before the 2008ff. crisis, a mode of Europeanization as multi-scalar competitive integration developed, one that, basically, takes socio-spatial unevenness as a competitive advantage. The second argument is that the backbone of this competitive Europeanization mode is a transnationalized European regime of fragmented and flexible production. This regime particularizes labour and labour processes on all social scales, within and beyond nation-states, by putting them in a competitive relation to each other. The third argument is that due to permanent transnational restructuring and technological (digital) modernization, no stable socio-spatial division of labour within and among the European countries arises. Instead, permanently changing forms of labour’s social polarization occur, a finding that questions classic ideas of social development through economic and technological modernization. Precarization, defined as the detachment of dependent labour working conditions from the means of integrative social participation, hereby describes a specific concentration of a nevertheless wider structural uncertainty that is inherent to both the mode of European integration and the regime of European production.

Unequal Europe

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason Beckfield
Keyword(s):  
European Integration ◽  
Unintended Consequences ◽  
Household Level ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Level Data ◽  
Single European Act ◽  
Distribution Of Resources ◽  
Eu Policies ◽  
National Economies ◽  
Integration Project

The Euro-crisis of 2009–2012 and the UK’s 2016 vote to leave the EU vividly demonstrated that EU policies matter for the distribution of resources within and between European nation-states. Throughout these events, distributive conflicts between the European Union’s winners and losers intensified, and continue today. This book places these events into a broader historical, sociological, and economic perspective by analyzing how European integration has reshaped the distribution of income across the households of Europe. The motivating question is: who wins and who loses from European integration? Using individual- and household-level income survey data, combined with macro-level data on social policies, and case studies of welfare reforms in EU and non-EU states, this book shows how European integration has restratified Europe by simultaneously drawing national economies closer together and increasing inequality among households. With the benefit of hindsight, we can now see that the Single European Act of 1985 had an array of intended and unintended consequences for inequality in Europe. With the Single European Act, EU policymakers revived the integration project by elevating the single market to the top priority of European law and by constitutionalizing the idea that markets solve social and political problems.

scholarly journals European Integration and Czech Sovereignty ‘Synchronized’

2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 41-58
Author(s):  
Ondrej Hamuľák
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Czech Republic ◽  
European Integration ◽  
State Sovereignty ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Classical Concept ◽  
Member States ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Integration Project

Abstract European integration entity ceased to be just a forum for negotiations between independent and sovereign nation states. To some extent it overlaps with the states and becomes their competitor. In this context, the classical concept of state sovereignty loses its original content and meaning. The participation in the integration project opens the question whether it takes away or weakens sovereignty of Member States? This paper puts on four arguments to proof the hypothesis that Czech Republic continues to be a sovereign country even aft er accession to the European Union.

scholarly journals The European Administration as a Facilitator of the European Integration Process: Organizational and Ethical Implications from the Proliferation of European Union Agencies

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (15) ◽  
pp. 78-94
Author(s):  
Giorgio Oikonomou
Keyword(s):  
European Integration ◽  
Sharp Increase ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Eu Enlargement ◽  
Policy Area ◽  
Ethical Implications ◽  
European Court ◽  
Integration Project ◽  
The Eu

The purpose of this study is to explore the evolution of EU administration by focusing and critically examining the role of EU agencies in advancing the European integration project. The research question deals with identifying the factors that account for the formulation of EU agencies and the reasons behind their sharp increase in numbers since the 2000s. The tasks are to analyse critical EU agencies’ parameters such as their typology, the policy area they deal with, origin of their resources and funding, and their output. In addition, transparency and accountability issues accompanying the proliferation of EU agencies are also considered. Emphasis is placed on the evolution of the European administration as expressed by the establishment of various types of agencies since 1975 thereafter. Methodologically, the research utilizes quantitative data based on annual EU budgets as well as official reports and policy papers issued by main EU institutions (European Commission, European Parliament, European Court of Auditors) and agencies, analyzing them from a historical perspective. As a result, it is argued that the proliferation of EU agencies has advanced the process of European integration, namely the EU enlargement and expansion in new policy areas following successive reforms of the Treaties. However, concerns regarding accountability and transparency issues remain in place.

16. Trade Policy

2020 ◽  
pp. 363-387
Author(s):  
Alasdair R. Young
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Trade Policy ◽  
European Integration ◽  
The United States ◽  
Bilateral Agreements ◽  
Multilateral Negotiations ◽  
The World ◽  
Integration Project ◽  
The Eu

This chapter introduces the importance of EU trade policy both to the European integration project and to the EU’s role in the world. It explains how different aspects of trade policy are made. The chapter also charts how the emphasis of EU trade policy has shifted from prioritizing multilateral negotiations to pursuing bilateral agreements. It considers how the EU has responded to the apparent politicization of trade policy within Europe and to the United States’ more protectionist and unilateral trade policy. It also considers Brexit EU trade policy and how trade policy complicated Brexit. It argues that there has been considerable continuity in EU trade policy despite these challenges.

scholarly journals On the (De-)Fragmentation of Statehood in Europe: Reflections on Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde's Work on European Integration

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 403-434 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vlad Perju
Keyword(s):  
European Integration ◽  
Vertical Integration ◽  
Common Good ◽  
European Level ◽  
Nation States ◽  
The Common ◽  
Horizontal Fragmentation ◽  
Post War ◽  
Domestic Level

It has become a standard critique of European integration that the upward transfer of sovereignty in market-related matters leads to the fragmentation of statehood between the supranational, European level and the largely incapacitated nation-states that retain jurisdiction over social and distributive policies. My article takes up this critique in the elaborate version of one of Germany's leading post-war constitutional theorists, Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde, whose approach has been influential in how German constitutionalism relates to the project of European unification. In this account, vertical integration uses law to sever economics from democratic politics, fragments the concern for the common good of citizens and undermines the unity of statehood. I contrast this account to instances of horizontal fragmentation of statehood, such as those underway in member-states such as Hungary or Poland where the nation state's constitutional structures are coming undone at the hands of authoritarian populists. The European Union's role of defending the rule of law within its constitutive states seeks to restore their normative integrity and, as such, is best understood as a role of verticalde-fragmentationof political and constitutional transformations at the domestic level. The question if statehood can be established at the European level gains greater urgency and complexity in light of these developments.

The Citizenship Paradigm

2013 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
pp. 197-225 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dimitry Kochenov
Keyword(s):  
European Integration ◽  
Internal Market ◽  
European Citizenship ◽  
European Unity ◽  
Integration Project

AbstractThis chapter suggests the deployment of the concept of European citizenship as a means of integration alongside the internal market, proposing the citizenship paradigm of European integration to inform the Union’s future. This proposal, based on a combination of the initial promise of European unity and the potential of EU citizenship, is not purely utopian but is directly rooted in the primary law as well as in the purpose of the integration project.

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