Introduction: setting the context

In this chapter we are concerned with contributing to an understanding of challenges facing an enlarged European Union (EU), with a focus on issues of social cohesion and solidarity, linked to the idea of a collective European identity. This is of considerable importance because, in a context in which geographical expansion renders Europe increasingly diverse – culturally, economically and politically – there is no theorisation of European society at the present time in studies of Europeanisation that is ‘comparable to the theory of the state’ (Delanty and Rumford, 2005: 1). At first sight the difficulties confronting those seeking a theorisation of European integration and identity seem almost intractable, with fluidity in patterns of migration seeming only to aggravate tensions on the ground. Yet, it is argued here that it is the very character of these tensions that may create opportunities to build solidarity as much as division, not just between nations but between citizens of the EU.

The political context for this analysis is the prevalence of an insistent neoliberalism, which some see as so pervasive that it is becoming the dominant discourse (Harvey, 2005). This, while giving priority to markets and capital, mobilises a strategy of governance that intrudes its tentacles into civil society through partnerships and a variety of consultative networks designed to steer and coordinate while, ultimately, retaining control. Meanwhile public sector organisations are charged with the responsibility of delivering social services and securities in increasingly efficient and accountable packages (Hood, 1995; Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2000).

Yet, such approaches from political and managerial elites, in offering top-down prescriptions for change to accommodate the demands of neoliberalism, fail to engage electorates and public sector employees. This results in a mismatch with considerable consequences, since it elides the issue of involvement central to decision making in a democratic public sector. Little wonder, perhaps, that on the one hand political endeavour has met with electoral apathy and a concomitant rise in social movement activity (Todd and Taylor, 2004: 3) as those in civil society seek to make their oppositional voices heard, while on the other hand the managerial delivery mechanisms through the vehicle of new public management reforms have been contested by those implementing them (Barry et al, 2007).