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Europe in crisis: migrations, racisms and belongings in the new economic order: proceedings of the Conference of the ESREA Network on Migration, Ethnicity, Racism and Xenophobia: Karl-Franzen University of Graz, Austria, 19-20 April 2012

Imagen de portada del libro Europe in crisis

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  • The economic crisis has destabilised the European project and made visible tensions between Europe as imagined by its political and economic elites and the ordinary peoples of Europe. Before the crisis the dominant political narrative was of an increasingly open European space within which goods, people and knowledge would circulate. In an early formulation of this Europe was imagined as a bulwark against American cultural, political and economic dominance. This was partly captured in the language of the "learning society" and discourses of "lifelong learning". However, more recently, elite interests have transformed these more egalitarian sounding terms into Europe as a "knowledge-based economy". The mobility of goods, people and knowledge become commodities re-designed in the interests of capital accumulation. But this might suggest a shift from a more inclusive to a more exclusive regime. Whether it is the "learning society" or the "knowledge-based economy" the key points of tension have remained the same. It is the mobility of people, whether historic or current, that appears to challenge Europe's self-understanding of itself, to challenge the very idea of being European. The positive and self-confident tones of the language of European expansion and integration disguise its historic formation in opposition to an ¿other¿. The primary focus of this "other" changes over time and from place to place. The formation of the European Economic Community was a deliberate attempt to avoid the repetition of events that led to the Shoah and to expunge from Europe's self-identity the need to define itself as against its internal Jewish "other" as part of its Christian identity. Modern Europe has defined itself as "Fortress Europe" and as bulwark, not against American imperialism, but against the poor, dispossessed and oppressed of Africa and Asia. The "migrant" became, and continues to be, the nodal point around which exclusionary policies and right wing politics is organised. This has also been a feature of tensions between "old" and "new" or "West" and "East" Europe. These tensions have been racialised, particularly in relation to the Roma peoples. Since 9/11 Europe's "other" has been depicted by Islam. This creates a dual process of antagonism both towards Europe's internal Muslim communities, and against Islam on its borders. In recent times we have seen this explode into public policy debate in France and Switzerland. We have seen the rise of populist right wing parties mobilised against Islam and the increasingly racialised and anti-Islamic language of politics in general. It seems inevitable that the current economic crisis will exacerbate these issues, especially as the majority of "established Europe" prepares to open their borders to the Accession states.

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