Education, Europeanization and Europe’s social integration. An introduction

For quite some time, the process of European integration has largely been taken for granted and widely perceived as an irreversible trend. Politicians, administrations, and executives on the national and European levels have driven this process forward and given it its specific shape, while large parts of the European population appeared to welcome the idea of an integrating Europe. Political scientists have referred to this attitude on the part of the European public as a “permissive consensus” (Lindberg and Scheingold 1970, 41). Because of these efforts to promote integration from above and the fact that they have largely gone unchallenged, European integration has had a profound influence on the various EU member states and their societies. This process of change has been referred to by scholars as “Europeanization” which either denotes national changes towards European standards and compliance with a supranational entity (Olsen 2002; Radaelli 2003) or relates to the socio-structural foundations of European integration and its societal consequences (Favell and Guiraudon 2009). However, public sentiment has come a long way since the label “permissive consensus” was first applied. In light of the concurrent processes of Europeanization and denationalization, both of which are also linked to general globalization, and of the numerous crisis phenomena that took place during the past decade, the situation has changed. European integration, the institutions of the European Union (EU), and even “Europe” as a more general frame of reference have turned into contentious objects of political and societal conflict in a multitude of EU member states. This can be seen, most clearly, by the rise of Eurosceptic political parties across the continent. As a result, calls to continue working towards European political and/or economic integration are often met with overt and fundamental opposition (on the grounds that the EU constitutes a neoliberal project or subjects nation-states to “foreign rule,” among other positions). In sharp contrast to this conflict-laden political situation, the realms of culture and education are still conceived of as bringing people together in a European spirit, thus