Thursday, June 27, 2013: 4:00 PM-5:45 PM
C1.23 (Oudemanhuispoort)
The study of identification with Europe and of transnational human capital and practices has generally focused on only two questions: How prevalent they are and what is the relationship between the two. As Europeans learn languages, travel, study, and work abroad, and as they transcend more and more their local and national identifications through adoption of European or even cosmopolitan ones, these skills, experiences and identifications become sources of change in the citizens’ position in society, their views, and their practices. This panel brings together five papers that explore some of these changes. Two of them relate transnational practices to forms of capital. In one of the papers, Sorgaard Jensen contends that as travelling, studying, and working abroad become more prevalent and as a greater number of people develop strong bonds (e.g. friendship, love) with nationals from other states, these unevenly distributed experiences become an object of contention in the struggle for the accumulation of symbolic capital. In the second paper, Koelet and De Valk demonstrate that, as Favell already suggested in Eurostars and Eurocities, transnational experiences and practices directly impact in how individuals insert themselves socially in the places in which they live and in the social capital they can rely on in these places. The other three papers in the panel focus on the impact of transnational experience and identifications. First, Rössel and Schroedter suggest that transnational experience leads to the emergence of a new axis of differentiation in taste, one that is partly orthogonal to the classic differentiation between omnivore and restricted taste. Then, Gerhards and Hans focus on the new social inequalities created by transnational human capital, as it differentially allows people to access national public spheres other than one’s own. Finally, Teney provides a new light into the classic analysis of the relationship between identification and support for the European Union, by concentrating not on mere support for the EU but, rather, into the cosmopolitan and communitarian worldviews that underpin this support.
Chair:
Juan Díez Medrano
Discussant:
Mabel M. Berezin
