Transnationality

Abstract

The growth of transnational interconnectedness in an ever-integrating Europe is often taken for granted in theories of Europeanisation. However, research on the extent and degree of transnational exchanges and contacts between Europeans is still rare, and data on horizontal cross-border connections and movements are quite limited. Nonetheless, aside from “top-down” political processes, transnational interactions in everyday life possess a quality of their own, and it is necessary to have a closer look at this horizontal dimension of European integration. Thus, in this chapter we attempt to map different forms of “bottom-up” transnational activities in Europe on the basis of available data. We start with a portrayal of the infrastructure of transnational interaction in Europe, the networks of transport and communication, which we consider both as indications of transnational connectivity throughout Europe and as enabling factors of transnationalisation. Subsequently, we turn to several accounts of transnational activities at the grassroots level of society, such as intra-European migration and tourism, student and youth exchanges, town twinning and other forms of regional cross-border cooperation. We will show that there is a high and growing degree of interactions across national borders, which is bringing about a reasonable degree of pan-European connectivity in everyday life.

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Introduction

In recent decades much research has been undertaken to identify the roots, the distinctiveness and the uniqueness of European society. This endeavour has been set in motion because the process of European integration demands reflections on the specific traits of Europe. Policy-makers as well as social scientists have frequently referred to the character of European society and the shared traits of the European nation states and the European people in order to justify the process of supranational community building. In their view, the European Union constitutes more than a random cluster of countries that decide on a particular form of cooperation. Moreover, it also embodies a particular sense of, commonness, which backs the current process of integration. Indeed, though the European continent has been the locus of excessive nationalism, it can be argued that there is a common ground that unifies the European countries, going beyond mutual recognition and political cooperation.

In historical perspective we can see that there has been a high density of interaction between people from different regions and parts of the European continent. As Giner (1993: 153) underlines, “The lives and destinies of the European peoples have been inextricably intertwined for a very long time, indeed, and no emphasis on internal varieties and variations can ever disguise the fact that the continent has shared one single civilization over centuries.” In other words, Europe did not consist of unconnected islands between which exchange was rather rare and exceptional, but there were many institutionalised and informal social ties. For example, the aristocratic families of Europe have always been closely interlinked and their marriage patterns engendered a dense web of transnational relations. There are countless examples from the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries in which family bonds crossed borders. Monarchies used the strategy of initiating blood connections to safeguard their rule and power and to forge alliances. As a result, a European courtly society came into being. From the beginning of the medieval period onwards, scholars and scientists have also moved and communicated across Europe and thereby dispersed and accumulated knowledge. There was always a relatively high degree of heterogeneity in many places all over Europe before the rise of modern nation states. The major towns and capitals of the multi-national empires or the major port cities actually were multi-cultural places, with people and groups of different origin living in spatial and social proximity. There was no large-scale unified system that regulated freedom of movement. Yet, the control of mobility was in the hands of local authorities, landlords, and feudal lords in earlier times. But despite these local restrictions on mobility, this was a system that allowed a frequent coming, going and staying of non-native people and did not require an anchoring of people in a given territory (cf. Therborn 1995).

Along with the establishment of modern nation states, a new type of political order emerged. One of the main features associated with modern nation states was territorial closure, by which state authorities attempted to control and govern population and territory (Rokkan 2000). The invention of the passport, border controls, the regulation of mobility, the endowment of people with citizen status − all these measures contributed to the ability of the state to take hold on the society (Torpey 2000). As a consequence, clear demarcations between distinct “national” groups became the common feature in modern Europe. Some scholars even claim that there were no pre-modern societies as clearly separated and demarcated as the modern nation states (Giddens 1990). After the “golden age” of the nation state and the many instances of national rivalry and conflict, Europe has entered an era of reconciliation and political integration. Though post-war Europe underwent a deep divide with two geopolitical blocs standing against each other, this was also the period when the foundations of European integration were laid down: starting with ambitions of economic integration, then becoming a more and more political project of supranational system building and, finally, reaching out to the social level of integration (Leibfried and Pierson 1998). Since the middle of the previous century, the dynamics of European integration continually bound more and more European nation states together. After the collapse of the communist system and the following tremendous eastward enlargement, a large part of the European continent constitutes the territory of the European Union (EU) today. Besides that, during the previous decade a single European market with a common currency came into being fostering considerable flows of intra-EU economic transactions. Consequently, the EU has also acquired huge regulatory power and authority over the meantime to interfere in various policy areas formerly defined as distinct national issues (Wallace and Wallace 1998; Cowles et al. 2001; Rumford 2002; Featherstone and Raedelli 2003).

Essential for a sociological understanding of the process of European integration is not, however, the supra-national economic and political mechanisms shaping contemporary Europe but the social dynamics of transnational interdependencies as well as the changes in individual citizens’ lives against the backdrop of ongoing European integration (cf. Kaelble 1987; Bach 2000; Immerfall 2000; Beck and Grande 2004; Delhey 2005; Fligstein 2008; Mau and Verwiebe 2009). In fact, if one only looks at the breakdown of national borders and the subsequent facilitation of cross-border exchanges we can expect a significant impact of European integration particularly on the level of individual citizens. Therefore, sociologists assume that growing interaction and interdependency between citizens of different European member states is slowly transforming national societies and their boundaries and may catalyse a new type of integration and solidarity at the European level (Delanty and Rumford 2005).

Since Durkheim’s (1960 [1893]) classic book on The Division of Labour in Society, the link between growing societal interdependence and solidarity is one of the core theorems of the sociological analysis of the genesis of solidarity. Durkheim assumed that intensified exchange and entanglement engender social and emotional bonds between the interacting strangers. With regard to European integration, one may concede a growing degree of interpenetration and dependency between the EU member states. Adopting Durkheim’s approach, it stands to reason that the more interwoven the European member states are, the more likely solidarity bonds across national borders are to develop. In fact, Durkheim himself, albeit more than 100 years ago in an era of excessive nationalism, indicated such a possibility for the European nations to come about: “…among European peoples there is a tendency to form by spontaneous movement a European society which has, at present, some idea of itself and the beginning of organisation. If the formation of a single human society is forever impossible, a fact which has not been proved, at least the formation of continually larger societies brings us vaguely near the goal.” (Durkheim 1960 [1893]: 405 f.).

Karl W. Deutsch’s “transactionalism” (Deutsch 1957, 1968) has also taken such a perspective as a point of departure and emphasised that political integration also needs to entail intensified communication and exchange between different nations. According to Deutsch, it is of political importance that integration does take place not only at the economic level but also at the level of personal contacts and interactions (cf. Delhey 2004). He describes the dynamics of this process as a cybernetic model − a self-propelled process − within which economic and political transactions trigger further individual-level transactions. With the intensification of border-crossing exchanges, more and more people would start to become aware of the advantages of these flows and start to participate in transnational interaction, social distances would diminish and prejudices be weakened. One can justifiably question the optimistic perspective of such a deterministic theory. Nevertheless, we can generally assume that institutionalised and politically fostered forms of exchange and interaction, such as the creation of a common market, cross-border cooperation or investment in transport systems, provide an infrastructure encouraging ever more individual cross-border transactions. Hence, the emergence of transnational interactions and inter-individual networks in contemporary Europe can indeed be conceptualised in close relation to the overall macro-structural change in the conventional system of nation states.

If we look more closely at the various possible types of interconnectedness among the citizens of different European countries, we can see that this phenomenon in multi-faceted and different aspects may play a role. Delhey (2004) distinguishes between a quantitative and a qualitative dimension of transnational interconnectedness. The quantitative dimension circumscribes the mutual relevance of different national societies measured in border-crossing transactions and activities such as communication flows, stays and travel abroad, cross-border purchases, inter-group friendships, acquaintances and contacts, inter-group marriages and migration, mutual attentiveness, interest and knowledge and, last but not least, transnational social comparisons and yardsticks. The qualitative dimension rather entails aspects such as help across borders, positive mutual perceptions and attitudes and the issue to what extent a shared community feeling overrides existing national divides. We can, however, assume that the quantitative and the qualitative characteristics are closely interwoven with dense cross-border networks and interaction also strengthening community feelings and forms of solidarity. And exactly along this line, it has been suggested that the enormous increase in border-crossing interactions might contribute to a shift of political loyalties and identifications away from national societies to the European and global level (Münch 1999, 2001; Fligstein 2008).

However, one can also question that cross-border interaction necessarily leads to “subjective” manifestations of Europeanisation. Interaction across borders may trigger feelings of reciprocity and commonness; but there are also many instances and social situations, indeed, where such a spill-over does not take place. Even Durkheim, who is always referred to as the classical proponent of a functional logic of social evolution and change, reminds us of the fragile nature of solidarity bonds across borders with his reflections on anomie (cf. Münch and Büttner 2006). According to Durkheim, it is possible that trans-boundary integration might break down at any point in time due to revived national protectionism and excessive national inclusion (Durkheim 1961: 195f.). In fact, this has been the usual case throughout Europe’s whole modern history. Thus, increasing border-crossing exchange and interaction do not naturally create the feeling of commonness or the emergence of a new solidarity “community” with a common identity. This would always require to be embedded in “lived” social institutions. This means that it must be routinely practised and reproduced by individuals and, at least to a certain extent, materialise in values of commonness and reciprocity. However, if this is the case in contemporary Europe is a matter of ongoing political and scientific debate.

Yet, what is widely shared today is the perception of an enormous increase in transnational interactions in everyday life. Despite some scepticism, we assume that these everyday cross-border transactions indeed catalyse transnational integration among European citizens, namely by ending national containment, fostering pan-European connectivity and adjusting individual citizens’ lives and experiences on a European scale. We claim, therefore, that aside from “top-down” political processes these transnational interactions in everyday life possess a quality of their own and it is necessary to have a closer look at this horizontal dimension of European integration − or as Favell (2005: 1115) put it more pronouncedly:

Political scientists think of voting and “revealed preferences”, of course, but ‘being European’ nowadays is as much likely to be about this, as it is about shopping across borders, buying property abroad, handling a common currency, looking for work in a foreign city, taking holidays in new countries, buying cheap airline tickets, planning international rail travel, joining cross-national associations − and a thousand other actions facilitated by the European free movement accords. These ways of being European (that can all be counted, or interrogated for meaning), are notably also enjoyed by many who overtly profess themselves to be Eurosceptic or to have no European identity at all. Thought of this way, we may indeed discover “social identities” that are genuinely transnational, if they turn out to be rooted behaviourally in new forms of cross-national action and interaction.

In the following sections we will mainly describe different forms, so-called bottom-up forms, of horizontal cross-border activities within Europe in order to map the degree of transnationality and interconnectedness among European citizens. We will focus on the frequency and density of horizontal activities in everyday life, such as communicating, travelling or working together across borders.¹ The prevalence of transnational interconnectedness in an ever-integrating Europe is often taken for granted in theories and studies on Europeanisation. However, the data available for capturing such horizontal cross-border movements and connections are still rather limited. So far, most of the research undertakings interested in Europe are comparative in nature, and we still lack knowledge as regards the character and the extent of horizontal networks between peoples.² Thus, the data presented in the following are to a large extent data published by EU institutions and other official bodies, which do not fully satisfy our sociological demands. It would require additional data on transnational friendships, family ties and transnational practices to gain a more comprehensive picture. However, as such studies are still in their infancy − at least on a European level − the picture we will provide here will remain preliminary and partly incomplete.

In the next section we start with a spotlight on the infrastructure of transnational interaction, although its development is strongly dependent on top-down political and economic decisions. Nonetheless, we consider the extension of transport and communication networks both an important enabling factor and an indication of bottom-up transnationalisation (cf. Larsen et al. 2006; Urry 2007). If there was no demand for transnational movements and exchange, the infrastructure would not have to be expanded and vice versa. In fact, exactly along these lines we consider individual behaviour and macro-structural conditions related, and they must be singled out analytically. After looking at the infrastructure, we turn to several accounts of transnational movements, such as intra-European migration and tourism, student and youth exchanges, town twinning and other forms of regional cross-border cooperation. As we will show, large-scale pan-European movements take place at the grassroots level of society, already bringing about a reasonable degree of pan-European connectivity in everyday life.

The Infrastructure of Transnationalisation: Transport and Communication Networks

Thinking of incidences and enabling factors of horizontal interactions across and beyond national borders in Europe, we often primarily think of the major political steps undertaken during the 1990s to foster cross-border exchanges and mobility of Europeans, such as, above all, the establishment of the European Common Market, the abolition of rigid border controls between Schengen states, or the creation of the Euro-zone. Indeed, these changes have brought European nation states closer to each other than ever before, especially the member states of the European Union (Mau 2006). But besides these major steps of economic and political integration, the development of a trans-European network of transportation and the opening of telecommunications markets have also decisively accelerated cross-border activities of European citizens.

One short glance at the extent of motorways or railroad connections all over Europe reveals that networks of transportation already transcend the borders of European nation states to a large extent (cf. Espon 2004, 2006b). Various border-crossing motorways, railroads and waterways have been built in the past two or three decades in particular in order to facilitate cross-border travel between neighbouring countries. National railway companies increasingly cooperate with each other and put huge efforts into offering ever faster and cheaper international railroad connections between major urban centres. Neighbouring countries and regions increasingly work together in order to raise the number of border-crossings and make regular border-crossing traffic ever easier.³ And besides the respective governments of neighbouring countries, the European Commission above all has been very active in promoting the idea of trans-European mobility in conjunction with the realisation of a common market. In fact, the European Commission expects the traffic to double between EU countries by the year 2020. Consequently, many international motorways and railroad connections are planned for the near future. The Commission has defined major priorities for the further development of trans-European transport networks and it also provides member states with respective financial support (cf. European Communities 2001, 2005).

Another important, if not even the most important, aspect of the current extension of border-crossing traffic in Europe has been the liberalisation of air traffic in EU member states, also mainly driven forward by the European Commission. The liberalisation brought about the abolition of long-existing state monopolies in air transportation. Private air carriers have full market access nowadays, and they are more or less free in determining their own prices and tariffs (European Communities 2004). A direct consequence of this reform was an enormous increase in both European air carriers and pan-European air connections. Today, there are more than 130 airlines in Europe connecting a network of more than 450 European airport locations.⁴ Above all, the rise of new so-called low-budget air carriers over the past few years has revolutionised the transportation market indeed and significantly raised opportunities for travelling across Europe. These new airlines have usually opened up new airports at places outside the main metropolitan areas and established new pan-European connections, sometimes even to the most outlying places in Europe. Furthermore, prices for international pan-European flights have fallen tremendously − to the benefit of international travellers, but certainly at the expense of growing environmental problems as well, as not only environmentalists have repeatedly admonished.

Today European low-cost airlines carry more than 100 million passengers per year with a current annual growth rate of about 20%.⁵ In 2006, more than 50 low-cost carriers were offering their services in Europe, amounting to a market share of about 16% of all European flights (Eurocontrol 2006). In accordance with the expansion of low-cost carriers, the total number of passengers transported by air in the area of the European Union (former EU-25) has risen significantly over the past years. Between 2003 and 2004 it grew 8.8% up to a total of 650 million passengers.⁶ Just about one quarter (24%) of these air passengers were on domestic flights, 34% took extra-EU flights, and 42% − that represents almost 300 million of all EU air passengers in 2004 − chose intra-EU connections. Thus, a large part of air traffic in Europe is border-crossing and trans-European in nature, which is at least an indication of the extent of regular trans-European mobility today.⁷

In fact, over the past few years there has been a huge increase in same-day return connections all over Europe, which is, in our point of view, a good indicator of how transnationally interconnected some localities in Europe already are. Looking particularly at “daily accessibility by air”, it becomes evident that Europe’s 72 major urban agglomerations and cities are highly interconnected with each other (see Espon 2006b: 34 ff.). Hence, there seems to be a corresponding demand for transnational trips at least between major European centres on a daily basis. That accounts, above all, for the central area of the European Union between cities like Paris, Brussels, Frankfurt and London, of course, where plenty of options for return trips on the same day are available. With slight restrictions, this is also true for other cities such as Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Hamburg, Berlin, Cologne, Munich, Zurich, Prague, Vienna and Rome (see Fig. 18.1 below). In some cases overall accessibility by air is faster than by car or train from the “hinterland” in direct proximity.

Fig. 18.1

Daily accessibility by air between major European urban areas (2003)^{* *}Source: Espon Atlas (2006: 39), own reproduction. ^* Thin black lines: daily return trips possible in both directions (2003); black spots: main airports in Europe

However, taking all means of transportation together − motorways, waterways, railways and air connections − we can see that the trans-European transport network is far from being spread equally all over the territory of the European Union. Generally speaking, there is a distinct West–East gap in terms of interconnectedness and accessibility as well as a significant North–South divide (see Espon 2004, 2006a). The countries in Central Europe with the highest population density such as Germany, Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and France are strongly interconnected with each other in terms of regular cross-border traffic. This includes various daily air connections, but even more so a multitude of border-crossing motorways and railway connections (Strelow 2006). Relatively high levels of interconnections, especially by air and by train, can also be found between the Central European area (Benelux, France, Germany and Austria) and the British Isles as well as Italy. In relation to that, railroads and motorways between these West-Central European states and their Eastern neighbours are still weakly developed. In fact, the most accessible places in the new EU member states from Central and Eastern Europe, and all over Eastern Europe in general, are a few so-called airport islands, namely the capital cities and a few regional centres. This also holds partly true for Northern and Southern European countries. Though these countries are quite well interconnected internally, the most important nodes of international travel are some outstanding urban centres such as Oslo, Stockholm, Helsinki, Athens, Istanbul, Madrid, Barcelona or Lisbon and major tourist destinations such as Palma de Mallorca, Malaga, Nicosia or Thessaloniki.

Besides cross-border traffic and transportation networks, another dimension of trans-European connectivity can be particularly attributed to the enormous expansion of new opportunities for international communication in Europe over the past decade. Certainly, a huge part of current transnational interactions in everyday life does not take place by means of physical cross-border mobility, but via telecommunications and different forms of electronic communication. Never before has communication beyond national borders and over long distances been as fast, cheap and easy as today. Indeed, the expansion of new communication opportunities makes it much easier to maintain long-distant relationships between friends and relatives.⁸ Both the digitalisation of data transfer and − similar to the case of air transportation − the removal of national state monopolies on the telecommunications sector in EU member states during the past years have strongly contributed to a huge increase of international communication. On the one hand, the rise of new internet technologies has brought about an enormous expansion of communication via email. Many people now have their own mail accounts and contact friends and relatives all over the world via email on a regular basis, which was not the case to this mass degree even less than 10 years ago. On the other hand, the market situation in telecommunications has completely changed since the abolition of state monopolies in 1998. Above all, prices for long-distant phone calls, which had been relatively extraordinary and expensive ventures only some 10 years ago, have fallen exorbitantly. In Germany in 1997, for example, right before the fall of the state monopoly, a long-distance domestic call of ten minutes cost approximately 2.80 Euros. An international call of the same length was sometimes even twice as expensive, depending on the distance and the direction of the call. Ten years later, the same phone call costs only about 4% of the former monopoly price on average − no matter if it is a domestic or an international one, especially for calls within the core area of the European Union.⁹ This has strongly affected the conventional use of telecommunications and, certainly, increased the opportunities to maintain many different kinds of long-distant relationships across borders. Due to the marked reduction of prices, international phone calls are no longer an expensive exception and, consequently, have become a normal element of everyday communication on a mass scale. However, little data are available on the overall increase in international communication in Europe, but it can be expected that it has expanded to a similar extent to the fall in prices.¹⁰ Moreover, the spread of new internet technologies and the respective expansion of efficient broadband connections even enable people to make phone calls free of charge all over the world.

Certainly, the expansion of new communication technologies is not a specific European phenomenon; and the development of new opportunities for communication is by far not restricted to Europe. However, the digital revolution and the specific liberalisation of the European telecommunications markets have brought Europeans closer to each other as well. In terms of the technical infrastructure of electronic communication, Europe is one of the most highly developed areas in the world, offering huge opportunities for regular transnational digital connectivity. According to a recent study on telecommunications in Europe, there are about 226 million fixed phone lines (EU-25) and there has been a huge expansion of mobile phones in EU countries up to more than 400 million subscriptions (Lumio 2006). As regards the spread of the internet, more than 90% of all European companies and about half of the EU population have access to the internet and use it on a regular basis. This study also mentions that Europeans mainly use the internet for email communication and information searches. This at least indicates that the people in Europe embrace the new opportunities of electronic communication and make great use of new communication technologies. Nonetheless, there is a marked North−South gap in Europe concerning the use of the internet. In countries like Iceland and Norway as well as in Sweden, Denmark and Finland, regular use of internet for private purposes is most widespread (more than 75% of the population). In Southern European countries, in turn, and in the new EU member states from Central and Eastern Europe alike, these levels are significantly lower (30% and less) (Demunter 2005a). A “digital divide” is noticeable, above all, with regard to the age, employment status and educational level of European citizens. Certainly, the internet is still the medium of the younger, well-equipped and better-educated generation. In all EU member states (EU-25) the vast majority of students, more than 85% of people aged 16 or more at schools or universities, and more than 60% of employees regularly used the internet in 2004. This also accounts for 77% of those Europeans (EU-25) who have completed tertiary education. In marked contrast, only 13% of the retired and 25% of those people with lower secondary education at most used the internet at this point. Nevertheless, the new information and communication technologies have become widely available to the masses both in terms of accessibility and costs in recent years. Especially within Europe, the digital divide is rather likely to shrink in the near future, and international communication and exchange will become increasingly common and widespread (Demunter 2005b).

Transnational Migration in Europe

For most of its history, Europe has been a migrant-sending continent, if one only thinks about the pathways of colonialism or the big waves of emigration to the “new world” in the past centuries. Moreover, during the process of industrialisation a significant share of the fast-growing European population emigrated to North America, Australia and South America. Between the mid-19th century and 1915 nearly 42 million people left Europe; half of them went to the United States (Fischer 1985). Moreover, during times of war in the first half of the 20th century alone, tens of millions of people from all over Europe became victims of forced migration. It is estimated that about 60 – 80 million people were forced to leave their homes by expulsion, deportation, evacuation, population shifts and transfers or resettlement (cf. Kulischer 1948). These various forms of forced migration and “ethnic cleansing” even continued in some European countries for decades after the Second World War (Schechtman 1946; Therborn 1995; Naimark 2001).

During the second half of the last century, nonetheless, Europe − and especially the industrial core regions of Europe − increasingly became an area of immigration and a major destination for migrants from all over the world (Bade 2003; Currle 2004). This was partly due to post-colonial migration movements of people coming from the former colonies, especially to the United Kingdom, France and the Netherlands, who were entitled to privileged access and residence permits. A second wave of migration emerged in the aftermath of the post-war economic boom, when countries like Germany or Austria started to recruit workers in the Mediterranean region to shore up their labour force. Though initially intended as a temporary form of migration to fill labour market vacancies, a large part of the labour migrants continued to stay and even initiated ongoing further follow-up migration of family members. Nowadays, in contrast, significant flows of migration to the area of the European Union consist of people emigrating from poorer areas in Africa, Asia and Latin America, increasingly also entering the territory via “unauthorised” channels (OECD 2006). Moreover, in the past two decades a reasonable part of migratory flows to Europe has also been constituted of refugees and asylum seekers, above all civil war refugees from South-Eastern Europe and other major conflict regions in the world. Since the beginning of the 1990s, Europe has also experienced a marked East–West flow of migration due to the fall of the “Iron Curtain”.

Yet, whereas European policy-makers deliberately took action to regulate and limit the inflow of migrants from outside Europe and to establish joint regulations for immigration,¹¹ intra-European mobility has been strongly encouraged in recent years. Since the deinstitutionalisation of borders was regarded as an integral part of the project of European integration, EU citizens were granted freedom of movement and the right to choose their place of residence − though some temporary restrictions for the new accession countries still exist. Whereas in earlier days of European integration, full mobility rights were only allowed for employees, and therefore strictly limited to the field of economic integration, they have now been extended to all holders of EU citizenship, and partly also to those non-Europeans who possess a permanent residency permit in one of the EU member states. In addition, the EU has made serious steps forward towards removing all barriers to mobility and migration related to protective labour market regulations or restrictions of access to national welfare benefit schemes.

Against this backdrop one might think that intra-European migration must be a widespread phenomenon. Most surprisingly, however, official statistics show that the extent of intra-European migration is still much lower than the amount of immigration from countries outside the European territory. So far, only approximately 1.5% of all EU citizens permanently settled down in other EU countries; and a large part of this marginal share still originates from the first wave of recruitment of “guest workers” in western Europe during the 1960s and 1970s (Rother 2005). Though the shares of EU citizens residing in other EU countries have grown since 1985 in most EU member states, they still seem to be quite marginal, especially in relation to the ambitious aims of the architects of a common European space. In a country like Germany, for example, which has the highest amount of non-nationals of all European countries (almost 8 million people), intra-EU migrants only account for about one-third of all non-nationals (Recchi et al. 2003). Although there are some substantial differences among the EU member states − and some exceptions such as Luxembourg − the share of EU citizens residing in other EU countries does not exceed 3% of the respective total population (Verwiebe 2006: 160 ff.).

A recent analysis of the 2005 Eurobarometer survey on geographical and labour market mobility also reveals that Europeans are relatively immobile indeed compared to the population in the United States, the frequently cited example of high-level internal mobility (Vandenbrande et al. 2006: 7 ff.). According to this analysis, which is based on a representative sample of EU citizens, only a tiny minority of 4% has moved to another EU country, and only approximately 18% of the EU population have even moved outside their region of origin.¹² In fact, people do not usually tend to move to another country or region if they are well situated in their local environment and perceive their current economic situation as acceptable. However, it is not only the pure socio-economic situation which influences migration decisions, but such decisions are also largely dependent on social and cultural factors (see Faist 2006). And, certainly, an important obstacle to large-scale trans-European migration might still be the fact that many Europeans do not speak any foreign language (European Commission 2006).

But this should not lead to the rash conclusion that hardly any internal cross-border migration is taking place within Europe or that it is a negligible phenomenon of a second order in an ever-integrating Europe. On the contrary, the current stage of political integration does allow for various forms of transnational movement that are not yet reflected in official migration statistics. New research on intra-EU migration shows that for many European labour migrants, the old concept of migration as leaving one country for good and living in the host society for a longer period of time does not apply anymore (Mau et al. 2008). Rather, more and more people migrate on a short-term or mid-term basis, go abroad for seasonal employment or commute across national borders on a regular basis. Thus, for the study of intra-European migration and transnational mobility in Europe, the perspective of long-term migration is by far not sufficient and even misleading. Consequently, the current research on migration has already started to explore the various forms and characteristics of migratory flows within Europe and beyond. Increasingly, migration researchers are becoming aware of the prevalence and significance of new, genuinely transnational types of migration (Faist 2000; Levitt et al. 2003; Pries 1999, 2001, 2004; Verwiebe 2004). Above all, they have explored the emergence of new transnational spaces of mobility and interaction between and beyond different places all over Europe: such as the spaces of seasonal workers who temporarily migrate from their original places of residence to other cities and regions in Europe with more favourable income and employment prospects; or the spaces of so-called shuttle migrants who constantly commute between their home regions and places in other countries. Besides that, seasonal workers and shuttle migrants of today often leave their home countries without giving up their close ties and connections to their home regions. Consequently, however, many of the contemporary European trans-migrants neither really live in their home countries, nor in their respective host societies anymore; they rather constantly “live in-between” two countries.

The most comprehensive attempt to investigate the dynamics of intra-EU mobility and migration has been made by the PIONEUR project directed by Ettore Recchi (see PIONEUR 2006). Though outlined as a large-scale international project, it proved difficult to reflect a detailed picture of the motivations, patterns and consequences of intra-European migration, mainly due to a lack of reliable data sources. The intra-EU migrants appeared to be a “hidden population” because they are not registered in any systematic sense by their host countries and because it is difficult to reach them with standard survey questionnaires. A large part of the mobile people does not pass information to the official bodies either in their home or in their host country. The PIONEUR group has been able to generate a sample of 5,000 European citizens resident as foreign nationals in the five EU member states France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy and Spain. It was discovered that the classical push and pull factors do not fully explain why people move to another EU member state. As mentioned above, non-economic reasons such as family bonds and romantic relationships or the overall quality of life also play an important role. Asked for their subjective motivation for moving, about 30% of the sample mentioned “family/love”, 25% “work opportunities”, 24% “quality of life”, 7% “study” and 13% other reasons. The study by Verwiebe (2005) also highlights other reasons than job opportunities, such as interest in living in an attractive place.

However, the reasons and patterns of migration still largely differ in terms of the social status of the respective migrants and the socio-economic situation in their country or region of origin − and this has become more relevant particularly in Europe again since the fall of the “Iron Curtain”. While in former times temporal intra-European migration mainly consisted of seasonal migration of people from Southern Europe (Recchi et al. 2003), a large part of trans-migration flows is now made up of people from Eastern Europe, where unemployment is quite pervasive and average wages are still relatively low compared to Western European standards. In the past decade, many people from Eastern Europe have chosen to work in Western European countries on a seasonal basis − as nurses, au pairs, cleaners, farm workers, craftspersons, mechanics, etc. − rather than staying in their home countries (Morokvasic 1994; Hess 2005). This trend has been further reinforced in the new EU member states since their EU accession in May 2004. In Poland, for example, with 38.5 million inhabitants by far the largest EU member state in Central and Eastern Europe, a survey recently revealed that about 3 million people have worked abroad since May 2004. The case of Poland is particularly telling with regard to the thesis of growing interdependence of European societies. Until recently, in fact, most of the Polish emigration went to non-European destinations, especially to the United States and Australia. However, since the regime change and after EU accession most of the Polish migrants do not go overseas anymore but look for new opportunities in Western EU countries.¹³ According to the survey about 1.1 million Poles were employed or were looking for jobs abroad by the beginning of 2007, most of them in other EU countries; even more have worked abroad for a certain period and returned home in the meantime.¹⁴ The most important destination for Polish job-seekers in 2007 was Great Britain with a share of 26% of the current 1.1 million migrant workers, and another 10% went to Ireland. This is not surprising, since these countries had already removed all employment restrictions for people from the new EU member states in 2004. In this sense, one can say that the characteristics and types of intra-European labour mobility and migration depend to a large degree on existing regulations and restrictions on immigration and employment. Nonetheless, 16% of the current Polish migrant workers also chose to travel to Germany, the Western neighbouring country, although Germany still restricts employment and residence for Poles and people from the other new EU member states. However, migrant workers often simply bypass more restrictive employment regulations in countries by constant trans-migration. Since citizens of the new member states are allowed to travel throughout all EU countries and stay for 3 months without any kind of obligations, many of them travel home when their residence permit expires and come back as soon as possible.¹⁵

Although the present intra-European labour migration is to a certain degree shaped by the socio-economic gap between East and West, short- and mid-term migration has also become quite common and widespread for people in Western Europe. This strongly relates to the structural changes in labour markets and working conditions in Europe over the past few decades. On the one hand, unemployment has been more pervasive all over Europe − even in most prosperous EU member states. On the other hand, Europeans are increasingly experiencing a de-standardisation of working careers and a rise of more dynamic, more flexible, but also more precarious forms of employment, such as temporary or casual employment (Sennett 1998; Smith et al. 1998). The structural changes in working conditions also entail an increase in interregional and international mobility. More and more Europeans are sent abroad to foreign divisions and subsidiaries by their employers for a certain period of time. More and more Europeans have started to look for job opportunities beyond the national scope. Germany, for example, has experienced an increase in labour migration with destinations such as Ireland, the Netherlands, Austria or Norway, all countries with a demand for skilled labour. No wonder that the highly skilled groups constitute the majority of migrants leaving Germany.¹⁶ However, besides highly skilled labour, people with vocational training and certified skills are also starting to look for new employment opportunities abroad. For the European system of migration, the role of institutional support structures must be emphasised. The European Employment Service (EURES), for example, is a cooperation network between the European Commission and the public employment agencies in the member states, which supports labour market mobility within the European Union by means of providing information and help for job seekers. Potential migrants receive information about job opportunities, employment regulations and terms and conditions of working in other European countries. Especially for skilled workers, the new internationally oriented employment services, both private and public, are one important door-opener into other labour markets (Mau et al. 2007).

Looking more broadly at the multi-faceted movements of people in Europe, we can observe as a general pattern that all migratory flows, both within and to the area of the European Union, are age-specific and regionally targeted (see Espon 2006b: 10 ff.). Undeniably, younger people constitute the most mobile group of migrants in Europe. The younger generation of today mostly prefers to live in more dynamic urban areas rather than in sparsely populated rural areas. A marked growth of the population can be observed in many local and regional centres and in the major European metropolitan areas in particular. Above all, metropolises such as London and Paris, but also Brussels, the dynamic urban centres in Ireland and Great Britain as well as most prosperous areas of Sweden, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Germany and also Switzerland are Europe’s most preferred destinations. Hence, these urban areas are the most multi-cultural places in Europe today, often hosting a huge number of different European as well as non-European ethnicities. Correspondingly, however, the population in economically less favourable, mostly rural and geographically remote regions, but also in declining old industrial areas, tends to decrease, in fact, and to become older as well as more “homogenous” on average. Another aspect of intra-European migration that is increasingly relevant is the movement on the other side of the age scale: the emigration older middle- and upper-class people to areas with pleasant surroundings and a certain level of regional attractiveness (Williams et al. 1997; King et al. 1998). In fact, it is becoming increasingly popular for older Europeans to move to attractive tourist regions in France, Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece, but also to the Southwest of England and Scotland, after retirement.¹⁷ The central criterion for this emigration to tourist regions after retirement is the quality of living conditions, rather than the particular level of incomes or prices for goods and services. Often, experiences and impressions made during many holidays abroad in the decades before stimulate the decision to change life after retirement and finally move abroad.

Hence, summing up, we can observe that Europeans are much more frequently on the move today than they used to be a few years ago in times of closed borders and national containment. Fewer people regard the internal European borders and cultural differences as a major hindrance for migration. The risks of failure in the “foreign world” are more and more calculable and bearable. It is becoming ever easier today to maintain close relationships with old friends and family members over longer distances and to come back home. But again, one has to acknowledge that the level of mobility of Europeans is still quite moderate, and this is not expected to change dramatically in the near future (cf. Vandenbrande et al. 2006: 31 ff.). Nonetheless, especially taking the territorial dimension of migration into account, it has definitely changed the structure of the population in many localities, and it will do even more so in the upcoming decades.

Tourism in Europe

Besides permanent and temporary migration, another significant indication of increasing trans-border mobility of Europeans is the rise of international tourism in Europe over the past decades. Ever more people are leaving their home for holidays and look for recreation outside their familiar domestic environment (Opaschowski 2006). In fact, travelling abroad has become an important, if not the most important leisure activity of Europeans. In terms of accessibility and costs of holiday, destinations inside or outside one’s own country no longer differ greatly. Moreover, the new tourism movement with its mass character and its well-developed infrastructure even makes it possible that destinations abroad are often less costly and even more convenient to reach than places in geographical proximity. Correspondingly, the percentage of people going abroad for holidays has increased substantially in most of the OECD countries.

According to the World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO), international tourism − measured in terms of international arrivals − has risen world wide by a multiple of 30 since the middle of the past century: from about 25 million international arrivals in 1950 up to more than 800 million in 2005.¹⁸ Despite the growing threat of terrorism, the shock of devastating environmental catastrophes in the Asian Pacific or the United States as well as the marked increase of prices for petrol over the past few years, the growth of tourism is unbroken. The number of international arrivals is expected to exceed 1 billion by 2010. Hence, in many countries tourism has developed into a flourishing industry and even become the most important source of income for large parts of the population. This accounts not least for Europeans, since Europe is the most important tourist region world wide both in terms of international arrivals (about 500 million) as well as revenues from tourism (UNWTO 2006). Seven European countries can be found on the list of top-10 tourist destinations world wide. Six of these are current EU member states (Spain, France, Italy, United Kingdom, Germany and Austria, in the order of their position); the seventh one is Turkey, a candidate for EU membership over the medium term (ibid.). But Europe is not only the top destination of world tourism, it is also the top generator of international tourist flows − and a huge part of this border-crossing travel by Europeans takes place within Europe itself. Consequently, most Europeans have had experiences of other countries and with other European nationals via tourism.

Thus, tourist activities have become the most common way of getting in contact with other cultures and lifestyles and might therefore be considered one of the central components of Europeanisation “from below”. However, authors have been sceptical as to what extent tourism might be conceived as triggering new social bonds. Meethan (2001: 142), for example, argues, “As tourists cross borders in the literal sense, they also cross cultural barriers. (…) Such cross-border and transnational movements are by their nature temporary, and contacts between hosts and guests are transitory. Tourists as transient visitors may remain outsiders, as anonymous to their hosts, as the hosts are anonymous to their guests. Each party will view the other as a generalised type, as the opportunities to develop any form of social interaction above and beyond the superficial level are generally limited, may not even be desired or encouraged.” The anthropologist Ulf Hannerz, well-known for his studies on globalisation and new forms of transnational relations in everyday life, stated even more bluntly: “Tourists are not participants; tourism is largely a spectator sport.” (Hannerz 1990: 242).

In our view, nonetheless, there are good reasons to assume that there are spill-over effects from tourism to other forms of transnational contacts. Tourist experiences are very often a first opportunity to “get to know each other” and may diminish the distance between the nations, for example if they engender new relationships or migratory movements. In fact, a recent Eurobarometer study on the use of languages in Europe reveals that holiday-making abroad is the most important reason for Europeans to learn and use foreign languages, far more important than the regular use of foreign languages at work or at home (European Commission 2006: 18 ff.). Though not all tourist visits will have strong repercussions on people’s everyday lives, such visits may act as door-openers to other cultures and may extend people’s cognitive and behavioural horizons. Therefore, tourism should be seen as a very significant part overcoming physical and cultural barriers between nations, getting in touch with foreign people and foreign life-worlds, enhancing trust among people of foreign nations and, eventually, even feeling more, European, (see also Mau 2007).

A recent Eurostat study on tourism shows that in 2004 about 197 million EU citizens (EU-25) made about 400 million longer holiday trips of four or more overnight stays both within and outside their home countries¹⁹ − that accounts for approximately 40% of the total EU-25 population (see Bovagnet 2006a). Thus, those Europeans who went on holidays made two longer trips per year on average. But this also means that a considerable amount of EU citizens still did not undertake any longer holiday trip of four nights and more at all. Unsurprisingly yet most significantly, the study reveals that there is a huge divergence between old and new member states in terms of participation in international tourism. Thus, the vast majority of tourist activities in Europe still take place within and between a limited number of Western and Southern European countries.

Certainly, the decision upon holiday-making and travelling away for holidays strongly depends on the respective financial situation of individuals and households. But besides budgetary constraints, other factors such as age, education and occupational status also play an important role with regard to decisions on holiday-making (European Commission 1998: 1). As far as the preferred destinations of travels are concerned, the most important criteria for Europeans are scenery and climate, whereas financial factors such as the cost of travel or cost of accommodation only come second (ibid.: 9). The most active group of travellers in Europe are people between the ages of 25 and 39, especially students and those with higher education, followed by the “40–59” group. These age groups can be regarded as the driving forces of international tourism, in fact. However, this has been changing noticeably over the past few years. While in former times the older generations used to be most reluctant to travel and often did not leave home for holidays at all, the elderly Europeans of today are much keener on holiday-making and travelling abroad than their predecessors. Thus, given the current demographic trend and the favourable financial situation of many pensioners in most of the Western European countries, the current imbalance between generations in terms of tourist activity will definitely disperse in the near future.

However, looking more closely at the major destinations of tourist travel in Europe, the aforementioned Eurostat study also reveals that many EU citizens who go on vacation still prefer to stay in their home countries for their major holidays. In 2004 about 57% of all longer holiday trips of four or more nights were not border-crossing in nature at all. On the other hand, more than two thirds of all longer outbound trips of Europeans went to other EU-25 countries (see Table 18.1). Especially people from smaller EU countries such as Slovenia and Luxembourg, but also the populations of Belgium, Ireland, Denmark and Germany, travel abroad more frequently than people from other EU countries. Nonetheless, quite a few countries can be identified, in turn, in which the preference to stay at home is widespread. With the exception of Poland (82% of all longer holiday trips), almost all these countries are located in Southern Europe, namely Greece (90%), Spain (88%) and France (83%). Many people live from tourism, there, and if they go on vacation themselves, they tend to stay in their own country and visit their friends and relatives in the countryside.

Table 18.1 Holiday trips of 4 nights or more in Europe by destination, 2004

The most popular European tourist destinations for Europeans (EU-25) measured by overnight stays of non-residents are Spain, Italy and France. The other European top tourist destinations − but not as popular as the leading three − are Austria, Great Britain, Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Portugal and Ireland. These 10 countries account for almost 90% of international tourism in the area of the European Union (European Communities 2006: 3 ff.). In general, however, major tourist flows in the European Union display a strong preference for Southern Europe. Spain is by far the most popular tourist destination in many European countries, namely in all Northern and most of the Central European countries.²⁰ People from Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg tend to prefer France over other foreign destinations, whereas people from the Baltic States and Poland most frequently travel to Germany (see Fig. 18.2). However, one has to acknowledge that the trans-European tourist flows are far more complex and not as one-dimensional as they are shown on the map. This map only displays a general tendency; it indicates the main flows of outbound tourism by country in relation to other outbound destinations in 2004. The data capture only longer trips of four nights or more and thus the great significance of shorter trips of less than four overnight stays for European tourism is not taken into account at all.

Fig. 18.2

Most important targets of outbound tourism in Europe (EU-25) by country^* Source: Bovagnet (2006b, 5); own reproduction. ^*The arrows mark the most important targets of intra-EU outbound tourism for each of the EU member state (EU25).

A broader look at the statistics on travelling and holiday-making in Europe - that does not only take longer trips of four and more overnight stays into consideration - reveals that more than half of all holiday travels in Europe are short-term (less than three nights). Most strikingly, the increase in these trips has been much higher than that of longer trips of four nights and more, particularly since 2000 (see European Communities 2006: 23 ff.). The highest proportion of preferences for short-term trips can be observed for Finnish, Swedish and Spanish tourists (70% and more). In Denmark, Germany, Spain, France, Italy and Luxembourg, the growth of shorter trips was higher than that of longer ones. Especially in Denmark as well as in Greece and Germany, the number of longer trips decreased between 2000 and 2004, whereas the amount of trips of 1–3 nights increased tremendously (more than 14%). It has to be pointed out that most of this short-term travel consisted of leisure activities, and only a small amount of these short trips were in fact business trips.

Against this backdrop, one can say without exaggeration that holiday travels to other European countries and shorter cross-border trips have become normal and regular for a growing amount of Europeans. This is definitely strongly relating to the aforementioned structural changes that have taken place in Europe over the past decade. Most of all, the expansion of low-cost airlines in Europe over the past years has strongly affected the travel habits and routines of many Europeans. It accelerated the growth of smaller and shorter intra-European trips. These new airlines do not only provide new travel opportunities for regular travellers, they also attract new groups of travellers, including those with limited budgets. The huge expansion of these airlines makes it easier for travellers to reach places all over Europe faster, more often, and more spontaneously than in former times, and consequently further boosts the expansion of tourist travels particularly in Europe. This certainly has repercussions on respective tourist localities: foreign people, foreign lifestyles and foreign languages are becoming a normal part of everyday life (cf. Urry and Sheller 2004).

Student Mobility, Student Networks and Youth Exchanges

The cross-border mobility of students is a rather special, but very important part of bottom-up transnationalisation in Europe. Indeed, it has been – and still is − one of the driving forces of the development of transnational bonds and networks. Leaving the familiar local environment and studying or working abroad for several months, or even years, usually entails a much more intense experience than shorter holiday or business trips could ever do. It often is the most important “cut” in the life-course of young people as regards international experiences − and sometimes even the starting point of an international career. At least it constitutes at least constitutes an important step in the usual course of education for acquiring “intercultural competences”, such as learning foreign languages, adapting to other cultural contexts, socialising with foreign people, problem-solving under unknown conditions. However, it is not only the mobility and exchange of students, but of young people in general, that has been a driving force of transnationalisation in post-war Europe. Certainly, the younger generation constitutes a special group in terms of transnational mobility and exchange among Europeans, and, thus, deserves special attention in our discussion. However, since cross-border exchanges often take place before the entrance to universities and are by far not limited to the world of university students, we will not only describe some basic features of trans-European student mobility in the following, but also point to the dimension of youth exchanges and international youth mobility in an ever-integrating Europe.

Indeed, large-scale student mobility across Europe is nothing new. Hundreds of years ago, students travelled from university to university all around Europe in order to acquire the most up-to-date knowledge of that time. In this sense, the universities have always been nodes of transnational exchange and globalisation (Stichweh 2000).²¹ However, with the rise of modern nation states and the respective national restructuring of educational systems during the 19th and the 20th centuries European universities became less internationally oriented. This has been changing radically over the past two decades again. Studying abroad has increasingly become usual for students, the experience of a multi-cultural environment an integral part of standard educational careers. International student mobility has risen enormously over the past 25 years. According to UNESCO data on the sector of higher education, 2.5 million people worldwide studied in a foreign country in the year 2004. Europe is in fact the most frequent destination of foreign students. Europe’s top three host countries for foreign students are the United Kingdom, Germany and France; they account for about 30% of all international students together. The largest receiving country, however, is the United States with its share of 22% of foreign students worldwide (UNESCO Institute for Statistics 2006). Most strikingly, international student mobility does mainly take place within the OECD world. Yet it must as well be highlighted that a large number of foreign students in OECD countries also originate from countries outside the OECD area (OECD 2001, 2004: 11 f.).

A comparison of world regions, based on the UNESCO data on world wide student mobility in 2004, shows that the traditional so-called Western countries (North America and Western Europe) host the vast majority of 70% of all international students (see Table 18.2). These countries − and especially the leading four just mentioned: the United States, the UK, Germany and France − are the most important destinations for students from all areas in the world. In almost all world regions the shares of students who study abroad in North America or Western European countries are much higher than those of all other destinations.²² However, the share of international students originating from Western countries is not the highest of all outgoing students in the world. Table 18.2 also shows that the number of internationally mobile students in 2004 was much higher in East Asia and the Pacific (700,999 outgoing students) than in the Western countries (486,601). This is mainly due to the huge amount of Chinese students, which are by far the largest group of outgoing students worldwide with an amount of 343,126 internationally mobile students, mainly going to the United States, Japan or the UK (UNESCO 2006: 132 ff.).²³ In North America and Western Europe only 10% of all outgoing students go to countries outside the Western world. Therefore, the amount of students going abroad is much lower than that of incoming students. It is almost four times lower, in fact, and in the two Anglo-Saxon top destinations for international students, the United States and the UK, the outgoing–ingoing ratio is even much lower.

Table 18.2 International student mobility by world regions (2004)^*

Looking at student mobility within Europe in more detail the data display that there are specific patterns of student mobility for each of the European countries. It turns out that student mobility is highly dependent on respective historical pathways as well as factors like geographic or social proximity of different nations. Table 18.3 indicates flows of international student mobility in selected EU countries according to areas of origin and main destinations: at the top of the table the five most attractive EU destinations for international students and below them a few other selected EU countries.²⁴ We can see that the UK, Germany and France indeed accommodate the lion’s share of all international students in Europe.²⁵ Yet it turns out that the places of origin of incoming students differ remarkably among these top three destinations, each of the countries has its own major linkages. While the majority of students in the UK derive from North America or Western Europe as well as East Asia and the Pacific, the largest group of incoming students in Germany are from Central and Eastern Europe. In fact, Germany is one of the most important destinations for students from CEE countries. In France, in turn, students from Western Europe and Northern America account only for 16% of all foreign students, whereas half of all incoming students originate from Arab States and Sub-Sub-Saharan Africa − this is definitely an effect of the colonial history of the country. It is striking that the difference between incoming and outgoing students is relatively high in all of the three countries. In the UK, the students are even more immobile internationally as compared to France or Germany, and if British students go abroad, they tend to prefer other English speaking countries, above all. The same is true for Ireland, where the vast majority (90%) of outgoing students go to the UK or the United States.

Table 18.3 International student mobility in selected EU member states (2004)^*

Table 18.3 also shows that the incoming–outgoing ratio for the Southern European countries of Italy and Portugal is quite even; only Greece’s ratio is much higher. In 2004 half of the internationally mobile Greek students went to UK, another 15% to Germany. Outgoing students from West-central European countries, such as Belgium, mostly tend to go to surrounding countries, most of them to France and the UK, but also reasonable shares go to the Netherlands and Germany. Yet international mobility of students is quite low in Belgium, compared to other countries of equal size and in relation to incoming students; the same is true for Sweden. Last but not least, it is worthwhile highlighting some general characteristics of student mobility in the new EU member states from Central and Eastern Europe. First, outgoing mobility is much higher than the number of incoming students; the incoming–outgoing ratio for Poland is 1:4 and for Latvia and Romania it is about 1:2. Second, outgoing students from the new member states in Central and Eastern Europe are mainly aiming for countries in Western Europe and the United States. And third, the majority of foreign students in Central and Eastern Europe come from other countries of that area, most from more Eastern non-EU countries such as Ukraine or Moldova. Thus, there is clear trend of successive movement of students from Eastern parts of Europe towards more Western parts, from new EU member states to the older ones in Western Europe and from non-EU member states to the new Eastern countries of the European Union.

Especially within the European Union, there is a high degree of trans-European student mobility on the basis of growing transnational institutional cooperation and international exchange programmes. In fact, the internationalisation of study programmes has grown tremendously during recent decades. In this context, international and supranational organisations such as the OECD or the European Union have been very active in promoting the international mobility of students. Many study programmes have now been “Europeanised”, or at least adapted to the so-called Bologna standards.²⁶ Moreover, many major obstacles to international student mobility, such as residence permits over a longer period of time and the recognition of foreign studies or qualifications, have been significantly reduced in the past two decades. All this contributes to a dense integration of the European universities and the proliferation of student mobility.

The most successful European measure for promoting temporary trans-European student mobility and cooperation between European institutions of higher education during the past years is the so-called ERASMUS exchange programme first launched in 1987.²⁷ Since then, this programme has rapidly become the most visible European educational programme and a major driving force of trans-European student mobility. Today, the ERASMUS programme is the most established and standardised framework for intra-European students’ exchanges. It mainly supports study stays abroad of a half or at most one academic year, and, in principle, it is based on reciprocity and symmetrical exchange between participating institutions. Due to this, it can be ensured that participants of the ERASMUS programme get free admission to host universities and that acquired grades and exams are mutually accepted at participating universities. In addition, ERASMUS students are also provided with some financial support and usually get preferential treatment at their host universities.

Since its introduction, more than 1.4 million students have studied abroad within the framework of the ERASMUS programme. It started with 3,000 participating students in 1987/1988 and grew to an annual number of 144,000 in 2004/2005.²⁸ Today, the exchange includes about 2,200 higher education institutions in 31 countries − namely the EU-27 countries Turkey, Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein. In the 2004/2005 academic year, the country with the highest number of outgoing ERASMUS students was Germany with about 22,500 participants, followed by France with 21,561 and Spain with 20,819 participants. These three countries, in turn, were the most important destinations for ERASMUS students, respectively. According to a recent study on the professional value of ERASMUS mobility, many former ERASMUS students believe that their study stay abroad was “helpful in obtaining their first job” and that such a stay is gaining importance when employers select amongst applicants. Moreover, former ERASMUS students take over international tasks in their jobs twice as often as formerly non-mobile students (cf. Bracht et al. 2006). However, the importance and frequency of ERASMUS exchanges also strongly vary according to fields of study. Students of economics, social sciences, arts and law usually tend to go abroad more frequently than, for example, medical students or students of mechanical engineering (ibid.).

It must be pointed out, however, that the ERASMUS programme is indeed not the only possibility for European students to study abroad. More and more students decide to go abroad on their own account and enrol for their whole studies at foreign universities or for entirely transnational study programmes, which have flourished at universities in Europe during the past few years.²⁹ Nonetheless, the ERASMUS programme and its succeeding programmes within the broader SOCRATES framework are still the most frequented and the most advanced, and they also provide some opportunities for those who usually would not or could not go abroad to stay in another country for a longer period. Indeed, the ERASMUS programme has fostered a high level of intra-European student mobility. A comparison of the development of outgoing student mobility within the ERASMUS framework since 1990 in France, Germany and the UK and the respective annual number of outgoing students who went to the United States during the same period of time reveals that intra-European mobility has been growing enormously in the past two decades, whereas transatlantic mobility has remained stable (see Fig. 18.3 below). The cases of France and Germany are particularly indicative in this regard. A remarkable exception, however, is the United Kingdom, where outgoing ERASMUS mobility rose until 1995/1996, but has decreased since then. Indeed, there is no straightforward explanation for that at hand. Yet as mentioned above already, the British system of higher education is the most attractive one all over Europe and the imbalance of incoming and outgoing students is one of the highest worldwide. There is a huge inflow of students from other countries, but at the same time British students have the tendency to stay at universities within their country for the whole course of studies. Moreover, the British system of higher education is the most commercialised one in Europe. Presumably, British universities are much more reluctant to support ERASMUS exchange, since this programme which is based on the principle of gratuitous and mutual exchange among European universities undermines their aim of attracting as many foreign students as possible for profit from all over the world.

Fig. 18.3

Outgoing students in Germany, France and UK: ERASMUS versus US stay^* Source: European Commission¹; Institute of International Education (USA).^{2 *}This figure displays a time series of annual amounts of students going abroad within the framework of the ERASMUS programme on the one hand, and to the United States on the other, in France (F), Germany (D) and the United Kingdom (UK), the three most important countries of Europe as regards international student mobility. Thin black lines: students going abroad to the United States from France, Germany and the UK since 1993/1994; thick black lines: students going abroad on the basis of ERASMUS exchange from France, Germany and the UK since 1990/1991.¹ http://ec.europa.eu/education/programmes/socrates/erasmus/statisti/table8.pdf, cited 02 Feb 2007. ² http://opendoors.iienetwork.org/page/113181/, cited 24 Nov 2007.

Apart from the growing number of studies abroad, international student exchanges and transnational study programmes, another indication of transnational integration of students’ lives in Europe is the emergence of international and genuinely “transnational” student networks and associations. In fact, European students are increasingly acting and working together by means of self-organised international student exchanges, summer schools and work experience. These new types of transnational joint ventures and institutions are often not implemented by a top-down political process, they have mostly evolved from the bottom-up. An outstanding example in this regard is AEGEE, one of the largest interdisciplinary student associations in Europe, consisting of more than 15,000 students in more than 40 countries all over Europe.³⁰ AEGEE was founded in 1985 at an international students’ conference with the aim of promoting intercultural exchange in Europe. It is an independent, supranational non-profit organisation, without organisational structures on national levels, but only at universities and at the European level. It offers a wide range of activities, such as transnational summer universities, training, projects and action days, aiming at promoting the idea of a unified Europe without Europe, the creation of an open, tolerant and humane society, and cross-border cooperation between Europeans.

As mentioned above, the many different forms of international youth exchanges in Europe are also significant in terms of triggering transnational contacts. Their origins date back to the spread of various anti-authoritarian hikers’ movements (esp. the Wandervogel movement) before and after the First World War. Since the middle of the 20th century, however, these exchanges became an important tool of political reconciliation between formerly divided European nations. From that time onwards, they were therefore strongly promoted by national governments. One typical example of this kind was the foundation of the bilateral youth exchange programme between France and Germany in 1963.³¹ The founding principle of this exchange programme was to deepen the relations of young people and youth workers in both countries. The programme supports youth and student exchanges, language courses, international work experience, and various other forms of intercultural learning. Since its foundation in 1963, more than 7 million young people from France and Germany have taken part in its activities-that means an average of 200,000 participants and about 7,000 activities per year. To the present day, participation in the activities of this programme is unbroken, but the original bilateral scope of the programme has been enlarged towards the promotion of European values in general and the integration of young people from other countries, primarily from Central and Eastern Europe. Apart from national institutions, the most important promoter of common European values and intra-European exchange during the post-war period, especially with regard to youth issues, was the Council of Europe. It was the first genuinely ‘European’ intergovernmental organisation focusing on cultural approximation among European ethnicities. In the past decades the Council of Europe was very active, particularly in promoting the idea and practice of intercultural youth education as well as the development of interest articulation for young people on the European level.³²

Many Europeans who belong to the older generation gained their first experiences with other European cultures and their first contacts with European counterparts via youth exchanges and international youth camps in the post-war period. This strongly contributed to broadening the scope of many young Europeans beyond their particular local environment and enlarged their horizons across the borders of nation states. Besides these classical politically initiated exchange programmes, a huge variety of other possibilities exists for young Europeans to make friends all over Europe, explore foreign cultures and countries, and learn foreign languages.³³ Nowadays it is almost exceptional if a student does not take part in any activity of intercultural learning, such as youth exchanges, study trips or internships, during his or her educational career. Many schools have their own international partners and offer exchanges on a regular basis. Young people can apply for a multitude of institutionally embedded language courses, internships, voluntary work programmes, etc. Local youth organisations, sports clubs and scouts groups often organise international events or take part in huge international summer camps all over Europe. Considering these various forms of activities altogether, they account for a huge amount of transnational experiences, contacts and exchanges among today’s young Europeans.

Town Twinning and Cross-border Cooperation

Another significant indication of how extensively trans-European networking has seized local life-worlds all over Europe is the wide spread of international twinning arrangements between European cities, towns, smaller provinces and local authorities. ‘Town twinning’ is a concept based on the idea that two or more towns institutionalise long-term relationships, with the goal of fostering personal contacts and constant staff exchange in many different societal realms, be it on the level of public administration and economic associations or in various cultural and social ways. This clearly exceeds the level of individual experiences and random transnational contacts, but entails more stable and more formalised forms of exchange across borders. Naturally, they are the beginning of further and more intensive exchange among citizens, especially between young people, and often lead to closer economic and cultural collaboration. However, town friendships and official twinning arrangements are often the result of preceding personal relationships between ordinary citizens. Official twinning arrangements, however, are usually established between towns and municipalities with common interests or certain characteristic similarities, e.g. a similar size, historical experience, religious orientation, social and economic structure, geographical location or just a similar name.

Certainly, town twinning is by far not limited to the European continent. In fact, many cities, towns and smaller communities also have at least one if not various twinning partners on another continent. In Europe, however, the twinning movement became popular in the era of European integration and reached its highest degree of diffusion and institutionalisation in the past 50 years. The first international twinning arrangements of our contemporary kind were established in the first half of the 20th century. However, similar to the case of intra-European youth exchanges, the enormous rise and diffusion of twinning arrangements all over Europe began after the end of the second World War, as a means of reconciliation and mutual recognition between European nations. From that time onwards, the European twinning movement was so successful that half a century later there is hardly any city or town in Europe without international twinning partners. Apart from the post-war period, a new wave of twinning arrangements washed over Europe during the 1990s with the fall of the Iron Curtain, in order to build bridges between Western and Eastern European societies (Vion 2002). Today, in fact, European twinning arrangements are mostly established in the spirit of European integration and trans-European cooperation in a globalising world. Not surprisingly, therefore, the idea and practice of twinning has been increasingly promoted by supra- and international actors and institutions, too. Besides the Council of Europe, again the European Union has increasingly taken on the role of actively promoting twinning since 1989.³⁴

The most important promoter of twinning arrangements in Europe, however, is the Council of European Municipalities and Regions, the official self-organising body of European towns and municipalities consisting of more than 100,000 members from over 35 European countries.³⁵ Another example of constant trans-European exchange, cooperation and interest formation of municipalities is the EUROCITIES network of larger European cities, which even exceeds the current area of the European Union. It was established in 1986 in order to “(…) share knowledge and ideas, exchange experiences, analyse common problems and develop innovative solutions through a wide range of forums, working groups, projects, activities and events”.³⁶ The network currently consists of more than 130 larger cities in over 30 European countries and is active in a wide range of policy fields. The first genuinely trans-European twinning arrangement, in fact, is the so-called Douzelage association, a multi-national network of municipalities in almost all EU member states. It was founded in 1991 by 12 municipalities of the respective member states of that time and has continually enlarged with the accession of new member states to the European Union. The main aim of this network is to promote and support inter-European exchange, mainly in the form of common cultural, youth and sports projects.³⁷

Finally, an increasing part of constant cooperation of localities, local actors and local administrations across national borders takes place in the so-called INTERREG framework of common European regional policy. Since the end of 1980s the European Union has actively stipulated cross-border cooperation of adjacent regions from different countries, transnational cooperation among national, regional and local authorities as well as international cooperation and exchange between regional bodies all over Europe.³⁸ Today, nearly all smaller European border regions (NUTS-III level) − and the major part of the current European territory consists of border regions − cooperate in at least one so-called transnational “Euro-Region” or at least in joint working groups. The highest percentage of transnational cooperation weighted by population can be found around the Baltic Sea, especially in Southern and Central Sweden, most of the Finnish regions, Central and Northern Norway, in the three Baltic States, north-eastern Germany, and also in northern Scotland (Espon 2006c: 56). These cross-border cooperations are quite relevant for many regions involved in these programmes. Since many of these regions are mostly located in the periphery of the countries they belong to, cross-border cooperation opens up new opportunities to take advantage of the geographical location. This often initiates political, economic and social exchanges and sometimes even fosters stronger social bonds beyond the national “container”. It also might contribute to disperse the single dependence on support from the national centre and the feeling of belonging together with regard to other areas of the national territory.

Final Remarks

In the previous sections we mapped several transnational linkages and forms of connectivity across Europe. We did so on the basis of the assumption that the European integration process is not only characterised by economic and political forms of trans- or supranational cooperation, but that Europe also is emerging as a social space with a higher density and frequency of cross-border interaction. However, our main intention was not to celebrate the end of nation states, or even the advent of a common European society, but to buttress theoretical assumptions on pan-European integration of everyday life with more empirical evidence than is usually the case. Often, assumptions on the dynamics of bottom-up Europeanisation are rather speculative or overemphasise political and economic interactions. As we have shown, in fact, ordinary citizens in contemporary Europe are much less “locked-in” in national containment, and they are engaged in various and multi-faceted encounters with citizens from other EU countries and beyond − be it through leisure activities, family and friendship networks or in employment contexts. However, as already pointed out our findings are still incomplete and preliminary, indeed, due to a lack of appropriate cross-national survey data and respective research activities. It can be assumed that there are numerous other incidences and phenomena of transnationalisation from below, which are not reflected in our description (cf. Favell 2005 and 2008; Fligstein 2008).

Yet, most indicators presented above portray an extent of cross-border linkages and activities which were quite unknown and unnoticed until recently. As we have shown, much of the current horizontal interaction and integration across the borders of European nation-states, such as pan-European communication, mobility and exchanges as well as different forms of cross-border cooperation, has increased over the past two or three decades. Moreover we have also stressed that all these different aspects of transnational integration do not apply to all Europeans at the same level. In fact, we have pointed to the existing differences in access to means of cross-border transportation and international communication across countries and highlighted that by far not all Europeans travel abroad for holidays or participate in any of the established exchange programmes. Some qualifications also have to be made for intra-European (labour) migration, which is still not at high level, and mainly limited to younger age groups. But we have also mentioned new and growing phenomena of mobility such as old-age migration from the Central and Northern to the Mediterranean region, forms of cross-border commuting and larger numbers of people who live temporarily in other European countries for educational purposes or long-term holidays. After the fall of the Iron Curtain, the Eastern part of Europe has also become involved in cross-border activities − still to a lesser degree than in the older EU member states, but in the process of rapid catching up. The citizens of these countries are making extensive use of the new opportunities especially with regard to labour migration and leisure activities; and it might take less than a generation until they reach the West European level of transnational integration and pan-European connectivity.

From all these everyday movements and communications across the national “containers”, we can expect long-term effects on inter-group marriage patterns, family ties and friendship networks. Furthermore, there is also some evidence that the proliferation of transnational contacts may also facilitate attitudinal changes. The classic contact theory (cf. Allport 1954), for example, asserts that contacts between different (especially ethnic) groups, reduce prejudices and foster mutual understanding (see also: Pettigrew 1998). At least for the German case it could be demonstrated that those people who are more involved in cross-border exchanges exhibit more positive attitudes towards foreigners (cf. Mau et al. 2008). Moreover, this study also indicates that transnational trust, the willingness to support supranational political solutions and the attachment to Europe and a European identity are positively correlated with the degree of individual involvement in transnational activities (cf. also Mau 2007; Favell 2008). Notwithstanding the conflicts, disappointments and misunderstandings that go along with the process of European integration, the involvement in transnational activities and networks seems to be favourable for engendering positive attitudinal stances.

However, although in the preceding sections we have particularly highlighted the interconnectedness of Europeans and of local life-worlds in Europe, the dismantling of national borders cannot be exclusively attributed to the process of Europeanisation. The literature on globalisation likewise predicts a new and unprecedented level of interconnectedness with a lesser relevance of state borders as interrupters of interaction (cf. Held et al. 1999). Certainly, the rate of cross-border interchange amongst individuals, institutions and societies has increased substantively over the last 30 years, not only in Europe but also in other parts of the world. This leads to the empirical and conceptual question as to what extent the observed cross-border linkages can be attributed either to processes of globalisation or to Europeanisation, respectively. Indeed, it is difficult to disentangle both processes, since the indicators capturing and identifying either globalisation or Europeanisation are identical to a large extent (cf. Delanty and Rumford 2005). One way of doing so is to detect the spatial extension of the cross-border transactions, and undeniably we will find that the territorial horizon of many of these processes seem to be European in nature. However, there are also significant transactions that exceed the boundaries of a European space, however defined, and reach out to other OECD countries or even beyond. Furthermore, viewed from a larger distance, European integration may appear as part of a broader tendency of growing global communication and interaction (cf. Stichweh 2000) – as an intermediate step towards a “world society”.

For the time being, one cannot preclude such a long term development, but there is also good reason to emphasise the specific nature of the process of Europeanisation. A number of forms of transnationalisation “from below” would not have happened, at least not to the same extent, if some European governments had not de-institutionalised borders; helped to build a dense infrastructure of communication and transportation; supported different forms of mobility, migration, exchange and cooperation. As demonstrated, the process of European unification acts as an important driving force and facilitator of new cross-border activities. It provides a framework due to which old forms of national containment lose their grip and within which pan-European forms of connectivity can emerge. In this way, Europeanisation “from above” creates more than political and economic institutions, it also promotes contacts between people and the building of pan-European networks. Given this, it could well be that the European integration, understood in social terms, will not be supplanted and superseded by an even larger social entity, but will crystallise into a European society. But such a ‘European society’ would be less integrated than the old territorially bound national societies and involved in larger (global) networks and would not just reproduce the logic of external inclusion and internal homogenisation of the era of national containment. In fact, Europe might well represent a new type of macro-regional clustering with a higher degree of intra-communication and interaction, half-way between the former nation state and world society.