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Control over the production, the circulation and the use of statistical knowledge is inextricably linked to bureaucratic forms of domination. The historiography of the building of the modern State insists on the tight relationship between the capacity to collect and utilise statistical knowledge and the consolidation of bureaucratic domination. The creation of statistical categories symbolically unifies territories, social groups and practices. Similarly, the European Union has invested heavily in harmonising statistical categories, thereby providing institutions and actors with uniform descriptive languages. However, unlike statistical constructs of the Nation States of the 18th and 19th Centuries, European statistical categories are generated in a context of pre-existing statistical categories structuring public policies and social practice and institutions. The article will be empirically based on the emergence of EU disability policy which managed to carve out a new arena for policy discussion and coordination form the 1990s on. Although this policy does not imply a transfer of sovereignty, the statistical unification of this social group at the European level and the structuring of interest groups and expert groups can be interpreted as an exercise of rescaling which has transformed the definition of disability as a policy problem and operated a shift in resources and legitimacies among stakeholders. Despite the successful creation of a unified statistical category, the article will look into some reasons for the limited use of disability statistics in policy making, but then show how alliances put in place by the Commission with interest groups and expert circles institutionalised a new European sector for policy discussion.

Control over the production, the circulation and the use of statistical knowledge is inextricably linked to bureaucratic forms of domination. The historiography of the building of the modern State insists on the tight relationship between the capacity to collect and utilise statistical knowledge and the consolidation of bureaucratic domination. The creation of statistical categories symbolically unifies territories, social groups and practices. Similarly, the European Union has invested heavily in harmonising statistical categories, thereby providing institutions and actors with uniform descriptive languages. However, unlike statistical constructs of the Nation States of the 18th and 19th Centuries, European statistical categories are generated in a context of pre-existing statistical categories structuring public policies and social practice and institutions. The article will be empirically based on the emergence of EU disability policy which managed to carve out a new arena for policy discussion and coordination form the 1990s on. Although this policy does not imply a transfer of sovereignty, the statistical unification of this social group at the European level and the structuring of interest groups and expert groups can be interpreted as an exercise of rescaling which has transformed the definition of disability as a policy problem and operated a shift in resources and legitimacies among stakeholders. Despite the successful creation of a unified statistical category, the article will look into some reasons for the limited use of disability statistics in policy making, but then show how alliances put in place by the Commission with interest groups and expert circles institutionalised a new European sector for policy discussion.

En 1996, l'Union européenne a lancé une nouvelle politique en direction des personnes handicapées. L'article décrit le processus d'unification symbolique d'une nouvelle catégorie sociale européenne et les tentatives d'institutionnaliser une nouvelle échelle d'action publique. À travers l'analyse des tentatives de durcissement d'une définition du problème centrée sur l'emploi grâce à la mobilisation de savoirs statistiques et de l'expertise, l'article révèle les faiblesses structurelles de la coalition d'acteurs ayant porté cet enjeu au sein de l'espace institutionnel européen.

En 1945, la pénurie de logements dans la zone d'occupation soviétique de l'Allemagne est catastrophique. Cependant, le rythme de la reconstruction, comme l'intensité du discours sur la crise du logement, sont plus faibles en RDA qu'ailleurs en Europe. L'article cherche à comprendre ce décalage entre la situation objective et la politique poursuivie en mobilisant plusieurs éléments de réponse. Le problème du logement est construit dans les discours comme un héritage du passé capitaliste et national-socialiste et sa résolution prend la forme d'un récit utopique qui permet d'occulter un présent difficile. Ce discours est produit par un groupe d'architectes qui parvient à monopoliser l'expertise et les positions institutionnelles dans le secteur du logement jusqu'aux années 1960. Spécialisés dans l'élaboration des formes architecturales et urbanistiques, les architectes conçoivent le problème du logement comme un problème qualitatif et technique plutôt que quantitatif et social. Enfin, l'article propose une comparaison avec la RFA et examine les pratiques d'attribution de logements pour cerner les pressions et les contradictions dans la gestion de cette ressource rare. Ces transformations contribuent à faire de la « résolution du problème du logement » une priorité politique à partir du début des années 1970.