Suchergebnisse

In this document we explore how the three key concepts of the EUCROSS project can effectively be operationalised in survey research. We see this step as an essential precondition to the development of the survey instrument itself, and as a contribution to the operationalisation of these concerns by other researchers, including outside the EUCROSS project. On the former point, our survey is only a 20 minute phone interview, and this format will necessarily constrain our question range and depth. However, our pragmatic choices should still be guided by a wider recognition of what questions might ideally be asked in view of experiences and findings from other projects. On the latter point, all three concepts are ones that interest a great many social scientists, yet there remains a stand-off between theorists of these concepts and qualitative researchers on the one hand, and those who use such concepts in survey research. We hope our operationalisation document may usefully bridge this divide, to some extent at least.

Regional integration and the transportation and communications revolutions are changing the way individuals relate to place through increasing the opportunity for transnational movements, forming transnational bonds between individuals, and sustaining ties to the home country among those who migrate. Today, it is possible to live in a place physically while having one's mind and consciousness elsewhere. Most significantly, EUCROSS findings demonstrate that EU citizens are engaged in a wider and more complex array of cross-border activities than most people believe (Salamonska et. al. 2013). If this process has a significant impact on a large number of people, it may be consequential for the social cohesion in actual physical locations—i.e. towns, cities or countries—and the quality of democracy. Do these cross-border activities jeopardize democracy by way of weakening incentives to participate in elections? Does the EU, by promoting an open and borderless society, also weakens itself in political terms?
This policy brief addresses these questions by comparing political engagement of Europeans who lead transnational lives with those who do not. In doing so, it shows that individuals who lead more transnational lives participate at least as much in politics as those who are more anchored in their national societies.

AbstractIn this article we discuss the concept of European solidarity by distinguishing between transnational and international solidarity. The former refers to support for institutional arrangements aimed at sharing economic risks at the individual level, while the latter entails public agreement to share economic risks at the Member State level. We explore the joint role of cross‐border interactions and political attitudes in fostering solidarity ties among Europeans through multilevel modelling based on the 2012 Eurobarometer 77 survey. The article shows that transnational experiences do not have the same effect on different forms of European solidarity, limiting transnational and enhancing international solidarity. Egalitarian individuals are more prone to EU‐wide solidarity, with cross‐border practices affecting their level of solidarity, while not altering those of the rest of the population. In particular, we find that cross‐border practices make egalitarians more inclined to international and less to transnational solidarity.

The Russian food market has been a fascinating subject for researchers investigating food security risks and ways to mitigate them since the embargo was imposed in 2014. The Kaliningrad region, an exclave of Russia, responded more sensitively to the restrictions than any other territory of the country due to the heavy dependence of its food market on imported finished products and raw materials, as well as the transit from Russia via third countries. This study aims to explore how the consumer preferences of Kaliningraders changed in 2014-2021 under the food embargo. The research also investigates changes in the cross-­border mobility of the region's residents with regard to the practice of shopping for groceries in neighbouring countries. The principal method used in the study is survey research. A survey of 1,019 respondents was conducted in September 2021. Additionally, a comparative analysis of average food prices in the region and neighbouring countries from 2012 to 2019 was carried out based on data from Kaliningradstat and the national statistics services in Poland and Lithuania. The ways to obtain embargoed food were systematised using content analysis of social media, advertising and joint purchase services, travel agency websites, regional news portals and blogs. The study found that rising prices for commodity groups falling under the import ban were the most significant change in the regional food market. As a result, the share of Kaliningrad and Belarusian manufacturers in the regional market basket of consumer goods rose dramatically, as the volume and range of products increased and new manufacturers entered the market. At the same time, the dependence of purchases of "sanctioned" goods on non-material reasons (quality, personal preferences) determined Kaliningraders' continued commitment to the "old" strategies despite significant restrictions.

EUCROSS untersucht die Beziehung zwischen den vielfältigen Aktivitäten von Einwohnern der EU (Bürger im eigenen Land, mobile EU Bürger, Bürger aus Drittstaaten) über nationale Grenzen hinweg, sowie die Ausprägung kollektiver Identitäten.

Themen: 1. Grenzüberschreitende Praktiken: Regionen und Länder, mit denen der Befragte vertraut ist; Gründe für diese Vertrautheit (Arbeit, Studium, Familie, Partnerbeziehung, Freunde, Freizeit, Urlaub, andere); Motivation für die Entscheidung, sich im Land niederzulassen; Jemals in einem anderen Land für drei oder mehr aufeinander folgende Monate gelebt vor Erreichen des 18. Lebensjahres und jeweilige Länder; Jahr oder Zeitraum, in dem der Befragte in diesem Land lebte; Land sowie Jahr oder Zeitraum des längsten Aufenthalts; Anzahl der besuchten Länder für Auslandsreisen; Bereitschaft, in das Land der Geburt zurückzukehren zur Verbesserung der Arbeitsbedingungen und der Lebensbedingungen; Teilnahme an einem internationalen Austauschprogramm, das von der Europäischen Union finanziert wurde; eigene Kinder im Schulalter sollten einige Monate in einem anderen Land verbringen; Anzahl der Auslandsreisen mit mindestens einer Übernachtung in den letzten 24 Monaten; besuchte Länder; Hauptgründe für diese Reisen; Anteil der Familienmitglieder, Schwiegereltern und Freunde, die ursprünglich aus anderen Ländern stammen (Migranten: aus dem Land der Geburt, aus dem Land des Wohnsitzes, aus anderen Ländern); Anteil der Familienmitglieder, Schwiegereltern oder Freunde, die außerhalb des Landes leben und Herkunft dieser Personen; Häufigkeit der Kommunikation mit Familienmitgliedern, Schwiegereltern oder im Ausland lebenden Freunden; Kommunikationswege; Amtssprache des Landes ist die Muttersprache des Befragten; Muttersprache; primär gesprochene Sprache im Haushalt des Befragten; jemals andere Sprachen neben der Muttersprache und der Amtssprache im Land gelernt; Fremdsprachenkompetenz; Fremdsprache, die der Befragte am besten spricht; Prozentsatz aller erhaltenen privaten und geschäftlichen Mitteilungen aus dem Ausland; Aktivität in einer Organisation oder Gruppe, die auf andere Länder oder Kulturen ausgerichtet ist; Häufigkeit von Geldüberweisungen ins Ausland aus anderen Gründen als dem Kauf von Waren oder Dienstleistungen; Empfänger des Geldes (Verhältnis zum Befragten); Befragter erhielt Geld von jemandem, der in einem anderen Land lebt; Beziehung zu diesen Personen; Befragter oder sein Partner besitzt Eigentum im Land des Wohnsitzes oder in einem anderen Land; Land des Eigentums; Kauf von Waren oder Dienstleistungen von Verkäufern oder Anbietern im Ausland und deren Geschäftssitz (Land); Häufigkeit der Rezeption von Sportarten in den Medien; Rezeption von Sport auf nationaler Ebene oder in einem anderen Land; Häufigkeit des Empfangs von TV-Inhalten in anderen Sprachen (nicht synchronisiert) als die offizielle Landessprache oder die Muttersprache; präferierte Musikarten; präferierte fremde Küche; Lebenszufriedenheit.

2. Europäische Identifizierung und kosmopolitische Werte: Identifizierung als Bürger der Stadt des Wohnsitzes, der Region, des Landes, Europas, der Welt); Identität (nur regionale, regionale und europäische, europäische und regionale, nur europäische, Geburtsland usw.); Assoziation mit dem Begriff Europa (der europäische Kontinent, die Europäische Union, eine gemeinsame europäische Kultur und Geschichte, die christliche Religion, keine); Teilnahme an den letzten Wahlen zum Europäischen Parlaments im Juni 2009 (nicht im türkischen Fragebogen enthalten) und bei den letzten nationalen Wahlen im Land; Wahrnehmung der Flagge der Europäischen Union oder eines Bildes der Flagge während der letzten sieben Tage und Gelegenheit (z.B. Fahne als solche, Piktogramm auf Pass, Ausweis, Führerschein usw., Links-Rechts-Selbst-Selbsteinstufung; gute Sache für eine Gesellschaft, die sich aus Menschen aus verschiedenen ethnischen Gruppen, Religionen und Kulturen zusammensetzt; steigende Verbreitung von ausländischen Filmen, Musik und Büchern schadet der nationalen und lokalen Kultur; Wichtigkeit ausgewählter Ziele der Europäischen Union (Solidarität zwischen den Völkern in der EU, Demokratie und Menschenrechte in den einzelnen EU-Ländern, wirtschaftliche Stabilität in den einzelnen EU-Ländern, das Recht, in jedem Land der EU zu arbeiten, eine gemeinsame Währung); die EU sollte keine neuen Mitgliedstaaten akzeptieren; EU-Institutionen sollten einige ihrer Entscheidungsbefugnisse zurück übertragen auf ihre Mitgliedsstaaten; Meinung zum Beitritt ausgewählter Länder zur Europäischen Union (Türkei, Kroatien, Ukraine, Norwegen sowie retrospektiv: Finnland, Griechenland, Polen und Bulgarien); finanzielle Unterstützung im Falle einer Naturkatastrophe im regionalen Verwaltungsbezirk (nur die jeweilige Verwaltung der Landesregion versus das Land als Ganzes); finanzielle Unterstützung im Falle einer Naturkatastrophe eines anderen EU-Mitgliedsstaates (nur durch das jeweilige Land versus durch alle EU-Mitgliedsstaaten); Meinung zu nationalen staatlichen Hilfsfonds, um EU-Ländern zu helfen, die Schwierigkeiten bei der Rückzahlung ihrer Schulden haben; Meinung im Falle der Auflösung der Europäischen Union (Bedauern, Gleichgültigkeit, Erleichterung).

Migranten zusätzlich: Selbsteinschätzung der Sprachkenntnisse zum Zeitpunkt der Einwanderung und jetzt; erfahrene Diskriminierung wegen der Geburt in einem anderen Land.

Demographie: Geschlecht; Alter (Geburtsjahr); Staatsbürgerschaften; Geburtsland; Jahr der Übersiedlung; Familienstand; Partner; Partner lebt im Umfrageland; Land des Wohnsitzes des Partners; höchster Bildungsstand; Beschäftigungsstatus oder aktuelle Situation; jemals erwerbstätig; Hauptberuf; Name oder Titel des Hauptberufs; Häufigkeit der beruflichen Interaktion mit Menschen im Ausland (z. B. Geschäftspartnern, Klienten, Kollegen); nationale Staatsbürgerschaft von Vater und Mutter bei ihrer Geburt; höchstes Bildungsniveau der Eltern; als der Befragte 14 Jahre alt war: Elternteil, der am meisten zum Haushaltseinkommen beitrug; Vater / Mutter war Angestellter, selbständig oder arbeitete nicht; Name oder Titel des Hauptberufs von Vater / Mutter; finanzielle Situation des Haushaltes, als der Befragte 14 Jahre alt war; Partner: Geschlecht des Partners; Jahr des Beziehungsbeginns; nationale Staatsbürgerschaft des Partners bei seiner Geburt; höchstes Bildungsniveau des Partners; Beschäftigungsstatus oder aktuelle Situation des Partners; Erwerbstätigkeit des Partners in der Vergangenheit; Partner ist / war Angestellter, selbständig oder arbeitete für das Unternehmen seiner Familie; Name oder Titel des Hauptberufs des Partners; derzeitige finanzielle Situation des Haushalts.

Zusätzlich verkodet wurde: Eindeutige Nummer; Internationale Standardklassifikation der Berufe (ISCO 2008); Internationaler sozioökonomischer Index des beruflichen Status (ISEI, nach Ganzeboom); Stichprobengruppe.

This report presents the findings of a three-year research project titled The Europeanisation of Everyday Life: Cross-Border Practices and Transnational Identities among EU and Third-Country Citizens (EUCROSS) funded by the European Commission as part of the 7th Framework Programme. Between 2011 and 2014, the project has carried out an extensive collection of sociological data in six EU member states: Denmark, Germany, Italy, Romania, Spain, and the UK. These data have two main sources. First, a large-scale, systematic and independent CATI survey (the EUCROSS survey) of 8500 interviews to nationals of these six countries and immigrants from Romania and Turkey. Second, a set of follow-up in-depth face-to-face interviews with 160 respondents (the EUMEAN survey).
These datasets advance existing studies on sociological Europeanisation by going beyond conventional data, such as Eurobarometer, and by taking its findings deep into a detailed breakdown of the changing everyday life and social practices of Europeans. Moreover, the project extends the realm of research on the internationalisation of European societies that has mostly been charted in social theoretical speculation rather than empirically established findings.
At a very general level, we address the theme of the sociological foundations of European integration. We tackle an argument that resonates strongly in the public discourse but is also echoed in much social science on the subject: namely, that European integration is 'an elite process' (Haller 2008). This argument has two strands. The first one, less problematic, holds that the EU (and its former institutional incarnations from the 1950s onwards) has been designed and advanced by a very small slice of the European population. By itself this should not be surprising: all new political regimes tend to be elite creations (Higley and Burton 2006). However, the second strand is much more contentious, even dangerous, and affects the chances of future European unity. It maintains that 'Europe' has become part of the life of the upper classes and a privileged segment of those classes who most directly benefit from European integration, while the rest of the populace is increasingly alienated from it. 'Elites and citizens live in different worlds', insists Haller (2008) – and only elites have a Europe-wide horizon. With some nuances, Fligstein reaches a similar conclusion in his book Euroclash (2008) – the EU population is split between a minority of Europeanized citizens and a majority of non-Europeanized ones, with national middle classes wavering in between.
The EUCROSS project sets out to test this argument: that is, discover more about the degree of 'horizontal Europeanisation' (Mau and Verwiebe 2010) of EU citizens, as well as an indicative sample of third country nationals, the Turkish. The project assumes that cross-border practices of all kinds, both physical and virtual, are the crucial aspect of the Europe in the making. Their spread or not across social categories – classes, cohorts, gender and nationalities – defines the degree of 'social exclusivity', so to speak, of sociological Europeanness. If low, the elite argument holds; if not, it doesn't. As committed empirical scholars, members of the EUCROSS team (from six different research institutions across Europe), endeavour to test to what extent such a cleavage divides Europeans in their everyday life.
The project focuses on practices (i.e., behaviour) but does not downplay the relevance of subjective dimensions of Europeanisation – a European 'identification' or, in a broader meaning preferred by EUCROSS researchers, 'sense of belonging' (Savage et al. 2005), as well as values, whether national or cosmopolitan. Indeed, broadly speaking, we expect that cross-border practices do indeed diffuse a sense of transnational belonging, in line with the 'transactional thesis' put forward initially by Karl Deutsch (Deutsch et al. 1957). But, again, this is submitted to empirical testing. Moreover, European belonging is unpacked into three different facets: a sense of cultural-territorial belonging to 'Europe', support and participation to the political project embodied by the EU, and solidarity with fellow Europeans.

Transnational migration fields emerged in social research as a result of a tentative criticism of methodological nationalism with its focus on the national space as a homogeneous container of all the forms of social life. The new approach of methodological transnationalism is targeted to locate some sociocultural phenomena and processes in the framework of interactions among several societies. Cross-border practices, links and identities in this new approach put in relation not only nation-states but non-state actors that are structured at group, community and regional level. The three chapters of the working paper address the emerging social transnationalism (Mau, 2012) of Romanians by focusing on transnational fields, perceptions of the first trips abroad and the habitus of emigrants in relation with return intentions. Temporary or indefinite time emigration of Romanians abroad for work started, mainly, during the economic recession that hit Romania in 1997-1999. In spite of its young age, it largely contributed to the structuring of a social transnationalism by fields, actors and layers. EUCROSS and non-EUCROSS data at individual or aggregated level, of quantitative and qualitative nature are put to work for capturing the complexity of the Romanian transnationalism in the making.

The key idea of the first chapter is that regions at different levels, at origin and at destination, function as relevant frames in structuring migration fields. Transnational fields are not only dense interactions between pairs of societies having Romania as origin, but a configuration of interactions among clusters of sending microregions in Romania and receiving macroregions, formed by clusters of receiving countries. Changing the unit of analysis from national societies to regions at different levels allows for a dynamic picture of multisited and multilevel regionalism in understanding transnational migration. Survey and census data are aggregated to reach this picture. The multiregional model of transnationalism is developed by four axes or layers on migration streams, cross-border networks, transnational habitus and migration experiences at individual and family levels. This comprehensive, multilayer approach requires the use of multiple data sets (the EUCROSS survey on Romanian natives, the Romanian census data from 2011 and the Romanian subsample from the Eurobarometer 73.3 on New Europeans) that are able to capture the complexity of the model.

The chapter "First trip abroad: expectations, experiences and stories of transnational Romanians" analyses transnational Romanians' stories about their first trip abroad using the EUMEAN dataset. The concept of physical mobility is seen as a broader framework for understanding transnational and cosmopolitan behaviours as well as international migration. In order to distinguish between different types of travelling for the first trip abroad, the chapter is constructed keeping in mind the structural changes and constraints regarding physical mobility for Romanian citizens. During the transition from a communist country to a EU member state, Romanian citizens' stories about travelling abroad for the first time fundamentally changed. Labour migrants, asylum seekers, business travellers, students or tourists left the country with different expectations and faced different problems at destination. Their attitudes toward origin and destination framed their images about the first trip abroad. Using a qualitative approach and samples of Romanians who live in Denmark, Germany, Italy, Romania, Spain and the United Kingdom, the analysis emphasizes certain differences between different types of travelling for the first time abroad and reconstructs how Romanians started their transnational careers.

Romanian migration has a temporary and circulatory character: on the one hand, people are moving back and forth to and from a destination and, on the other hand, there are migrants who either resettle in Romania, come back in the home country and then emigrate to a different destination than the initial one or move to a new destination after spending time abroad without returning to Romania. The third chapter is concerned with the factors that shape these distinct possible strategies and types of mobility, with a special interest towards intentions and plans for return. In doing so, we look at the bonds Romanian migrants maintain with their home country and explore the different typologies and categories of migrants as moulded by their experiences, opinions and attitudes towards the country of origin. The main questions of interest concern how the experience of migration shapes the attitude towards the home country and the intention to return, how did the crisis influence such aspects (if it did) and what the main factors that appear as significant to one category of migrants or another from this point of view are. For this purpose, we use fifty one of the sixty one in-depth interviews realized with Romanians as part of the EUCROSS project in Denmark, UK, Spain, Italy and Germany (EUMEAN dataset).

This paper illustrates the research questions, the main underlying concepts and therelevant literature of the EUCROSS project. It reports on the existing literature in sociology, anthropology, political sciences and social psychology related to the project which seeks to examine the relationship between the manifold activities of EU residents (nationals, mobile EU citizens, and third country nationals) across the borders of nation states and their collective identities. It raises questions about 1) how to map out individuals' cross-border practices as an effect of European integration and globalisation; and 2) assess the impact of these practices on collective identifications, while also controlling for the inverse causal process. Which cross-border practices are more likely to foster some form of identification with the EU – e.g., contacts with foreign friends and/or unwanted foreigners, periods of labour mobility abroad, business and tourist travel, or consumer relations with international companies? Under which contextual and individual conditions do these experiences promote a higher sensitivity to 'Europe' – rather than the 'local' or the 'global' – as an identity catalyst? Which social groups are more likely to adopt a European mindset in the wake of the Europeanisation of everyday life? While substantial separate literatures about 'Europeanisation', 'European identity', 'cross-border practices' and 'cosmopolitanism' can be found, we argue that seldom are these concepts treated altogether to specify the link between spatially and culturally situated behaviours on the one hand and collective identifications and value orientations on the other. Moreover, few studies examine socio-cultural Europeanisation and supernational identifications comparatively, and none include simultaneously native and immigrant populations, who in fact may attest of different modalities in which the behaviour-identity link can take place.