Europeanization via transnational mobility and migration

Abstract

Mobility and migration between countries in Europe are central elements of Europeanization and have played an important role in uniting the continent over the last decades. By being mobile across borders, Europeans have come into contact with each other, generated social bonds and exchanged ideas, thereby creating a dense web of transnational social interaction that contributed to European society-building ‘from below’ (Mau & Büttner 2009; Deutschmann & Delhey 2015; Kuhn 2015; Recchi et al. 2019a; Heidenreich 2019). At the same time, mobility and migration have also created new fault lines and caused shifts in political landscapes. Brexit, an extreme example of such a rift, even contributed to the partial breakup of the European Union. Regardless of how one weighs these consequences, one thing is clear: mobility and migration matter.