Social Cohesion and Social Change in Europe

Gerard Boucher, Yunas Samad

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781138999435
• eBook ISBN: 9781317330677
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Social cohesion has had different meanings for people depending on their background, their interests, where they live in the world, and at what time they lived. In the social sciences, social cohesion is a term used to explain the social and cultural consequences of structural changes related to industrialization and modernity. In the European Union, structural changes which relate to globalization, European integration, the restructuring of welfare states, ageing societies, and transitions from communism, have often led to more insecurity and material inequalities between people. Higher rates of immigration, and issues related to the integration of migrants and their descendants, have also led to anxieties about the preservation of national cultures and identities.

This book argues that perceived crises in social cohesion in Europe have more to do with the consequences of structural change rather than the failure of multiculturalism and immigration. It looks at the relationship between social cohesion and social change in Europe, focusing on the European Union as a whole, and on urban areas such as Paris, France and Bradford, UK. This book was originally published as a special issue of Patterns of Prejudice.

European social cohesions

GERARD BOUCHER

ABSTRACT Contemporary public debates on social cohesion in Europe at both the European Union (EU) and member-state level tend to reduce the topic to the ‘problem’ of immigration by third-country nationals, and the integration of these immigrants and their descendants into European national societies. These debates often emphasize a culturalist perspective on the social cohesion of national societies based on core national cultures, identities and histories that pre-date the mass immigration of non-EU/European Economic Area immigrants, with social cohesion depending on their identifiable assimilation to this core set of values, beliefs and behaviours. This culture-based perspective on social cohesion has become an integral component of the neoliberal reorganization of the interventionist state in Europe that both punishes the native poor and coerces the immigrant third-country national as it frees markets and restructures the European welfare state. Yet, an examination of European social cohesion policies across seven policy domains suggests that the problem of social cohesion has little to do either with the issue of immigration or of immigrant and ethnic minority integration. However, it does have a lot to do with increasing inequalities and insecurities in European societies that result from neoliberal political economic policies. Drawing on Émile Durkheim’s seminal discussion of social cohesion that includes structural and cultural dimensions, Boucher analyses the seven policy domains of European social cohesions within a functionalist framework that highlights inconsistencies, policy gaps and internal tensions between the domains. His analysis suggests the need for a more coherent, integrated and multilevel governance policy framework based on social justice, socio-economic equality and cultural diversity to achieve the elusive goal of social cohesion in Europe.

Social cohesion in Europe is usually explained as the outcome of processes that encompass both sociocultural and structural factors including the state, economy and other societal institutions. In classical sociology, Émile Durkheim’s account focused on the role of social interactions and common values, and on material equality of opportunity between individuals in the division of labour.¹ While Durkheim emphasized the importance of occupational associations, state intervention was also necessary to achieve social cohesion, not least through funding and administering a public system of education to inculcate national culture and provide greater equality of opportunity between individuals.²

Durkheim’s concept of social cohesion is expressed in objective, universal terms as applicable to all societies that undergo a transformation in the division of labour to modern, industrial societies. However, evaluating Durkheim’s concept from the historical perspective of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in a French national context, reveals limitations to his discussion of social cohesion. First, Durkheim underestimated the role of the state in modernizing France through public expenditure and the public sector under the Third Republic from the 1870s, in constructing a more unified polity and economy, and turning peasants into Frenchmen and women.³ Second, he understated the cultural diversity in France where, in 1863, at least 20 per cent of the population did not know the French language, and substantial regional and local differences existed until the early twentieth century.⁴ Third, he ignored the role of migration in the transformation to a modern, socially cohesive society,⁵ in terms of internal rural-to-urban migration,⁶ immigration to France from other European countries,⁷ and French imperial emigration to colonies in the Caribbean, Africa and Asia.⁸ Finally, Durkheim did not connect the public modernization policies that were intended to construct a unified, cohesive France with the assimilation policies of the French imperial state in the colonies.⁹

Notwithstanding these limitations, Durkheim’s analysis of social cohesion in modern, ‘organic’ societies is often portrayed as focusing primarily or solely on sociocultural factors and neglecting structural factors, particularly the significant role of the state in generating social cohesion. This interpretation has been useful as a justification for contemporary neoliberal social policies in European states like the United Kingdom by pointing to a ‘new Durkheimian hegemony’.¹⁰ At the European Union level, Carl-Ulrik Schierup, Peo Hansen and Stephen Castles extend this analysis, arguing that the content of the European Social Model (ESM) has been significantly altered by combining policies based on economic neoliberalism and social cohesion defined in sociocultural terms in an attempt ‘to reconcile “social cohesion” with “economic efficiency”… phrased in terms of deregulation and the demand for economic growth’.¹¹ They also claim that this new version of the ESM became dominant from the early 1990s, supplanting an earlier one based on ‘the ideal of citizenship as a universal entitlement’ and a ‘distinctly redistributive welfare policy’.¹²

This article examines contemporary European policies on social cohesion in an analytical framework that incorporates sociocultural and structural factors in seven policy domains in a context of continuing neoliberal globalization, European integration and welfare state restructuring. The analysis shows that the tendency in European public debates to reduce the topic of social cohesion to the integration of non-European Union (EU)/European Economic Area (EEC) migrants is too narrow in scope, and that this issue is only a minor concern in a more comprehensive policy effort to achieve social cohesion. The first section discusses uses of the concept of social cohesion in the European context, focusing on culturalist and structuralist perspectives, and the limitations of emphasizing the former particularly with respect to immigrants. The second section uses a Durkheimian functionalist framework to examine the internal tensions, gaps and inconsistencies in these simultaneous, overlapping policies between the seven domains of European social cohesions. The conclusion summarizes the main points concerning European social cohesions in the context of the neoliberal reorganization of the interventionist state in Europe. It suggests that a more integrated policy framework that includes both structural and cultural factors is needed, along with a reconstruction of national cultures to include immigrant diversity, in order to generate European social cohesions at local, regional, national and European levels of society.

European social cohesions

From a macro-level perspective, the topic of social cohesion in Europe is framed by large-scale, ongoing structural processes of social change involving issues such as neoliberal globalization, European integration and welfare state restructuring.¹³ In many European countries, these have led to debates about the social cohesiveness of national societies, regions, urban areas and local communities. At the national level, globalization and European integration have been perceived singly or together as threats to national sovereignty, culture and identity. Globalization is often viewed as a threat in terms of increasing financial, trade, service, cultural and people flows, while European integration is often perceived as a threat with respect to policymaking, the single market and, for some member states, the euro currency. At the same time, globalization, European integration and welfare state restructuring have combined to undermine gradually, and in some cases rapidly, the perceived and real material security of national populations, while increasing material inequalities both within and between countries.¹⁴ More broadly, Ulrich Beck refers to this in terms of ‘risk regime’ or ‘the political economy of insecurity, uncertainty and loss of boundaries’.¹⁵

This sense, and indeed the reality, of insecurity is often expressed with regard to issues like employment, working conditions and benefits, health care, education and other public services of the welfare state, or with respect to the social exclusion of historically and newly disadvantaged social groups in European national societies The current economic crisis that began in the autumn of 2008 has heightened these concerns across the member states of the European Union. In this context, debates about social cohesion tend to offer a ‘socioculturalist’ causal explanation for these macro-level structural changes and their perceived negative social effects. For example, culturalist explanations tend to focus on social interactions and community cultures usually in disadvantaged urban areas, and on social group, familial and/or individual behaviours that do not accord with prevalent national, broadly middle-class values, beliefs and norms. This perspective will be subsequently referred to as the ‘culturalist’ explanation. It draws on a sociocultural interpretation of Durkheim’s analysis of social cohesion favoured by neoliberal perspectives on contemporary European societies.

One prevalent tendency in this regard has been to focus the debate on social cohesion on the topics of immigration and the sociocultural integration to core national cultures of non-EU/EEA immigrants and their descendants.¹⁶ In many cases, particularly after the events of 11 September 2001, these issues are a proxy for ‘Muslims’, especially ‘fundamentalist’ Muslims. Such themes are evident, for example, in the case of the United Kingdom in the northern riots of 2001 prior to 11 September 2001, and have been central in framing the debate on social cohesion both in the previous New Labour and the current coalition government.¹⁷ This tendency selectively emphasizes one aspect of globalization, namely, the globalization of people flows.¹⁸ And, within this type of flow, it focuses on immigrants and not, for instance, on tourists.¹⁹ Furthermore, within this broad category, it highlights the integration of non-EU/EEA immigrants without European citizenship rights to mobility, work and residence normally accorded to citizens of EU countries in all other member states. From this perspective, non-EU/EEA immigrants, especially Muslim migrants, and their descendants are targeted or ‘scapegoated’ as the cause of a purported breakdown of social cohesion in European national societies.

This claim is usually made without reference to structural factors such as neoliberal globalization, European integration and welfare state restructuring as potential causes that undermine the material bases of sociocultural cohesion for all members of national societies, whether one is an EU/EEA citizen or not.²⁰ This structuralist explanation also draws on Durkheim’s account of the macro- and meso-level processes involving the economy, state and civil society organizations that underpin and contribute to the construction of social cohesion, which has been adapted to include cont...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction: social cohesion and social change in Europe
• 1. European social cohesions
• 2. Islamophobia, community cohesion and counter-terrorism policies in Britain
• 3. Cohesion without participation: immigration and migrants’ associations in Italy
• 4. Community cohesion without parallel lives in Bradford
• 5. Ethnicity and social cohesion in the post-Soviet Baltic states
• 6. The social geography of ethnic minorities in metropolitan Paris: a challenge to the French model of social cohesion
• Index