Local Community, Power and European Integration

Zdzislaw Mach

• Publisher: Peter Lang Group
• Year: 2017
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9783653057904
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: German Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

This collection of articles is the result of the research project «The Polish local society in the process of European integration – a decade of experience», financed by the Polish National Science Centre (NCN). The aim was to investigate the process of integration in the EU of six selected local Polish communities. The same six communities had been studied ten years before, when Poland was preparing for the EU accession. The research was based on qualitative methodology. The results show that the knowledge of the EU in local Poland remains at a very low level. The exception is competence in the field of EU structural funds. These funds are the main factor which determines the positive attitude of Poles towards the EU and the Polish membership in it. At the same time the process of the construction of a European identity in terms of values remains very problematic.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Introduction
• Social memory in local Poland after accession to the European Union (Pawel Kubicki)
• Economic rationality and perceptions of the European integration: local Poland ten years after the accession (Maciej Stepka)
• European integration from the perspective of local authorities. An empirical analysis of six municipalities (Dariusz Niedźwiedzki)
• Collective memory about the past and multiculturalism (Krzysztof Koźbiał)
• Who belongs to Europe? Perceptions of the future EU enlargement in the Polish society (Magdalena Góra)
• Between governmental assumptions and local reality. Cross-border cooperation of Polish local authorities from civil approaching exemplified by the municipalities of Nowa Ruda and Szczytna (Miroslaw Natanek)
• Conclusions (Zdzislaw Mach)