Sociocultural Aspects of Europe Research Paper

The term Europe took on a more political and sociocultural connotation during the Carolingian period (seventh to eighth centuries). According to a medieval anonymous chronicle, the soldiers led by Charles Martel who fought victoriously against the Arabs at Poitiers (732) were ‘European.’ At this time, the notion of Europe was assimilated with the Frankish Kingdom, and the idea of Europe as a political-spiritual entity developed along with the expansion of Arab–Muslim settlements north of the Strait of Gibraltar.

One of the recurrent themes of various subsequent concepts of Europe as an ‘imagined community’ (Anderson 1983) can be identified in statu nascendi from the latter observation. They are characterized almost without exception by a scheme in which the notion of Europe appears together with another contrastive term. In most cases, it is a dichotomy or bipolarity, rather than a comparison between what Europe is reckoned to be and what is supposedly its opposite. This ‘European self-awareness,’ as de Rougemont (1990) calls it, becomes even more tangible at the time of geographical discoveries and the first colonial conquests.

From an anthropological point of view, Europe discovers itself by discovering and conquering the rest of the world. Between ‘Europe’ and ‘Anti-Europe,’ which from time to time could be Arab–Muslim culture or Asia, Africa, or the Orient, there is a reflective relationship in which the former identifies its basic traits through a presumed diametrical difference with the latter. Balthazar Gracian (1601–1658) coins the famous phrase ‘Europe is the admirable face of the world.’ Following the same train of thought, the Grand Dictionnaire historique de Louis de Moreri (published in 1674) illustrates the European traits that have allowed them to overpower the people of other continents. It is quite surprising to read statements in this publication that seem to foreshadow the stereotypes of German ‘Volkerpsychologie,’ as well as American studies on ‘modal personality’ and ‘national character.’ Similar arguments were expressed more briefly and clearly by Carl von Linne (1707–1778); the Swedish naturalist describes the ‘Homo Europaeus’ as ‘subtle’ and ‘creative’ while Asians are ‘melancholic’ and ‘miserly’ and Africans are ‘sly’ and ‘lazy.’

During the ere des philosophes, almost all the eighteenth century’s great thinkers—Montesquieu, Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Ferdinando Galiani, Melchior-Gaspar de Jovellanos, Antoine de Condorcet, Edward Gibbon, Edmund Burke—pondered over a ‘European peculiarity.’ Their dissertations share a common denominator: a scheme, usually bipolar, in which at least one other term of comparison appears besides Europe. Thus, the main question for most of the above-mentioned authors is: how is it that European nations are the only ones that have reached such levels of civilization, while the ‘other’ societies are still savage, primitive, or barbarian? Leaving aside the answers, almost all eighteenth century texts on Europe draw either implicit or explicit parallels and hierarchies between ‘us’ and ‘them,’ between ‘Europe’ and ‘Anti-Europe.’

During the nineteenth century, the notion of Europe took on an increasingly hegemonic connotation. The century was characterized by a bold optimism that turned out to be an awful self-deception. In historical terms, European ‘elites’ surprisingly had underestimated the changes that had been going on beyond their continent. They had overlooked that there had been the American ‘Great Transformation,’ or the Japanese development model spurred by the emperor Mutsuhito (1852–1912), who had opened his country to foreign commerce. It is no surprise that the term Europe was being increasingly used as a synonym of ‘civilization’ and ‘progress’ (Schmitt 1974). From a European point of view, the Old Continent was the only one that could establish a ‘civilizing movement’ to ‘break through the darkness that enfolds whole populations’ as Leopold II (1835–1909), King of the Belgians, stated in a solemn speech in 1876. For this typical representative of the time, European colonial expansion in the heart of the ‘Anti-Europe’ at that moment, namely Africa, was ‘a crusade worthy of this century of progress.’

Nineteenth-century certainties were curtailed radically by the World War I, which the German philosopher Karl Lowith (1897–1973) keenly called ‘the first European civil war’ (Lowith 1990); by the critical analysis of the nationalistic and totalitarian frenzy between the two World Wars; by World War II traumas; and finally by the melancholic awareness of crumbling colonial empires. Europe as a nation became less triumphalist and much more defensive. After 1945, Europe was perceived as suffering from a chronic economic, cultural, and above all political and military fragility. This intrinsic deficiency could be checked only by a strong synergy between all the continent’s components sharing the same fate. In this respect, the French sociologist Edyan Morin (1987) has fittingly spoken about Europe as a ‘Schicksalsgemeinschaft,’ a term first used by the Austro-Marxist theorist Otto Bauer (1881–1938). From a sociological point of view, the ‘European fragility’ concept implies a ‘men- ace’ coming from external hostile forces. Each com- munity, especially if it is a ‘Schicksalsgemeinschaft,’ is strengthened or crystallized if under pressure from an actual or presumed enemy. The part of Europe that after the World War II was not under Soviet control always reverted to the ‘Anti-Europe’ theme to emphasize who the ‘menace’ was. From 1945 until 1989, while Europe was establishing its first joint institutions, the leading ‘Anti-Europe’ ‘menace’ was the Soviet and communist sphere.

The fall of the Berlin Wall (1989) and the subsequent disintegration of the opposing blocs coincided with the birth of a new European institution, the European Union (EU). A ‘fragile’ and ‘menaced’ Europe is still a common perception on the Old Continent despite this new highly specialized and official legal apparatus. Behind this defensive attitude some authoritative, though overly severe, ‘Euro-skeptic’ critics detect the danger of the creation of a ‘European fortress’ that wishes only to defend an acquired economic standing threatened by supposed external ‘menaces.’ At the end of the twentieth century, the bipolarity between ‘Europe’ and ‘Anti-Europe’ still exists. Now ‘Anti-Europe’ is mainly the planet’s boundless south: its migratory waves towards the Old Continent, its high demographic rates, and political-religious conflicts.

2. What Europe Is Not: Some Misleading And Dangerous Ideas

During the twentieth century, notions of Europe with powerful ideological implications have been spread occasionally; yet, they can hardly endure historical, sociological, and anthropological analysis. The idea of ‘European civilization’ as a ‘monolithic’ entity was most popular and politically relevant. ‘European civilization’ was seen as the bulwark of Christianity. This concept of Europe was an ideological backbone of antidemocratic political movements. Although under many aspects admittedly in conflict with Christian doctrine and ecclesiastic institutions, German Nazism and Italian Fascism envisioned themselves as the upholders of ‘European civilization’ and strenuous paladins of ‘Christianity’ particularly against Soviet Bolshevism, which was stigmatized as ‘Asian,’ hence ‘alien’ to Europe. Other regimes with similar ideological backgrounds, such as authoritarian and dictatorial governments and movements in Central and East European countries as well as Francoism in Spain and Salazarism in Portugal, resorted to analogous ideas.

Europe as a ‘united civilization’ embodied in the ‘Christian Occident’ is an idea that can still be traced in present-day European extreme rightists, such as the French Front National and neo-Nazi and neo-Fascist fringes in Germany, Austria, and Italy. These movements resort to similar concepts to assert their hostility towards immigration, especially from Islamic and/or non-European countries. It is a dangerous idea, since it implies the pursuit of cultural, denominational, and maybe even ethnic homogeneity based upon the ‘exclusion strategy’ and the ‘purity myth,’ which caused so many of Europe’s tragedies during the twentieth century. This vision of Europe is misleading since it is far from the continent’s past as well as present social realities.

3. Europe: A System Of ‘Historical Regions’

The German philosopher Ernst Bloch (1885–1977) advises us not to turn a highly differentiated social entity as Europe into a sum of ‘cultural areas’ because this would turn ‘History…into a circus (with) three or more (separate) rings’ (Bloch 1985). Europe must be considered a system of strictly (inter)dependent yet structurally diverse ‘historical regions.’ Hungarian historian Szucs (1983) was the first one to apply a strictly scientific method to the problem of Europe’s internal frontiers, to pose the question of its historical divisions, and consequently of its sociostructural differences.

Szucs stresses that from the early Middle Ages, Europe began to differentiate socioeconomically giving rise to two different poles: ‘Europa occidentalis’ and ‘Europa orientalis.’ The border could be a line running from the Elbe River (socioeconomic boundary line between western and eastern Germany) to the Leitha River (for many centuries a previous frontier between Austria and Hungary). A second economic and sociostructural division, which includes all societies involved in the Great Schism (1054), came to pass between the eleventh and fourteenth century. Thus, there are three ‘historical regions’ with very diverse socioeconomic, political, and cultural characteristics. The first one includes the territory from the Atlantic to the above-mentioned Elbe–Leitha ideal line: more or less Carolingian Europe, today believed to be the quintessence of Western Europe. The central ‘historical region’ east of the Elbe–Leitha line but west of the eastern and southern borders of the original kingdoms of Hungary and Poland (Grand Duchy of Lithuania included) approximately overlaps with what is known today as mid-Eastern Europe, also called Mitteleuropa. Everything east of the Baltic–Black Sea line or south of the Carpathians is East Europe proper.

Szucs’ arguments are relevant for the social sciences because they reveal how processes dating back to a remote past have created enduring economic, sociostructural, and cultural differences in Europe; however, his hypothesis of at least three ‘historical regions’ must be broadened and specified. It is useful to add Wallerstein’s analysis of Europe incorporated in the ‘worldsystem,’ yet divided into ‘core’ and peripheries’ (Wallerstein 1974). A new system to organize and manage the economy arose and spread between 1450 and 1640. Max Weber labeled this new system rational capitalism. According to Wallerstein (1974), as well as to the French historian Braudel (1979) amongst others, expansionist movements are inherent to this new model of economic and social behavior. The capitalist economy’s worldwide expansion implies new relationships between economic partners, that is, societies, states, regions, towns, etc. These new relationships entail a new international division of labor that will permeate social structures and cultural models of all the societies involved.

The international division of labor within the ‘world-system’ is also based on a systematic separation between core and peripheries. Europe at first, and then the whole world, came to be divided into a number of regions. Some of these underwent a historical acceleration, quickly modernizing most of their socioeconomic structure, while others suffered centuries of socioeconomic stagnation if not growing impoverishment. The following classification highlights roles of Europe’s ‘historical regions’ within the new international division of labor.

3.1 Northwestern Europe

The first core of the ‘world-system’ ensued from this region. Steady decline of the feudal system, early establishment of an extended net of self-governing towns ( freie Reichstadte, comuni, etc.), striking capital accumulation followed by important technological changes culminating in the ‘industrial revolution,’ the rise of strong territorial states with more culturally homogeneous populations, colonial expansion outside Europe: these are only some of the most evident processes marking the socioeconomic and cultural structure of this ‘historical region.’ From the onset, it included southern England, France, Flanders, Holland, and the westernmost part of Germany. Northern Spain and Northern Italy, other areas of Germany and most of Switzerland, Austria, Bohemia, and Scandinavia joined the core in subsequent periods.

3.2 Mediterranean Europe

This ‘historical region,’ for centuries the continent’s socioeconomic and cultural hub, was turned into a vast periphery by the new international division of labor. It provided the core with foodstuffs and raw materials for the growing textile industry. From a socioeconomic point of view, the area comprising Portugal, Spain, and Italy was ruled by a system of latifundistic wheat monoculture and/or stock-farming with an absentee owner aristocracy. The vast properties were administered by large tenants who sublet to smaller ones, who in turn would sublease to the smallest peasants. This long renting-chain led to a devastating fragmentation. Too many people without a productive activity lived exclusively off the land and the backs of those who actually tilled it.

Even though the banking system, rational capitalism’s pillar, was developed in Renaissance Italy, and the two Iberian States were the first to rely on imperial colonies, Mediterranean Europe’s structure was rooted in agrarian societies and economies from the sixteenth century up to most of the twentieth century. The rising bourgeoisie of this ‘historical region’ did not play a specific role, nor did it have its own specific economic behavior. Its ideal was to imitate the aristocracy. This matched the economic and social behavior of such categories of tenants as the senoritos in Andalusia, La Mancha, and Extremadura, or the gabelloti and galantuomini in Sicily and southern Italy, who were inclined to a passive existence based on the principle of ‘dignified idleness.’

3.3 Central-East Europe

This ‘historical region,’ with few exceptions, lies between the two ideal boundaries traced by Szucs. It is Europe’s second vast periphery and has been one of the core’s major suppliers of foodstuffs. The typical socioeconomic scenery of Europe’s second periphery is in western and eastern Prussia, the Baltic countries, the Hungarian plain, and the Romanian Danube plain besides Poland’s so-called eastern territories (most of which were lost after World War II). In these boundless areas were the landed estates of Central-east Europe’s aristocracy: major Polish and Hungarian noble families, Baltic overlords of Germanic ancestry, and Romanian boyars. The institution of serfdom was the rule in these estates nearly up to the end of the nineteenth century. In fact, rather than being abolished, serfdom relationships were revived in what historians call the ‘second serfdom.’ Great landowners introduced new farming methods in order to increase crops, mainly cereals, bringing down harsher labor and life circumstances on peasants. Central-east European ‘second serfdom’ was also accompanied by the formation of new groups of great landowners with a strong ‘corporate spirit’ and staunch political and socio-economic ambitions such as the Prussian Junker, Polish Szlachta, and Hungarian ‘gentry.’

3.4 Southeast Europe

This ‘historical region’ includes mainly the Balkans (except Romania). The Ottoman Empire which dominated it for almost 500 years became a part of the ‘world-system’ only during the eighteenth century, that is, during its manifest decadence. However, even under Ottoman domination the Balkans was a poor periphery, on the precarious border between the Ottoman and Austro–Hungarian empires. Therefore, the circumstances of this ‘historical region’ should not be compared to other more flourishing socioeconomic areas of the Ottoman Empire such as parts of Syria or Egypt. To make matters worse, in the Balkans there was a degeneration of the patrimonial system based on ‘tax-farming.’ The Balkans’ destiny within the ‘world system’ was to become a ‘periphery of the periphery.’

3.5 East Europe

In Europe’s third ‘historical region,’ according to Szucs’ classification, there is mainly Russian territory west of the Urals, except the areas south of the Carpathians. During its first centuries this enormous country was an ‘external area’ as regards to the ‘worldsystem,’ with a distinctive socioeconomic structure. A communitarian land property regime and a peculiar patrimonialism by which an imperial ‘official’ ‘arrogated’ property administrated on behalf of the tsar, were the socioeconomic structure’s cornerstone. Historians compared the situation engendered by such a structural peculiarity, which lasted up to the Russian Revolution (1917), to a ‘bog of misery’ (Riasanovsky 1984). However, East Europe’s gradual integration in the ‘world-system,’ beginning in the eighteenth century, remained incomplete. Russia continued to be a European ‘external area’ and never became a real periphery or a core-state, as the other ‘historical regions’ already described.

3.6 ‘Historical Regions’ And Present Socio-Economic Gaps

The establishment of the ‘world-system’ and the growth of a new international division of labor, which have molded the European core and peripheries, are the primary components of an epochal historical change whose socioeconomic and cultural consequences are still visible to this day.

The gaps that appeared between Europe’s ‘historical regions’ during the formation of the ‘world-system’ are still plain to see. The north–south gap mirrors past historical sociostructural and economic differences between the core and the Mediterranean periphery. To date, even the integration of these two ‘historical regions’ within the European Union has not eliminated the gap. The so-called ‘enlargement towards the East’ of the European Union is a problematic issue due specifically to east–west discrepancies (and not only to 50 years of socialism) that embody old boundaries between the European nucleus and the central–east periphery. The Balkan situation, which is characterized by feeble industrialization and incomplete modernization, is due to the fact that for centuries this area was a periphery of the periphery. Finally, presentday Russia with its distinct ‘development model’ torn between capitalistic borrowings and (pre)Socialist communitarist revivals, is adhering to its typical ‘tradition’ of lingering on the borders of the ‘worldsystem.’ The core–periphery gaps are detectable not only interregionally but also within states. In fact, states that straddle ‘historical regions’ have strongly ‘dualistic’ societies, economies, and cultures. For example, Italy is divided into north and south; Spain has discrepancies between Catalonia and Spanish Basque Country on one side, and the rest of the country on the other; in former Czechoslovakia there were differences between Bohemia and Slovakia; in former Yugoslavia, Slovenia, and Croatia were more connected to the core while Serbia, Bosnia, and Macedonia belonged to the southeast periphery.

3.7 Perceived Gaps And Peripheral Knowledge

Core–periphery gaps go beyond structural data. They are also ‘lived,’ therefore ‘perceived’ and ‘constructed’ realities. In European peripheries, especially among the intellectual elites, there is an awareness of the ‘marginality’ if not the ‘backwardness’ of one’s country or its ‘historical region.’ However, there is also a strong belief that one’s ‘nation’ or ‘people’ has outstanding ‘excellence’ and ‘virtues.’ ‘Peripheral elites’ have been coping with the discrepancy between their nation’s perceived socioeconomic ‘inferiority’ and its presumed spiritual and moral ‘superiority’ since just before the formation of their respective nation-states. European peripheries’ ruling classes’ interpretation of this apparent contradiction has been remarkably ambivalent as regards to relationships with the core as a socioeconomic and cultural complex. Quoting Bendix’s terminology, the core is looked upon as a ‘reference society’ with which there is both an ‘identification’ and a ‘distinction’ relationship (Bendix 1978). Emulation of the core is encouraged while dissociation is maintained as well. Over the past 150 years, almost every European periphery underwent major modernization processes, emulating the core, which included all aspects of society. However, these processes were accompanied by ‘archaistic’ counter-trends (agrarian populist movements, nationalisms, etc.) which instead glorified what was deemed to be the ‘past,’ ‘tradition,’ ‘culture,’ ‘identity’ of one’s group. Modernization drives and nativistic revivals were both at work.

A modernization drive basically means ‘Europeanization,’ particularly of politics (establishment of parliamentary institutions and legal systems), the economy (industrialization), culture (more theaters, art museums, avant-garde arts, etc.), and even everyday life (new habits, conventions, and ephemeral fads from the capitals of ‘reference societies’—Paris, Vienna, or Berlin). Nativistic revival means stressing one’s ‘difference’ to be distinguished from the core, and revitalizing ‘imagined’ social institutions, guardians and bearers of ‘primordial virtues,’ such as the village, rural community, medieval municipality, or guilds.

4. Europe And The Sociocultural Order Of Nationstates

Since the nineteenth century, capitalist economic expansion in ‘world-system’ Europe has been accompanied by a proliferation of nation-states. They were established (except in the United Kingdom) through a combination or a separate use of two main models conceived in France and Germany first (Brubaker 1992). Notwithstanding some differences, both concepts are based on the doctrine by which each ‘nation’ is entitled to its own territorial state and each state must include only one ‘nation.’

Because of this ideal, the last two centuries have been marked by repeated efforts to make single national territories more and more ethnically and culturally homogeneous. Already from the twelfth to the seventeenth century, Western Europe was overrun by several homogenization waves in the shape of religious conflicts and persecutions. Even in the more culturally homogeneous nation-states of Western Europe such as France, however, assimilation processes continued to the end of the nineteenth century (Weber 1976). In Central and East Europe by contrast, where the doctrine was applied only after the downfall of the multicultural empires, the processes of ‘ethnocultural recomposition’ aimed at ‘ethnic purity’ have been implemented only during the nineteenth and twentieth century, through a series of boundary revisions, forced assimilations, expulsions, aimed and planned immigrations, deportations, ethnic wars, and genocides.

Four main periods can be identified in the various processes of ‘ethnic separation’ that over the last two centuries concerned the European nation-states, especially in the central and eastern parts of the continent. The first period was predominantly in the Balkans, immediately after the creation of the first nation-states in the nineteenth century. Vast population groups of Turkish origin or merely of Islamic faith were forced to leave the region. As administrators of the Ottoman Empire, some indeed represented the hated occupiers, but members of social strata that had little in common with the ruling class were also expelled. During the great ‘Crisis in the Orient,’ which led to the bloody Russian–Turkish war, from 1875 to 1878, a million and a half people were repatriated.

The second virulent phase took place between 1913 and 1925. It was characterized by the forced transfer of whole minority groups, yet it was internationally recognized and guaranteed. In diplomatic language, it was euphemistically termed ‘population exchange.’ Substantial groups of Albanians from Kosovo and western Macedonia were transferred to Turkey after the Balkan Wars (1913) mainly because of their religion. Particularly after the creation of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, the Islamic populations were replaced with Serbian, Montenegrin, Croatian, and Slovenian people. The ‘population exchange’ between Greece and Turkey was even more dramatic. The Treaty of Lausanne in 1923 ratified a series of reciprocal expulsions and hasty repatriations caused by the Greek military catastrophe during the campaign in Asia Minor. After the defeat, Greece was overrun by refugees from the coasts of western Anatolia, plus the Greeks from the Black Sea area and the Caucasus who had fled the new Bolshevik regime’s repressions. A country with 4.5 million inhabitants faced the arrival of 1.3 million refugees. At the same time, the ‘population exchange’ provided for the departure of Turks and Albanians.

The third phase of ‘ethnic homogenization’ includes the decade between 1940 and 1950, marked by the Nazi policy of annihilation, transfer, and expulsion of whole ethnic groups, and by Stalinist deportations and purges. Along with the holocaust of the so-called ‘transnational minorities,’ that is, Jews and Roma, there were massive population movements in Central and East Europe. Eleven and a half million Germans were expelled from the Ostgebiete (eastern territories) while three million Poles, particularly from the regions absorbed by the Soviet Union after World War II, were settled in Silesia and in the southern portion of eastern Prussia. Thus, Poland became an almost monoethnic country.

The treaties between Czechoslovakia and Hungary and between the latter and Yugoslavia, which also provided for reciprocal ‘population exchanges,’ date back to the same period. Finally, Stalin consolidated his conquests in the western part of the Soviet Union through a policy of ‘planned mobility.’ This involved the deportation of populations considered ‘accomplices of the enemy,’ therefore ‘traitors of the great patriotic war’ (Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians, etc.), to Siberia or central Asia. It also involved replacing them with more ‘reliable’ immigrants, mainly of Slavic origin.

The fourth virulent phase of ‘ethnic homogenization’ is the wave of ‘ethnic separations’ that has devastated Central and East Europe over the past 15 years. It can be traced back to Socialist Bulgaria with its approach to minority problems. In the second half of the 1980s, the Bulgarian solution was to expel and/or forcibly assimilate ‘ethnic Turks.’ The phase continued with the disintegration of the three countries born after World War I through a multiethnic and multinational ‘logic’; Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union, and Czechoslovakia. The resulting new and old states are all based on the nation-state principle. This latest wave of ‘separations,’ which aims at the homogenization of territories with highly differentiated ethnic structures and claimed by one or more ‘nations,’ continued in the 1990s in Bosnia and Kosovo, and may not yet have come to an end, particularly in the Balkans and former Soviet Europe.

5. ‘Postnational’ Europe In The Making?

Over the last 50 years of the twentieth century, there were major population movements in Europe; this is the most outstanding characteristic of this period. These migrations for economic (job seekers) or political, that is, humanitarian (asylum seekers), reasons have affected Western Europe more than Central-east Europe. Until 1989, Soviet hegemony in this area allowed only a limited and often planned mobility, even though immigrant laborers were not totally lacking (Vietnamese in Bulgaria, former Czechoslovakia, German Democratic Republic, and the USSR as well). Within the EU and its previous community institutions a gradual, albeit slow, frontier abatement amongst member states has made transnational mobility easier. From the end of the 1950s, unprecedented numbers of laborers from the Mediterranean and Southeast peripheries (Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, and former Yugoslavia) reached the core (France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Benelux, United Kingdom, and Scandinavia). Here they found jobs in industry and in fields that are not sought after by the ‘autochthonous’ population because they are considered low status activities. From the 1970s on, these immigrants were joined by an increasing amount of laborers from the Mediterranean area bordering on the Old Continent (Turkey and Maghreb). Although to date some countries such as Germany and Switzerland challenge this denomination, northwestern European countries became ‘immigration societies’ in this period, notwithstanding strict measures introduced in the early 1970s regulating foreigners’ permanent entry.

The circumstances in Euro-Mediterranean former ‘emigration societies’ (Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece), which in the meantime have become ‘immigration countries’ instead, are slightly different from North- western Europe’s situation. Migration is mainly from so-called Third World countries (Sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, China, the Indian subcontinent, Latin America, etc.), and from the continent’s most under-developed areas (Albania). From the end of the 1980s, however, what became known as ‘mass unemployment’ worsened in all Western Europe. Therefore, recruitment of foreign workers fell drastically while political and humanitarian immigration increased.

At the same time, large numbers of migrants reached the core from non-European regions and former Socialist bloc countries after the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989) and the subsequent opening of frontiers. Facing a difficult socio-political transformation and an unstable economy, Central-east Europe is not the preferred destination for these migrants, who regard it only as a stopover on their way to Western Europe. Therefore, former ‘Real Socialism’ countries become a temporary ‘buffer zone.’

The above-mentioned migratory circumstances have called into question the sociocultural order created by nation-states that is based on the ideal of a mono-ethnic territory. The growing presence of diasporas, transnational groups, creolized communities, and deterritorialized collectivities in Europe’s social and cultural setting, plus minorities’ emphatic claims and demands (linguistic, religious, and ethnic), have fired discussions on nation-state adequacy and the need for ‘postnational’ organizations with new types of ‘transnational’ or ‘multiple’ citizenships, as Ferry (1992), Pierre-Caps (1995), and Kleger (1997) foresee.

However, such projects will be for the twenty-first century. For the time being the nation-state is the political and sociocultural standard, both internationally and regionally, from which different types of autonomism, Euro-regionalism, federalism, ‘devolution,’ and separatism (Catalonia, Galicia, Spanish Basque Country, Corsica, Flanders, Walloon Provinces, Scotland, ‘Padania,’ etc.) continue to draw inspiration when they seek an organizational form for their ambitions.

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