Books published by Presses Interuniversitaires Europeennes

The process of devolution in the United Kingdom (UK) established new institutions at the sub-state level with a range of legislative and executive competencies. Yet many of these devolved powers also have a European Union (EU) dimension, whilst EU policy remains a formally reserved power of the UK central government. This book explores how this multi-level relationship has been managed in practice, examining the participation of the devolved Scottish and Welsh institutions in the domestic process of formulating the UK¿s EU policy positions during their first four-year term. It also places their experiences in a broader comparative framework by drawing upon the experiences of multi-level governance in practice in other Member States of the EU.

This volume seeks to map an understanding of the Italian experience onto the broader picture of diasporic stories, though with an anchor in the Australian-Italian experience. It brings together key essays and testimonials that frame a picture of Italy¿s rich legacy at «home», in Europe more widely, and in the (post)colonial sphere, with a particular emphasis on the Australian experience. The essays collected here focus on the way an Italian Australian story has emerged and evolved in its own unique way. In some respects it might be possible to define Australia, through this community, as an Italian space, very much inscribed and described by the many voices that characterise it. What is clear throughout these pages is that past, present and future circulate through and around each other, just as notions of nation ¿ colonial, postcolonial, emigrant and immigrant ¿ jostle for purchase in what is in fact a contested space always under negotiation.

The development of a fully fledged European Public Sphere is seen by many as the solution to the legitimation crisis the European Union is suffering today. It is conceived as a space in which a Europe-wide debate about the current economic, social and political crises can take place and through which solutions can be developed. This book proposes a new multi-disciplinary approach to discuss the European Public Sphere, arguing that it should be approached as a complex and interlinking concept, considering issues such as identity, citizenship building and multi-level governance structures and actors, and that it should not be analysed merely from the traditional perspectives of information and communication policies. The volume presents both academic papers and more policy-oriented contributions, offering perspectives from scholars, politicians, consultants and administrators to give the reader a truly multidisciplinary understanding of the European Public Sphere.

This book explores what happens with ethnic and national identifications built on the same ethnocultural grounds, but under different socioeconomic circumstances. Territorial and non-territorial minorities have traditionally been considered not susceptible to comparison because it was assumed that groups organized on different grounds were distinctively separate phenomena. In this study, the comparative method is used to throw new light on how ethnic and national identifications are constructed, negotiated, and re-constructed in territorial and non-territorial minority contexts. The author investigates whether the ethnic and national identification and articulation processes of Hungarians in Slovakia and Hungarians in Sweden constitute different types of Hungarianness. Drawing on extensive interview material the empirical focus is on the interaction of self-narratives and public narratives. The author seeks to challenge the notion that national minorities and diaspora communities are fundamentally different in their understanding of nationhood and their relationship to an external national homeland.