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When it comes to its content, the course will cover the issues of participating in, rallying or subscribing to, and resisting Europe from various angles (but not necessarily in the same order as given below):
- The first angle of approach will be to take stock, in a general way, of the various populations acceptance of or resistance to Europe. What do rallying/subscribing to and resisting mean? How are these attitudes manifested? What means of action are employed? How have they changed over the years?
- In the wake of this first point we shall look at European social movements and networks: What are they and who belongs to them? What do they do, and how? We shall also ask in what way(s) Europe has changed collective action.
- We shall then see how European institutions are coping with their growing lack of legitimacy. What means has the EU used and is setting up to get more people to subscribe to the European blueprint?
- Illustration of these means through a specific policy, the European regional policy. This policy of financing socio-economic projects in the various regions of Europe (especially the most disadvantaged ones) serves as a public showcase for Europe. More in-depth analysis of the way it works reveals, however, a less democratic Europe than appears on the surface: a Europe of the elite, i.e., the only ones who have managed to crack the EU's codes.
- We shall wrap up with a more theoretical pondering of the relevance of analysing Europe from the "grass roots", i.e., its very physical players (in contrast to more institutionally oriented theories), as well as of the importance of embracing all the dimensions of Europe's construction, not just the political and institutional dimensions, but the social and cultural ones, too.
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