European Integration in Social and Historical Perspective: 1850 to the Present

Exploring the social dimensions of state formation and European integration, a respected interdisciplinary group of European and North American scholars takes a novel approach to the historical processes of integration. Rather than being led by EU institutions and intergovernmental policy, the contributors argue that integration is primarily influenced by non-state actors: unions, businesspeople, elites, and immigrants. Exploring the historical roots of integration, they trace contemporary integration efforts back to nineteenth-century social action in response to capitalist development. As today, it was a time when internationalism_both that of workers and of capitalists_sustained international cooperation and attempts to define universal standards for welfare and a social dimension to economic development. The reemergence of an integrated Europe as an alternative to the system of states produced by the settlements of 1918 and 1945 has provided a new opening for internationalism. The contributors view this as a positive trend, especially as a counterbalance to intensifying conflicts over growth, the distribution of wealth, welfare, and global access to markets and jobs.

Table of Contents:
Part 1 Introduction Chapter 2 European Integration in a Social and Historical Perspective Chapter 3 A Third Lens: Comparing European Integration and State Building Part 4 Historical Perspectives on Defining and Implementing Citizenship in the State Formation Process Chapter 5 Reinterpreting the History of European Integration: Business, Labor, and Social Citizenship in Twentieth-Century Europe Chapter 6 Citizenship and Nationality in Nineteenth-Century France Chapter 7 Crossing Borders and Building Barriers: Migration, Citizenship, and State Building in Germany Chapter 8 Foreign Workers in Western Europe: The "Cheaper Hands" in Historical Perspective Part 9 The Social Process of Developing Group Representational Institutions in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century European States Chapter 10 Markets, Industrial Relations, and the Law: The United Kingdom and France, 1867-1906 Chapter 11 From the Warfare State to the Welfare State: Postwar Reconstruction and National Incorporation Chapter 12 Markets, States, and Social Citizenship in Central and Eastern Europe Part 13 Citizenship and Group Representation at the Transnational Level Chapter 14 European Labor and Transnational Solidarity: Challenges, Pathways, and Barriers Chapter 15 Migration in Contemporary Europe: European Integration Chapter 16 Gender and Europe: National Differences, Resources, and mpediments to the Construction of a Common Interest by European Women Chapter 17 An Afterword: European Union at the End of the Century

About the Author :
Jytte Klausen is associate professor of comparative politics at Brandeis University and a fellow at the Mary Ingraham Bunting Institute of Radcliffe College and at the Minda de Gunzberg Center for European Studies, Harvard University. Louise A. Tilly is Michael E. Gellert Professor of History and Sociology at the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research.

Review :
The authors provide lucid perspectives often lacking in books on the travails of the EU. An ambitious volume. Its broad substantive and temporal scope as well as its interdisciplinary foundations open up new perspectives on integration in Europe. This book represents a successful and original attempt to move beyond the narrow academic debates surrounding the integration initiatives of the past decade. ...the editors do provide some insightful overviews in their brief introductions to each of the main sections, and bring out the links between these diverse strands. Individual contributions to European Integration in Social and Historical Perspective are important, perceptive, and often fascinating. ...A valuable contribution to contemporary debates on the European Union and similar pursuits. ...Students of the European Union and the relationship between sociopolitical actors and political institutions, as well as comparative-historical researcherswill benefit from the numerous contributions made by European Integration in Social and Historical Perspective.