The 'making' of Europe in the peripheries: Europeanization through conflicts and ambivalences

Abstract

In the social sciences, the idea of Europeanization as a pathway to an ever closer European Union and deepened integration is not uncontested, though it is still a popular concept. However, a paradigmatic turn towards a conflict-theoretical idea of Europeanization that is capable of taking into account the fuzziness and ambiguity of 'making Europe' is still wanting. In this article, I argue that Europeanization has never been unilinear and teleological but consists of ambivalences, turbulences, crises and simultaneous interlinked and contrary processes on transnational, national and subnational levels. Based on different theoretical strands of thought on social change, in particular Charles Tilly's political process model, I elaborate both this turn and a concept in three theoretical propositions that are based on one another and that constitute a systematically conflict-oriented concept of Europeanization. I illustrate the explanatory and analytical potential of the concept with an example that stands for ambivalent Europeanization processes beyond the EU's heartland: Ukraine. This view from the peripheries makes visible the need to analyze Europeanization as a multifold process involving inherent contradictions.