Paradoxes Of European Legal Integration

Focusing on paradoxes and tensions of European legal integration, this book investigates four complex and inherently contradictory processes - constitutionalization and democratization, institution-building and market-making, cross-cultural communication and European discourse, and cultural exceptionalism and normalization - to offer a new framework for understanding contemporary European integration. The volume features contributions from some of the biggest names in European legal philosophy, to include Neil MacCormick, Yves Dezalay and Bryant Garth, Pierre Legrand, Heikki Mattila and David Nelken. It presents a timely, interdisciplinary approach to an important and topical area and will be of interest to those concerned with the place of socio-legal processes, language and culture in the continuous advancement of the EU project.

This book examines the extent to which it is possible to identify a coherent legal method (a doctrine of the sources of law and their interpretation) that may be applied when analyzing EU law and the law of EU Member States. European Legal Method: Paradoxes and Revitalisation looks at what characterizes the sources of law and the interpretation methods that are actually used by European legal actors, especially judges and researchers. It examines the changes in the relative importance of various sources of law that occur in connection with the integration of EU law into national law.

This timely and innovative book analyses the lives of new female migrants in the EU with a focus on the labour market, domestic work, care work and prostitution in particular. It provides a comparative analysis embracing eleven European countries from Northern (UK, Germany, Sweden, France), Southern (Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece, Cyprus) and Eastern Europe (Poland, Slovenia), i.e. old and new immigration countries as well as old and new market economies. It maps labour market trends, welfare policies, migration laws, patterns of employment, and the working and social conditions of female migrants in different sectors of the labour market, formal and informal. It is particularly concerned with the strategies women use to counter the disadvantages they face. It analyses the ways in which gender hierarchies are intertwined with other social relations of power, providing a gendered and intersectional perspective, drawing on the biographies of migrant women. The book highlights policy relevant issues and tries to uncover some of the contradictory assumptions relating to integration which it treats as a highly normative and problematic concept. It reframes integration in terms of greater equalisation and democratisation (entailed in the parameters of access, participation and belonging), pointing to its transnational and intersectional dimensions.

Addresses paradoxes in the EU's foreign policy, and asks questions such as: how can the European Union's "power of attraction", combined with its operational weakness, be explained?; and can the EU remain a "civilian power" when coping with an "uncivilized" world?

It is said that at the start of the 21st century a certain indifference and lethargy characterise many European states. This is supposedly attributable partly to the peace and affluence secured within the EC, but otherwise to doubts regarding the ways towards and objectives of further European integration. The emphasis on national identity on the one hand and hopes for a 'united states of Europe' on the other is an insurmountable paradox which produces its own dynamic. It seems almost impossible to reconcile these opposing concepts in a way which will find acceptance among the majority of the people. The concern of this book is to re-establish the European idea and to show that the EU member states can build upon common elements to create a European identity so as to work together and complete the tasks which confront them all. This book indicates the initial components of a European concept of legislation and judicial interpretation, required if European integration is to develop into a force for positive change. Together with increased transparency and further democratisation, a method of European legislation and judicial interpretation is essential for the legitimacy and persuasiveness of law. Only such a law will be truly accepted by the citizens of Europe and can be the motor of a strengthened sense of shared community, the basis for a European identity.

The twenty years since the signing of the Maastricht Treaty have been marked by an integration paradox: although the scope of European Union (EU) activity has increased at an unprecedented pace, this increase has largely taken place in the absence of significant new transfers of power to supranational institutions along traditional lines. Conventional theories of European integration struggle to explain this paradox because they equate integration with the empowerment of specific supranational institutions under the traditional Community method. New governance scholars, meanwhile, have not filled this intellectual void, preferring instead to focus on specific deviations from the Community method rather than theorizing about the evolving nature of the European project. The New Intergovernmentalism challenges established assumptions about how member states behave, what supranational institutions want, and where the dividing line between high and low politics is located, and develops a new theoretical framework known as the new intergovernmentalism. The fifteen chapters in this volume by leading political scientists, political economists, and legal scholars explore the scope and limits of the new intergovernmentalism as a theory of post-Maastricht integration and draw conclusions about the profound state of political disequilibrium in which the EU operates. This book is of relevance to EU specialists seeking new ways of thinking about European integration and policy-making, and general readers who wish to understand what has happened to the EU in the two troubled decades since 1992.

This book traces Latin American migration to Europe since the 1970s. Focusing on Amsterdam, London, and Madrid, it examines the policies of integration in a comparative perspective that takes into account transnational, national, regional and local levels. It examines the entire mechanism that Latin American migrants confront in the European cities they settle, and provides readers with a theoretical framework on integration that addresses the concepts of multiculturalism, interculturality, transculturality and transnationalism. This work is based on rich qualitative data from in-depth interviews, focus groups and participant observation complemented by a substantial documentary and legislative analysis. It reveals that current policies are limited and migrants are excluded in most of the formal venues for integration. In addition, the book shows the many ways that migrants negotiate the constraints and imperatives of integration. In Western Europe today, immigrants are largely assuming the entire responsibility of their integration. This book provides readers with much needed insight into why European integration policies are not responding to the needs of immigrants nor to society as a whole.