Social Europe: A new integration-demarcation conflict?

Abstract

The European Union has gradually assumed increasing authority in the domain of social policy. This increasing importance of Social Europe fundamentally redraws the boundaries of existing solidarity arrangements. This chapter investigates whether the Europeanisation of social policy creates new structural conflicts between winners (benefiting from the expansion of individual mobility options) and losers (having far less exit options while being exposed to international competition) of European integration. Using data of the Belgian National Election Survey 2014, we investigate citizens’ preferences regarding various dimensions of the role of the European Union in social policy. Our results show that attitudes towards Social Europe are not strongly embedded in social structural characteristics. Rather than objective positions, subjective experiences and social dispositions shape one’s stance on Social Europe.