Unequal Europe: Social Divisions and Social Cohesion in an Old Continent (Routledge Advances in European Politics) - Hardcover

Wickham, James

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1857285514 ISBN 13: 9781857285512

Publisher: Routledge, 2016

Synopsis

This wide-ranging and comparative text reviews the major theoretical and substantive debates on social inequality in Europe. It provides a valuable dual focus on European society and individual societies while placing Europe in its wider global context.

Demonstrating the continued importance of national difference within Europe, the author argues that nonetheless the European Social Model has softened social inequalities such as those of wealth and income distribution, social class, gender and possibly even ethnicity. However these achievements are now being undermined, partially by the European Union itself. The book also challenges conventional wisdom on Europe’s alleged need for immigration and highlights the UK’s distinctiveness within Europe, explaining the country’s uneasy relation to the European project.

This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of Politics, European Societies, Social Policy and Comparative Studies.

About this title

Review:

'In November 1993, 28 countries, now containing over five hundred million people, joined to form the European Union (EU). People, goods, and money then moved freely within the EU. In 2002, a common currency, the euro, was introduced. Wickham, of the Dublin think tank Tasc, focuses on two issues: inequality within and between the 28 member nations, and the degree to which individuals in each nation feel that they are part of the larger EU. Summing Up: Recommended.' -D. Harper, University of Rochester, in CHOICE

Synopsis:

This is a penetrating new study about what Europe means today, showing how 9/11 was a brief moment of trans-Atlantic solidarity that lit up the international scene, but was quick to fade. This book is about the rift that existed before this historic juncture and has developed since. It examines Europe's distinctiveness in world terms from a range of angles that reveal the true extent of its modern sense of difference. The European Union is the first ever democratic system in the world that has developed supra-national institutions and laws. It also examines the peculiarity of the 'European social model' as opposed to those of the world's other developed nations and regions and argues that such a model captures, despite all its socio-economic and cultural variety, key aspects of European identity. This book will be of great interest to all students of the European Union, international affairs and relations and politics.

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 1857285514
• ISBN 13: 9781857285512
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 298