Competence centre on foresight

The European Union provides a unique experiment in transnational movement and identity, with 500 million EU citizens having the right to live, work, study and retire in any of the 28 Member States. However, only 2% of EU citizens exercise this right, even though it is regularly quoted as one of the most salient components of the European Union, especially among young people . The 1 theoretical and practical lessons from this mobile group are under-researched from an academic perspective." " This paper will examine this "Euro-elite" in terms of its cosmopolitanism, the implications for consideration of national and regional identity and its impact on notions of the nation state. It will suggest that these hyper-mobile elites, who simultaneously belong everywhere and nowhere, and are comfortable in multiple cultures, are interesting subjects of study, but not to be taken as representative of the European population. The paper hypothesises that this group is overrepresented in European institutions. Therefore their interests are guiding European policy in a cosmopolitan direction, when this is arguably not a primary concern of the wider EU population. This supposed phenomenon could be paradoxically described as parochial cosmopolitanism, and may be a factor in explaining the growing discontent between European decision-makers and their electorates." " This paper will examine the new challenges for nation states posed by global migration patterns, through the prism of the free movement of persons that is one of the four fundamental freedoms of the European Union (EU). It will examine how the EU's unique experiment in regional integration ) embodies new thinking about migration models, rejecting the traditional models of the past (Papastergidis, 2010). It will examine this multi-polar, multi-faceted experience of migration: multi-polar insofar as those that take advantage of free movement tend not to move from one place to another to settle or integrate, but will experience several mobility episodes in their lives; multi-faceted in the forms it takes, from long-term physical mobility, such as studying, working or retiring, to short-term forms such as tourism; and also virtual mobility through proximity to 'EU

There is a considerable body of academic literature showing that organisational networks are important for a range of key workplace outcomes such as career advancement (Wolff & Moser, 2009), knowledge management (Parise, 2007), and innovation (Brass, Galaskiewicz, Greve & Tsai, 2004). This academic work is being reflected in workplaces, with concepts such as Wirearchy (Husband, 2015) acknowledging that command and control hierarchical methods of organizing workplaces are being overtaken by social and technological change. Human resource (HR) departments and practitioners, and particularly their learning and development functions, are a key factor in this change. However, there remain questions around how far HR practitioners understand the extent of the potential, operation and complexity of networks within their organisation and therefore have the tools at their disposal to make the most of them.

This paper will examine the extent to which a link has been established between networks and key workplace outcomes. It will consider whether and how this link is reflected in current HR theory and practice. An attempt will be made to draw out some lessons about the extent to which existing network practice takes into account the current state of academic research into networks. In conclusion it will identify that there is strong potential for a network approach within HR, both at the theoretical and practical levels. Research is particularly lacking with regard to networks with a focus other than increasing the social capital of an individual. However, further empirical research is needed both in terms of further analysis of existing HR practice and the impact of networks on HR outcomes before a solid relationship can be established.

This essay seeks to examine the importance of the concepts of Knowing, Doing and Being to the learning experience. Through posing a number of questions and relating these to a particular learning context, in this case, the workplace, the essay will try to put forward a phenomenological approach to learning. It will use new ideas around the future of work to suggest that the equivalence is not between workplace learning and school education, but between work itself and school education.

The goal of this paper is to obtain the model for political participation on social network sites in Europe with a focus on European politics. We want to find out if and how European citizens are interested in using Facebook in political communication on the European level and if that can lead to more participation and more inclusion of citizens in the political processes on the EU level. We are interested in discovering more about the interconnection of political participation in the ‘offline’ world and the use of web 2.0 for political communication purposes.

This study examines the use of Facebook in political communication during the 2009 European Parliament elections campaign. Its goal is to explore the possibilities of the European Parliament communication strategy on Facebook as well as the interaction and participation of its online audiences. The analysis has discovered new concepts significant for the field of online political advertising, the specific campaign construction with its key themes and the particular form of interaction. The original contribution of this paper is seen in its efforts to reveal the campaign of the European Parliament on Facebook, which was not previously studied.

Despite the different approaches to the term 'democratic deficit', the majority of scholars today focus on political legitimacy and accountability. In this paper we assess the democratic deficit of EU institutions, more precisely the European Commission and the European Parliament. We suggest how this deficit could be overcome through the EU treaty changes, which would create more balanced powers in the EU. We evaluate briefly the attempt of European institutions to increase political participation among EU citizens, where the Internet is found to be a very helpful tool.

Following the rise in use of online communication in electoral campaigns throughout the world, this article deals with the use of blogs by politicians in Europe. Through the approach of Critical Discourse Analysis, it analyzes blog posts written by the European Parliament incumbents running for the European Parliament elections in 2009, from four different EU states and ideological backgrounds, and at the same time the four largest political groups in the European Parliament. The purpose of the study is to reveal the campaign strategy and dominant discourses through the analysis of the format, style and appeals. The findings reveal the differences in discourses between four political blogs, which result from the different use of language and appeals.

After the initial wave of optimism about the role of the Internet in societal and social changes, many scholars are gradually becoming less positive in their appraisals. Popular discussion, however, is still firmly optimistic and gives a great deal of attention to this issue. Some even consider social media a deus ex machina that will resolve the majority of contemporary societal problems. This paper reconsiders the role of the Internet in citizens’ lives, with a special focus on young people and their use of the Internet in political communication.

The second half of the XXth century brought big changes in the society and consequently in science. The growing number of universities after the IInd world war, the post-war industrial growth and later digitalization transformed the science present until then, enlarged the scientific community and the number of scientific publications. In the last couple of decades, the creation of web 2.0 brought new possibilities for knowledge co-production, and interaction and exchange between all interested parts in a research.
The goal of this paper is to explore the possibilities for (extended) peer review and quality control on the internet, primarily blogs and social media, which could contribute to the standard peer review process and open science to wider audience. We are wondering if these processes could also raise the quality in science and lead to the democratization of knowledge production. We argue that changes in science also have an impact in reshaping the society and bringing democratization in knowledge production.

Ó Centre for European Studies 2013 Lucia Vesnic-Alujevic obtained her PhD in Communication Science from Ghent University, after which she became a Visiting Fellow at the CES. Since November 2012, she has been postdoctoral researcher at the European Commission's Joint Research Centre. Her research interests include political communication, online communication, EU politics, Western Balkans and political participation.

The dissolution of Yugoslavia at the beginning of the 1990s gave birth to seven independent states. After the wars that followed the initial proclamation of independence in several of these countries, a period of consolidation ensued, along with European integration as well as reconciliation efforts. The principal goal of this paper is to explain the reasons that led to the wars in the Western Balkans, the main issues that remained in the 2000s and the EU initiatives that were supposed to help in resolving these problematic issues and facilitating the accession of the countries of the region to the European Union. Despite the effort jointly performed by the EU as well as countries from the region, this article shows that a lot of work will still have to be done before all of the countries become sufficiently mature in a political, economic and societal sense to become members of the European Union.

This document provides a set of policy recommendations, based on the findings of a three-year long case study on wearable sensors. The key objective was to assess state-of-the-art developments in this domain of innovation, using evaluation and analytic methods that correspond with the expertise and experience available on our study team and among our associates in industry and innovation, medicine, policy, grass roots activism, STS and ELS study traditions. Our aim is to provide guidelines for good governance of wearable sensors, in light of their potential roles in medical settings as well as their currency as consumer electronics for quasi-medical purposes. We provide recommendations for ongoing innovation in this field, considering the necessity of mutual recognition and reflexive knowledge exchange among innovators and industrial actors, medical expertise, scholarly and technical assessments, patient organisations and grass roots activism, policy developers and regulators.