Transnational Memory Politics in Europe

This special issue addresses the nexus between transnational politics of remembrance, European integration and an emerging European public sphere. The overall goal is to develop a novel understanding of how symbolic politics are negotiated and implemented at the transnational level and how they are translated into local, national and supranational practices. The authors investigate transnational politics of remembrance using a variety of methods, thus moving beyond single-country and comparative studies. Approaches employed include ethnographic research, network analysis, elite interviews and policy analysis, among others.
The articles assembled here offer innovative theoretical and empirical insights that go beyond abstract and normative perspectives that have dominated this area of research thus far. They address three key themes. In the first set of articles, European remembrance is analyzed as a field of transnational policy making in which individual and institutional actors compete through the use of various resources and the articulation of norms, interests, divergent political cultures and practices. Processes of agenda-setting, lobbying, decision-making, and implementation in the European Parliament, the Council of Europe and other transnational arenas are spotlighted here. In the second set of articles, authors take a relational perspective, examining how actors at different levels (local, national, supranational) cooperate, sometimes bypassing “official” channels of policy-making. These articles seek to answer the question of how network structures impact European memory-making in new ways. The third set of articles investigates how European memory is shaped by “marginal voices.” They offer insight into how historical experiences such as slavery, migration, and the persecution of Roma are in- or excluded from European commemoration.