The paper briefly outlines the history of Chinese educational migration to the West and discusses some of the policies and socioeconomic trends that have made China the largest source of international students today. It then presents findings from studies of Chinese students’ experiences in Europe, which indicate that personal development and time for reflection is becoming part of what some middle class students and their parents expect from the study abroad experience. This opens new possibilities for European universities in the fields of humanities and social sciences. At the same time we will probably see a growing demand for study abroad programmes that offer training for social service sector professionals, a field where China has a perceived need for developing new attitudes and skills.

The past half-century has been perhaps the European university's greatest age, even compared with the earlier flourishing in the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and during the industrial revolution of the 19th century. More universities have been founded; student numbers have increased at an unprecedented rate; and the scholarly and scientific productivity of the universities has been unparalleled. But the university has become for the first time a truly global institution, cut off from its roots in Europe and Europe's colonial empires and open to other, non-European and non-élite, knowledge traditions. At the same time the tight relationship between the university and modernity, or ‘movement’, has been increasingly questioned. For more than a century that relationship has been axiomatic, relegating the university's other role as an agent of continuity and tradition into second place. But the dynamism of socio-economic and technological change in the so-called ‘Knowledge Society’ is now so great that the university's role as a force for stabilization may become more important. As a result the centrality of the university in the European experience could be diminished.

The 20th-century has been the century of mass politics, and the mass parties that emerged at the beginning of this century became deeply rooted within wider society. The passing of this golden age of the party has now been marked by two distinct processes of change. On the one hand, parties have become more distant from society and more closely linked to government and the state. On the other hand, there has been a decline in the political identities of the parties, such that voters now find it increasingly difficult to distinguish between them. These changes, and the related transformation of politics into administration, have led to a growth in popular indifference to parties and to politics in general, as well as to a declining sense of engagement. Should this trend continue, it is mass spectacle rather than mass involvement that is likely to characterize the future of mass politics.

‘Eurafrica’, the continental-scale fusion of Europe and Africa into one political entity, was first developed as a political concept in the 1920s by the Pan-European Union, and named as such in a 1929 article by its founder and leader Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi. Within five years, this neologism had become a commonplace, as Eurafrica exploded across public political discourse. This paper unpacks what Eurafrica entailed in its original expression, what made it a useful concept for the Pan-European Union to employ, and what made it so appealing to a wider (European) public. It does so with particular reference to the way in which Eurafrica was presented as a means of opening up colonialism to those European states that lacked their own colonies. Partly, this meant appealing to German colonialists resentful at the stripping of Germany’s colonies at Versailles. Crucially, however, it also meant appealing to the broader ‘historical injustices’ that meant that Central European countries did not have access to colonies, and promising a future in which these intra-European ‘injustices’ could be transcended and Central Europeans could thus become equal partners in Europe’s mission civilisatrice in Africa.

Two developments in recent decades – the rising attention to children’s rights, and the growing importance of the digital environment – seem on a collision course, with children’s rights arguably more infringed than benefited by the digital world, and with efforts to promote children’s rights in a digital world seen by some as threatening the freedom of expression that digital networks enable. Here, I set out the case for realizing children’s rights in relation to the digital environment, and then examine the difficulties that arise. Most recently, the status of the child online is shifting from one of invisibility to one of hypervisibility in an increasingly datafied world, and the child’s right to privacy has rapidly become the most contested of all the rights. With challenges ranging from that of identifying who is a child online to reining in the economic power of the major digital platforms, states seem to be facing an impasse when it comes to taking effective action. The result is a series of stark policy choices which leave all stakeholders dissatisfied. I conclude by proposing a series of interventions focused less on the actions regarding particular child rights and more on the legal and institutional processes and standards by which all rights could be better realized in a digital world.

This article will offer an overview of the ever-changing relationship between the crime genre – understood as a global, transnational phenomenon – and European art cinema, with its national specificities. After a historical contextualization, this contribution focuses on the mode of production and circulation of contemporary European crime cinema by looking at two case studies of the contemporary national productions of Spain and Northern Ireland. The goal is to grasp the shifts occurring in this relationship, so understanding both the role played by the ‘auteur’ label in the distribution, commercialization, and appreciation of European crime cinema and how easily-marketable crime storylines promote the creation of new modes of authorship.

Istanbul and Bucharest are major European cities that face a continuing threat of large earthquakes. The geological contexts for these two case studies enable us to understand the nature of the threat and to predict more precisely the consequences of future earthquakes, although we remain unable to predict the time of those events with any precision better than multi-decadal. These two cities face contrasting threats: Istanbul is located on a major geological boundary, the North Anatolian Fault, which separates a westward moving Anatolia from the stable European landmass. Bucharest is located within the stable European continent, but large-scale mass movements in the upper mantle beneath the lithosphere cause relatively frequent large earthquakes that represent a serious threat to the city and surrounding regions.

The history of medicine in the Roman world has frequently been viewed from the perspective of the Elder Pliny (ca. AD 70), who described an invasion of incompetent, worthless charlatans from Greece and beyond. This extreme viewpoint was not shared by many of the inhabitants of Italy and the Western provinces, who welcomed these outsiders. This paper looks at the reasons why Greek-speaking doctors migrated westwards, and, through the writings of their most famous representative, Galen of Pergamum (127–216), how they became integrated into a Latin society.

One of the most difficult and uncertain areas of research offered the historian of literature today is the attempt to define ‘European literature’ as a corpus and an object of literary and/or historical analysis. The various efforts of the past few years – in the form of anthologies as well as histories of literature – usually remain torn between a unitary presupposition that seems to be the only acceptable political-historical way of justifying the body of European literature and an irreducibly composite – not to say heterogeneous – reality that is not amenable to the representations of Europe as reduced to this superficial unity. If we are to reflect on the modalities and specificities of such a historical undertaking – which has so few equivalents in the world that it is all the harder to model – and shake off political models and representations, it seems to me that we need to work from another hypothesis. One of the few trans-historical features that constitutes Europe, in effect, one of the only forms of both political and cultural unity – one that is paradoxical but genuine – that makes of Europe a coherent whole, is none other than the conflicts3 and competitions that pitted Europe’s national literary spaces against one another in relentless and ongoing rivalry. Starting from this hypothesis, we would then have to postulate that, contrary to commonly accepted political representations, the only possible literary history of Europe would be the story of the rivalries, struggles and power relations between these national literatures. As a consequence, rather than a unity that remains if not problematic at least far from being achieved, it would no doubt be better to speak of an ongoing literary unification of Europe, in other words a process that occurs, occurred and is still occurring – paradoxically – through these struggles. This upside-down history would trace the models and counter-models, the powers and dependences, the impositions and the resistances, the linguistic rivalries, the literary devices and genres regarded as weapons in these specific, perpetual and merciless struggles. It would be the history of literary antagonisms, battles and revolts.

This article deals with the figure of Julius Evola, philosopher and well-known freelance political commentator both during and after Italy’s Fascist dictatorship. My analysis of his intellectual production and political role in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s is a case study that focuses on both continuity and discontinuity of ideological issues in the crucial historical period between the Fascist regime and the establishment of neo-fascism in post-war Italy. Special attention will be paid to unchanging elements in Evola’s philosophy, such as criticism of modern society, rejection of faith in progress, reference to traditional values as reaction to nihilism and belief in the existence of a spiritual hierarchy. A central issue is the ideological influence that Evola exercised on a young generation of neo-fascists in Italy after the Second World War, based on the intention of offering them new rules of conduct in a post-nihilist world. It is exactly this phenomenon that enables us to put in question the declared apolitìa of Evola.

The purpose of this paper is to raise the question of the relative roles of cognitive and functional factors in the evolution of grammar. The conclusion is that they have both played important roles, although unbalanced ones. Human language originated with the linking of conceptual structures and the vocal output system. In other words, cognitive factors were the first to shape grammar. But with the passage of time, the needs of communication came to play an ever-more important role in grammar. Human language today hence reflects the influence of both types of factors.

The UN commitment to achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015 poses a major challenge. It is, first and foremost, a political challenge to wealthy countries, to provide the necessary transfer of resources, and to developing countries, to make effective use of these transfers. But it is also an intellectual challenge, to economists and other scientists, to better understand the processes by which the MDGs can be achieved. This article focuses on two aspects. On the substantive side, it examines how we can achieve increased funding for development, particularly via new methods of finance, such as global taxes. On the intellectual side, it describes how a new branch of economics is developing – global public finance – that can contribute to the analysis of new sources of funding for the MDGs and of the working of the global economy.

Nowadays China and EU share close investment relations. However, concerns have been raised over FDIs (Foreign Direct Investments) aimed at sensitive sectors, especially those from Chinese state-owned companies. In light of this, the European Commission in late 2017 proposed a FDI Screening Regulation. This proposal contains certain features, including cooperation mechanisms between Member States and the Commission to notify and give comments on FDIs, direct monitoring of FDIs by the Commission on the grounds of Union interests, and the illustration of instances to be considered when screening FDIs. However, the success of this proposal is in doubt. Its fate regarding being adopted as law through the EU’s legislative process is uncertain, due to the Member States’ divided attitude towards FDI screening. Its provision contains a lethal loophole, undermining the cooperation and exchange of information between the Member States and the Commission. The non-binding nature of the opinions and comments addressed to the FDI receiving Member State renders the mechanisms practically unenforceable. To establish an effective FDI screening framework for the EU, this proposal needs to be revised and amended.

First, this paper sketches the development of labour history as a historical subdiscipline up to the 1970s and 1980s when it became a booming field, an area of great excitement and high productivity. Why this should have been the case is an interesting question to ask in hindsight. Secondly, I discuss certain trends in the last 10–15 years that are related to a decline in this field, not in terms of sophistication, but certainly with regard to the field's popularity among historians, students and the public. Dealing with this rather dramatic change might tell us something about the way my discipline – modern history with a stress on social history – works, where it gets its vitality from, its conjunctures and fashions. Thirdly, I present some personal ideas about how one could, and perhaps should, deal with the present situation, its problems and its opportunities. I am presently working on the third volume of a history of labour in 19th century Germany – a project to which I have returned after many years. Some of the general problems I have encountered in this project will also be dealt with, indirectly, in this paper.

Is cohesion policy effective? Does it contribute to the reduction of development disparities and strengthen competitiveness in the European Union? These are the questions that have inspired a growing body of research on cohesion policy evaluation, and which has come to varied and inconclusive results. There has been significant variation with regards to the established (in)effectiveness of cohesion policy among different methodological approaches, which all have serious methodological shortcomings. In order to circumvent these, the authors have not only continued to rely on rigorous econometric methods but also focused on the potential benefits through an indirect estimation approach. They have confirmed that cohesion policy is de facto additional, i.e. that it effectively increases the structural expenditures of the recipient Member States, which, given the evidence on fiscal multiplier, should lead to stronger growth performance.

This paper focuses on Hungary’s illiberal regimes from the perspective of the opposition – a perspective we believe has been under-scrutinized so far. It argues that in order to understand the regime’s success it is crucial to explain why opposition parties have been unable to offer a credible alternative. The paper argues that the opposition is in a trap with three unfavourable factors mutually strengthening each other and undermining its ability for success. They are (1) the cartel party system; (2) the weak social embeddedness of opposition parties; and (3) lack of their presence in local politics. At the same time, we also point out that the rise of a tiny joke-party’s success (The Hungarian Two-Tailed Dog Party) highlights that these obstacles can be overcome even with very limited resources. Nevertheless, it is still unclear if the Dog Party’s innovative approach to doing politics could be ‘institutionalized’ – i.e. if it offers a feasible model strategy for opposition parties – or it is only an efficient way of mocking and criticizing how the political system operates.

The objective of this work is to analyse the factors that influence a greater or lesser inequality in income distribution in the 27 EU countries, paying particular attention to the effect that the economic crisis has had. For this purpose we have used panel data covering a period of 16 years (from 1996 to 2011, inclusive), and we have introduced additional variables over and above those normally used, such as the ideology of the governing party, the economic freedom index, as well as the ‘crisis’ variable. The results obtained enable us to conclude that while the economic crisis has not necessarily caused a worsening in inequality, the response of European governments by means of social policy has not so far proved effective in the fight against the lack of equality in income distribution.

Our experiences, through day and night, are not as clear-cut as might seem on first thought. Considerable aspects of life comprise illusory phenomena, some of which are realised, while others are not. Moreover, the boundaries between illusion and hallucination can be very blurred. This essay considers specific situations exemplary of these aberrations – the phantom limb phenomenon, the effects of migraine and temporal lobe epilepsy, sleep disturbances, out-of-body and near-death experiences, conjuring, and the technique of pick-pocketing. Life is never as certain or as sure as we think.

Core–periphery analysis is vital to an understanding of the European Union (EU) and regional development. The European Economic Community (EEC), which would eventually become the EU, was formed in 1957 in order to promote progressive economic integration. Recognizing that there were depressed regions within both peripheral and core nation-states, the EC adopted a programme with the goal of bringing those regions into convergence. Its programme is essentially a liberal centre–periphery model similar to the one proposed by Friedman. Many of the nation-states within the EC also have their own regional policies and programmes regarding intervention within their own spatial boundaries. To present an approach for comparison this article will focus on two examples of regional policy: Britain's attitude toward regional development in the North and the German programme for integrating East Germany.

This article presents two different perspectives on the relation between university governance and creativity. It argues that although perceptions of the relation between European university governance and creativity differ and vary over time, the space for creativity also seems to have been shaped by some common factors: fragmented authority structures, support and protection by centres of economic and political power, and values emphasizing openness and tolerance for new ideas. The importance and interplay between these factors have varied over time. This is illustrated by contrasting two examples of the development of the European university: Perkin’s historical perspective on universities in Medieval Europe and the modern university – as it has developed from about 1800 until today.