Since the beginning of 2021, the sociology team is working on the three year research project “Solidarity through Security? Discourses, Interactions and Practices of European Solidarity in the Field of Security” (ZUSE for short) funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research. ZUSE is a joint research project of the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg (IFSH), the University of Tübingen, and HSU.
The wider context of ZUSE (https://zuse-projekt.de/en/) examines how European institutions and states are increasingly emphasising the EU’s role as a security provider in uncertain times, with the aim of promoting solidarity within and among European societies. ZUSE investigates the political framing, administrative implementation, and societal effects of security as a potential novel guiding narrative of European integration.
The objective of this interdisciplinary research project is a more nuanced and differentiated understanding of security as a guiding concept of European solidarity and cohesion. ZUSE thus also contributes to the search for more diversity-centred conceptions of security that avoid exclusionary effects and the promotion of discourses of fear.
The research based at HSU, conducted by Teresa Koloma Beck, Katharina Wuropulos, Alexia Hack, focusses on the relevance of security-related imaginaries of Europe in everyday contexts. We ask: in which social processes are imaginaries of »(in-)security« and togetherness produced? How do they articulate in everyday experiences? How do they change?
To answer these questions we look at an empirical field that is particularly marked by conflicts between ideals of European solidarity and togetherness on the one hand, and European security interests on the other: places of first arrival for refugees.
Letzte Änderung: 1. April 2022