Europeanisation, National Identities and Migration ... - europeanization

German trade unions and Polish migrant workers 193
perceived as locally or nationally rooted processes of bottom-up response to and
adaptation of Europe, is a salient aspect of Europeanisation. According to Knill and
Lehmkuhl the domestic impact of European policies is primarily based on cognitive
logic. In this view, Europeanisation means in the first place a fundamental cultural
transformation from top-down as well as from bottom-up.
This chapter studies the modification of the beliefs and expectations of domestic
actors. Beliefs and expectations, i.e. meaning, is not created in a cultural vacuum
but localised in a cultural landscape of institutionalised knowledge and tradition
(Berger and Luckmann 1967). In the modern world, the stock of knowledge is
characterised by fragmentation in particular areas of meaning, uneven distribution,
day by day increase and constant flux (Hannerz 1992). Much of the taken-forgranted
everyday knowledge is coined by institutions, who ‘classify for the people’
(Douglas 1986). In the era of late modernity a vast number of cultural apparatuses
deliberately generate knowledge and meaning: competing professionals in science,
media, policy and civil society produce (competing) proposals on how to perceive
and interpret the world. The production of knowledge and meaning by cultural
apparatuses is characterised by a high degree of strategic and reflexive pursuit
of interests. To act successfully, member organisations have to go on from the
everyday knowledge and beliefs of people (Strauss 1968). By this, member organisations
as cultural apparatuses play an important intermediary role in the cultural
transformation, creation and shaping of a European horizon and identity. Within
the European multi-level framework, intermediary collective actors rooted in
the everyday life of people play a crucial role as transmitters and translators of topdown
projects as well as bottom-up responses. The focus of this essay is on the
cultural adaptation strategies of German trade unions vis-à-vis EU-Eastern
enlargement. I concentrate on trade union endeavours to transmit and translate
the dramatic re-shaping of categories of belonging and territoriality in the course
of Europeanisation to its members with particular attention to the significance
and function of the negative stereotype of Poles in the German debate on Eastern
enlargement. For reasons of stringency and clarity, the study focuses on the case of
the German construction trade union which became one of the key actors in the
German debate on Eastern enlargement. 1
German trade unions in the age of Europeanisation
In order to examine how German trade unions try to sustain solidarity and
adherence of members in the process of European integration, I focus on the
German construction trade union IG BAU 2 for two main reasons: (1) in Germany,
trade union membership is settled at the level of sectoral organisations. The German
umbrella trade union organisation, DGB, is only an alliance of sectoral trade
unions without direct responsibility for looking after members. In order to examine
the efforts at persuasion it is therefore appropriate to study one of the sectoral
trade unions. (2) Among the eight organisations the construction trade union
IG BAU played and continues to play a key role in the trade union debate on
Europeanisation. The reason for this is simply that IG BAU represents those sectors