Taidetta ja kohtaamisia
Osallistujien kokemuksia EU:n osallistavassa hallinnassa
Keywords:
demokratia, Euroopan unioni, kansalaisuus, osallistava hallinta, osallistaminenAbstract
Art and encountering. Participants’ experiences in the participatory governance of the EU
Participatory practices are increasingly common. The European Union seeks to promote participation through programmes that fund citizens’ activities in different fields. These projects aiming at involving citizens in the EU activities are part of the EU’s participatory governance. This article asks how does the EU’s participatory governance look like at the grass roots level, in the framework of one project. The analysis focuses on European Citizen Campus (ECC), a project organizing students’ artistic activity, funded through the EU’s Culture programme in 2013-2015. While participation is often discussed in an abstract way, this article complements the discussion with an ethnographic microanalysis, investigating how an EU programme is implemented at the local level and how do participants experience it. It examines how participation appears in the EU’s participatory governance and what meanings participants give to citizenship, the main theme of the project. Ethnographic research indicates both continuities and significant differences between participants’ conceptions and the conceptions expressed in the official texts of the project and in the policy documents regarding the Culture programme. The EU project is perceived as a space for politics and democracy only in a limited way. Instead, participation meant governmentality aiming at strengthening participants’ belonging to the EU.
