Introduction: The Turn to Cohesion in European Politics

Abstract

Social cohesion has become a problem across much of Western Europe, and the term has been brought to bear on a surprisingly vast range of issues: the segregation of communities along ethnic or religious lines poses a challenge to cohesion, as does the presence of welfare recipients in Europe’s increasingly precarious systems of collective solidarity. The absence of cohesion prepares the ground for crime and anti-social behaviour, which are exacerbated by expanding divisions in society. Declining turnouts at elections and growing political apathy signal the fraying of cohesion and the fragility of values and virtues that sustain liberal-democratic order. Social problems are considered newly problematic for the damage they inflict on social cohesion. Their urgency is traced to the effects of a growing social rift.