Eline Madeleine Schmeets

PhD Researcher

Eline-Madeleine Schmeets analyses the European integration process, there where it ‘hits the ground’, and theories, policies, subsidies, and good intentions, meet with the lived reality of the everyday. With her research, she aims to generate a better understanding of the way the interaction between the formal European integration process—as spearheaded by the European Union—and (informal) situated cross-border integration processes, both makes and unmakes the European project. It will add to the existing literature on European integration by arguing that integration efforts at the European level do not necessarily override integration efforts at the cross-border level and might even be counterproductive. At the same time, it will demonstrate what a Perecquian interest in the ‘seams’ of Europe offers with regard to possible bottom-up approaches to European integration.