Authors:
Emanuel Deutschman | Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg; Bremen International Graduate School of Social Sciences | Germany
Jan Delhey | Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg | Germany
Monika Verbalyte | Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg; Freie Universität Berlin | Germany
Auke Aplowski | Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg | Germany
Transnationalism, Europe, human interactions
Following relational sociology (Emirbayer 1997) and transactionalist theory (Deutsch 1953), we suggest to conceptualize the European social space as a multiplex network of people’s transnational mobility and communication. To enhance our understanding of how this social space has evolved over time, we analyse the development of five types of cross-border interaction (migration, student exchange, tourist flows, phone calls, online friendships) over periods of up to five decades (1960–2010). In specific, we examine: (1) how the density of interaction within the European social space has changed over time, (2) how the degree of closure of Europe towards the outside world has changed over time, (3) whether the European networks have become more centralized or decentralized over time, and (4) what the mechanisms behind these trends are, e.g., whether historically and culturally bound regional clusters are dissolving and political and economic ties are becoming more relevant. Social network analyses of process-generated dyadic data from a variety of sources (UN, World Bank, World Tourism Organization, International Telecommunication Union, Facebook) reveal, inter alia, that (a) the density of interaction has consistently increased in Europe, and (b) trends in closure as well as centralization are type-dependent, e.g. we find increasing closure in mi-gration and student exchange and decreasing closure in tourism and phone calls. Thus, our findings provide new insights into the changing structure of Europe as a social space and highlight the necessi-ty to take the multiplex nature of human interaction into account when examining processes of trans-national integration.