Eu-space and the Euroclass ― Modernity, Nationality, and Lifestyle Among Eurocrats in Brussels

How are prestige and power anchored in EU-Brussels? Which performances are valued, and which are not? Pawel Lewicki's ethnographic analysis gives insight into how different understandings of modernity and class structures reproduce national performances and stereotypes among EU civil servants. Divisions permeate both political and private life and are visible not only on the map of the city, but also in the lifestyles of people living and working in EU-Brussels. In such a cultural setting the strategies applied by newcomers to the EU, Lewicki shows, reveal deeper postcolonial and (post-)imperial dynamics at the heart of the union.

Pawel Michal Lewicki is assistant professor at the Chair for Comparative Central European Studies of the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder). His main research interests are "Europe" and cultural processes of Europeanization from postcolonial and (post)imperial perspective. Currently he analyses these issues in relation to trajectories of migrants from Central and Easter Europe to Berlin and Stockholm who are HIV-positive.