2. The Euro-/Refugee-/Security/Fragmentation/Environment/Corona-Crises: The New Europeanized ‘Normal’?

This chapter moves toward the structural environment in the EU and shows how crises have become the new ‘normal’ as postulated in the concepts of (post)modern global ‘risk societies’ (Beck in Global risk society. The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Globalization, Wiley, 2015a; Beck, Current Sociology 63:75–88, 2015b), embedded in what (Bauman in Liquid modernity. Wiley, 2007) calls ‘liquid modernity’. Given the rapidly changing demographic, economic, ecological, technological, and political environments, national political cultures and politics are exposed to vulnerabilities that cannot easily be adapted to, especially since globalization and Europeanization have diminished domestic problem-solving sovereign policy structures. This opens up the politics of inclusion to political mobilization and manipulation, as well as to the securitization of national welfare. To illustrate this process, the Euro-, Refugee-, Security-, Fragmentation-, Environmental, and Pandemic crises of the recent past are examined. The recurrence and the residual impacts of these crises make it more difficult for European societies, governments, and the EU institutions to constructively develop a robust vision for social inclusion and regional integration more generally. In theoretical terms, this chapter highlights the ‘politicization’ and eventual (de)‘securitization’ of previously mundane social policy issues in the process, and the polarization over those topics.