Introduction
The question which must be resolved first, failing which progress is no more than mere appearance, is the definitive abolition of the division of Europe into national, sovereign States.
Ventotene Manifesto 1943
The Community shall have as its task, by establishing a common market and progressively approximating the economic policies of Member States, to promote throughout the Community a harmonious development of economic activities, a continuous and balanced expansion, an increase in stability, an accelerated raising of the standard of living and closer relations between the States belonging to it.
Article 2, Treaty of Rome 1957
The Union’s aim is to promote peace, its values and the well-being of its peoples.
Article 3, Consolidated version of the Treaty on European Union 2009
Unlike the famous American declaration, happiness does not appear in the founding texts of the European Union.1 Nevertheless, a firm belief and willingness to achieve the “well-being” and “closer relation” among European states, at least in words, seem to be at the core of the whole process of European integration: the real alternative to the national state, deemed as the historical culprit of war and division among Europeans.
Over the past few years this process has stopped: Brexit, the rise of anti-euro, national-populist political parties and fears over immigration in both Eastern and Western Europe are the most acute and recent symptoms of the ongoing struggle the EU is facing.
What happened to the seeming irresistible process of a closer European Union? What about its mission to bring people together and to foster their well-being? This is a broad multifaceted question without an easy answer. However, looking at the image of success and happiness the EU has constructed and fostered over time may provide us hints on its inner contradictions and problems.
To do so, I plan to use as a case study one of EU’s most successful initiatives: the Erasmus program, a student exchange project that allowed three million young European university students to study abroad in other EU member states.2 Erasmus has been defined as “Europe’s last hope” (Makowski 2012), the “new sexual European revolution” (Riotta 2014), and even as “Erasmus-Orgasmus” (MacGregor 2012) responsible for the birth of one million babies from couples of mixed nationalities (AFP 2014).
As shown by the Happiness Studies and from the authors of this book, regimes of happiness propagate their moral ideals mostly through the articulation of specific “symbols, discourses, rituals, and institutions.” Moreover, in addition to the utilitarian tradition of implementing social policies to achieve the well-being of liberal democracies’ citizens, the modern idea of happiness in postwar Western societies is also frequently based on “individualism and hedonistic consumption,” particularly among young people (Turner and Contreras-Vejar 2018).
Looking at the European context, one of the major struggles European institutions had to face since their inception consisted of acquiring legitimacy and authority. After the failure of the dirigiste approach of the EU’s policies from the 1950s and 1970s, the major way to acquire them consisted of promoting cultural initiatives that would foster a specific image of Europe; the Erasmus program was one of them (Shore 2000).
Thus, by studying how European institutions have promoted the Erasmus program to the broader public, it is possible to establish the regime of happiness EU’s elites have attached to their idea of Europe. In addition, by looking at the discourse on Erasmus over time, we can understand how EU elites’ strategies aimed at gaining popular consensus have reacted to the broader problems the Europeanization process had to face.
Resting on such premises, this chapter argues that the Erasmus program has been represented as a powerful promise of happiness based on: personal fulfillment in the sphere of professional development (Erasmus enhances career benefits) and hedonistic consumption (parties, romance and sex), all within a European context. Soon after the launch of this program in 1987, European institutions and media have mostly promoted Erasmus as a great experience to achieve fundamental skills in the international job market for future European generations. As the project grew in the early 2000s, European students have portrayed the Erasmus experience as a wonderful possibility to achieve intense hedonistic pleasures. After the debt crisis of 2009, European institutions and the media have blended these two narratives, thus transforming the Erasmus program into the ultimate form of European happiness: Europe as a place where young people find love and jobs. However, a gap exists between the rhetoric of the institutions and former Erasmus students who, while supporting a narrative of hedonistic pleasure, do not generally emphasize a common European identity.
An important body of scholarship has begun to explore the connections between ethnicity, economics and discourse about sexuality and emotions. Some scholars have shown the misleading neoliberal use of identity politics: neoliberal supporters foster the rhetoric of human rights and gender equality to justify politics that increase material inequalities.3 In addition, other scholars have explored the use of discourses around sex and love as major means for the management of interethnic conflicts.4 Following these studies, this chapter shows that similar processes can also be registered in postnational and supranational contexts.
By proposing a possible analytical framework to explain Erasmus’s success story, this chapter tries to fill the gap of a scientific literature that has already taken into account numerous aspects of the exchange program, but it has left mostly unquestioned its cultural and intellectual representations.5
The first part of the essay reconstructs how promotional materials, official reports, media coverage and cultural representations have been built around the concepts of professional self-fulfillment and cosmopolitanism. Subsequently, the emergence of Erasmus as an experience of hedonistic pleasure in European newspapers and other cultural representations will be compared with the students’ accounts of their experiences of love and sex.6
Promotion, Media and Cultural Representations7
The EU’s intervention in the spheres of culture and education is a relatively recent phenomenon. Since the 1950s the driving principle of a closer Europe was that legal and economic integration would have automatically fostered a cultural and political one. Soon after this approach’s first signs of failure (i.e., consistent decreasing turnout in European parliamentary elections), and officially with the Maastricht Treaty of 1992 (which had to go through a difficult popular ratification in France and Denmark), the EU actively sought to foster popular European identity through initiatives in the domain of culture.8 The Europeanization of mass education, a desired objective for many pro-European intellectuals and professionals, finally became one of the official areas of EU’s interventions.9 Promoted and inspired by the actions and international experiences of a few key individuals,10 the Erasmus program was launched in 1987. At a time when each European country had its own specific university system and international study exchanges were rare, the program was intended to provide a chance for European university students to study in another European country. The credits earned abroad would get recognized once the students returned to their home university.
A closer look at Erasmus’s promotional material is the first step in reconstructing the image of Europe it portrayed. It is basically a self-celebratory narrative: Erasmus is a happy and successful story because it promotes a cosmopolitan youth ready to perform well in the job market thanks to linguistic and technical skills developed during the study period abroad. From 1987 to 1993, the European Commission reported the achievements of the program with 17 issues of the Erasmus Newsletter. With an enthusiastic but not celebrative tone, each issue of this publication can be read as a journal of Erasmus’s administrative expansion: little by little, more and more universities and students joined the program with successful achievements. From 1994 to 2006 Erasmus entered into the broader education scheme called Socrates. In the information material of this period, Erasmus is always presented with the other educational subprograms of the European Union (Comenius, Lingua, Grundvigt and Minerva). The materials are highly informative and concise. Their main objectives are to explain what Erasmus is, who can apply and describe its achievements. In a document of 2002, Erasmus is presented as a well-established program already quite well known.
Starting in 2007 Erasmus was merged with the scheme called Lifelong Learning Programme (2007–2013). For this period, the materials became even more celebratory, particularly for the 25th anniversary of the program in 2012. Success, creativity, innovation, opportunity are the words constantly used to describe Erasmus. The basic themes and celebratory narrative are still dominant, but starting with the material from 2010 the stories of universities are replaced with individual success stories. The document Erasmus—I am one of the two million who did it is one of the most emblematic of this narrative: 50 pages dedicated to 31 young European students. They are happy and enthusiastic about their experience, the people and cultures they encountered, and for the future career opportunities Erasmus has given them. While maintaining the career benefit and cosmopolitan themes, with this new umbrella program the representation of Erasmus gains a social dimension: Erasmus is a unique life experience where students can find friends, exciting adventures and experience strong emotions.
The media coverage followed a similar pattern.11 During the 1990s the articles about Erasmus were mainly informative in order to boost awareness of the program. In addition, in a decade where the Maastricht Treaty was a new feature of the European Union, news reports about international study exchanges were often positively charged. They depicted Erasmus as a great formative cosmopolitan experience that promised an easier path into the job market. These main characteristics are presented in all the newspapers examined. Also the periodization is similar: In all three countries there are fewer purely advertising articles after 2003 or 2004.
The years 2002 and 2003 are fundamental years for Erasmus’s representation. The French film The Spanish Apartment had a huge effect in the popularization of the program throughout Europe. The movie portrays the Erasmus experience of Xavier, a French student in Barcelona where he shares an apartment with other students coming from all over Europe. In this international context, Xavier and his roommates experience intense feelings and develop strong bonds while coping with their studies, personal problems and dreams about the future.12 The director, Klapisch, depicts a European youth constantly moving between carefree spirits and growing responsibilities. Neither with celebratory messages nor with national stereotypes, the international microcosm portrayed by Klapisch reinforces the beauty of a cosmopolitan European spirit: Even with countless differences Europeans can live happily together.
The impact of The Spanish Apartment on the awareness of the program among the European population is reflected in the decreasing number of informative articles about Erasmus. Indeed, since 2004 an increasing number of articles on Erasmus have been focused on its growing statistical achievements. There is no longer a need to explain what Erasmus is. In fact, it is often used to describe new similar exchange projects (Erasmus for entrepreneurs, Erasmus+, Erasmus Mundus). In addition, with this broader awareness of the program, another theme emerges: More than ever, it is presented as one of the main examples of the European Union’s benefits.
In addition to the media’s coverage, it is possible to identify different forms of Erasmus’s cultural representations. Many students have kept a record of their period abroad on blogs while others have published semi-autobiographical novels. Some of them have told their stories to newspapers, uploaded videos to YouTube or confessed their adventures on online forums. Due to the high variety and number of these representations, this research is limited to sources that can be analyzed in their entirety. In this case the International ESN videos and a group of Italian novels on Erasmus are useful samples of cultural representations of the program.
The Erasmus Student Network (ESN), a nonprofit student association aimed at promoting mobility among European students, is one of the main promoters of extracurricular activities among Erasmus students (cultural trips, meetings, parties, etc.). ESN has released several videos on its activities.13 In these videos Erasmus is portrayed as a positive experience, confirming the same trend of media and institutional discourse. However, here the story is much less celebratory and completely oriented toward the students. First of all, in order to foster a direct message the videos are very short: between two and three minutes. Moreover, they are constructed with a very similar structure: a sequence of images portraying young students in different exciting activities, with quite ubiquitous ESN and EU logos, while a narrating voice-over, coupled with an inspiring emotional tune, exalts the emotions of the viewer. Career benefits are deemphasized and pleasure becomes the most important theme, though it is subordinated to the spirit of cosmopolitanism. Parties, drinks and trips are not portrayed as pure hedonistic activities but as a substantial component of Erasmus. They are portrayed as fundamental experiences capable of fostering a strong bond among people once strangers and now friends for life: “you will use every single day and every hour, you will create memories which will last for the rest of your life, this is your time! Welcome to Erasmus.”14
The insistence on emotion here is fundamental. The nostalgia for Erasmus can be overcome by joining the network, the European motto (united in diversity) bonds the emotions of Erasmus to the European Union, and the stress on the network identifies ESN with the whole of Europe. The social experience and bonding among people are constantly presented over images of happy and excited young and active European students, often portrayed in large groups where the different flags of the European countries wave in the background.
Italian former Erasmus students seem to have privileged autobiographical novels to tell their stories. These sources offer a way to look into what students have experienced during Erasmus, and what they think is worth sharing with a larger public.15
Since 2005, nine novels on Erasmus have been published in Italy.16 All of them are set in different cities (four of them in Spain, the most popular destination for Italian Erasmus students), and seven stories are told by male voices (in contrast with the sex of the average Erasmus student: a woman). However, they share a common characteristic: human relationships and attachment are the core of these narratives. Erasmus is always depicted as a wonderful experience in which the protagonists forge strong relations with other international students, share memorable exciting activities (parties and trips), have sexual adventures and fall in love with other Erasmus students.
The emotional journey of the Erasmus student follows a similar pattern in these books: displacement–happiness–sadness. The arrival to the host country is described as almost traumatic. Newly arrived in a foreign place, unable to speak the local language, the student feels disoriented and scared. However, these same feelings motivate the students to reach out to their peers who share the same conditions. The vortex of party and joyful activities can start. It will be replaced by sadness only at the end of the period abroad, a feeling so particularly sad and widespread that it has gained its own name: the “Post-Erasmus syndrome.”
The motif of cosmopolitanism is ubiquitous. While national stereotypes emerge in each representation, and students tend to associate more with their compatriots, ethnic encounters are never problematic and each book provides examples of friendship and love created among people of different nationalities.
Notwithstanding significant differences in quality and style, these accounts of life in the Erasmus program confirm the prevailing image of Erasmus as a happy experience. Notably, however, the official rhetoric of career benefits and promotion of European identity is completely absent. Erasmus students do not talk about a united Europe, but instead often reflect on the differences between the host and home cultures. In all these novels, students are fascinated by the places they visit and are genuinely interested in the culture they embrace.
Finally, Erasmus is fundamentally portrayed as an enriching, life-changing experience in which, through transgression and strong emotions, young students become aware of different cultures, adult responsibilities and the pleasure of independence: “[Erasmus] has erased my limits, prejudices, assumptions, now I always look for something new, I’m never satisfied, now I’m open to everything. I see unknown people and new places as incredible experiences worth living.”17
The Sexual Thread
The idea that Erasmus fosters sexual encounters leading to love, marriage and the formation of a true European family has found recent echo in the press thanks to the “1 million babies” report of the European Commission on September 22, 2014. Almost every mainstream newspaper in the majority of the European countries reported the news, drawing attention to the Erasmus program’s ability to generate true Europeans. However, a few days after the release of the report, an article in Libération cast some doubts on its reliability.18 As Piquemal and Destelle explain, the term “1 million babies” is not even mentioned in the report. It was a quite complex extrapolation made by the European Commission and presented in a press release; 27 percent of Erasmus students met their current partners during Erasmus. Considering the total number of former Erasmus students since 1987, the 27 percent corresponds to approximately 675,000 students. This number multiplied by the average of children per woman in the EU (1.6) results in one million babies. But the sample of people interviewed for this report was quite small: The 27 percent in reality corresponds to just 4,170 former Erasmus students. What pushed the Commission to advertise and promote this estimate? What did it see in the sexual power of Erasmus? Is this the first representation of Erasmus students’ sexuality or are there more examples in the past?
It is fair enough to say that the person most responsible for promoting Erasmus program’s sexual potential was Umberto Eco: “I call it a sexual revolution: a young Catalan man meets a Flemish girl—they fall in love, they get married and they become European, as do their children.” Indeed, this famous quote of 2012 was already pronounced in similar terms 20 years earlier in a conversation with Jacques Le Goff19 in a 1998 interview for Corriere della Sera20 and finally in 2002 for La Stampa.21
The “Eco component” is then coupled by a second recurrent characteristic: stories of mixed European couples. The year 2012 stands out again as the most prolific year for this Erasmus representation. The major example is provided by the second issue of the special edition of Europa, focused on the “European Generation,” with The Guardian interview of four mixed European couples who met during their Erasmus experience and La Stampa’s similar stories. In addition, Le Figaro, without any apparent link with the Europa publication, provided the example of three other European mixed couples.22 Finally a compelling article shows that even the 1 million babies story was promoted for the first time two years earlier, again in 2012, by Alain Lamassoure, a French member of the Europarliament very active in promoting rights for children born from mixed couples. Interviewed by Le Figarò, Lamassoure defines Erasmus as “an incredible promoter for weddings, but nobody cares about it.”23 It appears that two years later that indifference had disappeared:
“Forget dating sites, Erasmus is the place to find true love”24
“In Erasmus si trovano lavoro e amore”25
“Erasmus, une foule de bébés et moins de chômage”26
Physical and sentimental pleasures become even more important in cultural representations of Erasmus made by former students. It is possible to identify some traces of these accounts in blogs, novels and other digital sources.27
Sexuality is a key theme in all former Erasmus students’ novels. A sexual tension, a will to reach for the other sex is omnipresent.28 Almost all the protagonists describe the struggle to reach the object of their sexual desire. Three novels present the narrator’s sexual adventures as a fundamental part of their narrative. Moreover, in two of them, the protagonist loses his virginity during Erasmus. In all the books, sexual attraction is one of the main drivers of the characters. In some cases, the outcomes of these encounters are love stories that last after the Erasmus period.
A recurrent feature of Erasmus sexual encounters is a tension between the will to enjoy every possible opportunity of sex and the choice of restricting passions to only one partner. On the one hand, the hedonistic Erasmus mantra pushes the protagonist toward the physical pleasure of endless sexual encounters; on the other hand, the ideal of romantic love fosters the attachment only to the loved partner.
Testimonies about sexual adventures during the Erasmus experience can be found as well on the web. Many Erasmus students have written blogs during their period abroad. The eight posts on sex here selected were all published between 2010 and 2014. These sex-talks offer different stories, ideas and opinions. For instance, two Italian students expressly speak about their sexual adventures from a purely materialistic desire: while one of them is happily describing Italian men as sexual magnets for foreign girls,29 the other one has different adventures ending with failure.30 Two posts are particularly compelling because they present behaviors considered unusual in Erasmus. One girl in Braga is almost excluded by other Erasmus students because she is not willing to party every night and constantly look for sex.31 Another girl in France points out the ease of romantic betrayal among Erasmus students, and she wonders about the integrity of her relationship with another Erasmus student.32 On the contrary, a Spanish girl describes her knowledge of new sexual positions thanks to her Erasmus experience.33 And finally, an Irish girl in Cologne describes the sexual attitudes of German guys.34
Even if all these posts vary a lot, each one of them presents the same characteristic: Every student knows that sex is a fundamental component of Erasmus, thus confirming the program’s reputation of pleasure. This idea is so well established that it has produced a number of humorous representations. A group of young Italian filmmakers has comically represented a student desperately coping with the fact that his girlfriend is abroad for her Erasmus.35 One episode of Eurobubble, a comic web series about the people who work for the European institution in Brussels, is dedicated to Erasmus: the “ritual” for every employee of the Eurocrats. The protagonists nostalgically remember the partying and casual sex of their Erasmus experience, in contrast with their current less attractive lives in Brussels.36
Critiques and Counternarratives
The first accounts of Erasmus diverging from its mainstream general narrative of success came from academic research. Was Erasmus fostering a European identity? At first, many works confirmed a strong link between European citizenship and Erasmus. They also showed how this connection was a key concern of the European Commission.37
However, since the late 2000s an increasing number of studies have questioned Erasmus’s effectiveness in prompting a European identity. They have generally pointed out a lower increase in European identity after the Erasmus experience, and Erasmus’s tendency to address students who are already likely to have a strong European identity.38 More recently these results have been questioned: A study demonstrates that Erasmus is in fact a transformative experience because the majority of interviewed students feel more European after their period abroad.39
This ongoing debate has mostly remained in the academy. Nonetheless, disaffection with the program has reached the larger public. While there isn’t a cohesive opposition movement, it is possible to identify certain critical voices. They range from constructive criticism (Erasmus is useful but its implementation is not well developed) to the overgeneralization of some of Erasmus’s characteristics (the program is depicted as sex-tourism paid by the European Union).
Some commentators have expressed their own opinions about Erasmus in national newspapers. Ilvo Diamanti has expressed doubts about the “temporary” and “undemanding” relationships among students in small and medium-sized Italian university towns.40 This almost indirect critique of student mobility provoked a bitter answer from many former Erasmus students, who reaffirmed Erasmus’s ability to create “strong friendships, love stories and […] future babies.”41 In 2012 Giuseppe Sarcina expressed his disillusionment with the process of European integration in Il Corriere della Sera. The author highlights the connection between Erasmus and the sharp decrease of support in the European project over the last 25 years. In the midst of the intellectual and political climate of the late 1980s, when the federalist European project was still strong, European leaders agreed to establish a program to promote cultural values and civic engagement: Erasmus. However, this program, the “flagship of European integration,” receives only 0.7 percent of the European budget. Therefore, what was conceived as a way to foster equality and democratization among European citizens has become “a useful tool for university and professional careers mainly for middle-upper class students.”42
Harsher critiques are directly related to some of the most pleasurable aspects of the program. With a strong polemical tone, the journalist Francesco Maria del Vigo attacked the cosmopolitan and positivistic rhetoric surrounding Erasmus, highlighting how it is often used for political purposes. Erasmus is described as a “gigantic Orgasmus, a sort of under-cover sexual tourism, an orgiastic ritual with a GPA,” and Europe is reduced to “a rabble of people who cannot stand each other.”43 An even stronger critique came from Turkey a few days after the infamous “one million babies” report. Yosuf Kaplan, columnist of the conservative and pro-government Yeni Şafak newspaper, defined Erasmus as “a project to raise foolish droves who pursue degeneration, sexuality and idolize sexuality.”44 Here, two of the main components of Erasmus’s representation, cosmopolitanism and sexual pleasure, are reduced to their extremes: hedonism and absence of national identity. Thus, Erasmus students become “stupid idolaters of sex” and “globalized pagan without roots.”45
Finally, the most substantial and developed critique of Erasmus, outside the empirical research of some scholars, is the satirical novel Homo Erasmus written by the French former Erasmus student Léos Van Melckebeke. His book satirically overturns point-by-point all of Erasmus’s supposedly positive aspects: The fictional character Homo Erasmus, in a grotesque and disillusioned tone, shows how the European rhetoric of “United in diversity,” enhanced by the general discourse on Erasmus, consists in pointless exchanges. Homo Erasmus is depicted in a continuous quest for worthless activities and parties organized by Erasmus associations. Disoriented and without real knowledge of the local language, he is absorbed by the homogenizing Erasmus community in which “everyone overplays his role,” speaks a universal shaky English and shares a futile blathering. Trapped in this hedonistic vortex, the Erasmus student is unable to know and experience the place and culture of his host society: No contact with the locals is established. Fearful of feeling alone and bored, Homo Erasmus embraces his imposed pointless and uncritical epicurean behavior, which could be followed in any part of the world. Thus, no real integration is possible. And even Eco’s infamous declarations on Erasmus is criticized:46
Why should we not propose to each Homo Erasmus an AEP—Assisted European Procreation? A giveaway show ‘Fornicate with Europe!’ […] And also, […] An imposed transnational copulation, a wonderful idea to turn your sexual life upside down! A compulsory mixed wedding for everybody, here you have the ultimate solution to win over the perfidious xenophobe nationalists!47
Van Melckebeke wrote this pamphlet after his Erasmus experience in Bologna. During his period abroad he was very negatively surprised by the lack of curiosity he found in his peers. His pamphlet, however, does not just express a sarcastic disillusionment with the Erasmus program. It is also a wide-ranging critique of a neoliberal society in which consumerism and uncritical thinking prevail. These same values are then shared and perpetuated by the EU in its highly praised Erasmus program. Along with the purported sexual utopia, Erasmus’s supposed benefits of employability and the positive rhetoric of cosmopolitanism are in reality subtle tools used “to encourage people better to conform to neo-liberal democracies governed by financial markets, subjugated by the mantra of performance, endless growth, and the abnormal consumerism of silly glittering objects.” From being the emblem of the true European, Homo Erasmus is nothing more than a crass tourist who doesn’t really try to know the places he visits, he just passes by.48
All these critiques share a common fundamental characteristic: They are negative opinions about Erasmus expressed during or after the European debt crisis.49 Indeed, all the critiques reported here are associated with a general disillusionment with the European project. Even if the attack comes from a conservative commentator or a disappointed student, the positive rhetoric of Erasmus has come to be perceived as excessive and fundamentally wrong when compared to the economic, cultural and sociological reality of crisis. Moreover, none of these critiques are real counternarratives. Erasmus’s characteristics are never denied; instead, they are often exaggerated and then the outcome is condemned.
Conclusions
Since its early years, Erasmus has been enthusiastically represented with an undisputed narrative of success built on the themes of career benefits and a spirit of cosmopolitanism. This conception reached a mainstream audience after 2003 through positive media coverage and successful cultural representations (such as the film The Spanish Apartment). However, starting around 2005 and with the growing European identity crisis,50 the institutional representation of Erasmus became more emphatic and rhetorical. Erasmus has become even more symbolically charged, since the economic crisis of 2009, when its sexual theme was combined with ideas of European ethnic identity. The emphasis of media and institutions is even more striking compared to Erasmus students’ accounts and cultural representations where discussions about Europe are almost absent. At the same time, after 2005, when awareness of European troubles was growing, Erasmus as an unquestionable success story came to be criticized.
Why is Erasmus so appealing to EU’s elites? Because it seems to be one of the few concrete ways to create a European identity that could reach a popular consensus. How so? Because it combines two different strands of a modern transnational Western regime of happiness: a Europe that ensures economic stability (promise of job market competitivity) and hedonistic pleasure (sex and romance). In addition, the more the incertitude around the European project has increased, the more the appeal to the hedonistic and sexual component of Erasmus has gained further prominence in the discourse of EU institutions, European media and intellectuals. This is mostly for two reasons: a) sex is the concrete act that allows the birth of multinational new European citizens, thus literally fostering closer union among Europeans; b) numerous examples have shown how often an increased discourse around sexual matters corresponded to troubled identity crisis.51
In the current political and cultural European context—one registering the rise of xenophobic, nationalistic, populist and anti-European political movements—Erasmus’s appeal is even greater, and it has certainly contributed in strengthening a positive image of a united Europe. But, the whole discourse of EU elites on Erasmus has some problematic contradictions. First, as of 2010 Erasmus students corresponded to only 2 percent of all European students (Ballatore 2010, 16), while the budget allocated to support the program roughly corresponded to 0.8 percent of the whole Union’s budget: quite low numbers when compared to the importance and emotional charge given to “Europe’s last hope.”52 Secondly, the rhetoric on sexual relations among Erasmus students resembles some of the most problematic aspects of nationalist discourses around sexual identities and norms. Indeed, it provides a narrow and selective idea of what future Europeans should look like: Christian, white and heterosexual.
Hopefully, something is changing with Erasmus+, the new EU education initiative started in 2014. Confirming the EU’s reliance on the Erasmus model, Erasmus+ includes international exchanges also for young European sport and professional apprentices and its budget is greater than that of previous years.53 Moreover, at least on a communication level, Eurocrats have promoted ideals of social equality and environmental concerns. Nonetheless, ethnic and religious minorities are kept outside fortress Europe and its representations, even if some initiatives have fostered more connections among Europeans and non-Europeans (i.e., Erasmus Mundus).
The Erasmus program is a truly life-changing experience, one that could concretely contribute in building a happy and successful Europe. To achieve this final transnational happiness, European institutions and politicians should concretely implement the program with greater institutional funds, instead of depleting its enormous potential by using it as a mere rhetorical tool. At the same time, European media coverage might as well develop a more nuanced narrative, one that portrays diversity and communality, concrete realities in Erasmus experiences, instead of its straightforward and banal representations ranging from heteronormative romance stories to exaggerated moral outcries. This is not the solution, but it could be one way to start approaching the conception and development of a postnational Europe without iterating its nationalist flaws.
1The Ventotene Manifesto is not an official act of the European Union (EU), but it is the founding political manifesto for the post-1945 European Federalist movement, written by Altiero Spinelli, who is seen as one of the Union’s founding fathers. The Treaty of Rome established the legal basis for the ECC (European Economic Community), the predecessor of the current EU, which in turn was officially established with the Maastricht Treaty.
2A clear reference to one of the historical figures perceived to be part of the intellectual European past, ERASMUS stands for EuRopean Community Action Scheme for the Mobility of University Students.
3Duggan analyzes how the neoliberal political agenda has recently incorporated gender equality and human rights in its rhetoric (Duggan 2003); El-Tayeb explores the different cultural practices, such as music, art and poetry, some communities of immigrants of color (in the Netherlands, France and Germany) use to resist a hegemonic discourse that depicts a “raceless” European identity (El-Tayeb 2011); Mitchell explores the contradictory behaviors of Western gay sex tourists, showing how their claims of human rights and gender equality are based on a market-driven logic and on consumerism (Mitchell 2011); Vance denounces the instrumental use of melodramatic structure in recent documentaries on sex-trafficking, which entertain and absolve rather than promote the understanding of sex-trafficking complex issues (Vance 2012).
4Scott shows how the construction of national identity is gendered (and sexualized). In the case of France, the polemics over the public use of the veil by certain French Muslim women are understood as symptoms of social and identity troubles (Scott 2005). Kulick shows the changes in Swedish gender equality ideology: ideals of gender parity, individual fulfillment and progressive feminism are more and more strictly bounded to a hegemonic ideal of romantic relationship where love and sex cannot be dissociated (Kulick 2005). Graff analyzes the anomalous proliferation of gender talks and images, reaffirming heterosexual gender model with male predominance, since Poland’s accession into the EU (2004). This phenomenon is read as a symptom of Polish anxieties over the processes of Europeanization and globalization that threaten Poland’s young autonomy and national identity (Graff 2005).
5It is possible to find an extensive sample of the bibliography on Erasmus made by the French agency 2e2f (CIEP 2012). These studies have investigated various subjects such as a quantitative assessments of the project (Teichler 2004), students’ profile (Souto-Otero, Huisman, Beerkens and De Wit 2013) (Eurostudent n.d.), the social composition of Erasmus students (Ballatore, 2010), the formation of friendship during the Erasmus experience (De Federico 2008), Erasmus’s identity changes over time (Dervin, Abdallah-Pretceille and Suomela-Salmi 2009), the sociological and theoretical dimensions of Erasmus (Murphy-Lejeune 2003), students’ cultural identity changes during the period abroad (Papatsiba 2003), Erasmus’s impact on career benefits (CIEP 2012, 43–53) and the relation between Erasmus and European identity (Sigalas 2010, Wilson 2011, Kuhn 2012, Wilson 2014, Mitchell 2015).
6The primary sources here taken into account cannot represent the totality of all Erasmus representations. Nonetheless, this research addresses a vast variety of sources from institutional promotional materials, newspapers articles, videos, films, blog posts, novels, etc. A great amount of this material is addressed to what may be identified as a general European audience, while other sources are only for national audiences. The countries mainly analyzed are Italy, France and the United Kingdom. Even though this is only a small selection of all the EU’s countries, those are three of the five nations most involved in the Erasmus program (France, Germany, Spain, Italy and the United Kingdom are five most chosen destinations by Erasmus students and the countries with the highest number of outgoing students). If not otherwise stated, quotations from non-English sources have been translated by the author.
7Erasmus has advertised itself mainly through two kinds of sources: the European Commission’s informational materials and articles in newspapers. The information material consulted for this research comprises 32 publications issued by the Publication Office of the European Union: European Commission, “EU Bookshop,” n.d., http://bookshop.europa.eu/it/home/ and the tentative study of the leading newspapers of three European countries most affected by the Erasmus program: Le Figaro, The Guardian and Corriere della Sera.
8The emergence of the EU cultural policies is well detailed and reconstructed in Cris Shore, Building Europe: The Cultural Politics of European Integration. Routledge, 2000.
9As Shore describes in his book, the EU’s action in the realm of culture included the invention of new symbols (e.g., EU’s flag, hymn), a bolstered information policy aimed at fostering a positive image of the EU, the promotion of a celebrative narrative of European historiography and the insistence on a gender-attentive EU, that is, “Women of Europe Award.”
10Most notably Sofia Corradi (a pedagogue and early promoter of increasing international exchanges among European universities and students), Hywel Ceri Jones (who holds numerous key roles in the administration of Erasmus’s experimental and initial phases) and Franck Biancheri (organizer and promoter of AEGEE, Association des États Généraux des Étudiants de l’Europe).
11These data have been collected from three major newspapers (The Guardian, Le Figaro, Il Corriere della Sera) of three of the five nations (France, Germany, Spain, Italy and the United Kingdom) with the highest number of outgoing students. The same countries are also the five most chosen destinations by Erasmus students. This is a first and tentative sample, but the research could provide more systematic results by including the other major newspapers of the five countries most involved in the program. http://ec.europa.eu/programmes/erasmus-plus/tools/infographics/inforgraphics-languages/most-popular-erasmus-destination_en.jpg; http://ec.europa.eu/education/library/statistics/aggregates-time-series/table1_en.pdf.
12Cédric Klapisch, The Spanish Apartment, Comedy, Drama (2002). Release dates for each country: France (2002), Italy (2003), the United Kingdom (2004).
13The official YouTube International ESN channel page contains 21 videos. This analysis is focused on five videos, produced between 2011 and 2014, constructed as promotional and inspirational descriptions of Erasmus. On the same web site, there is an enormous number of local ESN agencies whose channels have numerous videos. A great part of them are meant to promote specific local activities and meetings rather than a broader picture of what Erasmus is. Thus, these videos fell out of scope for this study.
14Patrick Doodt and IESN, Welcome to Erasmus—If Erasmus Had a Trailer, 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKY3scPIMd8&feature=youtube_gdata_player.
15In France Léos Van Melckebeke wrote Homo Erasmus in 2012 while in Spain several former Erasmus students published books on their experience.
16Francesca Barzanti, La Mia Irlanda (L’Autore Libri Firenze, 2005). Walter Melillo, L’ occhio dell’Erasmus (Editing 2006).Viviana Segantini, Back for Good (Panda Edizioni 2008). Davide Faraldi, Generazione Erasmus—e adesso che fai? (Reggio Emilia: Aliberti, 2008). Lorenzo Vecchio, Quando Lorenzo Visse a Barcellona. Quaderni E E-Mail Della Borsa Erasmus (A & B 2008). Davide Chiara, Se Solo Mia Madre Sapesse (Boopen 2010). Andrea Atzori, Brogliaccio del nord. Peripezie di uno studente Erasmus in Estonia (CUEC Editrice 2011). Tommaso Merlo, Lo swing della generazione Erasmus (Tommaso Merlo 2014).
17Fiorella De Nicola, “Intervista a Francesca Barzanti, Autrice de ‘La Mia Irlanda,’” July 16, 2008, http://web.archive.org/web/20150408030720/http://www.ierasmus.com/europeme/2008/07/16/intervista-a-francesca-barzanti-autrice-de-la-mia-irlanda.
18Marie Piquemal and Noémie Destelle, “Un Million de Bébés Erasmus, Vraiment ?,” https://www.liberation.fr/, September 24, 2014, http://www.liberation.fr/societe/2014/09/25/un-million-de-bebes-erasmus-vraiment_1107840. Press release available at: https://web.archive.org/web/20150308092636/http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-14-1025_en.htm.
19Pierre Huguenin and Jean Chichizola, “Eco Le Goff. Europei, Pirati Della Tortuga,” La Stampa, November 29, 1992, http://www.lexisnexis.com.ezproxy.gc.cuny.edu/lnacui2api/api/version1/getDocCui?lni=3TDH-KK30-008G-K1M0&csi=140957&hl=t&hv=t&hnsd=f&hns=t&hgn=t&oc=00240&perma=true.
20“Eco: Solo Fuori d’ Europa Mi Sento Europeo,” August 5, 1998, https://web.archive.org/web/20150308051227/http://archiviostorico.corriere.it/1998/luglio/05/Eco_solo_fuori_Europa_sento_co_0_9807052418.shtml.
21“Dialogo Sul Futuro Tra L’ottimista Eco E Il Pessimista Enzensberger,” La Stampa, Gennaio 2002.
22Anne-Noémie Dorion, “Trois Couples, Trois Façons de Vivre l’Europe,” October 22, 2012, https://web.archive.org/web/20150308064848/http://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/2012/10/22/01016-20121022ARTFIG00696-trois-couples-trois-facons-de-vivre-l-europe.php.
23Anne-Noémie Dorion, “Erasmus, 25 Ans, Un Million de Bébés; L’Europe Tente de Sauver de La Faillite Ce Programme D’échange.,” Le Figaro, Ottobre 2012.
24The Independent, September 24, 2014.
25Corriere della Sera (Italy), September 23, 2014.
26Le Monde, September 23, 2014.
27The purpose of this paragraph is not the systematic reconstruction of Erasmus students’ sexual practices. For this, it would have been necessary to interview a substantial sample of Erasmus students. Here, the main point is to provide a first assessment of individual student narratives of their sexual experiences and see how these stories are related or not to media and institutional discourses.
28In the institutional, media and cultural representations of Erasmus here analyzed there are no accounts of non-heterosexual desires. But, this does not mean that non hetero-normative relationships are absent in real Erasmus experiences. Further research is needed to identify the reasons for this absence.
29Thescamanti, “Sesso Facile, Sesso Sicuro, Sesso Erasmus,” March 4, 2012, https://web.archive.org/web/20150214211451/https://unpuglieseamadrid.wordpress.com/2012/03/04/sesso-facile-sesso-sicuro-sesso-erasmus/.
30Francesco, “Erasmus: La Cronaca Rosa Di Francesco: La Tipa Olandese,” June 8, 2012, https://web.archive.org/web/20120608070535/http://guidamadrid.altervista.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=erasmus:la_cronaca_rosa_di_francesco:la_tipa_olandese.
31Anitta, “Being an Erasmus – Experiencing Braga,” September 4, 2012, https://web.archive.org/web/20150213230207/http://blogit.jamk.fi/experiencingbraga/2012/09/04/being-an-erasmus/.
32“Erasmus Lifestyle | Foreign Status,” April 26, 2013, https://web.archive.org/web/20150213230342/https://meinedelweiss.wordpress.com/2013/04/26/erasmus-lifestyle/.
33Alejandra, “Sex in the Erasmus—From a Place in the World,” March 26, 2010, https://sites.google.com/site/fromaplaceintheworld/home/english-articles/sex-in-the-erasmus.
34Erica, “Ich Hab Wanderlust: Erasmus Orgasmus,” Ich Hab Wanderlust, March 28, 2013, https://web.archive.org/web/20150213230030/http://hab-wanderlust.blogspot.com/2013/03/erasmus-orgasmus.html.
35The Pills, The Pills—L’Amore Ai Tempi dell’Erasmus, 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKY3scPIMd8&feature=youtube_gdata_player.
36Charlélie Jourdan and Old-Continent, S1E08 Eurobubble Episode 8—Erasmus, 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKY3scPIMd8&feature=youtube_gdata_player.
37Iain Wilson, International Education Programs and Political Influence Manufacturing Sympathy? (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 69.
38Emmanuel Sigalas, “Cross-Border Mobility and European Identity: The Effectiveness of Intergroup Contact during the ERASMUS Year Abroad,” European Union Politics 11, no. 2 (June 1, 2010): 241–65. Iain Wilson, “What Should We Expect of ‘Erasmus Generations’?” JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies 49, no. 5 (September 1, 2011): 1113–40. Theresa Kuhn, “Why Educational Exchange Programmes Miss Their Mark: Cross-Border Mobility, Education and European Identity,” JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies 50, no. 6 (November 1, 2012): 994–1010.
39Kristine Mitchell, “Rethinking the ‘Erasmus Effect’ on European Identity,” JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies 53, no. 2 (March 1, 2015): 330–48.
40Ilvo Diamanti, “Quando Gli Studenti Si Prendono Le Città,” Repubblica, November 11, 2007, http://web.archive.org/web/20150418160124/http://www.repubblica.it/2007/11/sezioni/cronaca/perugia-uccisa2/studenti-citta/studenti-citta.html.
41“Gli Interventi Degli Studenti Erasmus,” December 4, 2007, http://web.archive.org/web/20150418155827/http://www.repubblica.it/2007/12/sezioni/scuola_e_universita/servizi/studenti-erasmus/studenti-erasmus/studenti-erasmus.html. Laura Wilfinger, “Omicidio Meredith, Basta Con La Fatwa Anti-Erasmus,” December 7, 2007, http://web.archive.org/web/20150418192014/http://www.cafebabel.it/eurogeneration/articolo/omicidio-meredith-basta-con-la-fatwa-anti-erasmus.html.
42Giuseppe Sarcina, “Erasmus l’Europa Incompiuta,” June 24, 2012, http://web.archive.org/web/20150418191143/http://lettura.corriere.it/debates/erasmus-leuropa-incompiuta/.
43Francesco Maria del Vico, “Basta Con La Generazione Erasmus!,” July 1, 2014, http://web.archive.org/web/20150418195915/http://blog.ilgiornale.it/delvigo/2014/07/01/basta-con-la-generazione-erasmus/.
44Sevil Erkus, “Turkish National Agency Pledges to Keep Erasmus Program,” October 1, 2014, http://web.archive.org/web/20150418203749/http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkish-national-agency-pledges-to-keep-erasmus-program.aspx?pageID=238&nID=72379&NewsCatID=510.
45“Comment Erasmus Est devenu ‘Orgasmus,’” Courrier International, accessed April 17, 2015, https://web.archive.org/web/20150417181401/http://www.courrierinternational.com/article/2014/09/29/comment-erasmus-est-devenu-orgasmus. Pinar Tremblay recollects Kaplan’s critique to the recent Turkish government’s broader intervention on sexuality: This process reflects the conservative conception for which the state has to intervene in order to “fight moral wrongs involving unsolicited mixing of the sexes, polygamy, women’s clothing, abortion, right to employment and education.” Tremblay Pinar, “Why Are Turkey’s Conservatives Obsessed with Sex?,” October 8, 2014, http://web.archive.org/web/20150418203921/http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/10/turkey-conservatives-talk-sexuality-control-society.html.
46Léos Van Melckebeke, Homo erasmus: critique de la léthargie nomade (Paris; Lugano (Suisse): Éd. Dasein ; Circolo P. Eldritch, 2013), 12–27.
47Ibid., 22.
48Ibid., 21, 39.
49Except for Ilvo Diamanti’s opinion that is nevertheless related to local sociological and economical problems of some Italian urban societies.
50The failure of the European Constitution in 2005, which led to great debates especially in France and the Netherlands, and the adoption of the Lisbon Treaty in 2007, which was contested as well in Ireland.
51This literature is succinctly described earlier in this essay in footnote number 4.
52This is an approximate calculation since I was not able to find a specific reference to this measure. For the years 2007–13 the EU’s budget corresponded to €864.3 billion. The Life Learning Program, the umbrella initiative covering Erasmus and other initiatives, received €7 billion, which corresponds to 0.8 percent of the total EU’s budget for the same years. European Commission, https://web.archive.org/web/20180823152204/http://ec.europa.eu/education/lifelong-learning-programme_en; European Commission, Press Release: “Q&A on Interinstitutional Agreement on Budgetary Discipline and Sound Financial Management 2007–2013” Brussels, May 17, 2006, https://web.archive.org/web/20180823152426/http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-06-204_en.htm.
53€14.7 billion for the years 2014–20, which corresponds to a 40 percent increase of the previous program running from 2007 to 2013. European Commission, Press Release: “Green light for Erasmus+” Strasbourg/Brussels, November 19, 2013. https://web.archive.org/web/20180822232320/http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-13-1110_en.htm.
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