The new nationalism emerging across much of Europe is ready to forgo and forget lessons of history that had successfully domesticated and democratized the nations of the EU over the last 70 years. If the nation, however, is an important resource for integration, and integration is seen as a common project for both its citizens and its migrants, how can it be reimaged and supported to live up to this difficult and important task? This article will analyse these problems in the light of new and older concepts.

Two developments in recent decades – the rising attention to children’s rights, and the growing importance of the digital environment – seem on a collision course, with children’s rights arguably more infringed than benefited by the digital world, and with efforts to promote children’s rights in a digital world seen by some as threatening the freedom of expression that digital networks enable. Here, I set out the case for realizing children’s rights in relation to the digital environment, and then examine the difficulties that arise. Most recently, the status of the child online is shifting from one of invisibility to one of hypervisibility in an increasingly datafied world, and the child’s right to privacy has rapidly become the most contested of all the rights. With challenges ranging from that of identifying who is a child online to reining in the economic power of the major digital platforms, states seem to be facing an impasse when it comes to taking effective action. The result is a series of stark policy choices which leave all stakeholders dissatisfied. I conclude by proposing a series of interventions focused less on the actions regarding particular child rights and more on the legal and institutional processes and standards by which all rights could be better realized in a digital world.

People build bridges in many ways, and not least over time, spanning the different epochs that define their lives. For social anthropologists, this process is far from self-evident. Diverse ways of thinking about transitions summon anthropology’s traditional mode of making bridges, cross-cultural comparison. This account thus interweaves materials from Europe and Melanesia. Stimulated by an ethnography of an East German town being precipitated into a new world, it focuses on abrupt transitions and their recurrence. What is happening when a radical break with one kind of past is also recalled as looking forward to a moment when another kind of past might finally come into its own? Pursuing such paradoxes, the article turns to today’s Papua New Guinea where many have seen colonialism – like socialism – come and go in a lifetime. People’s aspirations for the future, raising questions about the abruptness of breaks and the crisis that new times create, throw out challenges as to how to envisage worlds old and new.

Amongst the most significant extreme meteorological phenomena are the Sand and Dust Storms (SDS). Owing to significant amounts of airborne mineral dust particles generated during these events, SDS have impacts on climate, the environment, human health, and many socio-economic sectors (e.g. aviation, solar energy management). Many studies and reports have underlined that the society has to understand, manage and mitigate the risks and effects of SDS on life, health, property, the environment and the economy in a more unified way. The EU-funded European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) Action ‘InDust: International network to encourage the use of monitoring and forecasting Dust products’ has an overall objective to establish a network involving research institutions, service providers and potential end users on airborne dust information. We are a multidisciplinary group of international experts on aerosol measurements, aerosol modelling, stakeholders and social scientists working together, exchanging ideas to better coordinate and harmonize the process of transferring dust observation and prediction data to users, as well as to assist the diverse socio-economic sectors affected by the presence of high concentrations of airborne mineral dust. This article highlights the importance of being actively engaged in research networking activities, supported by EU and COST actions since common efforts help not only each scientist by shaping their expertise and strengthening their position, but also all communities.

What follows is the result of a workshop on ‘mobility’ organized by the History & Archaeology Section of the Academia Europea at the AE Wrocław Knowledge Hub on 3 and 4 September 2018. The topic of ‘mobility’ is understood here in its paradigmatic sense. It takes into account the mobility of human beings, goods, animals and plants, diseases or knowledge, including infrastructure, effects on environment, societies and politics, gender issues, transport, etc. At the same time, a historical dimension may serve to bestow upon such a paradigm the perspective given by time when applied to different patterns of mobility. However, the bridge is not only between past and present, but also between disciplines, both within and beyond the realm of humanities and social sciences. The purpose of this workshop, therefore, was to consider strengthening the links between the two component disciplines of the Section concerned, namely History and Archaeology, while at the same time consolidating our disciplinary voice within the Academia Europaea and establishing a constructive dialogue with other sections of the Academia.

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals for 2020–2030 include areas such as climate change, economic inequality, innovation, sustainable consumption, peace and justice. The topic of migrations comprises broad concepts of socio-cultural, religious, political, economic, environmental and technological movement and change. The consensus seems to be that the future lies in cooperation across disciplines. The question of this paper is: how far can social scientists go or want to go down this road?

International boundaries are man-made separation lines. All of today’s boundaries were created in the past, sometimes years, sometimes decades, even in some cases centuries ago. Thus, international boundaries reflect the historical moments in the life of a State, when its limits were made according to its force and ability at a given time. Understanding the process of boundary making and the location of boundaries can become a bridge of research and knowledge between three major scientific areas – history, geography and political science.

This article presents the concept of contemporary mobility in relation to the writings and actions of the Situationist group, particularly in Guy Debord’s concepts of urban dérive and psychogeography, as reflected in his last film In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni (1978). Connecting different disciplines, the paper examines the concept of mobility in its relation to history, philosophy, art and urbanism.

The worldwide transportation sector remains 93% dependent on the oil industry. While other economic sectors in developed nations have begun to decarbonize in recent decades, greenhouse gas emissions from transportation have continued to rise. This article examines how automobiles came to be so dependent on a finite and socially detrimental resource when electric and ethanol-powered vehicles have always offered distinct performance advantages, and how the latter vehicles fell from socio-political favour to technological lock-out.

The kings’ travel patterns in thirteenth-century Norway raise the question of the relationship between geographic and social mobility. A clearer social hierarchy would reduce the king’s need for travelling and the introduction of permanent and professional administrators would mean that these people would visit the king rather than vice versa. Moreover, the king did not travel exclusively for political reasons, but also for hunting and other entertainments and on pilgrimages. The changes in this field form a significant part of the development of European monarchy.

This paper addresses the theme of mobility in the context of late medieval political thought, more specifically, the rhetoric of royal charters issued in England and the Holy Roman Empire in the fourteenth century.

Public works began, at least in the Spanish Empire, after the failure of Christopher Columbus’s governance in the Antilles. The foundation of cities in the Americas was a colonization strategy. Urban republics formed a network to support the kingdoms of the Indies for more than three centuries. Far beyond traditional and nationalistic explanations, it was precisely the ability to establish bridges – social, as well as material – that explains the resilience and durability of this network until 1825.

In this article I discuss intercontinental migration during the early modern period. The discovery of the New World sparked a large-scale movement lasting more than four centuries. Before 1800, only 2 to 3 million Europeans availed themselves of the opportunity to move to the New World. Colonial powers, therefore, turned to Africa and transported about 11.5 million slaves to America. After 1850 and the gradual abolition of slavery, the migration of Europeans increased dramatically, but these migrants avoided the former slave regions. Some areas therefore resorted to the importation of Asian indentured labourers, mainly from British India.

The global refugee crisis has reignited long-standing debates about how to successfully integrate religious minorities into liberal democratic societies. In the United States, security fears, particularly connected with terrorism, are preponderant. In Western Europe cultural fears seem to dominate, with many misunderstanding Islam as a direct threat to the norms and values that bind their societies together.

Will Kymlicka’s liberal theory of justice and of minority rights provides a useful explanation of why the rights of national cultural minorities are worthy of being protected. Kymlicka argues in particular that minorities’ exploitation of their own cultures (read: languages) supplies them with the possibility to make some meaningful (life) choices. It follows, then, that deprivation of such exploitation constitutes a deprivation of individuals’ liberty. Kymlicka’s liberal theory of justice and of minority rights, however, is deficient in the two major respects. In the first respect, it is plagued by ambiguities as regards Kymlicka’s theoretical treatment of justice as a factor that helps to account for the change of states’ policies towards national cultural minorities. In the second respect, it accords remarkably little room, at the end of the day, to the possibility of there being legitimate concerns shareable by majorities rather than minorities regarding minority rights claims in ethnic politics. It follows, then, that re-thinking of received insights is called for.

As one of the building blocks of the fourth industrial revolution, artificial intelligence has attracted much public attention and sparked protracted discussions about its impact on future technological, economic and social developments. This contribution conveys insights into artificial intelligence’s basic methods and tools, its main achievements, its economic environment and the surrounding ethical and social issues. Based on the announced and taken measures of the EU organs in the area of artificial intelligence, the contribution analyses the position of Europe in the global context.