Call for papers: ‘Religion and European Integration’, 9th Pan-European Conference of the European International Studies Association (EISA) (Section 55 on ‘Transnational Religion, Conflict and Dialogue’, convened by Jeff Haynes and Luca Ozzano)
Wednesday 23 – Saturday 26 September 2015, Giardini Naxos, Sicily, Italy, http://www.paneuropeanconference.org/2015/
Convenor: Simona Guerra, gs219@leicester.ac.uk
Prospective participants can propose a paper by sending an abstract of up to 200 words to the convenor at gs219@leicester.ac.uk by January 15, 2015.

Abstract:
This panel invites paper proposal that would seek to examine why, when and how religion can use a Eurosceptic narrative. As stressed in the literature, comparative research on the involvement of religious actors across societies is quite infrequent. Anna Grzymala-Busse (2012) suggests that the role of religion itself is fundamental to examine identity, the state and institutional actors in comparative political studies. This is critical in the post-Communist region where the repression of the Churches from the Communist regime froze affiliations, but did not halt people’s beliefs. The process of democratization provided the opportunity to the Church to reorganize itself and fill the possible political vacuum left by the Communist regime; on one hand, at the EU level, religious communities opened their offices in Brussels, while on the other, at the domestic level, the rewriting of the past could trigger a new religious revival across the former communist region. Although Catholicism never represented a determinant factor impacting on negative attitudes the EU integration process, it could become a source for EU opposition and influence a Eurosceptic narrative in the religious public discourse.