The proposal compares public policies (Hassenteufel, 2005) of three European member States - France, Italy and Slovenia - at the crossroads of social inclusion and education. The study analyzes transformations of categorizations, legislation, actors, and knowledge in this policy area, and how these emerge in the three States, as well as how the European strategy linked to the paradigm of social investment is translated and enacted in national contexts. We give an explanation of the convergences and divergences in the implementation of the European strategy concerning social inclusion in education.

Several research questions are addressed: how have discourses and institutions evolved and impacted these member States throughout Europeanisation? Who are the actors that participate in the enactment of these policies, as well as their transformation? How does the policy transfer of the European strategy impact on ongoing policies in France, Italy and Slovenia?

To address these questions, we are inspired by political sociology, and, more precisely, the French sociology of public action and policy instruments (Lascoumes & Le Galès, 2005). We take some concepts from the cognitive analysis of public action, such as the construction of public problems (Gusfield, 1981/2009 ; Cefaï, 1996), as well as from governmentality studies (Foucault, 2004 ; Tremain, 2005 ; Miller & Rose, 2008). We analyze how policy solutions to «public problems» are formulated at European level and then adapted and translated in France, Italy and Slovenia.

Furthermore, we provide a sociology of actors in differentiating programmatic (Genieys & Hassenteufel, 2012), intermediate (Nay & Smith, 2002) and peripheral ones. This approach allows us to elaborate national maps of these distributed actors, as well as their differences and similarities from one country to another.  

Using also the theoretical framework of policy transfer developed by Dolowitz and Marsh (1996, 2000), we further discuss the extent of the European strategy in national policy spaces.

The research work is based on different methods. First of all, we present a genealogy to better understand the similarities and differences in the enactment of social inclusion policies in education in the three countries. We thus use primary and secondary sources related to the field of education and welfare policies that refer to social inclusion and education. Laws, statistics, historical and official documents from the three countries and the European Union were analyzed. We enriched this corpus by interviews with some actors that were involved in policy changes. We also used network ethnography (Ball, 2016) to follow actors on the local, national and European scales. We created different maps of actors with the software Gephi, coupled with 31 interviews that helped us to better understand and explain policy networks in social inclusion in education. We also observed and analyzed several events and conferences related to this policy area.

On the basis of the collected data, it is possible to reveal some similarities and differences in the Europeanisation of social inclusion policies in education in France, Italy and Slovenia. In adopting European standards, national solutions and responses vary. We conclude that what we observe in this policy area is not really a complete process of Europeanisation. We show the emergence and role of private actors, such as various associations financed by the European Union, as well as other international organizations, fundations, and philanthropists, in the process of implementation of diverse European ideas, programmes and projects. However, the sustainability, the coherence and the scaling-up of these European projects remains at stake, while State policies seem to remain predominantly autonomous from the European trends.

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