The paper traces the discourse articulated on policy documents and processes of European Higher Education Area (EHEA) configuring social dimension as a core element of higher education systems across Europe today (Kooij, 2015). The policy topic of social dimension has been present in the agenda of Bologna Process since 2001, however it is only recently that its meanings and practices have been stabilized (Rome Communiqué 2020). Literature on the critical analysis of this policy is rather limited, while the policy on social dimension is relevant to the core issues e.g. of academic trajectories, access, participation, retention and inequalities in higher education.
In the present study a discourse analysis has been conducted on the Ministerial Communiqués of the Bologna Process (2001-2024) and on the implementation work of BFUG in the period 2020-2024. The critical discourse analysis of the policy documentation produced in the long-lasting Bologna Process has revealed a complicated evolution of the policy on social dimensions regarding 1. the social purposes to which higher education is linked, as well as the operational objectives of the universities, through which this educational policy derives legitimacy at each period of the process; 2. the means adopted to mitigate the constraints which distinctions, exclusions and inequalities impose on individuals both at the time of their admission to university and during their studies at university; and 3. the mechanisms for policy formulation and promotion of the social dimension as elements of governing from the distance in the EHEA. At a second phase, and in order to confront this complexity and reveal the deeper logic of the policy, the study exploits an advanced discourse analysis, informed by the archaeological method with the aim to understanding of the norms and the potentials/ limitations that the policy on social dimension creates for the European HE systems and institutions to enact today (Grimaldi & Ball, 2021).
This presentation will focus on the analysis of the Annex II (Rome Communiqué 2020) under the title “Principles and Guidelines to strengthen the Social Dimension of Higher Education in the EHEA”. This document essentially establishes the policy discourse of EHAE on the social dimension offering a common definition and ten principles for its implementation, which are specialized in guidelines for the higher education systems and institutions to adjust. The definition of “social dimension” reflects the idea that it should operate as a general regulatory principle of the complex field of higher education with the objective to enhance and promote social awareness and aspects of social justice in European universities. In particular, the principles and the guidelines link social dimension with a range of specific interventions and transformations across the whole spectrum of governing higher education (legislation, administration, academic practices, financial resources, infrastructure and support services, data collection systems, consultation with public authorities and others) with the aim to tackle the complex problems of inequality and discrimination in the field of higher education.
Drawing on Foucault’s method, as implemented in a set of studies on governmentality and education platforms analysis (Dean, 2006, Grimaldi & Ball, 2021), the study addresses the document as an epistemic exemplar- a regime of practice- that operating like the document Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area (ESG) (Sarakinioti & Philippou, 2020), forms the spatial and temporal conditions (structures, cultures, etc) which European higher education institutions have to fulfill in order to compline with the discourse of social dimension.   

Following this literature and critical argumentation (Grimaldi & Ball, 2021: 116), four aspects of analysis are delimited on the articulation of the policy discourse on social dimension: a. fields of visibility, i.e. ways of seeing and perceiving that are characteristic of the social dimension in the European systemic, instructional and individual sites of practice and their interrelations; b. forms of rationality i.e. ways of thinking and questioning on social dimension, specific vocabularies and procedures for the production of the truth; c. forms of knowledge, i.e. certain bodies of knowledge that mobilized to govern thoughts, desires and activity of individuals/ systems; d. modes of identity formation, that is identification of ways of forming subjects of certain kinds. Three processes of formation of social dimension inscribed on the policy document of the Ministerial Communiqué- Annex II have been analysed (ibid): 1. the formation of social dimension space and the reasoning according to which the objects and subjects are constructed (meanings, institutions, students and staff etc.) 2. the temporal and special conditions that frame educational experience in higher education, and its teleological features in terms of the social dimension 3. the kind of norms through which experience in HE and its subject(s) are classified, valued and differentiated. This kind of analysis allows the study to identify a distinctive set of meanings and tensions that demarcate the spatial and temporal configurations within which the constitutive elements of social dimension become apparent for public authorities, HE institutions and individuals (students and staff) in this policy framework of EHAE.

The analysis hopefully opens a field of problematisation, highlighting social dimension as a strong regime of practice for the years to come and as space of possibilities for practices and identities in the field higher education. Reconstructing the findings of the analysis on the norms and the temporal and special restructurings of HE promoted by social dimension policy, a diagram on the possibilities of its enactments has been developed. The meanings of social dimension are defined as both inclusivity and quality; while HE subjects are made visible, knowable, and governable through social dimension within a. the spatial range between hyper-contexuality and strong structures and b. the temporal tension between linearity and co-existence. The linear and strong regulation of the institutions correspond to measures of legislation, monitoring, quality assurance mechanisms, funding etc and the hyper-contextual and co-existed practices of social dimension correspond to measures of connectivity, flexible learning pathways, mobility, community engagement, counselling and guidance for students and staff. The study reveals strong governance technologies that aim a. to re-regulate the boundary relations between HE, the state, and societies, b. to transform relations within HE regarding social meanings and internal rules and practices of distribution of knowledge and power to promote inclusion and quality. This development signals, as the study argues, the strengthening of the standardized and steering form of governance of the European university established earlier by policies of quality assurance. This shift highlights quality and inclusion as core discursive elements on social dimension on the basis of a managerial and compensatory logic that depoliticise the issues of social inequalities and instrumentalises the diversified social and academic needs of the students. This put pressure or creates new dilemmatic spaces for the universities to reconsider their mission and academic practices, and possibly re-inventing social dimension.

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