Acknowledgements This content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence. See Terms and Conditions. Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources for permission to reproduce material in this unit: Sally Pawlik, Careers consultant
8 Sources of references Virtual voluntary work
7 FAQs These questions represent general issues about ‘getting started’, but they have a particular focus on special requirements, whether it’s about volunteering for particular age groups or virtual volunteering for those with a lack of regular time to commit, or problems with mobility. 1.2 Standing out from the crowd ‘Volunteering looks great on your CV….It’s the perfect way to get a taste of working life and gain skills and experience’ Employers are impressed by voluntary work, but what are the hard facts about this? Research carrie 1.1 Introduction Recent findings show that volunteers report higher ratings on the measures of life satisfaction, happiness, and feeling that the things they do in life are worthwhile. Last year the number of people volunteering at least once a month rose to 29%, which may be thanks in part to the high profile volunteering received References 1.9 Conclusion If we try to recapitulate what we have done in this course two main areas need to be considered: is there likely to be a European identity in the near future? and how important are national sentiments going to be? While it could be said that by the end of the twentieth century the EU had become a reasonably integrated economic space politically, and especially at the cultural level, progress was limited. But even at the economic level, areas like labour mobility were still very low in t 1.8.1 What happens next? The next ten years are likely to be momentous for the history of Europe. However, in the same way that no social scientist was able to predict the collapse of the Soviet order, it is pointless to speculate on possible but improbable scenarios. At this point it is only possible to project toward the future on the basis of the existing parameters; the more accurate and detailed our knowledge of the present trends is, the more likely our forecasts are to have some success. Europe is at a c 1.7.2 Summary The EU is an economic, juridical and, to a certain extent, a political reality but a single European public space has not emerged yet. The establishment of European citizenship could play a crucial part in fostering a common European public space. European citizenship could encourage Europeans to play a more active role in EU affairs and participate in governance processes. 1.6.2 Education Education is obviously one of the crucial dimensions in any attempt to develop a future European identity or at least more understanding and convergence among Europeans. If the school made the nation, it should also be a key factor in promoting Europeanness. Observers of the school scene in Europe acknowledge the existence of a growing sentiment of interest for European themes (institutions, politics, peoples, languages). Furthermore, the EU-based exchange programmes have recognised the impor 1.5.2 Summary The development of a European identity will be the outcome of a long process in which bottom-up as well as top-down initiatives are likely to be employed. 1.5.1 A true community of Europeans? Ray Hudson (Hudson and Williams, 1999) has maintained that the formation of a true community of Europeans is important and desirable, and that it will not follow automatically from the converging of linguistic and cultural practices. It is difficult to envisage the disappearance of national differences, though they may be less pronounced in the future. What seems to be clear for Hudson is that only by looking at the future can a European identity be created; the past, unless highly sanitised, 1.4.2 Unification and the EU With the development of the EU an arena for collective action has appeared. But, as we shall see in SubSection 1.4.3, it is rather limited and it cannot be compared to the public sphere of the member states. Although collective actors have reacted to the emergence of new European-based institutions, due to internal constraints not 1.3.2 Summary The shifting character of European geographical boundaries is illustrated by Turkey and the other twelve countries from Central and Eastern Europe which are currently negotiating access to the EU. The boundaries of Europe change depending on whether Europe is defined in terms of institutional structures, historical geography or observed patterns of social, economic and political interaction. 1.2.2 Summary The results of successive editions of the Eurobarometer show that in most EU countries only a very small percentage of people, around 5 per cent, declare having an exclusive European identity, while up to 50 per cent do not have any sense of European identity. European political identity is weak and there is a great variation across states. Acknowledgements The content acknowledged below is Proprietary (see terms and conditions) and is used under licence.
Course image: Falcon® Photography in Flickr made available under Author(s): Keep on learning   There are more than 800 courses on OpenLearn for you to 1.12.2 Constructing discursive spaces Finally, the notion of discursive space draws attention to the broader social practices which construct such spaces. Thus social scientists and discourse researchers have been interested in the practices of production of newspapers and the media and in the ways in which economic and technological developments construct discursive spaces. E-mail, the internet and computer-mediated communication are good examples of how changing practices produce new spaces which construct new kinds of discursi 1.12 The politics of representation We turn now to consider Diana as an icon, as the subject of discourse. It could be said that Diana and the many words written about her form a discursive space (Gilbert et al., 1999; Silverstone, 1998). She is the rather enigmatic centre of many competing representations of royalty, femininity, democracy, the family, morality, celebrity, fashion, private versus public life which jostle with each other. Such a discursive space is a place of argument. To use another metaphor, it i 1.9.2 To sum up Such an analysis reinforces the notion of discourse as a form of work or labour. It also implies a strategic speaker. But, again, is this the case? Are speakers strategic in this way or just doing what comes naturally? It can suggest, too, a duplicity in Diana's actions. Potter is not implying this, however. Rather, as knowledgeable speakers and competent members of discursive communities, we are all, like Diana, skilled in a range of methods for accomplishing different activities such as sta
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