Mobility of cultures and knowledge management in contemporary Europe

Abstract

In the aftermath of the fall of the Iron Curtain, the European Union (EU) has included more and more new member states from Central and Eastern parts of the European continent. This enlargement process has increased the cultural diversity of the European community as new languages and minority groups have been subsumed into the EU. It is the purpose of this article to discuss the challenges that result from the EU's enlargement, together with the added intra-European mobility of cultures, that affect the national knowledge infrastructures. Based on recent social scientific scholarship on mobility and cultures, this article proposes that knowledge management in contemporary Europe is not only a technological or organisational issue but also a cultural question. Since people are free to move within the EU, it becomes of greater importance not only to increase our understanding of other cultures but also to ensure that member states can provide public services for EU citizens arriving from other cultural regimes. The paper shows that, because of the increased mobility of cultures, national knowledge infrastructures have to be opened and remodelled. New forms of collaboration between national knowledge systems are needed to guarantee the equal treatment of people representing different cultures in contemporary Europe.