INTRODUCTION perhaps too partisan. In Konjic, between Sarajevo and Mostar, an international so­cial science summer school was supported by this Norwegian initiative – actually still going strong – and later on a number of seminars were held with participants from this part of the world as well as from the Far North of Europe(Kuhle and Sokolovic 2003 including Lindvall in this volume). The ambition was to overcome wartime hostilities far from the military battlefields, and to improve cooperation on the academic level within the former Federation and between European scholars irrespective of civic or ethnic nationalities. In Bergen, Norway, as well as on the campus of the Inter-University at Dubrovnik students and scholars met to discuss the contemporary challenges of social policy and social work(Kuhnle 2005). To my mind, this was a fruitful program, though not without its impediments. Elderly colleagues from Zagreb and Beograd brought up under Djilas, Kardelj and Tito had an easier time to talk to each other than younger ones from the same cities and uni­versities with a wartime intellectual formation. The Ivory towers were not unaf­fected by imprisonment, civil wars and ethnic nationalisms. The universities of South Slavic Europe has continued and most likely will con­tinue to do academic cooperation both between the various new nation-states and republics – all of them with the exception of Montenegro and the territory of Kos­ovo are represented by academics at this Conference here today – and within the larger Union. Students and scholars come and go between the countries in and around the union when the necessary economic resources are available through various Erasmus, Linnaeus and Socrates programs, also those from the social sci­ences. For instance, Scandinavian social policy has continued to puzzle those ac­tive in building a welfare society and state, likewise, the role of social movements and the strength of the trade union movement of the Far North(Kjellberg 2007). In this part of the world, one Swedish university and its School of Social work have been particularly active in this field of higher education. These are promising signs, but it is still too early to proclaim victory for the civilizing process. Still, human societies are cruel, violent, societies, and this is a fact that social policy, social work and the social sciences has to acknowledge and take into account. For in­stance, that Kurdistan at present – and maybe“forever” – is part of the European or West Eurasian border zone to Iraq and Iran, part of Mesopotamia. To End Demography also matters. Apart from ethnic nationalism, there is also civic na­tionalism(Nairn 1999). Europe is not yet united, far from that. An over-burdened Constitution that was rejected by voters in France and the Netherlands have been renamed and may even be adopted in the years to come but most likely without giving birth to an even larger and more participatory Union community. Top-down is the order of the day. Nevertheless, the smoke coming from Berlin, Paris, London and Brussels gives no clear signal. Whether there will be a Union that stretches from the Atlantic to Ural is an open question most likely waiting for an answer far 23