ABSTRACT
Welfare and Values in Europe (WaVE) was a research project funded by the European Commission 6th Framework Package in response to a call for research on “values and religions in Europe”. Specifically, the call invited studies aiming “to better understand the significance and impact of values and religions in societies across Europe and their roles in relation to changes in society and to the emergence of European identities”. The Commission asked for an exploration of the following:
how religion is sometimes used as a factor in social mobilization, solidarity or discrimination; the processes leading to tolerance or intolerance and xenophobia; and the challenges that religious, ethnic and cultural diversity may pose to legal, educational and political systems in European countries. The research is to impart insight on ways to ensure peaceful coexistence of different value systems through comparison of the differing ways European countries address these issues with various policies and practices and their relative degrees of success in this. (EU FP6 call, 2005)
