Regionalism through higher education in South America: copycat or copyright?

PERROTTA, DANIELA.

Buenos Aires

Conferencia; FLACSO ISA Joint Conference Global and Regional Powers in a Changing World; 2014

Área de Relaciones Internacionales de FLACSO & International Studies Association

Regionalism through higher education (HE) in South America has been frequently analysed with the lenses of the European process of HE convergence ?mainly, the Bologna Process? and the hegemonic theories for understanding regionalism. This has led several scholars to declare the inconvenience of South American regional integration policies for the HE sector as there is a lack of basis of convergence of the HE systems and certain regulatory flaws regarding the institutional framework and the governance procedures of our regional integration agreements. Therefore, the aim of this proposal is to shed light on the process of regionalism of HE in South America (specially within MERCOSUR) from a broader analysis that takes into account the dominant discourses, theory, frameworks and concepts about regional integration, on one hand, and HE regionalism, on the other, so as to transcend them by incorporating other perspectives. By means of such an insight we pose a delicate question: are HE regional policies a copycat from the European experience or has the South American regional built an autonomous position that could be characterized as its own copyright?