Unthinking the European Higher Education Area - differentiated integration and Bologna's different configurations

Differentiated integration was conceived of as a political methodology and as a technology to achieve a European "union" in the field of knowledge policies. However, the non-achievement with regard to the political goals of the European Higher Education Area has highlighted the limitations of this approach to promote furthering the EHEA. In this paper, unthinking is both a research strategy aiming to question those limits and a pedagogical tactic to question the assumptions about the futures. As a research strategy, articulations between unity and diversity are examined. Based on the analysis of the documents endorsed by the Education Ministers in keeping the pace of the Bologna process, the paper contributes to expand knowledge on the nature of Bologna's differences and underlines the paradoxes in dealing with those differences. As a pedagogical tactic, unthinking questions the assumptions about the future scenarios sketched for higher education. Alternative ways to further integration are discussed on the basis of the idea of integration of the "differences", bringing to the centre education as a political concern, as higher education institutions, professors, and students/graduates are those at the core of the political management of the "differences".