"This research project consists in analysing the influence and effects of European policies on national transformations in the fields of reconciliation between paid work and private life and anti-discrimination. More precisely, this research project ambitions to contribute to the understanding of the concrete mechanisms thanks to which the EU contribute to the transformation of national models of reconciliation and anti-discrimination, not by imposing a common model or precise reforms but by providing actors with resources useful for their political work and strategies. In this sense, the development of an approach based on the “national usages of Europe” will contribute to the academic debate on the Europeanization of public policies. The research question that will be examined in the EQUALUSES project is whether the utilitarian shift in policies combating discrimination and reconciling paid work and private life at the EU level has also occurred at the national level and what has been the possible influence of the EU on national developments. In order to do so, this project will compare policy reforms in Belgium, Sweden and the United Kingdom since the beginning of the 1990s, while attempting to identify the EU’s role in these evolutions. From a theoretical standpoint, this project aims at participating to the “sociological turn” in the study of the European Union and to complement the dominantly institution-focused approach of this literature, which has led to an underestimation of the discretion and role of political actors in the adaptation processes, especially by taking into account new social practices opened up by the process of Europeanization. From a methodological standpoint, the use of CAQDAS techniques and Qualitative Comparative Analyses will provide some grounds for ‘modest generalization’ beyond the 3 core country cases."