Comparative insights into local responses to the European Social Fund

Chapter 5 presents insights how local responses to the ESF look like, both in a qualitative and descriptive manner, and in a more formalised, quantified way. In a first step, the chapter presents descriptive snapshots how usages of Europe look like in the empirical reality and then illustrates the situation across the 18 local cases. The same is done for ESF-induced change. In a final step, the chapter draws a comparative picture of local patterns of usage and change. Here, three different configurations of usage and change stand out empirically: cases where no usage and no change was observed, cases with usage but no change, and cases with both usage and change.