Data Practices

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What is 'Europe' and who are 'Europeans'? This contemporary political and theoretical question is approached as a practical problem of counting. Through various data practices, such as censuses, EU member states ascertain their national populations, which the EU then uses to understand Europe's demographics. This volume examines data practices not merely as reflections of populations but as performative; they both constitute a European population and contribute to the formation of a European people. The work develops a conception of data practices to analyze findings from collaborative ethnographic multisite fieldwork conducted by an interdisciplinary team as part of a five-year project, Peopling Europe: How Data Make a People. It focuses on how data practices categorize people and the implications of these categorizations in enacting Europe as a population and people. Five core chapters delve into categories such as usual residents, refugees, homeless individuals, migrants, and ethnic minorities, exploring how they are defined, estimated, recalibrated, and inferred through specific data practices. Two additional chapters discuss the key roles produced by data practices: the data subject and the statistician subject.