‘A resilient Europe’? The representation of European society in the national recovery and resilience plans

In recent years, the concept of resilience has rapidly proliferated across the social sciences and policy domains, with evolving and often ambiguous meanings. Drawing on critical discourse analysis as a theoretical and methodological framework, this paper investigates how resilience is conceptualised in the European Union’s National Recovery and Resilience Plans (NRRPs), introduced following the COVID-19 pandemic. I demonstrate how the representation of a ‘resilient Europe’ functions ideologically, naturalising economic priorities while marginalising social diversity. The concept is deployed strategically to frame crises as opportunities for growth, thus obscuring systemic inequalities. I argue that NRRPs discursively construct an ethnocentric vision of Europe around a colour-blind logic that excludes racial and ethnic minorities. The analysis reveals that the resilience discourse aligns with neoliberal and exclusionary governance structures that reinforce existing power relations.