The Bologna Process and higher education in Mercosur: regionalization or Europeanization?

Over the past two decades regional agreements have become more significant in educational and training. This paper situates and analyses the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), the Bologna Process and the Lisbon Strategy and explores their influence on the integration of higher education systems in Mercosur (the Southern Common Market of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela). Mercosur is still a customs union, and the project of integrating higher education is at an early stage. Lacking organically established regional bodies, coordination of integration in Mercosur has focused on summits and meetings of officials. However, in a context of unequal maturity in regional integration, there is emerging evidence that the EHEA project is influencing the reforms of national systems of higher education and even Mercosur’s model for a regional area of higher education. A nascent Europeanization of higher education systems in the Mercosur region is emerging, by-passing Mercosur’s regional structures. The formulation of policies has been permeated by policy transfer from Europe to national territories within Mercosur.