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Do citizens that live close to the border of another European country feel more European? We suggest that border proximity affects European identity formation, but that the positive effect of border proximity is confined largely to areas where citizens live close to regions with better quality of government and lower levels of corruption. Using our newly collected individual level and post-coded data from the most recent wave of the European Quality of Government survey, covering over 129,000 respondents in all 27 European Union member countries, we show that citizens that live close to the border of another country express a stronger European identity, all things being equal. Yet the effect is driven largely by citizens that live adjacent to regions with relatively higher/lower quality of government compared to their own region. Our study thereby contributes to a closer understanding of where and why citizens become attached to Europe, and if and how benchmarking institutional performance and quality of government affect citizens' willingness to belong to, and identify with, Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do citizens understand political authority within multi-level systems? We use original survey data from six European Union member states to assess the roles of political identity and interest in shaping citizen attitudes towards political authority in the European Union. We find that citizens with a greater interest in politics are more likely to express views on the authority of the European Union. These individuals are less likely to be uninformed. Interest does not necessarily mean that individuals hold correct perceptions. A substantive number of voters are misinformed about the power of Brussels. We find that citizens with an exclusively national identity are more likely to hold misperceptions than those who think of themselves as both members of their nation and as Europeans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article takes the concept of spatial imaginaries to explore how the post-Brexit negotiations shifted meanings of 'Europe' for Polish migrants residing in Scotland. A flourishing subfield of 'Brexit geographies' has explored the meaning and consequences of Brexit (as an event, process and affect) for wide-ranging communities on the move and in place. Yet, the question of how 'Europe', and in particular 'EUrope', is being re-imagined and re-constituted by EU migrants residing in uncertain political spaces remains understudied. In this article, we address this lacuna through analysis of biographical narrative interviews and spatial mapping exercises. In doing so, we conduct a multi-scalar analysis of Polish migrants' discursive and visual representations of EUrope, defined both as a geographical and institutional space. The study is spatially and temporally situated at a particular time and place in the Brexit timeline – the summer of 2019 in rural and urban Scotland. At this time, Brexit negotiations were ongoing, there was widespread uncertainty about the consequences for migrants in the United Kingdom, and, in Scotland particularly, much resistance to leaving the European Union. The article argues that while Brexit might have not affected European identity among Polish migrants in Scotland, it has prompted them to reconsider their place in Europe and to reimagine both the geographical and conceptual parameters of EUrope. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although research has questioned the stability of identities, we know little about identity change. I examine a political event as a driver of identity change, namely the Brexit vote. I contend that the act of voting, choosing between two options, boosts the European and British identity underlying the vote choice. I test whether the increased identification with Europe or Britain comes with a reduction in the other identity. Using British Election Study panel data in a two-way fixed-effects design, I show that voting to remain increases identification with Europe but voting to leave does not increase British identification for Leavers. However, voting has no impact on how Remainers identify with Britain or Leavers identify with Europe. The results contribute to the growing literature on the link between politics and identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the history-based research networks funded by the Framework Programmes for Research and Technological Development (FPs). It sheds light on the interactions between the European Commission and scholars – Commission-appointed experts, funded researchers, but also scholars who disagree with the EU memory policy. Even if the scholars' influence is significant, the FPs remain an instrument in the hands of the European Commission. The visions of the history of Europe brought forward are in conformance with official narratives highlighted by works on other EU memory policy instruments. This leads to a confrontation between 'authorised' and alternative narratives at European level. While the institutionalisation of European research networks as a form of knowledge production which is intended to be specifically European contributes to shaping 'Europe', the idea of the emergence of an autonomous 'European memory space' nevertheless deserves nuancing because of the FPs' fragmented nature and of the role that national academic levels continue to play. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will compare and contrast Visegrád and Southeast European mobility towards (and away from) the European Union (EU) ideal of cohesion, in the process investigating conflicting "core" and "peripheral" assertions of "Europeanness." Though the Visegrád states have exceeded economic expectations, they have to varying degrees stood in opposition to the values of the EU's self-professed "European identity," with Hungary and Poland in particular demonstrating increasing illiberalism. Meanwhile, in Southeast Europe, lacklustre economic performance has tended to contrast with increasingly liberal democratic rule and strong popular support for the EU "project." The EU's cohesion strategy has prioritized economic convergence and, ultimately, this has meant that budgetary considerations, and political rhetoric and scrutiny, have often favoured the rebellious but economically resurgent Visegrád states over the weaker economies of a more compliant Southeast Europe. The EU's integration strategy of constructing "identity hegemony" depends upon both economic and socio-political convergence. This paper questions the congruence of these focuses, given the discriminatory application of integration incentives and the persistence of Orientalism/Balkanism in West European rhetoric. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tom Lanoye's 'theatre novella' Fort Europa: Hooglied van Versplintering (Fortress Europe: A Canticle of Fragmentation) (2005) features a range of characters who probe Europe's possible future by turning to its past. The Eurocentric heritage narratives on which they draw perpetuate an idea of Europe as a civilization founded on Christianity and on the Enlightenment and racially defined as White. The way in which Lanoye stages these conservative narratives and the way in which he employs irony, however, invites critical reflection, thus calling for a postcolonial perspective on Europe and on European heritage. We approach Fortress Europe as a literary text that reflects on and intervenes in dominant heritage discourses. Through close reading, we investigate how this work stages and engages with European heritage and how it thereby explores specific ideas about European culture and identity. Our focus is on the literary means by which Lanoye reflects on the place of heritage in narratives of Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the role of European Union Cohesion Policy in the development of European identity, drawing on an original and representative survey in 17 regions across 12 member states. We advance a theoretical model which distinguishes cognitive, instrumental and communicative drivers of identity formation. Contrary to existing scholarship, we find that EU Cohesion Policy does contribute to European identity. Citizens that perceive benefits for themselves and for their region's development from EU Cohesion Policy are more likely to develop a European identity. We also find that awareness of the EU Cohesion Fund and exposure to publicity on EU funded projects is positively correlated with European identity. However, while Cohesion Policy contributes to citizens' self-categorization as European, it does not associate with their emotional attachment to Europe. The study has important implications for understanding European identity formation and communicating the benefits and role of the EU in regional policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reflects on historical arguments about migration in conceptualisations of Europe, highlighting an ambivalent support of migration within Europe on the grounds of mutual cultural enrichment. There is a strong tradition, dating back to French and German eighteenth-century thinkers, such as Herder, Voltaire and Fichte, of citing cultural diversity, plurality and exchange to construct an idea of Europe. 'Europolitanism', the ideal of Europe as an open space of welcome movement and unprejudiced exchange, conceals, however, exclusionary tendencies: exchange has never been intended for all social groups. Contemporary theorisations of Europe, based ostensibly on cultural exchange, synthesis and plurality, have their roots in Romantic and Enlightenment thought, but then as now there are questions to be asked about participation in pan-European identity formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Europe has recently become closely associated with LGBTQ rights. It remains unclear, however, what is the role of this association in everyday European imaginations and identifications. Empirical research on European identity hardly ever discusses the role of LGBTQ rights. Nor do we know much about European identifications of LGBTQ people themselves. In this article, I address those gaps from the perspective of Polish LGBTQs in the UK. Drawing on 30 interviews from a recent two-year research project, I discuss my participants' European imaginations and identifications by developing the concepts of 'uncanny Europe' and 'protective Europeanness'. I show how my participants tend to view Europe as 'diverse', 'open' and 'tolerant', while attributing those characteristics exclusively to Western Europe. I also demonstrate that they tend to readily identify as European in the context of increasingly hostile national identities, with the increasing anti-Polish xenophobia in the UK and growing anti-LGBTQ discrimination in Poland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In January 2019, 30 leading European intellectuals, including Bernard-Henri Lévy and Orhan Pamuk, pronounced that 'the idea of Europe is in peril'. Their voices added to a general sense from all corners of the European continent that the liberal narratives that have sustained the European Union integration project are under attack. Is it true, as Pamuk suggested, that Europe no longer makes us dream? What would it take to reactivate Europe's ability to inspire? Aligned with Sudeep Dasgupta and Mireille Rosello's approach of queering European culture, I imagine the possibilities that might emerge if we reenergise Queer and Europe with their original radical potential. In my reading of Panos H. Koutras' film Xenia, I ask the following: what happens if we imbue Queer Europe with a grammar of hope instead of a grammar of hopelessness? I posit that Xenia queers the space between the European centre and periphery in its celebration of 'diva citizenship' and in so doing, the film reconfigures a Europe in the present continuous rather than the past and future tenses. Such a reconfiguration widens the scope to imagine new cartographies that map European culture in alternative frameworks. A Europe of Stories, I suggest, emerges in the space that this new cartography opens up. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reflecting on the articles in this special issue of European Union Politics, this essay first asks whether EU scholarship has sufficiently conceptualized and measured what it means to identify with the European Project and/or the European Community. The evidence in this special issue indicates that many citizens now have attachments to Europe, albeit in uncertain depth. European attachments also exist in combination with or as an alternative to national identities. European/national identities also now overlap with partisan attachments, potentially forming a new basis of political cleavage. The research in this collection demonstrates a rich portfolio of methods to examine this important topic, and yields new evidence of how geographic identities are related to public opinion on issues such as immigration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, there has been greater scholarly enquiry into explaining variation in support for European Union membership. We theorise that one cause of such variation is likely to be non-political psychological predispositions, such as one's personal values. We test this proposition by applying Schwartz's theory of basic human values to predict voting intentions in hypothetical referendums on EU membership. We theorise that these values determine both voting intentions and more proximate explanatory variables of support for EU membership: attitudes to immigration and identifying as European. Using data on 13 countries from the European Social Survey (N =24,703 citizens) and multigroup structural equation modeling, we demonstrate that this psychological framework effectively predicts voting intentions, notably in terms of the consistent cross-country evidence for indirect effects of values on support for membership via European identity and attitudes to immigration. We then discuss the implications of our findings, including differences in effects between countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does European state building go hand in hand with European nation building? This article engages with the scholarly debate on the dynamic relationship between the construction of supranational political institutions that exert key functions of sovereignty and collective identities by investigating the extent to which the adoption of the Euro as a currency is associated with a decrease in the share of Europeans who identify exclusively with their nation and not with the European Union. In detail, by using a dynamic panel-data model on 26 European Union countries in the post-Maastricht period (1996–2017), our results show that the Euro has fostered European identity, leading to a small but significant decrease (-3%) in the share of Europeans with exclusive national identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article intends to review the relationship between European organization and diversity. Europe lives in the legacy of division of nation and ethnicity as its main source dating from the nineteenth century. Although a hyper-real Europe has emerged overcoming its deeply divided meaning, the memory of the dividing past lives in other guises. I intend to look at current lines of division (east and west, north and south, new and old, rich and poor), considered as critical fault lines in European identity formation, turning to the notion of narrative identity, which builds upon philosophical accounts of identity in terms of continuity of self and collective consciousness, thus upon the story of space-time which makes sense for the individual and for the cultural group. The focus is intended to be on the potential for cross-fitting of particular narratives and their embedding in wider narratives (political and cultural, including values), on the potential of imagining of European unity, on uniting chronicle cultures and restructuring the interaction of multiple identities on political as well as on ethical grounds. The approach is linked to perspectives from Judt, Berlin, Delanty, Garcia, Gilbert, Nikolaidis, Trenz and also refers to the so-called 'narrative turn' in European studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We argue that the geographic distribution of power across different levels of government influences citizens' attachments to alternative collective groups. In federal states where authority is shared between the center and regions, individuals are more likely to have attachments to multiple groups. We present evidence for the impact of state structure on collective attachments using the case of supranational European identity. We show that in countries where state structure empowers sub-state governments, individuals manifest stronger attachments to a supranational European community than they do in unitary states. This study indicates that when we examine individuals' attachments to a collective group, the political-institutional context in which these individuals are embedded is an important factor to consider. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cross-border mobility has long been seen as a mechanism to promote a collective political identity; however, the results of empirical studies on young people have been inconsistent. The present work extends previous research on the effect of cross-border mobility by considering the effect of cross-border friendships drawing on the intergroup contact theory of Allport as well as the common ingroup identity model of Gaertner and Dovidio. This longitudinal study examines the role of cross-border friendships in the development of a sense of transnational political community that transcends national boundaries, i.e. the European Union. The results rely on a two-wave sample of 1294 Italian adolescents and young adults. Cross-border friendships significantly predicted identification as European, attitudes toward the European Union, political beliefs about the European Union, trust in the European Union, (negatively) political alienation, and political participation at the European level and intention to vote at the next European Parliament elections, even after including baseline levels of outcomes as well as relevant socio-demographic factors (i.e. gender, age, majority/minority status, educational qualification, parents' education level, family income, and socioeconomic status) in the model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses the current 'refugees/migrants crisis' and Brexit as illustrative of the numerous challenges the European Union faces today when it comes to its identity and the construction of a 'European citizenship'. By discussing the proliferation of borders on the European continent and by analysing the sociological significance of such proliferation, the article argues that Europe is experiencing an ontological and epistemological rather than an existential crisis that relates to its incapacity to acknowledge, and critically engage with, its fundamental neo-colonial and neo-liberal matrix. The article argues that the stalemate experienced by the European Union with respect to its regional and global relevance can only be overcome by bringing to the surface buried or disqualified knowledges about 'who counts as European' beyond whiteness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Euro crisis has revealed severe conflicts between EU member states and challenged a shared European identity. This article investigates how the crisis was reflected in identity constructions in media discourses in EU key countries. European identity construction is conceptualized as framing of the EU in favour or against belonging to the EU and togetherness with other members. Conducting a systematic content analysis of two weekly newspapers and magazines in Germany, France and the UK, we compare identity constructions between 2011 and 2014. Findings show that while support of belonging to the EU is low in general, the countries differ remarkably in terms of their sense of togetherness. This particularly applies to strong or weak political integration, market regulation or market freedom and financial stability or impulses for economic growth. The positions reflect long-term political conflicts between the countries but are also flexible enough to adapt to the particular event context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To date, most accounts of the UK's vote to leave the EU have focussed on explaining variation across individuals and constituencies within the UK. In this article, we attempt to answer a different question, namely 'Why was it the UK that voted to leave, rather than any other member state?'. We show that the UK has long been one of the most Eurosceptic countries in the EU, which we argue can be partly explained by Britons' comparatively weak sense of European identity. We also show that existing explanations of the UK's vote to leave cannot account for Britons' long-standing Euroscepticism: the UK scores lower than many other member states on measures of inequality/austerity, the 'losers of globalisation' and authoritarian values, and some of these measures are not even correlated with Euroscepticism across member states. In addition, we show that the positive association between national identity and Euroscepticism is stronger in the UK than in most other EU countries. Overall, we conclude that Britons' weak sense of European identity was a key contributor to the Brexit vote. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the Spanish and German contexts of philosopher José Ortega y Gasset's Europeanizing cultural mission before the First World War, culminating in his first published book Meditations on Quixote (1914). Ortega saw in the genius of Cervantes' Don Quixote both a source of latent European cultural ideals preserved in Spain's past and an exemplar of tragicomic heroism fit to defend these ideals in the face of twentieth-century modernity. Using Georg Simmel's concept of 'the tragedy of culture' as a way to give shape to the problem of decadence and the idea of cultural salvation in Spain and Europe in and around 1914, I show how Ortega seized on the German ideal of Bildung as the European cultural ideal to regenerate Spain, after which Spain would save Europe. Here the idea of Europe served as both the vehicle and the aim of cultural salvation. By analysing Ortega's project of overcoming decadence and saving culture in the decade leading up to the war, I show how the discourse of European identity took shape in relation to the search for the authentic identities of self and nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The enlargement of 2004 and 2007 significantly transformed the European Union in political, economic, and social terms. It also challenged the collective identities of Western Europeans as well as each of the newcomers. However, for new members, the prospect of joining a supranational political entity posed a threat to their newly established or regained sovereignty and nationhood. The integration triggered a process of redefinition of both their self-perception and the perception of Europe as a common project. The article offers a case study of how the Polish Members of the European Parliament discursively (re)construct national and European identities and how these constructions relate to each other. The analysis reveals three main visions of the European identity that are voiced by the Polish representation and corresponding visions of national identity. By focusing on the supranational level of the European Parliament and contextualising the analysed constructions with references to national debates, the study is able to nuance the existing theoretical accounts of European and national identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Commission aims to understand the extent of which European citizens feel that they belong to the EU, assume their European identity and think of themselves not only as national citizens but also as citizens of Europe. Using data from the European Commission's Eurobarometer Surveys to proxy European identity and multinomial logistic regressions, this paper examines whether the transfer of resources to subnational tiers of government (i.e. fiscal decentralisation) and/or the transfer of powers to subnational tiers of government (i.e. political decentralisation) influence a European sense of belonging in comparison with national belonging. The results show that fiscal decentralisation is a powerful promoter of European identity, while there is no strong evidence that political decentralisation has reinforced it. Moreover, men, middle-aged people, highly educated people, single and people who are very satisfied with their life feel more European than others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article suggests that both territorial and symbolic borders ought to be treated as specific cultural forms enabling the exercise and practice of cross-border communication. The notion of active border is introduced as a nexus of the transnationalization of public spheres and identities in Europe. Active border is interpreted as a border that supports and produces both public criticism and social integration without generating antagonism toward those from "over borders." Contrary to active border, passive border entrenches stereotypical negative identities and cognitive foreclosures and is a significant hindrance in positive identities formation. The concept of active border contributes to the broad sociological context of Europeanization and transnational public spheres and identities formations in which questions about cultural change and plurality should be discussed. It tries to offer a novel interpretative perspective on processes of transnationalization in Europe and beyond. This article draws inspiration mainly from Edward Shils's typology of collective identities, Erik Erikson's concept of identity formation, and Gerard Delanty's typology of cultural encounters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

European identity is currently facing important challenges. From the beginning, European identity has been related to the national identities of Member States with different economic strengths. The recent economic recession made these disparities salient across countries. In this research conducted in two countries with relative low status in the European Union (EU), we explored whether the perceived disparities in wealth between the countries of the EU—perceived economic inequality—predicted disidentification with Europe. We also examined the mediators of this relationship. Study 1, conducted in Spain, revealed that perceived economic inequality positively predicted disidentification with Europe; importantly, this effect remained when controlling for individuals’ subjective socioeconomic status and the perceived status of the country. The experience of fear of economic inequality in the EU mediated this relationship. The results of Study 1 were replicated comparing a Spanish sample (Study 2a) and a Greek sample (Study 2b). These studies delved deeper into the specific appraisals of fear that mediate the relationship between economic inequality and disidentification with Europe. Four categories of fear appraisals obtained in a preliminary qualitative study were measured as potential mediators: losing national sovereignty, worsening of living conditions, being negatively stereotyped, and Europe losing fundamental values. The relationship between economic inequality in the EU and disidentification with Europe was mediated by fear of losing national sovereignty and fear of Europe losing fundamental values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The EU has weathered the financial crisis but continues to face a host of challenges: its role in international politics, the scope of security and defence cooperation, the question of how to redefine the concept of 'sovereignty', the societal impact of technological disruption and migration, and the general anxiety among the EU's population in relation to globalisation. In this context it is important for the EU to remain confident in itself and its sense of identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The free movement of persons in the EU has been thought of as reflecting an ideal of supranational solidarity within the single market. However, over the past decade, it has become a source of political contention among European peoples. Much attention has been paid to Western European, anti-EU sentiment regarding Central Eastern European migration. Yet euroskeptic populism has recently risen within the eastern EU as well. Despite this phenomenon, less attention has been given to discursive views of the free movement of persons in the eastern expansion countries. This contribution takes issue with transactionalist and utilitarian approaches to identity formation. It argues that resilient national identity shapes the perception of national interests regarding the market-based citizenship promoted by the EU institutions. Through qualitative analysis of the high-circulation popular Polish press, this study finds that when viewed through national identity–based interest perceptions, the free movement of persons is not framed in terms of “actual” economic benefits or opportunities. Instead, it is framed as a dubious benefit of EU integration, in relation to many obligations of EU membership. In contrast, the press discourse examined here frames intra-Union migration as the continuing unfortunate necessity of emigration. Thus, national identity conceptions may influence the eastern EU press narrative, causing it to frame the free movement of persons negatively, in terms of perceived interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Framework for Key Competences (2006) promotes a shared European identity as a priority for assuring a cohesive future for the European Union (EU), yet the development of a discrete European identity remains acutely contentious, with critics claiming it is too shallow to support the bonds of solidarity needed to engender and support a shared ‘future together’. Most EU member states now have some sort of citizenship curriculum within their state education systems and most are aware that such programmes are difficult to introduce, to teach and to assess within conventional school curricula. However, much of the citizenship education literature tells us that educators are conscious of the problematic nature of exploring citizenship identities. Drawing on both philosophical perspectives and an empirical investigation undertaken by one of the authors, this paper argues that issues of belonging may prove a useful way to explore wider conceptions of citizenship. The research was designed to examine how visual art and citizenship education could be combined to explore and extend children’s notions of European identity, using data from Images & Identity, an EU-funded 2-year curriculum development project on citizenship and art education in the Czech Republic, England, Ireland, Germany, Malta and Portugal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The attitudes of the European Union (EU) citizens towards immigration and the impact of their national identification on attitudes towards the EU have received ample attention in the literature. However, the immigrants’ identification with Europe has not been adequately studied. This article investigates the impact of non-EU immigration heritage on European identification. Based on social identity theory and using Eurobarometer cross-sectional data, it compares the European identification of those with a first generation non-EU immigration heritage to that of EU country natives. Moreover, it focuses on salient aspects of immigrant experience such as country policies directed at reducing discrimination and personal experience of discrimination. The results show that those with non-EU immigration heritage have higher European identification compared to the natives. Furthermore, in line with social identity theory, this article shows that successful anti-discrimination policies pull immigrants towards national identification rather than European identification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article interprets Thomas Mann’s Reflections of an Unpolitical Man (1918) as a document of the reimagining of self, nation and Europe during the First World War. In this messy and mostly forgotten work, Thomas Mann created an identity that he adopted for the rest of his life: the artist-intellectual as the self-overcoming decadent and saviour of culture. He did this by mapping his heroic vision of Germany as the saviour of Europe onto his own artistic ethic of the self-overcoming decadent. I show how the Reflections allowed Mann to probe the unanswered questions operative in his own work and in his conflicting identities as an artist, an intellectual, a German and a European. Constructing the crisis of modernity according to the opposition of décadence v. Bildung, Mann called for a particularly German and artistic irony to mediate this conflict and preserve the authentic identities of self, nation and Europe. This heroic irony – used as a conservative defence of German culture during the war – would become, ironically, the basis of Mann’s endorsement of the Weimar Republic in 1922 and his future identity as a defender of liberal Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, the Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (2012) have funded programmes designed to advance European citizenship and citizen competences through education. This paper reports on the findings from one project, Creative Connections, designed to encourage the “voices” of young people in exploring European identities.Children (aged 9–16) in 25 schools in six European Union (EU) countries (UK, Finland, Spain, Czech Republic, Portugal and Ireland) developed artworks that explored perceptions of European citizenship. Their art was posted on a secure website and they discussed images with peers using automatic online translated blogs. The project facilitated representations of identity/belonging using a range of media. However, some artworks suggested that children were alienated from “Europe”, particularly EU responses to global austerity. This paper uses the theory of precarity to examine the ways in which the children expressed their concerns.Some artworks suggest that recent economic and political decisions have had the effect of challenging a sense of shared European citizenship; they resist a positive sense of identification with Europe and demonstrate fear for their future based on their current lives. This indicates that the EU’s educational goals to promote citizenship competences may require revision to account for the challenges of contemporary societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Any understanding of European literature that does not include immigrant literature results in an incomplete vision of literature created in Europe. As immigrant writers have sought to find a place for themselves and their writing, the labels attached to that writing have been crucial. While such debates certainly have to do with the writers themselves and how they seek to have their writing read, they also reflect an anxiety in Europe about what counts as European literature and, not incidentally, who counts as European. To examine these issues, this article takes the example of the work of Franco-Turkish writer Sema Kılıçkaya. In contrast to the usual French fear of communautarisme, which signals for many the fragmentation of society along ethnic and religious lines, the article argues that Kılıçkaya’s writing provides another model for national and European belonging, one that depends, perhaps paradoxically, on sub-national and local belonging – in both the country of origin and the country of settlement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The inclusion of 11 new member states from the former Eastern bloc constitutes a significant challenge to the European Union in various respects. Many worry that whatever tenuous ‘European identity’ existed prior to the eastern enlargement, it has now become so diluted that no meaningful European political community can form. We provide an empirical account of the state of European identity after the eastern enlargement through a comparative analysis of affective and cognitive European identity in the old and the new Central and Eastern European member states. Our empirical analyses indicate that while the overall levels of cognitive European identification in the East are indeed lower than in the West, citizens from new member states are just as attached to Europe as citizens from old member states. Most importantly, not only is there no discernable difference in cognitive identification among young Europeans in East and West, but the youngest in the East seem to be even more strongly attached to Europe than their peers in the West. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates whether European identity is a feasible and functional alternative to national identity. We examine the extent, determinants and consequences of national and European identification among (immigrant) Turkish and native Belgian pupils, with data gathered from 1629 pupils across 68 Belgian schools. The results show that immigrant Turkish pupils identify more strongly with Europe than with Belgium. The groups are closer to each other with respect to their European identification, while the latter is not in conflict with national identification. Moreover, European identity is less ethnically and more civically defined than national identity. Importantly, European identification was moderately related to academic achievement, though it is hard to make a causal claim. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Has the European Union (EU) succeeded in socializing citizens to support the democratic values it claims to promote? On the face of it, the prevailing skepticism precludes any expectation of a successful socialization of EU citizens to the EU values. Yet, according to the socialization hypothesis, citizens' support for these values is expected to increase as countries accumulate more years of the EU membership. Using survey data to isolate distinct dimensions of democratic values, we examine differences among countries in this regard, as well as changes within countries over time. Results confirm the socialization hypothesis, showing that support for democratic values is generally higher in countries with more years of the EU membership, and that this support trends upwards over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Love is often a key factor in migration decisions. Partner relationships and union formation have also been identified as forming an intrinsic part of intra-European migration. Nevertheless, empirical research into intra-European love migration remains rather scarce. In this paper, we focus on the often neglected but substantial intra-European moves. We analyse the relationship between bi-national couple formation, identification as a European and European transnational solidarity. The analyses are based on the EUMARR survey, investigating bi-national marriages in a unified Europe, comparing European bi-national and uni-national couples. In this paper, we focus on the Netherlands (n = 898) and compare Dutch–Dutch with Dutch–EU couples. Our findings indicate that bi-national couples are more likely to identify as European compared to uni-national couples, but this is not reflected in more solidarity to European countries in times of crisis. Implications of these findings are discussed in light of the European integration process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyze the impact of intermarriage, and transnational social relations and experiences on the emergence of European identity. According to the structuralist theory of identification, European social relations, with European intermarriage as an especially important relation, and experiences should explain European identifications. Our analysis is based on a survey in Zurich, Switzerland, providing a broad array of data that allow testing the impact of a European partner on European identification for Swiss and how transnational social relations and experiences contribute to both Swiss and non-Swiss feeling European. Overall, we find that a partner from another European country (for Swiss natives) and transnational social relations and experiences have an important role in explaining European identification. The most important differences are between Swiss and EU citizens living in Switzerland where, for the latter, the meaning of Europe is differently constructed. Specifically, EU citizens see less conflict between national and European identification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the relationship between social backgrounds—socio-economic status and ethnicity—and European knowledge, identities and attitudes to European Union (EU) membership in two member states—the Eastern European newcomer Bulgaria and the Western European notoriously Eurosceptic United Kingdom. Itadopts an empirical sociological approach in line with recent calls for more sociological input into EU studies. By drawing on 174 individual interviews with 9-/10-year-old primary school pupils, the article is focused on young people: a group that ‘holds the key’ to the future of the EU, yet is entirely neglected by academics and policy makers. The findings suggest that despite the substantial national differences, the significance of socio-economic status and ethnicity is strong cross-nationally. European identity is largely elite and racialized and those at the margins of society in my sample are not at all involved in the European project. A key theoretical contribution this article makes is to move beyond mono-causal explanations by providing an account of the intersection of national context, socio-economic status and ethnicity in relation to young people’s European identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A superordinate identity reduces bias and facilitates intergroup cooperation. This suggests that getting European Union (EU) citizens to identify with Europe will decrease outgroup hostility. Is European identity thus a superordinate identity? Using Eurobarometer data, I determine which level of identification is the most inclusive for individuals' immigration attitudes. Those who feel European hold more favorable views toward immigrants—an effect that is amplified under conditions of cross-cutting cleavages and where country length of European Union membership is greatest. In contrast, strong national identity is associated with more negative immigration attitudes; regional identity has no effect. A subsequent test confirms that the benefits of identifying with Europe extend most strongly to immigrants of European Union origin, although positive effects are observed toward non-European Union migrants as well. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Cultural diversity is very often conceived in relationship with the nation-state, but rarely problematized in tandem with transnational forces like political and economic globalization. The article begins by recognizing the need, and the difficulty, of studying both these forces simultaneously in relation to cultural diversity. As a supranational set of institutions, the European Union provides an ideal framework in which to assess the simultaneous impact of the nation-state and globalization on cultural diversity. The EU unification project, based on a pluralist, multicultural and multilateral vision of Europe, is diametrically opposed to previous state-making practices centred on rigid notions of internal uniformity and gravitating around the practices of ‘nation-statism’. This article first proposes the notion of ‘cultural homogenization’ as an explanatory tool to identify the role of normative visions of culture associated with the nationalizing practices of most modern nation-states. It then connects this to the scholarly literature on ‘nation-building’ and focuses particularly on its critique within theories of nationalism. This in turn is associated with various resurrected pluralist arrangements which have emerged in Europe, like cultural autonomy, multiculturalism and particularly, ‘consociationalism’. However, the article identifies a more immediate challenge to cultural diversity in the de-regulative policies associated with neo-liberal globalization. It concludes that, although European consociationalism remains a well-established and time-honoured tool for stabilizing inter-cultural relations and maintaining pluralist coexistence, it does not, and cannot, provide an incentive and framework for accommodating the normative and cultural conflicts unleashed by neo-liberal globalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the formation of European identity among children in two very different countries: the traditionally Eurosceptic United Kingdom and the enthusiastic EU newcomer, Bulgaria. The paper revisits existing debates about the relationships between European identity, knowledge and the political and historical context, paying particular attention to the meanings attached to Europe. It demonstrates that children who identify as European are more likely to see Europe in geographic terms, which facilitates the perception of the European identity as ‘default’. In contrast, children who refuse to describe themselves as European see Europe as an exclusive political entity, associated with high standards and distant elites. These perceptions are significantly more common among Bulgarian children, who often depict Europe as a dream, and perceive the European identity as an ideal they aspire to reach. The article also shows how ethnicity and the images of Europe influence the relationship between national and European identities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Following the 2004 extension of the European Union (EU), Polish migrant workers began arriving in the United Kingdom on an unprecedented scale. Londyńczycy/Londoners (2008-9) was a response to this. Exploring the lives of Polish migrants in London, the series became an instant success on Polish television, regularly attracting around four million viewers. This article will explore how Londoners represents Britishness and Polishness to its target Polish audience. It will argue that the series negotiates questions of Polish national identity, which for the past 20 years has been undergoing fundamental redefinition as a result of the ending of the Cold War and Poland's accession to the EU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explains the role of media in the identity-building process in the European Union (EU). Starting from a historical overview of different forms of nationalism in Europe and various ways in which nations emerged, it traces the efforts of current members of the European Union to create a common feeling of belonging in the EU’s unique post-national realm. Finally it examines whether media should be and could be the conveyors of the new pan-national European soul. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Cross-border people mobility has long been seen as a promising method to promote European integration. In this article, I test the premise that the ERASMUS student experience abroad and direct interpersonal contact promote a European identity. The results draw from a two-wave longitudinal survey on two samples of ERASMUS students who studied in continental Europe and England, respectively. Although studying abroad led to increased socializing with other Europeans, contact with host country students remained limited. The paired sample t-tests reveal that ERASMUS does not strengthen students' European identity; on the contrary, it can have an adverse effect on it. Nevertheless, the regression analyses show that increased socializing with Europeans has a positive, though modest, impact on European identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports results of representative survey studies in border regions of Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, and France. It addresses the proposition that border regions are laboratories of social integration in Europe, and tests to what degree the endowment with transnational social capital (TSC) predicts individual transnational identities with regard to the immediate border region and to Europe as a whole. Results show that only in the border region of Germany and France is there a relationship between accumulated TSC and strength of transnational identity, whereas in the border regions of Germany, Poland, and the Czech Republic, the accumulated individual TSC does not predict transnational identities, which are there more an outflow of political attitudes and reflections about historic conflicts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The boundaries, openness and character of the future European society will crucially depend on the degree and scope of identity politics. Religion, culture and nationality remain strong reference frameworks for individuals in their inter-personal but also political relations and tend, in practice, to favour weak rather than strong forms of citizenship. Whether this is a viable model for large and diverse democratic societies is an old debate known primarily from the discussions and theory on multiculturalism. How this debate is played out at European level and especially with respect to the role of religion is illustrated with reference to the ideas of Daniel Cohn- Bendit and Tariq Ramadan, two well-known public figures with a strong commitment to Europe and European identity, albeit from rather different perspectives and outlooks. At the substantive or philosophical level, it appears impossible to resolve the fundamental questions underlying the opposition between liberalism and communitarianism as represented by the two men. The usefulness of a middle-range pragmatic approach insofar as political solutions or societal compromises are concerned is scrutinized for its usefulness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues for a robust notion of collective identity which is not reduced to a psychological conception of identity. In the first part, the debate on the concept of identity raised by several authors is taken up critically with the intention of defending a strong sociological conception of identity which by definition is a collective identity. The basic assumption is that collective identities are narrative constructions which permit the control of the boundaries of a network of actors. This theory is then applied to the case of Europe, showing how identity markers are used to control the boundaries of a common space of communication. These markers are bound to stories which those within such a space of communication share. Stories that hold in their narrative structures social relations provide projects of control. National identities are based on strong and exclusive stories. Europeanization (among other parallel processes at the global level) opens this space of boundary constructions and offers opportunities for national as well as subnational as well as transnational stories competing with each other to shape European identity projects. The EU -- this is the hypothesis -- provides a case in which different sites offer competing opportunities to continue old stories, to start new stories or to import old stories from other sites, thus creating a narrative network on top of the network of social relations that bind the people in Europe together. European identity is therefore to be conceived as a narrative network embedded in an emerging network of social relations among the people living in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the conditions for the development of a common identity among employee representatives within European Works Councils and addresses the importance of information and communication technology in this respect. Drawing on case studies conducted at General Motors and Deutsche Post, it is concluded that systematic use of such technology is a necessary condition if employee representatives are to be able to act jointly and in a timely manner across borders when challenged by management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among scholars and intellectuals, Europe is often celebrated as a postnational space, i.e. a space built around cosmopolitan values rather than culturally and/or ethnically specific factors. This view is also often sketched in normative terms, being rarely based on what people actually think of this post-national Europe. The present article essays to fill this gap, by focusing on two post-national questions: is European identity constructed in the absence of an Other? Does Europe stand for the separation of the 'cultural' from the 'political'? Relying on qualitative information collected in four regional case studies in Western Europe, this article maintains that the 'postnational' view finds expression also among people. Yet, it coexists with a 'national' view, which continues to shape how people see themselves and the world, Europe included. The article argues that it is exactly in the interaction, at times contradictory, between these two views that the normative idea of Europe as a post-national space should be analysed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The political significance of Mitteleuropa has grown in that much of it is now within the EU. Mitteleuropa is a discourse; it is not just a semantic term or a label to refer to a geopolitical region in which power and culture are interwined. Although people may identify with it, it is not primarily a term of identity but a cultural mode of interpretation. It can be called, along with other concepts of Europe, a conflicting field of interpretation. The concept reflects a civilizational context based on imperial models of modernity and cosmopolitan cultural resonances. Europe is an ongoing cultural battleground and the idea of Mitteleuropa is a reminder of a shift to the margins and the emergence of a multiperspectival Europe along with new notions of geopolitical space and historical-time consciousness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]