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Recent farmer protests across Europe demonstrate the complex challenges facing modern agriculture. This article examines the human story behind these protests. It explores how farmers' roles have changed from respected innovators and providers to a group caught between environmental demands, economic pressures and shifting societal expectations. Neoliberal policies, green regulations and new workforce patterns have precipitated an identity crisis among European farmers. Their protests are not just about money but also about deep‐seated anxieties concerning their place in a rapidly changing world. Farmers struggle to balance traditions with new environmental imperatives, to maintain viable livelihoods in a global market and their unease with an increasingly diverse rural workforce. European farming is at a crossroads, pointing towards possible paths for a future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Larger comparative studies into Europeans' attitudes toward English are scarce particularly those researching southern-eastern European countries. Thus, the present study explores attitudes toward English among 1,179 respondents in Bosnia and Herzegovina, contrasting two emerging attitudinal clusters. Moreover, the study also compares Bosnians' attitudes with the attitudes of two other national groups, that is, German and Dutch, from Edwards and Fuchs study. The findings show that younger and better educated Bosnian respondents with higher English proficiency are more favorably inclined toward English, whereas older, less educated Bosnian respondents with lower English proficiency are not as well-disposed toward English and express concerns over its consistent presence. Compared to German and Dutch respondents, Bosnians are less confident about the status of their L1, more deeply engrossed in English and like and prefer using it significantly more than two other national groups. They are exonormatively oriented and aim toward native-like pronunciation. Plain language summary: The current study explores attitudes toward English in Bosnia and Herzegovina by contrasting two attitudinal groups, that is, English-positive and English-negative groups. Moreover, the study also compares Bosnians' attitudes with the attitudes of two other national groups, that is, German and Dutch, from Edwards and Fuchs (2018) study. The findings indicate that younger and better educated Bosnian respondents with higher English proficiency are better-disposed toward English, whereas older, less educated Bosnian respondents with lower English proficiency are less favorably inclined toward English and express concerns over its consistent presence. In comparison to German and Dutch respondents, Bosnians are less confident about the status of their L1 and like and prefer using it significantly more than two other national groups. They are exonormatively oriented and aim toward native-like pronunciation. The study's importance lies in its potential to uncover some hidden language ideologies, reveal a range of English-related identities present in the Bosnian context and establish a link between English-related and national identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unevenness has become a moral category. It is something to be protected and preserved. The moral essence of unevenness is the assertion that certain elements of underdevelopment are more valuable than a state of development. However, the masters of semi-detachment have another challenge to meet. Its believers must also separate their societies from each other. Towards their Eastern conquerors they try to present themselves as more Eastern (i.e., more communist more pro-Russian). If the conqueror is Western (e.g., National Socialist Germany) then they endeavor to present themselves as more pro-German than their neighbors, and in joining the democratic West they try to present themselves as more Western, consciously pushing back their neighbors. Moreover, if they approach the East and the West at the same time, they argue both ways simultaneously. This attitude also motivates the specific role of nationalism in our region. In our case, the role of national identity is not only the same as it used to be in the most developed parts of Europe, but here in Central Europe it has also had to justify the unevenness of state and society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the decorated prefatory statements in two fifteenth-century books of the proctors of the German natio at the University of Paris as part of the discussion on the relationship between academic mobility and identity construction in medieval Europe. The article argues that the decorated statements – a virtually unexplored source – functioned as acts of self-presentation and 'public identities' for the proctors. Then, it discusses the complex role of geographical origins and related political, linguistic and cultural factors in the articulation of identity in the Parisian scholarly community. The relevance of the analysis for the debates surrounding the idea of 'national identity' in medieval Europe is also addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main research question is whether history is doomed to divide or whether it may unite. The author argues that, on the one hand, the rejection of the concept of truth in historiography may lead to treating history as a reservoir of selective argument in political struggles. In this sense, history will always divide. However, on the other hand, truth may be achieved. Scholars have several ways to test how far from the truth is a statement concerning history. There are six basic rules to test it, which are discussed in the article. The concept of national identity, culture perceived as the backbone of national identity and the regional cooperation context are examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the intensification of migration and border politics throughout Europe in the mid-2010s, displaced Syrians fleeing war to seek asylum and a livable life were simultaneously welcomed as vulnerable strangers who could contribute to European economies and societies and perceived as threats to the imaginaries of a homogenous Europe. This essay critiques the logic embedded in this narrative, namely that migrants are a social factor external and destabilizing to Europe, through a critical interpretation of Syrian choreographer Mithkal Alzghair's work, Displacement (2016). This provocative dance work pivots on Alzghair's reimagining of dabke , Syria's celebrated folk dance, in which he deconstructs the social relations and embodied aesthetics of popular dabke practices to forge a political critique of Syrian authoritarianism and forced migration. By crafting a repertoire of movement that critiques the aesthetic and political ideologies on which it is based, Displacement arguably disrupts the postcolonial imaginaries of national identity and place that have historically ensconced folk dance in Syria and in Europe, respectively, and transforms the possibilities of what cultural heritage connotes, represents and signifies for Syrians and Europeans. Instead, the destabilizing work of embodied performance reveals how instability is endemic to European spaces and society. Through the convergence of performance theory and praxis, this essay demonstrates how Displacement stages live, perpetual, repetitive, and embodied motion in ways that open a space for artists and audiences to collectively engage with a fractious period and reconfigure the complex relations of power and representation situated between Syria and Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article "Migrants" by Alejandro Reig and Roger Norum addresses human mobility and highlights that people's movements have intensified due to the transformation and diversification of contexts. The authors propose reviewing migratory waves throughout history to understand the present and demonstrate its complexity. The book is structured into six chapters that address conceptual aspects, categories related to migration, skilled migration, identity, and the pros and cons of migration. The relationship between migration and globalization in the contemporary context is also analyzed. The text presents different key elements in the migration debate, such as the economic reasons for migration, the economic impact of immigrants, their contribution to Europe's aging population, their relationship with the welfare state and national identity, and the lack of transparency in international migrant statistics. Additionally, the importance of successful integration of migrants in cities is highlighted, and examples of different integration models are presented. The text concludes with reflections on the future perspectives of migration and the need to address it more effectively on a global level. [Extracted from the article]

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A game of war, chess was played and pictured in a time of war by men and women, Jews and non-Jews in hiding, in the ghettos, and even behind the barbed wire of the transit, concentration, and extermination camps across Nazi-occupied Europe. Throughout the Second World War, instead of "throwing the game" and giving up, victims of National Socialism devised ingenious ways to improvise chess sets out of found materials and detritus—carved wood, folded paper, etched tin, and modeled bread. They also drew and painted chess games to document and allegorize their lives in extremis. Through a close reading of chess artifacts and artworks, this article reveals how access to materials and time, status within camp hierarchies, ethnic and national identities, and wartime experiences impacted the various ways these groups used the game of chess under difficult playing conditions. Insisting upon the central role of creativity and play, it argues that both material artifacts and artwork inform our knowledge of how individuals living under Nazi oppression thought and felt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Historia y Comunicación Social is the property of Universidad Complutense de Madrid and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Populist radical right‐wing's rhetoric often includes a reference to the nation's past when everything was supposed to be better. This runs from considered heroic times of the country in terms of war victory and economic grandeur to an idealized past which fits the ideology of nativism, meaning that a homogeneous society is preferred over a multicultural one. In this contribution, we study to what extent voters for the radical right indeed differ from voters of other party families in their pride in the nation's history. We compare this to other forms of domain‐dependent national pride. Earlier studies suggested that not only nostalgia differentiates the radical right electorate from others, but that other positive attitudes in relation to the nation may do so as well. Making use of the International Social Survey Program data on national identity, we study domain‐dependent national pride across European nations to answer whether it is pride in the nation's history that characterizes radical right voters when accounting for other dimensions of national attitudes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the salient features of the recent populist turn in Europe has been a redefinition of the European. Traditionally, (far) right-wing parties defined themselves as Eurosceptic and focused on national identity. Increasingly, however, they have referred to pan-European heritage, although against the mainstream conceptualization of it. The article looks at the case of Hungary and the image of Europe constructed by the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, whose rhetoric has become a key reference point for other European populist movements. The past decade his government has witnessed, on the one hand, a tendency to redefine what is European against the dominant and institutionalized interpretations, and, on the other, an attempt to single-out the concept of Central Europe as the locus for maintaining and nurturing European values in contrast to perceived Western decline. This paper examines this discourse through a close reading of major speeches delivered by Orbán on the anniversaries of historical events. Analysis of these speeches reveals the ideological foundations of his political project and presents historical and philosophical interpretations of the European political situation. It seeks to identify how Orbán's discourse evolved across time, by putting the speeches about the past into the present political context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies how people in the Euro Area Member States identified as European during the Great Recession and examines both their perceptions about being European and their attachment to Europe. It analyses the effect of the crisis on the relationship between European and national identifications (the identification approach), including public debt as a key contextual factor. Factors related to the rational instrumental approach and cognitive mobilisation were controlled for. The analyses indicated that the higher a country's public debt, the greater the positive effect that national identification had on the perception of being European, whereas this relationship was negative at lower levels of public debt. Conversely, the higher a country's public debt, the weaker the positive relationship between national identification and the attachment to the EU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the existing gap in the literature by proposing a new measure of nationalism across multiple states in ECE. Using ISSP data from 1995 to 2013 and Mokken scale analysis, I create a set of nationalism indices that account for the intensity of nationalist sentiments based on the measures of national identity, national consciousness, patriotism, national pride, national superiority, and xenophobic nationalism. The research contributes to our understanding of the dynamic nature of nationalist sentiments across different ECE countries over time. The findings indicate that weak, moderate, and strong manifestations of nationalism are both time-dependent and context-dependent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1731 Lady Grisell Baillie began a tour through Europe to Naples with her husband, two daughters, son-in-law and eldest granddaughter. Prompted by an order abroad for her son-in-law's health, the journey to and from Naples took in cultural sites and offered unique opportunities for shopping. In 1756 Margaret Calderwood of Polton similarly set out for Europe with her husband and young sons on a journey to see her exiled brother, which offered invaluable opportunities for social observation and purchasing delftware, or so Margaret hoped. Superficially they were elite women joining their families on an excursion abroad. In a challenge to simplifications of identity, this paper reviews their journeys through contexts of formative experiences, national allegiance and preconceptions around female skillsets. It identifies the everyday impact of politics, and why eighteenth-century women were as critical in developing generational national character as the patriarchal state to which they were subject. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite patterns of secularisation across Europe, religion continues to exert influence. Besides theological belief, religion is deeply integrated into daily life as a social institution and marker of who belongs in a community and who does not. Linear mixed effects analysis of the 2016 European Social Survey (ESS) demonstrates that secular individuals and those in minority religious groups have weaker national identity than individuals in the country's historically majority religion. The effect of affiliation with the majority religion on national identity also holds for secular individuals who grew up in the majority religion. Overall influence of religious importance is waning, except among Muslims, which suggests that religion's socio-political power lies in its social identities more than devout practice in the contemporary European context. The findings of this study further advance understandings of the ways that religion reinforces or conditions national identity in so-called 'secularizing societies'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of English as a Lingua Franca is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Michael Billig's seminal work 'Banal nationalism' described how everyday practice and habits reinforce national identity. Football fans provide a fertile ground for an application of this concept. The community among supporters of the same team is constitutional for football. 20 years after his book, the Europeanisation of football structures could have caused banal national identifications to expand to the European level, contributing to a 'banal Europeanism'. In contrast to the crises of political Europe, football could provide fans with an everyday practice of Europe. This might change the understanding of in- and out-groups among supporters and beyond. The article discusses 'banal nationalism' in the arena of European club football. It elaborates in how far 'banal' football fandom related practice is related to the European level. The leading question of the article is How does football create an arena for 'banal Europeanism' among football fans? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this contribution the focus is on nationalism, i.e. the view that one's own country and people are unique and superior, implying a negative comparison with regard to other national groups and countries. The research questions we set out to answer are: (1) what are the cross-national differences and trends in nationalism across Europe? (2) Which individual and national characteristics can explain these differences and changes in nationalism in European countries? We use high-quality cross-national data from 20 countries from the 'National Identity' modules of the International Social Survey Programme, collected in 1995, 2003 and 2013. Considerable differences between countries were found; however, within countries the level of nationalism remained rather stable over the period from 1995 to 2013. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Swiss Political Science Review is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Little is known on how ethnic minority adolescents develop acculturation profiles of identification (i.e., how they combine their ethnic and national identification, such as being high on both and thus rather "integrated" or high on ethnic and low on national and thus rather "separated"). In a first step, this 3-year longitudinal study classified Turkish (n = 344) and resettler-origin (n = 121) ethnic minority adolescents living in Germany (Mage = 14.2, SD = 1.54, 51.6% female) according to their levels of ethnic and national identification. Latent profile analyses identified four profiles (separated, integrated, medium-ethnic, low-ethnic) for the former and three profiles (separated, integrated, low-and-medium ethnic) for the latter group. Latent transition analyses revealed considerable instability of profile attributions over time. Integration declined among both groups and results provided no evidence that national group boundaries are more permeable for resettler-origin than for Turkish-origin adolescents. Additional analyses revealed that perceived ethnic discrimination affected the probability to be in a particular profile but did not moderate transition probabilities. Overall, results suggest that during early-to-mid adolescence it is increasingly difficult to uphold a dual identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Co-production was developed by several European countries to revive their film industries and has become increasingly popular, spreading across the region and beyond. However, this scheme should be carefully examined as to whether it is truly beneficial to the film industry. In response, this paper proposes two new concepts, "corporation-led" and "state-led" co-productions by distinguishing them from the prevailing notion of "(international) co-production." Corporation-led coproduction is to achieve the best outcome through the optimal utilization of production (or creative) factors and business activities. By contrast, state-led co-production has been used to enhance the national image and has been supported by financial incentives. As such, this type of co-production becomes a hindrance for the optimal utilization of production factors. All of these aspects can be found throughout the history of Europe's co-production efforts. In the future, such an instrument should be redesigned in order to promote the film industry more effectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we show how judgments of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) have provided nationalists with an unexpected opportunity to promote a nationalist discourse that is seemingly in line with human rights while fundamentally at odds with the counter-majoritarian core of human rights. We start our analysis with two judgments in which the Court accepted the arguments of liberal democratic states to infringe fundamental rights of persons belonging to (immigrant) Muslim minorities in the name of "requirements of living together" or "social integration": SAS v France (2014) and Osmanoglu and Kocabas v Switzerland (2017). Strikingly, the justifications by the states for these infringements point to concerns about perceived threats to national identity and culture. We show how nationalist politicians in countries with minority populations, including those in East Central Europe, have used justifications in terms of national self-protection, tacitly or explicitly, to pursue old anti–human rights agendas. The case law discussed here enabled them to present these justifications as ECtHR proof, notwithstanding the underlying nationalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The primary aim of the study is to highlight the main problems facing national minorities in Europe. To this end, it examines whether the respect for cultural diversity as stated in the Charter of Fundamental Rights also applies to European national minorities, which raises the question of whether national minorities in Europe are a European value. To answer this question, it is necessary to examine a number of concepts and conceptual relationships. For example, what is the historically evolved meaning of 'value', which is closely linked to people's identity, leading to the issues of European and national identity. The protection of human rights is clearly a European value, which includes the right to live as a minority; however not only the concept of national minority, but also the concept of minority itself is not clear at a universal level. Although it can be said that the protection of national minorities is one of the European values, this fact raises more questions than it answers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the centrality of national identity in the exclusionary discourse of the European radical right, scholars have not investigated how popular definitions of nationhood are connected to dispositions toward Muslims. Moreover, survey‐based studies tend to conflate anti‐Muslim attitudes with general anti‐immigrant sentiments. This article contributes to research on nationalism and out‐group attitudes by demonstrating that varieties of national self‐understanding are predictive of anti‐Muslim attitudes, above and beyond dispositions toward immigrants. Using latent class analysis and regression models of survey data from 41 European countries, it demonstrates that conceptions of nationhood are heterogeneous within countries and that their relationship with anti‐Muslim attitudes is contextually variable. Consistent with expectations, in most countries, anti‐Muslim attitudes are positively associated with ascriptive – and negatively associated with elective (including civic) – conceptions of nationhood. Northwestern Europe, however, is an exception to this pattern: in this region, civic nationalism is linked to greater antipathy toward Muslims. It is suggested that in this region, elective criteria of belonging have become fused with exclusionary notions of national culture that portray Muslims as incompatible with European liberal values, effectively legitimating anti‐Muslim sentiments in mainstream political culture. This may heighten the appeal of anti‐Muslim sentiments not only on the radical right, but also among mainstream segments of the Northwestern European public, with important implications for social exclusion and political behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fourth grade represents the first year of study of the discipline History for students in pre-university education. Before being a matter of civics, the European identity is a historically grounded construct; therefore, we naturally wondered whether the issue that we have not only an ethnic or national identity, but also a European one is, even incipiently, raised when teaching history. Our analysis started from the definition of the concept of European identity, to the general perception of Romanians regarding Europe according to Eurobarometer data, to reach the analysis of the school syllabus in the History discipline and then to the textbooks constructed starting from this syllabus. The conclusion we reached following our approach was that, as the school syllabus supports the formation of the national identity first and on a secondary place, the sketching of elements of European identity (through the elements related to the history of the national minorities in Romania, the location on the map of Europe of the events in the history of Romanians, discussing in different topics subjects such as the European Union or presenting some important personalities for the history of Europe), the three existing textbooks, available and at the decision of the teachers have an accordingly approach, that we consider to be correct. The European identity cannot be built before the national identity, historically speaking, and for the age category to which we refer (9-10 years), in the condition of one course hour per week, the simultaneous construction of the two types of identity (in other words teaching the history of Romanians and universal history at the same time) is difficult to achieve. Therefore, we believe that the choice for national history and identity before the European one is properly substantiated. The national and European identities cannot be constructed from the simple enumeration of historical names or data. The well-built explanation, accompanied by carefully chosen examples is essential in teaching history to this age category and, of course, in the solid construction of one's own identity (national and European). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By analyzing China's national image in the eyes of European missionaries, philosophers, and writers during the Enlightenment, it was concluded that in the 18th century, Europe's understanding of China covered the fields of matter, system, and culture, and Western countries have placed their political expectations on China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to explain the relationship between socialism and sport in Britain using a historical and comparative analysis of developments in Europe to identify the particular sociopolitical conditions and processes pertaining in the British case. It argues that a distinctively socialist sports culture failed to develop in Britain due to the interaction between two sets of forces: the powerful economic, political, and cultural constraints that are characteristic of Britain's development, and the character of British socialism's response to those constraints. It pinpoints the ways in which features specific to British socialism disabled socialists from adequately grasping the significance of sport in popular culture, from responding effectively to the way class, sex and gender, and national identities are formed in sporting activity, and from influencing processes of conflict and accommodation taking place around sport between dominant and subordinate groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on studies dealing with the transfer of marketing strategy to determine the effect of national identity on multinational promotional strategy in Europe. The author focuses on analyzing data collected on a series of failed marketing campaigns initiated by corporations in the U.S. It is suggested that the failed campaigns, which were targeted at European consumers, signal a shift in consumer preferences in European countries. Data from another study illustrates that a decline in the influence of international print and broadcast media in countries including Scotland and France is the result of a resurgence of national identity in Northern European nations. The author also discusses decision making variables that impact marketing strategy and sales promotion.

Copyright of Pouvoirs is the property of Editions du Seuil and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Using exceptionally rich qualitative data coming from the FP7 EUCROSS project on the ‘Europeanization of the Everyday Life’, this paper focuses on high-skilled and highly transnational Turkish migrants who reside in the UK, Romania and Italy. The article analyses participants’ discursive constructions of Europe and Europeanness and shows how specific images and symbols of Europe and Turkey influence their own relationship to Europe. We argue that understanding Turkish migrants’ identification with Europe requires a comprehensive analysis of the development of a Westernization discourse in Turkey that has framed people’s identities. This discourse symbolizes the desire for being part of the Western world, and especially Western Europe, but, at the same time, the fear of being dominated by the very same world. We show that we need to grasp the values, images, symbols and discourses that underline transnational practices to understand the making of European identity among migrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chapter III focuses on institutional frameworks and curatorial practices shaping the construction of Europe through dance. The nuanced complexity of this book and its broad cultural philosophic scope certainly makes it a significant contribution also outside dance studies and particularly timely in view of the current erratic state of Europe. Dancing Europe: Identities, Languages, Institutions. [Extracted from the article]

This study examines ethnic, national, familial, and religious identity and well-being of 632 Roma minority and 589 majority adolescents (age: M = 15.98 years, SD = 1.34) in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Kosovo, and Romania. Results indicated that Roma showed lower endorsement of national identity but stronger religious identity than their majority counterparts. Path models showed positive associations of familial and religious identities with well-being, whereas Roma identity was negatively associated with well-being, particularly for Roma in Bulgaria and Kosovo (countries with a less active policy toward improving conditions of Roma). In the latter countries, Roma ethnic identity is less relevant and weakly associated with psychological well-being of youth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the conference "Football as an Instrument of Nation-Building II: (South)East-Europe and Overseas Countries, held between February 17, 2017, and February 19, 2017 in Zurich, Switzerland. Featured speakers included Catalin Parfene, Luke Hodges-Ramon, and Christian Tagsold, who discussed various aspects of the connection between soccer, nationalism, and nation-building.

This article argues that discrepancies between individual-level conceptualisations of national identity and official government approaches to national identity, as reflected in policies towards migrants, contribute to reduced levels of political trust in Europe. Public opinion data matched with contextual data measuring immigrant incorporation policies are used to investigate this proposition. The findings indicate that individuals who take a more exclusive approach to national identity but live in political systems that are comparatively more welcoming of immigrant incorporation into the national political system tend to be the least trusting of their political systems, and this is closely followed by those individuals who adopt a more inclusive form of identity but live in countries that are relatively less welcoming in their treatment of immigrants. Where individual identity and immigrant incorporation are both inclusive, trust tends to be relatively high. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Christianity has lost its salience, but customs and traditions maintained their importance in forming national identity in Europe. Using the ISSP National Identity 2003 and 2013 data from 17 European countries, this article tests how the salience of Christianity and sharing of national customs and traditions varies according to the share of Muslim and immigrant population, and whether the association changed across time. Multilevel regressions show that the link between the size of the Muslim population and the salience of Christianity changed between 2003 and 2013. In 2003, the link was negative. In 2013, respondents from countries with larger Muslim populations were more concerned about Christian background of nationals. The link between the share of immigrants and the demand on sharing national customs and traditions changed as well. In 2003, it was negative but, by 2013, it flattened out. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information is provided on the workshop titled "Soccer as an Instrument of Nation-Building I: Germany, Western Europe, Central- and (South-)Eastern Europe" held from February 12-14, 2016. Topics, including European football, or soccer, in German Democratic Republic (GDR), or East Germany, the role that soccer played in social conflict in Austria during the 1930s, the relationship between national identity and soccer and football clubs in Ukraine, are discussed.

Amid growing Islamophobia throughout Europe, Muslims in France have been described as "ethnoracial outsiders" (Bleich 2006, 3-7) and framed as a cultural challenge to the identity of the French republic. Based on ethnographic research of 45 middle class adult children of North African, or Maghr ebin, immigrants, I focus on the actual religious practices of this segment of the French Muslim population, the symbolic boundaries around those practices, and the relationship between how middle class, North African secondgeneration immigrants understand their marginalization within mainstream society and how they frame their religiosity to respond to this marginalization. How respondents frame their practices reveals their allegiance with the tenets of French Republicanism and laïcité as well as shows how Muslim religious practices are being accommodated to the French context. This religiosity is not a barrier to asserting a French identity. Individuals frame their religious practices in ways that suggest they see themselves as just as French as anyone else. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An emerging consensus among scholars of Muslim political and social identity suggests that Western Muslims live out an anti-essentialist critique of identity construction. Considering this view, this paper examines a cross-national comparison of British Bangladeshis in London and Spanish Moroccans in Madrid that solicits the perceptions of working-class Muslim men. While the results indeed reaffirm respondents' concomitant relationships to a variety of identity paradigms, interview content demonstrates that subjects' multiplicity is complicated by their desire to meet – not reject – the essentialist standards of belonging to the identity paradigms discursively available to them. Rather than defiantly cherry-picking preferred characteristics of religion, ethnicity and nationality, individuals' responses suggest that they are trying to fulfil perceived standards of authenticity. Such a contention helps explain the prevalence of Western Muslims' expressed and well-documented ‘identity crisis’, suggests the enduring relevance of identity essentialisms, and more broadly, complicates post-modern conceptions of identity formation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A symbolic approach of the European Unity takes us to the main European symbols. Some of them already officially recognized by the European Union (the flag, the anthem, Europe Day and the currency) originate in the national symbols. These were designed to strengthen the national unity and the sense of belonging to a large community like the nation, but at the same time generating a differentiation from the others, members of other national communities and thus leading to the alterity or even violence. The issue that I will address in this study is whether it can be a European identity based on symbols originally linked to national identity without creating new alterities and differences. Are they compatible with the values of tolerance, of equality of chances or with the ideal of unity in diversity promoted by the European Union? We will argue in favor of an affirmative answer, while warning about the dependence of European symbols on their national substrate. The paper will be divided in two parts. In the first one, after a general introduction to the problem, I will focus on the European flag and anthem/hymn and in the second part I will analyze the meanings of the European currency, the Europe's Day and of some religious symbols and places. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Union's ambition to create a harmonized reception system for asylum seekers differs from the realities on the ground. We address how differences in national reception conditions stimulate the secondary migration that challenges the creation of an effective common migration regulation in Europe. We base our analysis on the Dublin Regulation (DR) and the secondary movement of Eritrean asylum seekers from Italy to Norway. The empirical material consists of qualitative interviews with civil servants, NGO representatives, and Eritrean migrants in Milan and Rome, and Norwegian civil servants. Recently developed models of migration destination selection were used to analyse the interaction between individual aspirations and structural constraints. We found that the Eritrean informants remained highly motivated to apply in a second country but were to some extent held back by the DR. Supranational regulations were challenged by the migrants' actions and by national differences in reception and welfare standards. Both the migrants' aspirations to move on and the challenges to a harmonized regional regulation of migration increased during times of economic crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article identifies previously ignored determinants of public support for the European Union's security and defence ambitions. In contrast to public opinion vis-à-vis the EU in general, the literature on attitudes towards a putative European army or the existing Common Security and Defence Policy ( CSDP) suggests that the explanatory power of sociodemographic and economic variables is weak, and focuses instead on national identity as the main determinant of one's support. This article explores the possible impact of strategic culture, and argues that preferences vis-à-vis the EU's security and defence ambitions are formed in part through pre-existing social representations of security. To test this proposition, 'national' strategic cultures are disaggregated and a typology is produced that contains four strategic postures: pacifism, traditionalism, humanitarianism and globalism. Applying regression analysis on individual-level Eurobarometer survey data, it is found that strategic postures help explain both the general level of support for CSDP and support for specific Petersberg tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores how churches in Poland and Romania have gained a central role in politics especially in connection with national identity, and highlights the threat felt by these churches from the European Union's demands concerning homosexuality.

The article presents an analysis of European border cities and risks and opportunities related to them. Topics discussed include challenges faced by Nicosia, Cyprus while separation of Greek and Turkish inhabitants, SWOT analysis for analysis of strengths, opportunities and threats associated with economic development of Kaliningrad, Russia, concept of national identity and cross-border cooperation relationship between Romania and Hungary.

Europe is a profoundly flexible concept and, in Ernesto Laclau’s terms, a ‘floating signifier’ which is given various meanings depending on the speaker’s political aims. The article focuses on current populist and nationalist political discourses in Finland and the articulation of Europe and European identity in the political rhetoric of The Finns Party. In the rhetoric, Europe is given contradictory meanings. On the one hand, it is perceived as a cultural and value-based community which shares a common (Christian) heritage and values. Identification with Europe and the promotion of European communality are particularly pronounced when a threat towards ‘us’ is experienced as coming from outside the imagined European borders. On the other hand, the European integration process and Europe as a political project can be articulated as threats not only to national independence, identity and cultural particularity but to European cultural identity as well. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]