Search

Supplemental material, USJ962397_Supplemental_Material_D for Not too close, not too far: Urbanisation and life satisfaction along the urban hierarchy by Camilla Lenzi and Giovanni Perucca in Urban Studies

This paper studies the determinants of the imbalance between country and European identity. While the two sentiments are positively correlated, recent empirical evidence showed the emergence, in the last years, of an increasing imbalance in favour of the identification with individuals’ country of residence. In the political arena, this phenomenon is accompanied by the increasing support to nationalisms and Eurosceptic parties almost everywhere in the EU. It is therefore interesting to understand what are the individual and contextual factors associated to this identity imbalance. The assumption tested in this paper is that the unequal distribution (among individuals and regions) of the benefits from EU integration is the main determinant of the emerging antagonism between European and national identity. Empirical results support this hypothesis. Individuals with lower education and income, and those living in the lagging-behind regions of the EU are more likely than the others to identify more with their own country than with Europe., Este artículo estudia los determinantes del desequilibrio entre la identidad de país y la europea. Si bien los dos sentimientos están positivamente correlacionados, la evidencia empírica reciente mostró la aparición, en los últimos años, un desequilibrio creciente a favor de la identificación con el país de residencia de las personas. En el ámbito político, este fenómeno se acompaña del creciente apoyo a los nacionalismos y los partidos euroescépticos en casi toda la UE. Por lo tanto, es interesante entender cuáles son los factores individuales y contextuales asociados a este desequilibrio de identidad. El supuesto que se contrasta en este documento es que la distribución desigual (entre individuos y regiones) de los beneficios de la integración de la UE es el principal determinante del antagonismo emergente entre la identidad europea y nacional. Los resultados empíricos respaldan esta hipótesis. Las personas con educación e ingresos más bajos, y aquellos que viven en las regiones rezagadas de la UE tienen más probabilidades que los demás de identificarse más con su propio país que con Europa.

The role of Cohesion Policy in the process of European identity building is an extremely relevant issue, even if few studies focused on it. The present work has the aim to work on the relationship between Cohesion Policy and European values, providing two main original contributions to the literature. Firstly, it discusses the logical chain linking the implementation of Cohesion Policy to the formation of EU values. In doing this, it identifies the context conditions related to the local policy implementation settings that are likely to favour awareness and satisfaction of citizens with the Communitarian policy program. Secondly, it provides original evidence on the determinants of the perception of Cohesion Policy, testing the role of the context conditions. As a main result, the work finds out that “individual / private / subjective” needs have to be fulfilled in order for Cohesion Policy to contribute to the EU identity building process, independently from the capacity of EU actions to accomplish their main goal, i.e. that of fulfilling “real / collective / objective” needs of the regions., COHESIFY Research paper 5. COHESIFY WP2 -- Task 2.3: Output 2.3

This paper focuses on the outcome of Cohesion Policy (CP) on the processes of European Union (EU) identity building, by claiming that the context in which CP are implemented plays an important role in these processes. This topic received almost no attention in the literature, despite of its relevance in a time characterized by a persistent economic crisis, an unstable global scenario and increasing Euroscepticism. However, the impact of CP cannot be assumed to be the same across EU regions. Instead, it is mediated by a set of territorial characteristics defining different kinds of local policy implementation settings. The goal of this paper is therefore to conceptually discuss and define these features and, in the second part, to empirically classify EU areas across the alternative policy implementation settings. This analysis will allow drawing some implications on the relationship between CP and the identification of citizens with the EU values., COHESIFY Research paper 2. COHESIFY WP2 -- Task 2.3: Output 2.2

The literature on life satisfaction in transition countries, and in particular on Romania, demonstrated that life satisfaction significantly differs across rural communities and cities of different size. The question addressed in this paper is whether these imbalances are stable over time or, instead, they become manifest in the presence of strong divergences in the economic growth rates of different kinds of communities. Results point out that in the period of sharp economic growth led by large urban areas, as the one experienced by Romania on the road to EU accession, rural/urban disparities in life satisfaction widened, favoring cities of intermediate size.