Identity And Integration In Europe

Collective identity, the emotionally powerful sense of belonging to a group, is a crucial source of popular legitimacy for nations. However efforts since the 1990s to politically support European integration by using identity mechanisms borrowed from nationalism have had very limited success. European integration may require new, post-national approaches to the relationship between culture and politics. This controversial and timely volume poses the logical question: if identity doesn't effectively connect culture with European integration politics, what does? The book brings together leading scholars from several of the disciplines that have developed concepts of culture and methods of cultural research. These expert interdisciplinary contributors apply a startling diversity of approaches to culture, linking it to facets of integration as varied as external policy, the democratic deficit, economic dynamism and the geography of integration. This book examines commonalities and connections within the European space, as well as representations of these in identity discourses. It will be useful for students and scholars of sociology, geography, anthropology, social psychology, political science and the history of European integration.

Symbolic boundaries, cultural differences and ethnic conflicts have gained significance and new meanings in a global situation characterized by the dissolution of traditional political and societal structures. Communications and political and economic interactions increasingly cross the borders of states, nations and ethnic communities, and yet symbolic borders and separate group identities are nevertheless asserted. The perceived efforts of migrants to maintain their cultural and ethnic identities are often blamed as a cause of conflict within nation states. This intriguing volume recognizes that migrants with an Islamic background are seen as especially problematic cases. Turks are the biggest category among Muslim migrants in Europe and more than one third of all Muslim migrants in Europe are from Turkey. Referring primarily to immigration from Turkey, this book combines both exemplary case studies of Turks within Europe and theoretical papers with innovative perspectives on the relations between integration and identity.

An ambitious volume which asks why hopes are fading for a single European identity, despite decades of European integration.

European integration has generated a wide array of economic, political, and social opportunities beyond the nation state. European citizens are free to obtain their academic degree in Germany, earn their money in London, invest it in Luxembourg, and retire to Spain. An early theorist of European integration, Karl Deutsch expected this development to promote a collective identity and public support for European integration: by interacting across borders, Europeans would become aware of their shared values and beliefs, and eventually acquire a common 'we feeling'. Experiencing European Integration puts these expectations under scrutiny by developing a comprehensive theoretical model that helps us understand how transnational interactions relate to orientations towards European integration. An extensive analysis of survey data covering the 27 EU member states provides a thorough empirical test of transactionalist hypotheses. Findings show that individual transnationalism indeed strongly and positively influences EU support, but that only a young, wealthy, and highly educated minority take part in cross-border interactions. The book further shows that the effectiveness of transnational interactions in generating EU support is contingent on a number of factors such as their purpose and scope. Importantly, increased transnational interactions result in negative externalities among those who do not become transnationally active themselves. By discussing the implications of transnationalism for the theoretical debate and current policy, this volume will provide a unique analysis of a key dynamic of European integration.

This book examines how African, Asian, Middle Eastern and Latin American diasporas use media to communicate among themselves and to integrate into European countries. Whereas migrant communities continue employing print and broadcasting technologies, the rapidly growing applications of Internet platforms like social media have substantially enriched their interactions. These communication practices provide valuable insights into how diasporas define themselves. The anthology investigates varied uses of media by Ecuadorian, Congolese, Moroccan, Nepalese, Portugal, Somali, Syrian and Turkish communities residing in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and the UK. These studies are based on research methodologies including big data analysis, content analysis, focus groups, interviews, surveys and visual framing, and they make a strong contribution to the emerging theory of diasporic media.

The four Nordic countries, Denmark, Finland, Sweden and Norway, have all held referenda on their relationship to the European Union in the 1990's. These referenda catalysed heated debates: should Finland and Sweden give up neutrality? Should Denmark follow the European Union's move towards higher degrees of integration? And, had there been enough change in Norway to reverse the rejection of European Community membership in 1972? These key questions about the future of European integration are addressed in this highly topical book by examining the crucial role played by national identity.

In the age of grand recession, nationalism seems to have returned to Europe. In every EU country, many citizens are unhappy with the perceived intrusion of 'Europe' in their way-of-life. Any idea of a genuine pan-European identity seems to be in retreat. This book provides an unprecedented insight into the multiple ways through which citizens of 16 countries connect their own national identity to European identity. The book's theoretical claim is that European identity, as well as national identity, should be empirically assessed taking into account its multi-dimensionality. The volume's contributors suggest that European identity was always unlikely to be a source of political integration and political legitimacy in the way national identities have been in the past and are today. Europeans' primary identity is national rather than supranational. Mutual trust between European peoples exists, but is somewhat fragile. Yet, European identity is intertwined with national identities in manifold ways. The 'imagined communities' at the national and European level show strong similarities - criteria for being a European are strongly associated with the criteria used to define who national belonging. These complex links also manifest themselves in citizen's feelings of interdependence between the nations in the European Union - which, the volume suggests, support the EU in the face of severe crises. The IntUne series is edited by Maurizio Cotta (University of Siena) and Pierangelo Isernia (University of Siena). The INTUNE Project - Integrated and United: A Quest for Citizenship in an Ever Closer Europe - is one of the most recent and ambitious research attempts to empirically study how citizenship is changing in Europe. The book series is organized around the two main axes of the project, to report how the issues of identity, representation and standards of good governance are constructed and reconstructed at the elite and citizen levels, and how mass-elite interactions affect the ability of elites to shape identity, representation and the scope of governance. A first set of four books examines how identity, scope of governance and representation have been changing over time respectively at elites, media and public level. The next two books present cross-level analysis of European and national identity on the one hand and problems of national and European representation and scope of governance on the other, in doing so comparing data at both the mass and elite level. A concluding volume summarizes the main results, framing them in a wider theoretical context.

This original work explores the increasingly important phenomenon of the formation of transnational identity. Considering the ongoing relevance of the European Union, the contributors ask a series of intriguing questions: Is a European identity possible? How are the various types of European identity formed and maintained? How are these identities linked to the process of European integration? Examining the psychological, institutional, and political mechanisms that encourage or impede identification with transnational groups, the book considers these theoretical questions in light of new evidence drawn from a rich body of primary research, including field experiments, in-depth interviews with elites, and public opinion surveys. Brought together for the first time, social psychologists, sociologists, political scientists, and ethnographers share their theoretical and methodological perspectives in tackling the common issues surrounding the emergence of "European" as a political identity. Paying special attention to the role of the institutions of the EU, the authors investigate the impact of neo-functionalist strategies and find that the processes of identity formation are far more complicated than can be explained by material and institutional factors alone. The authors engage in a fruitful dialogue about how much a European identity exists and how much it matters as they delve into the sources of disagreement and their implications.