Introduction: the Europeanisation of identities through everyday practices

ABSTRACT

In this introduction to the special issue on ‘The Europeanisation of identities through everyday practices’, we argue for a more thorough shift towards everyday practices, lifeworlds and leisure-time activities as important terrains for research into (ultimately also politically relevant) identifications among Europeans. Doing so entails the idea that the Europeanisation of identities might unfold in a more subliminal manner, and might hence be anchored less in policy changes and people’s positionings towards political issues in a narrower sense. In contrast, mindsets, aspirations and frames of reference might undo a more unconscious transformation due to various activities in lifeworldly, cultural, leisure time-related, and even private spheres. Drawing on a multitude of fields (e.g. cultural heritage, university cooperation, everyday routines in the border region, arts, sports and gaming) as well as varying approaches and different methodologies, this Special Issue aims at demonstrating that ever more Europeanised identities might emerge from multiple sources and activities, which are not obviously tied to political agendas and frameworks.

KEYWORDS:

• Europeanisation
• (European) identity
• the everyday
• leisure-time
• transnationalism

Acknowledgments

We like to thank Alexandra Bumcke and Helen Klaes for their valuable research assistance. We also thank the reviewers of this introduction for their valuable comments and suggestions as well as Martin Bull and the JCES team for their support throughout the whole process that led to this special issue.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. At least if we talk about people in democratic regimes that have not put filtering and restrictions in place.

2. This goes along with an increasingly stricter border regime vis-à-vis the outside world (Niemann and Zaun 2023) – an important phenomenon that is, however, of lesser relevance for the theme and focus of this special issue.

3. This and the following section build upon chapter 4 of a forthcoming book on the Europeanisation of identities among football fans (cf. Niemann, Brand, and Weber forthcoming). It summarises a few of its arguments, particularly those which transcend the field of football and sports.

4. We use this term in a rather loose fashion, not aiming at philosophical purism along the lines of, for instance, Husserl or Habermas. In our understanding, ‘lifeworlds’ are those contexts of action and being that are not constantly theorised by people, that are taken for granted, and the surroundings of which are too normal to be reflected upon and nevertheless constitute the bulk of most people’s lifetime experience, cf. e.g. Dahlberg and Dahlberg (2020), Krall and Knapp (2021).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft [386268084].