A near-existential dilemma: the European national template, the accommodation of diversity and the nationalist backlash

ABSTRACT

The reason Europe has difficulties accepting large-scale immigration and ethnic diversity should be sought in the basic structure of European nationalism and is not a phenomenon easily dealt with through good will or institutional reform. Simultaneously, populism and other forms of anti-elitism go hand in hand with increasing international interdependence; the business world and politics are moving apart; and the EU is trapped between nearly irreconcilable paradoxes. I outline a number of these dichotomies while finally looking at what needs to be done to close the widening gap between nationalism, European integration and migration-based diversity.

KEYWORDS:

• National identity
• diversity
• migration
• EU
• integration

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Ulf Hedetoft is Professor of International Studies, Saxo Institute, and Director of the Center for the Study of Nationalism at UCPH. Primary research interests include: nationalism and nation-states in historical and comparative perspective as well as international migration and European integration. Altogether some 250 publications, e.g. Signs of Nations (Dartmouth, 1995); The Postnational Self: Belonging and Identity (University of Minnesota Press, 2002); The Politics of Multiple Belonging (Ashgate, 2004); Nationalism as Civil Religion, in A. Hvithamar et al, Holy Nations and Global Identities (Brill, 2009); Is Nationalism an Anachronism? in M. Barrett et al, Nationalism, Ethnicity, Citizenship (Cambridge Scholars, 2011); Multiculturalism: Symptom, Cause or Solution?, in R. Taras, Challenging Multiculturalism (Edinburgh UP, 2013); Review of M. Ehala, Signs of Identity. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development (2018).

Notes

1 In February 2009, for instance, the Council of Europe held a conference in Moscow for ’ministers responsible for social cohesion’ in their respective countries. See http://www.coe.int/t/dc/files/ministerial_conferences/2009_social_cohesion/default_en.asp

2 This section is based in large part on Hedetoft, 2013b.

3 National reality has never been more than an approximation to the ideal; sovereignty has never been absolute, migration has been a continuing fact of life; homogeneity has always been partial; the economy has never been totally ‘domestic’. Nevertheless it makes sense to argue that in a particular phase (app 1950–1970), political and economic instruments for the maintenance of state control with borders, populations, and economic developments were qualitatively different compared with the current regional and global order and that, partly for that reason, it was possible to construct workable welfare states in Europe.