Introduction: European Identities

Europe is not a mother who owes something to her long-neglected children; neither is she a princess one has to court. She is not a knight sent to free us, nor an apple or a cake to be enjoyed; she is not a silk dress, nor the magic word ‘democracy’. Most likely, Europe is what we – countries, peoples, individuals – make of it for ourselves.

Slavenka Drakulić, ‘Café Europa’, 1996, Abacus, London

The widening and deepening of European integration in the last few decades has increased people's awareness of Europe. However, despite the political and administrative integration of the European area and the efforts undertaken to create a common European identity (e.g. through different kinds of symbolism usually associated with nation states); there is not yet a widespread sense of being European. In the words of Jacques Delors, paraphrasing the architects of Italian unification: ‘We have created Europe, now we must create Europeans!’

For this reason, we were interested to explore the notion of European Identity. There are increasing numbers of articles addressed to this issue, but many of them at a high level of abstraction, representing normative views of European identity rather than evidence for how this works. Hence, there is a real lack of concrete knowledge about feelings of belonging to Europe among Europeans. This special issue of Perspectives on European Politics and Society aims to remedy this lack of knowledge by bringing together a group of cross-disciplinary papers based on different kinds of data and different theoretical, empirical and methodological approaches, to explore various aspects of European identity.

It is perhaps a mistake however, to see European identity as similar to national identity that is representing a sense of belonging to a unique culture and nation unified by a common language or history. The papers in this special issue show that where a European identity is emerging it does not take this form. Rather it comprises a range of languages (indeed regional languages seem to have been strengthened by the integration process according to Grindheim and Lohndal) and a range of identities in which the European one does not necessarily exclude others, such as those of nation and region, sexuality, family and so on (see Boehnke & Fuss). Indeed, some have argued for the notion of ‘nested identities’ as being a better metaphor for this process (see e.g. Diez Medrano & Gutiérrez, 2001). We are not dealing with a zero-sum game where an increase in European identity necessarily decreases one's national identity or other kinds of identities. Most European citizens identify with both their national and regional communities and with Europe (– like the Euro coins being national on the one side and standardised European on the other). In addition, the feeling of Europeanness is not delimited to those living within the European Union, which at the same time illustrates Europe's ‘fuzzy boundaries’ (Risse, 2004).

The concept of ‘identity’ itself has undergone a number of transformations since it is seen more often as shifting, hybrid and protean rather than mono-cultural or essential. For example, the meaning of what it is to be ‘Scottish’ or ‘female’ is changing all the time, much like the idea of Europe itself. Although the nation states were built upon a sense of exclusionary national culture, this idea is criticised in the context of late modernity. People adapt and choose identities which can change under different circumstances. Thus in Europe one may not see oneself as ‘European’ but, when visiting the US or other continents, this makes much more sense. Furthermore, the kinds of identity that people might adopt vary according to different social groups which may also be ethnically defined. However, these kinds of ‘post-modern’ transmutations are not always accepted by populations who may reject rather than welcome them, as the civic and ethnic strife in Balkan Europe in the early 1990s testifies.

Furthermore, a number of papers in this special issue show that the meaning of being European, as well as the reasons for feeling European, differs according to national context, with, for example, the countries of Central Europe seeing Europe in terms of a common history, whereas countries such as the UK see it in terms of current political issues (see Pichler, this issue, 2008, pp. 411–430). These variations are often related to different dimensions like centre/periphery, east/west or old/new member states. The European Commission has yet another opinion of what is meant by the concept of ‘European Identity’, and which often may be governed by a need to legitimise the system (see contribution from Bee). For this reason we have named the special issue ‘European Identities’ rather than ‘European Identity’.

Indeed, the idea of Europe holds different meanings for sub-groups of the population, and the differences within countries may sometimes be greater than that between countries. As Pichler demonstrates (see Pichler, this issue, 2008, pp. 381–396), social class has a substantial impact on the level of identification with Europe; European identity is predominantly found in the elite groups of society. The young and the highly educated are also likely to have greater ‘exposure’ to Europe through mobility, learning languages and ‘cognitive mobilisation’ as is described in the paper by Spannring, Wallace and Datler. They inhabit a particular ‘habitus’, which incorporates familiarity with European culture, perhaps as part of their education, and hence Thorpe demonstrates that it is not just travel per se that is important, but the way in which these kinds of experiences can be incorporated into a person's biography and culture. For this reason there is an important social class differentiation in terms of experiences of becoming European, something which has been little explored hitherto. Nor is it necessarily the entire middle and upper classes who develop an identity as ‘European’. Rather as internationalism becomes part of their cultural currency for particular fractions of the bourgeoisie, there is the potential for further levels of stratification at the European level. Some may float in an international social space, feeling comfortable with other cultures and languages, whereas other social groups, especially the less educated, are mired in local and national cultures. Indeed a great deal of work remains to be done to look at the different orientations to Europe of different ethnic, social and cultural groups.

Some have argued that a ‘European Identity’ must grow out of a sense of cosmopolitanism (Beck, 2006; Delanty, 2006). This cosmopolitan awareness grows out of a post-materialist awareness of diversity, difference and internationalism as an alternative to mono-cultural nationalism. The linguistic and cultural diversity found in the European area means that European identities must be multi-cultural in character. Again, the university educated fractions of the bourgeoisie, able to take advantage of various exchange and travel schemes, are perhaps more likely to evince such an awareness.

Finally, as Duchesne argues, Europe may not represent the first point of belonging for most of its citizens. But the process of building a European identity is a new one (national identities after all took at least a century to build) and it is therefore ‘work in progress’. This special issue represents an attempt to try to capture this progress at a given point in time.

Acknowledgements

The papers included here were originally presented at a CINEFOGO Network of Excellence workshop, New Forms of Citizenship and Governance in Europe, in Prague in September 2006. We would like to acknowledge the financial support of the European Commission Sixth Framework Programme. Not all the papers presented there fitted with the current framework, and we had to turn away some interesting contributions as well as inviting some additional contributions to fill important gaps. We are grateful to the CSES in Prague as well as the European Commission for their help with staging this event and putting this special issue together. We would also like to thank Matt McGovern and Kathryn Vincent for their help in editing the special issue.