European identity

Why are hopes fading for a single European identity? Economic integration has advanced faster and further than predicted, yet the European sense of 'who we are' is fragmenting. Exploiting decades of permissive consensus, Europe's elites designed and completed the single market, the euro, the Schengen passport-free zone, and, most recently, crafted an extraordinarily successful policy of enlargement. At the same time, these attempts to de-politicize politics, to create Europe by stealth, have produced a political backlash.

This ambitious survey of identity in Europe captures the experiences of the winners and losers, optimists and pessimists, movers and stayers in a Europe where spatial and cultural borders are becoming ever more permeable. A full understanding of Europe's ambivalence, refracted through its multiple identities, lies at the intersection of competing European political projects and social processes.

Contents:

1. The politicization of European identities - Jeffrey T. Checkel and Peter J. Katzenstein

Part I: European Identity as Project
2. Political identity in a community of strangers - Dario Castiglione
3. Experimental identities (after Maastricht) - Douglas R. Holmes
4. The public sphere and the European Union's political identity - Juan Díez Medrano

Part II: European Identity as Process
5. Being European: East and West - Holly Case
6. Who are the Europeans and how does this matter for politics? - Neil Fligstein
7. Immigration, migration, and free movement in the making of Europe - Adrian Favell

Part III: European Identity in Context
8. Identification with Europe and politicization of the EU since the 1980s - Hartmut Kaelble
9. Conclusion: European identity in context - Peter J. Katzenstein and Jeffrey T. Checkel

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