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.

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.

European economic integration has advanced faster and further than anyone could have predicted, yet hopes are fading for a single European identity. This ambitious study analyses the complex mosaic of competing visions and aspirations, and explores a Europe where concepts of community are multiplying and disintegrating simultaneously.

Jeffrey T. Checkel is the Simons Chair in International Law and Human Security in the School for International Studies at Simon Fraser University, British Columbia and Adjunct Research Professor in the Centre for the Study of Civil War at the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo.
Peter J. Katzenstein is Walter S. Carpenter, Jr Professor of International Studies in the Department of Government at Cornell University, New York.