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European Identity

An ambitious volume which asks why hopes are fading for a single European identity, despite decades of European integration.

Jeffrey T. Checkel (Edited by), Peter J. Katzenstein (Edited by)

9780521709538, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 5 February 2009

280 pages, 13 tables
22.7 x 15.3 x 1.5 cm, 0.45 kg

'This timely book advances two significant claims. First, European identity has become inevitably politicized and contested. Second, next to the modern, enlightened vision of Europe, a much more xenophobic and populist identity construction has emerged, with 'Europe to the Europeans' as its rallying cry. Checkel and Katzenstein have collected an impressive group of authors. Their book serves as a huge question mark to the conventional wisdom that the Europeanization of identities is a benign and uncontested process of post-modern nation-building.' Thomas Risse, co-ordinator, Research Center 'Governance in Areas of Limited Statehood' and Director, Center for Transnational Relations, Foreign and Security Policy, Freie Universität Berlin

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.

Subject Areas: Politics & government [JP], Sociology [JHB]

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