The Construction of European Identity: From Nation State to the European Union

Abstract

This chapter deals with a few aspects which illustrate the basic context of European identity and discusses the development of national identity into European identity European identity. In this chapter, I try to combine different scientific disciplines, such as social anthropology, political science, political economy, European studies and linguistics, in order to approach European identity in an interdisciplinary context and specifically, as a supranational identity that is created by political elites. Hence, in this chapter, I mention some basic theories of nationalism and national identity that I consider necessary to the study of European identity. Thereafter, I focus on the nation state, its crises and its replacement by post-national regimes, such as the European Union, given that European identity, from my viewpoint, is directly linked to state and suprastate apparatuses. Moreover, I refer to different approaches to European identity (transnational, post-national, etc.), and present a classification of those approaches, and refer to studies on the discursive construction of national and European identities.