In the age of grand recession, nationalism seems to have returned to Europe. In every EU country, many citizens are unhappy with the perceived intrusion of 'Europe' in their way-of-life. Any idea of a genuine pan-European identity seems to be in retreat. This book provides an unprecedented insight into the multiple ways through which citizens of 16 countries connect their own national identity to European identity. The book's theoretical claim is that European identity, as well as national identity, should be empirically assessed taking into account its multi-dimensionality. The volume's contributors suggest that European identity was always unlikely to be a source of political integration and political legitimacy in the way national identities have been in the past and are today. Europeans' primary identity is national rather than supranational. Mutual trust between European peoples exists, but is somewhat fragile. Yet, European identity is intertwined with national identities in manifold ways. The 'imagined communities' at the national and European level show strong similarities - criteria for being a European are strongly associated with the criteria used to define who national belonging. These complex links also manifest themselves in citizen's feelings of interdependence between the nations in the European Union - which, the volume suggests, support the EU in the face of severe crises. The IntUne series is edited by Maurizio Cotta (University of Siena) and Pierangelo Isernia (University of Siena). The INTUNE Project - Integrated and United: A Quest for Citizenship in an Ever Closer Europe - is one of the most recent and ambitious research attempts to empirically study how citizenship is changing in Europe. The book series is organized around the two main axes of the project, to report how the issues of identity, representation and standards of good governance are constructed and reconstructed at the elite and citizen levels, and how mass-elite interactions affect the ability of elites to shape identity, representation and the scope of governance. A first set of four books examines how identity, scope of governance and representation have been changing over time respectively at elites, media and public level. The next two books present cross-level analysis of European and national identity on the one hand and problems of national and European representation and scope of governance on the other, in doing so comparing data at both the mass and elite level. A concluding volume summarizes the main results, framing them in a wider theoretical context.

The English Tribe is about the crisis of nation and national identity facing the English - and the British - as we meet the challenges of the global economy and absorption into a federal Europe. It asks: what does it mean to be English - and British - at the very end of the twentieth-century? And it argues that as Britain becomes part of a federal Europe there will be no need for the centralized United Kingdom (monarchy, Westminster and Whitehall) as power is divided upwards to Brussels and downwards to the nations, regions and cities of Britain.

This study patterns national identity over a number of important historical milestones and brings the debates over Europe up-to-date with an analysis of recent happenings including the referendum on Scottish independence, the global economic crisis and the current crisis in Syria.

Providing a comprehensive and comparative analysis of the way national and European identities are intertwined in old and new member states of the European Union, this volume assembles nine country case studies. Each country has experienced different processes of state formation, nation-building and democratization, thus they have each developed different forms of national identity and different patterns of interaction between national and European identities. The case studies illuminate the similarities and differences in how national and European identities have evolved among the nine countries. Rich in empirical data, the volume examines the historical entanglement of national and European collective identities and is therefore well suited for courses on European studies including European integration and enlargement, international relations and sociology.

This book provides a comprehensive analysis of the opponents of Britain’s first attempt to join the European Economic Community (EEC), between the announcement of Harold Macmillan’s new policy initiative in July 1961 and General de Gaulle’s veto of Britain’s application for membership in January 1963. In particular, this study examines the role of national identity in shaping both the formulation and articulation of arguments put forward by these opponents of Britain’s policy. To date, studies of Britain’s unsuccessful bid for entry have focused on high political analysis of diplomacy and policy formulation. In most accounts, only passing reference is made to domestic opposition. This book redresses the balance by providing a more complete depiction of the opposition movement and a distinctive approach that proceeds from a ‘low political’ viewpoint. As such, the book emphasises protest and populism of the kind exercised by, among others, Fleet Street crusaders at the Daily Express, pressure groups such as the Anti-Common Market League and Forward Britain Movement, expert pundits like A. J. P. Taylor, Sir Arthur Bryant and William Pickles, as well as constituency activists, independent parliamentary candidates, pamphleteers, letter writers and maverick MPs. In its consideration of a group largely overlooked in previous accounts, the book provides essential insights into the intellectual, structural, populist and nationalist dimensions of early Euroscepticism. The book will be of significant interest to both scholars and students of national identity, Britain’s relationship with Europe and the Commonwealth, pressure groups and party politics, and the trajectory of the Eurosceptic phenomenon.

The author reviews main theories of nationalism and criticises their lack of elaboration on the role of 'Others' in nation formation. Drawing upon anthropological, sociological and social psychological perspectives, she develops a dynamic, relational perspective for the study of national theory.

Making sense of the perplexing diversity of Europe is a challenging task. How compatible are national identities in Europe? What makes Europe European? What do Europeans have in common? European National Identities explores the diversity of European states, nations, and peoples. In doing so, the editors focus on the origins and elements of different national identities in Europe and different themes of national self-understanding. Each chapter contributes a unique view of national identities gravitating around myth, historical experiences and traumas, values, ethnic and linguistic differences, and religious fault lines. This work grounds European national identities within cultural, historical, and political dynamics, which makes the work approachable for many readers, including historians, sociologists, and political scientists. In addition, the editors illustrate that national identities continue to be a source of contention and a challenge to political developments, the demands of immigrants and minorities, and the dynamics of European integration. This book draws particular attention to identity shifts and conflicts within individual European countries.

This timely book provides an extensive account of national identities in three of the constituent nations of the United Kingdom: Wales, Scotland and England. In all three contexts, identity and nationalism have become questions of acute interest in both academic and political commentary. The authors take stock of a wealth of empirical material and explore how attitudes to nation and state can be understood by relating them to changes in contemporary capitalist economies, and the consequences for particular class fractions. The book argues that these changes give rise to a set of resentments among people who perceive themselves to be losing out, concluding that class resentments, depending on historical and political factors relevant to each nation, can take the form of either sub-state nationalism or right wing populism. Nation, Class and Resentment shows that the politics of resentment is especially salient in England, where the promotion of a distinct national identity is problematic. Students and scholars across a range of disciplines, including sociology and politics, will find this study of interest.

The resilience of nationalism in contemporary Europe may seem paradoxical at a time when the nation state is widely seen as being 'in decline'. The contributors of this book see the resurgence of nationalism as symptomatic of the quest for identity and meaning in the complex modern world. Challenged from above by the supranational imperatives of globalism and from below by the complex pluralism of modern societies, the nation state, in the absence of alternatives to market consumerism, remains a focus for social identity. Nation and Identity in Contemporary Europe takes a fully interdisciplinary and comparative approach to the 'national question'. Individual chapters consider the specifics of national identity in France, Germany, Britain, Italy, Iberia, Russia, the former Yugoslavla and Poland, while looking also at external forces such as economic globalisation, European supranationalism, and the end of the Cold War. Setting current issues and conflicts in their broad historical context, the book reaffirms that 'nations' are not 'natural' phenomena but 'constructed' forms of social identity whose future will be determined in the social arena.

Inspired by debates among political scientists over the strength and depth of the pre-modern roots of nationalism, this study attempts to gauge the status of ethnic identities in an era whose dominant loyalties and modes of political argument were confessional, institutional and juridical. Colin Kidd's point of departure is the widely shared orthodox belief that the whole world had been peopled by the offspring of Noah. In addition, Kidd probes inconsistencies in national myths of origin and ancient constitutional claims, and considers points of contact which existed in the early modern era between ethnic identities which are now viewed as antithetical, including those of Celts and Saxons. He also argues that Gothicism qualified the notorious Francophobia of eighteenth-century Britons. A wide-ranging example of the new British history, this study draws upon evidence from England, Scotland, Ireland and America, while remaining alert to European comparisons and influences.