Europe's Contending Identities


Book Description

This volume interrogates the implications of the persistence of nationalisms and newer, ethnic-religious identities for the emergence of a robust European identity. The collected essays intersect and are informed by the streams of scholarship on: contemporary ethnonationalism; the challenges associated with immigrant, particularly Muslim immigrant, incorporation; and the so-called new nationalism, including the illiberal ideas and policies promoted by extreme right political parties and groups.




Fortress Britain?


Book Description

Immigration is a key concern in British society; however, the ethical implications of the issue are often overlooked. Produced by Theos, a leading Christian think tank, this collection of short essays explores the ethical issues surrounding immigration in a post-Brexit Britain with contributions from across the Christian and political spectrums. This timely collection considers the many issues surrounding immigration including economics, community, nationhood, sovereignty, and internationalism, and demonstrates the range of conclusions that can be drawn on this topic, with possible interventions from the Christian perspective. Insightful for policy-makers and politicians, as well as anyone looking for orientation on a complex subject, this book is also full of ethical questions and considerations for readers from any faith or background.




Nationalisms in the European Arena


Book Description

This book explores how the multiplicity of nationalist parties across the European Union have embraced or refused the process of European integration and made it a platform for transnational coordination in the European arena. The author analyzes how opposing pro-European minority nationalist parties and Eurosceptic populist nationalist parties have diversely politicized European integration over the past three decades and engage in different patterns of Europeanization. Tracing their divergent trajectories of transnational coordination, the book examines the common challenges these opposing nationalist party families face and their systematic fragmentation in the European arena. The book offers a novel approach to understanding the conditions for the emergence of truly European nationalist party families, based on the interaction of ideological, strategic and institutional variables that underpin the Europeanization of heterogeneous nationalisms. Nationalisms in the European Arena will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of disciplines including sociology and political science. It contributes to the increasing literature on identity politics in the European Union and reveals the mechanisms behind why the European arena is adverse to the political translation and organization of domestic nationalisms as distinctive European actors.




Engaging the Other


Book Description

Addressing the specific contexts of communal leadership, educational policy, inter-communal relations, legal reform, media production, public discourse, public opinion, and responses to government policy, this volume examines Western-Muslim relations and makes proposals for enhancing Self-Other interaction to improve societal harmony.




An Anthropology of the Irish in Belgium


Book Description

The first anthropological account of the Irish diaspora in Europe in the 21st century, this book provides a culture-centric examination of the Irish diaspora. Focusing less on an abstract or technical definition of Irish self-identification, the author allows members of this group to speak through vignettes and interview excerpts, providing an anthropological lens that allows the reader to enter a frame of self-reference. This book therefore provides architecture to understand how diasporic communities might understand their own identities in a new way and how they might reconsider the role played by mobility in changing expressions of identity. Providing firsthand, experiential and narrative insight into the Irish diaspora in Europe, this volume promises to contribute an anthropological perspective to historical accounts of the Irish overseas, theoretical works in Irish studies, and sociological examinations of Irish identity and diaspora.




Switzerland-EU Relations


Book Description

This book offers an up-to-date assessment of the state of Switzerland-EU relations with the aim of drawing lessons from the Swiss experience to shed light on the challenges facing the UK post-Brexit and, more broadly, on how non-member states can adapt to "integration without membership". The book covers the main issues in the Swiss experience of dealing with the EU over the last 30 years. These include the determinants of the 1992 vote, the architecture of the bilateral agreements signed since then, the economic interests at stake, the role played by immigration, the impact on the country’s federal system, the political, social, and cultural factors shaping attitudes to integration, and how the "Swiss model" has featured in the discourse about Brexit. The concluding chapter identifies the key lessons Switzerland’s experience offers for the British debate on the country’s relations with the EU post-Brexit. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of European Union politics, European politics, Swiss Politics, British Politics, Brexit, and more broadly to international relations.




The Unity We Have and the Unity We Seek


Book Description

This book contains twelve studies by well-qualified authors, many of them already very well-known in the field of ecumenism. It represents a stocktaking at the end of the twentieth century of "the unity we have" and a reassessment of "the unity we seek." It provides a well-documented overview of the field: a thorough and accessible introduction for everyone with an interest in ecumenism and an invaluable resource for everyone involved at any level. A substantial section charts some of the major ecumenical developments of the twentieth century and some of the new problems that have emerged.




European Identity


Book Description

The further evolution of the European Union is mainly dependent on how its citizens relate to their fellow Europeans speaking a score of languages and belonging to a variety of cultures. This book addresses the question of whether a new sense of collective self-identification, labeled “European identity,” a special form of socio-territorial identities, is emerging. Collective identities are works in progress, they entail a salient strategic—activist and future-oriented—dimension. Divergent strategic goals of the constituent groups induce a perpetual contestation and negotiation of the group identity, a process that in the case of the EU is intensified by the continuously changing boundaries and institutional structure of the super-polity. To confront these challenges, this book has a double focus. The first part weighs in on the feasibility of a European identity in light of what the two main paradigms in the field, primordialism and constructivism, can predict. The second part maps the social forces that are either favorable or inimical to the creation of a common social identity on the continent. Both parts develop hypotheses about the processes we witness, and test them with the available empirical data. Part II distinguishes between passive and active supporters of the integration project, besides the Euroskeptic segment of the public. Provision of public goods by regional integration is believed to explain passive permissiveness, while the main impetus for integration comes from those who may reap above-average benefits from it. This book contends that the groups of active supporters have historically been changing within the Union; namely, the political Left and Right are changing their roles in negotiating future developments. Yet the evolution of the EU is also shaped by the solutions adopted to accommodate ethnic and cultural diversity. The empirical tests involve opinion survey data taken from the Eurobarometer series, World Value and European Social Surveys, and the International Social Survey Programme, expert ratings, as well as party elite documents from the Manifesto Project Database.




Citizenship, identity and immigration in the European Union


Book Description

European citizenship, identity and immigration are constitutive issues facing the European polity and have important consequences for domestic political systems. There has been a great deal published about citizenship within the setting of the nation-state and comparative immigration policies, but relatively little has been written on their theorisation in a post-national, post-statist context, such as the EU, and on alternative European institutional designs. Now available in paperback, this volume blends normative political theory with European integration, and develops an original theoretical framework for European Union citizenship, identity and immigration as well as a set of policy proposals for institutional reform. Challenging the conventionally held views in these areas, the author argues that a constructive model of European citizenship and identity is vital to the construction of a democratic, heterogeneous and inclusive European polity. The book will appeal to academics and political actors concerned with issues of European governance as well as to undergraduate and postgraduate students of European politics, European integration, European Union Law, political theory and sociology.




Globalism, Localism and Identity


Book Description

Global economic and social forces are affecting everyone, everywhere. However, their influence is shaped by local communities' interpretation of these forces and responses to them. Social identities provide a guide; they are the product of history, culture, economy, patterns of governance and degree of community cohesion. How the global and the local connect and reconfigure at various scales and through different cultures is explained in this forward-looking volume. The book's thesis, namely that localism is the crucial complement to globalism, is supported by a range of European case studies. Local responses to globalizing forces depend on the nature of the interlinkages in governance from international structures, through multilateral organizations to nation states, regions and localities, as these are mediated through social-local identity. The contributors draw on numerous themes in examining the interaction between the global and the local, such as decay and revitalization, local identity and empowerment, opportunism through sustainability and governance for the transition. This is a pioneering publication utilizing an innovative person-centred methodology. It makes an original and important contribution to the study of contemporary societies and is aimed at anyone interested in the social, economic, political, cultural and environmental implications of any move towards sustainability.