A EUROPE OF HOMELANDS OR HOMELAND EUROPE: (EUROPEAN) IDENTITY ISSUES
Cirila TOPLAK1 Mitja VELIKONJA11 Jernej PIKALO111 Peter STANKOVIČIV Ksenija ŠABECV Mirt KOMELVI
COBISS 1.01
ABSTRACT
A Europe of Homelands or Homeland Europe: (European) Identity Issues
This paper addresses identity issues in Europe in the context of the free flow of people within the European Union and therefore the creation and reinforcement of complex parallel individual and also collective identities. The authors' premises are current EU perspectives on migration and the interconnection of migration and identity issues. Based on the substantial body of literature on the topic, the authors confront various theorisations of collective identities with the political project on European identity, emphasising in particular European nationalisms, social and other identities in relation to European identity and the (ab)use of the latter as a political instrument. In the conclusion, the authors suggest key research issues to orient the scientific research in this field in the future. KEY WORDS: Europe, identity, European Union
IZVLEČEK
Evropa domovin ali domovina Evropa: Dileme (evropske) identitete
Znanstveni članek naslavlja identitetne dileme Evrope v kontekstu prostega pretoka ljudi v in znotraj Evropske unije in posledično oblikovanje in krepitev kompleksnih vzporednih individualnih in kolektivnih identitet. Avtorji se pri analizi opirajo na aktualne migracijske vidike EU in povezavo med migracijami in identitetami. Skozi obsežen opus obstoječe literature o (evropski) identiteti soočajo različne teoretizacije kolektivnih identitet s političnim projektom evropske identitete, pri čemer izpostavijo zlasti evropske nacionalizme, socialne in druge identitete v odnosu do evropske identitete ter (zlo)rabo evropske identitete kot političnega orodja. V sklepu pa avtorji sugerirajo ključne smernice za znanstveno raziskovanje v tem polju v prihodnje. KLJUČNE BESEDE: Evropa, identiteta, Evropska unija, migracije
I	PhD Political History, Assistant Professor; Faculty of Social Sciences, Kardeljeva pl. 5, SI-1000 Ljubljana; e-mail: cirila.toplak@fdv.uni-lj.si.
II	PhD Culturology, Professor; Faculty of Social Sciences, Kardeljeva pl. 5, SI-1000 Ljubljana; e-mail: mitja.veliko-nja@fdv.uni-lj.si.
III	PhD Political Science, Associate Professor; Faculty of Social Sciences, Kardeljeva pl. 5, SI-1000 Ljubljana; e-mail: jernej.pikalo@fdv.uni-lj.si.
IV	PhD Culturology, Associate Professor; Faculty of Social Sciences, Kardeljeva pl. 5, SI-1000 Ljubljana; e-mail: peter. stankovic@fdv.uni-lj.si.
V	PhD Culturology, Assistant Professor; Faculty of Social Sciences, Kardeljeva pl. 5, SI-1000 Ljubljana; e-mail: kse-nija.sabec@fdv.uni-lj.si.
VI	Assistant; Faculty of Social Sciences, Kardeljeva pl. 5, SI-1000 Ljubljana; e-mail: mirt.komel@fdv.uni-lj.si.
INTRODUCTION
At present, the European Union is in yet another crisis, a crisis of institutions and policies, of democracy and demography and, supposedly and subsequently, identity. In the prevailing political discourse since the Great Enlargement of 2004, the need to stimulate European identity has been emphasised as an increasingly unavoidable precondition for the new impetus of the European integration project that has been initiated and stimulated so far by European political elites. This need has been further accentuated by European demography issues that include an important immigration flow from third countries in addition to low fertility rates and population ageing. Immigration into the European Union is by no means anything new; Europe has been a continent of migrations since Antiquity, with periods of mass emigration followed by periods of mass immigration. The latter has recently been seeing a significant increase yet again in the context of unstoppable globalization processes, including in particular populations from non-European countries and continents, while the expected, feared and in some cases hoped for internal migration within the EU has been limited to a manageable scale. Also, "many of the Member States of the EU have inherited permanent populations of foreign residents as a result of both their colonial past and various systems of guest worker systems. ... There has been increasing entry by family reunification and a dramatic growth of asylum seekers." (Morris 1997: 195) According to estimates, by 2050 this immigrant flow into (the) Europe(an Union) is going to increase by at least 50 and at most 100 million new "Europeans" (Bijak et al 2007: 11-13). Although in some European countries declining populations are about to become "overwhelming phenomena" (ibid: 27), strong political and public opposition persists to welcoming new immigrants, and immigration is continued to be considered part of the problem instead of the solution. One of the symptoms of this malaise is the absence of a common EU migration policy that leaves each Member State to manage (illegal) immigrants independently without being subjected to unified legal requirements at the EU level. It appears as if the immigrants, these "Others", are simply not considered the right answer for the European demographic and economic future, albeit they may be the only one. Numerous studies and analyses have been carried out on the interdependence of demography and economics, with population ageing and fertility on one side and immigration on the other. The fact that EU politicians and citizens are not inclined to permanently accept immigrants in their midst is in our view to be studied in the context of European identity as much as in the context of globalization-related economic and cultural threats. After all, about 30 million immigrants are supposed to live today in EU Member States, which all together include over 500 million inhabitants (www.imiscoe.org) and these figures hardly make the immigrant population appear as a real threat. The immigration issues in Europe put further pressure on the necessity to identify the geographical and cultural limits of the European Union project, i.e. who is/can be European and who can/ will not. That is why we propose in this paper to review the status of European identity studies and draw possible conclusions for European immigration issues. We propose to take a closer look at European nationalism, the interaction between European identity and other collective identities and the (ab)use of European identity as a political instrument.
"EUROPEAN IDENTITY"?
Since the European Union is a very specific political project without comparable precedent, the issue must be raised as to whether we can expect and subsequently adapt our actions to the expectation that the European Union may eventually evolve into a super-state with national attributes. The observed evolution of the European integration process does not seem to lead in that direction; on the contrary. If the creation, implementation and conservation of national identities have been crucial to the creation and survival of nation-states in Europe, the supposedly self-evident analogy with the necessity of European identity is not that obvious after all.
The "Europe of nations" is a historical reality we cannot underestimate, let alone ignore today, and is something we have to live and plan for in the future. Although Euro-sceptics have promoted the argument that national identities have evolved "organically" and are therefore irreplaceable and cannot be completed by European identity, an extensive body of historiography demonstrates that national identity formation processes in Europe indeed took place in various historical periods or particular European states, but they were always conscious and political processes in the course of which national elites attempted to achieve as fast and efficient as possible national cohesion through numerous concrete measures and policies, such as the consensual invention of national history, the careful selection of desirable traditions to be perpetuated, control of official language and communication codes, intensive national-political iconography and targeted topics of educational programs. In the case of multi-national political communities, attempts were made at the articulation of a specific supra-national identity through the implementation of similar policies and measures.
A critical distance needs be kept however, from the very possibility, necessity and desirability of an effective European identity in order to avoid prejudicing, which would only help to solidify and promote the current political discourse on European identity without exposing it to critical assessment. Despite having opted for such a topic we are fully aware that our objective scientific position may be nuanced by our views and interests as citizens of the EU, and we believe that optimally impartial scientific interest in topics that have a direct impact on our everyday life presents a particular challenge to academic excellence and a particularly valuable goal to pursue.
Proceeding from the assumption that a comparative analysis of cohabitation of different cultural and national identities in selected multiethnic/multinational/multicultural states can provide important answers for dilemmas related to the processes of building a common multiethnic/multinational/ multicultural European identity, the first issue which needs to be tackled is the very meaning of the concept of "European identity", how this concept can be defined and above all which (different) theoretical approaches have already been conceived regarding this issue. Also, in addition to the undoubtedly important academic disputes on the issue of European identity, another factor should not be neglected - European citizens' perception of this common identity as a work in progress.
According to the public opinion survey data in the Eurobarometer, the cultural identities of separate nation-states are the predominant form of collective identification in the European Union, when compared to European cultural identity which is at present relatively weak and undetermined. The reasons for this can be identified as people's emotional indifference towards the European Union, prevalent attachment to their national/regional/local identities, heterogeneous perspectives of separate European states about the way European identity should be established (French, British and German as the most profiled), and the democratic deficit of the European Union (Šabec 2006: 214-216). Additional reasons could be the processes of European integration, transnationalisation and globalization. Two non-coincidental developments in Europe (and elsewhere) are indicative in this respect: the gradual abolition of borders and global processes of individualisation on the one hand, and the explicit manifestation of separate local, regional and national identifications on the other, even in the form of militant outbursts of xenophobia, invigorated by constantly reformed, selected and transformed collective memory (Robertson 1995; Appadurai 2000; Goldsworthy 2003). Revisionist ideas and attempts at reforming the past, including the redefinition of the Holocaust, grow out of populist right-wing movements and are increasingly becoming parts of legitimate discourse (Kuljic 2002: 48). Serious attempts to deny the Holocaust have wide repercussions in the political sphere, mass media discourse and even in the education process. However, the European Union and its institutions, non-governmental organizations, international universities, donations, foundations, and projects endeavour to shape the so-called common European identity, which inevitably requires at least a certain degree of consensual collective memory (historical culture as a synthesis of experiences of the past and perspectives of the future, according to Rüsen (2006)), of our common past.
A dilemma has been raised in the past decade regarding whether a common identity is a precondition for greater political and economic integration of the nations of Europe. In this respect, many researchers have wondered if in the case that this common identity is indeed deemed necessary or at least desirable, it should necessarily include unified symbolic geography (myths, values, symbols, remembrance days, anthems, flags, memory of glorious military feats, war memorials etc.) and a "common past" (Toplak 2003: 127). Some scholars argue that economic and political union can only be founded upon a common European cultural identity that will endow legitimacy to EU-induced institutions and decisions.1 Others, however, argue that the emergence of a shared social identity, whether it originates from a national or supranational centre, is not premised upon common culture but grows out of a shared experience of political citizenship.2 From this perspective, the extension and deepening of EU competencies and institutions at the subnational level as expounded by multi-level governance, arguably contributes to increasing citizens' attachment to the European sphere without, necessarily, any corresponding decline of national or regional identity (Marks 1997: 85; Marks 1999). Ole Waever (1995), for instance, sees the possibility of constructing a supranational European identity - a sort of European citizenship - only in the field of politics and economics, while at the same time adhering to national identities at the cultural level and leaving the decisions on culture to the national governments. The general argumentation here is that while Europe is witnessing the emergence of an increasingly global economic sphere, the cultural sphere is becoming more and more national or regional. However, it does not consider this division into identity levels entirely unproblematic, as it is probably not even possible to make a clear distinction between culture and politics.
NATIONAL IDENTITIES vs. EUROPEAN IDENTITY
In the social, political, cultural and historical sciences, most researchers understand collective identities as constituted by the collective group to which individuals belong and identify with. Accordingly, national identities are conceived as derivatives or prerequisites of nation-state formation and, transposed to Europe, a European identity is seen as an attachment to the evolving European transnational governance system. Within this perspective and parallel to the opposition between the nation-state and the possibility of a European super-state, two opposite theoretical approaches determine studies of the relationship between national identities and a potentially emerging European identity. According to the first, the new European identity is perceived as a substitute for national identity, while according to the second, it is a supranational concept.3
The second approach seems more pluralistic and acceptable in terms of contemporary identities, which coexist at the individual as well as collective level. According to Edgar Morin (1989) and other supra-nationalists, if outbursts of nationalism, xenophobia, ethnic conflicts and violence are to be
1	So far this common cultural identity is non-existent, and in the context of enduring national allegiances this could be understood as a problem, as it contributes to reinforce the Union's infamous democratic deficit (Grimm 1997; Smith 1997).
2	In these instances social identity is a product of civic participation in institutions that helps forge a common sense of belonging to a broader European demos (Habermas 1997; Weiler 1997).
3	The first approach therefore defines the European Union as a system of governance which absorbs elements of national governance and assumes a trans- or post-national European identity, which in turn increasingly replaces the pre-existing national identities. The basic premise here is that national identities are progressively declining against a strengthening European identity. The second approach conceives of the European Union as a transnational or supranational structure superposing the constituting Member (nation) States and therefore views the emerging 'Europeanness' as only an additional layer to the fundamental national identity. The premise here is that the emerging European identity is in fact only an additional identification and is therefore, at least for the time being, still relatively weak, when compared to the primary and strong national identifications (Riz-man 2003: 119).
avoided, European identity should have no mobilisational value (i.e. should not be constructed on a memory of glorious military feats, war memorials, remembrance days etc., which lies at the core of every European national identity), just as it should by no means promote the sense of superiority of Europeans to any significant Others (Mead 1997; Hall 1997). The European supra-nationalist project is according to these authors incompatible with any such monumental 'struggle for freedom' model because the European political project is explicitly founded on a anti-war stance, and since the glorification of the alleged European feats of arms would clash fundamentally with the values which stand at the core of the supranational conception of European identity (tolerance, liberalism, democracy and universal human rights). But with no memory of military glories and no hostile other (Asians, Africans, Americans etc.), European supra-nationalists are left with few other tools of traditional national identity construction. Some of them, Jean-Baptiste Duroselle for instance, have attempted to identify some common European 'phases of shared experience' or common past (from the megaliths to the era of Imperialism), while others, Morin among them, admit that the European past offers no narrative of this kind. Instead, Morin recruits the future for the cause of Europe and its common identity. According to Pavkovič (2000: 115) however, this seriously undermines the political utility of the project (Pavkovič 2000: 127-128).
The contradiction between European identity and existing national identities, however, may be rather superficial, and according to Anthony D. Smith (1992), actually depends on the understanding of the phenomenon of nationalism itself. If understood in Romantic terms as a seamless, organic cultural unit, then the contradiction becomes acute, but if a more voluntaristic and pluralistic conception is accepted as an analytical point of departure, understanding the nation as a rational association of common laws and culture within a defined territory, the contradiction is minimized. In this version there is room for competing identity focuses and the conflict between the national identity claims and those of a European identity becomes more situational and pragmatic, even if it could never be eliminated in a political crisis.
OTHER IDENTITIES vs. EUROPEAN IDENTITY
Based on a comprehensive overview of the research work which has already been done on the construction of a common European identity, the issue of national and supra-national identities needs be connected to the wider issue of socially constructed identities. Some work has already been done in this direction, but in many respects researchers have focused primarily on historical or political issues, neglecting the very basic question of the constructed nature of social identities. 4
According to the concept of concentric circles of allegiance, various individual and collective identities (gender, age, regions, occupations, religions, class, professional, civic and ethnic allegiances etc.) and memories can be multiplied (Smith 1991), complementary and cohabiting. These identifications may reinforce national identities but at the same time also cut across them.
Under normal circumstances, most people live with multiple identifications; only occasionally does one or another of these identities come under pressure from external circumstances, or from a conflict with one of the individual's, family's or group's other identities. Conflicts between loyalty to a national state and solidarity with an ethnic community may in this sense bring about accusations of dual loyalties (Smith 1992: 59). There is always the potential for such identity conflicts. That they do not occur often is due to the certain fluidity involved in the processes of individual identifications, and the advantage of possible supranational identifications is that they presuppose the recognition of multiple
4 The precise meanings of terms "supra-nation" and "sub-nation" need be identified as well the theoretical background of the interrelation of these concepts, focusing on the concept of "ethnicity with an experience of residence in multicultural and multinational societies" i.e. the "passion ethnicity" as suggested by L. Gumilev and identifying factors and mechanisms of interaction of passion ethnicities with supra-national entities.
loyalties. National identifications, however, possess distinct advantages over the idea of a unified European identity: they are vivid, accessible, well established, long popularized, and still widely believed in, whereas Europe is deficient both as an idea and as a process. According to Smith (1992: 62) Europe lacks a pre-modern past which can provide it with emotional sustenance and affect it with interest and historical and cultural depth. Multilayered identities should therefore allow for the simultaneous celebration of local, national, and continental elements, which means in practice that, for example, Catalan, Spanish, and European allegiances need not be mutually exclusive. But if Europe is merely a sum total of its various national identities and communities, there is something quite arbitrary about aggregating such identities, as certain otherwise unrelated communities happen to reside in a geographical area which is conventionally designated as the continent of Europe. If 'Europe' and 'European' signify something more than the sum total of the populations and cultures that happen to inhabit a demarcated geographical space, something which might be called 'specifically European experiences' have to be identified with respect to this continent.
It could be argued accordingly that there are shared traditions, both legal and political, and shared heritages, both religious and cultural, such as Roman law, political democracy, parliamentary institutions, Judeo-Christian ethics, Renaissance humanism, rationalism and empiricism, romanticism and classicism. Not all Europeans share in all of them, but at one time or another, all of Europe's communities have participated in at least some of these traditions and heritages to some degree. Instead of the official European cultural formula - unity in diversity - Smith (1992: 70) proposes a European family of cultures made up of a syndrome of partially shared, overlapping and boundary-transcending historical and political traditions and cultural heritages. Indeed there has always been such cultural cross-fertilization in Europe but what needs to be established is how far those shared traditions and heritages have become part of each of Europe's national identities and how much different national traditions have embraced and assimilated these trans-European cultural heritages. As already mentioned, a distinction should be made between families of cultures and political or economic unions. The latter are usually deliberate creations (consciously willed unities, rationally constructed sets of institutions), while the former tend to develop over long time-spans and are the product of particular historical circumstances.
In this context there are multiple answers to the question of how the supposed European identification could be forged. One argument suggests a mass standardized public education system (based above all on a common European past), however there are only national systems at this point, and besides, writing a narrative on a common European past is dangerous in itself as it promotes hegemonic Eurocentric metadiscourse (Velikonja 2005: 92). Heikki Mikkeli (1998) argues that there are actually at least three factors which challenge this idea. Firstly, the narrative of the 'idea of Europe' has an inbuilt vision of the progress of a set, largely invariable ideal towards a legitimate European Union. This narrative is by nature teleological, progressive and deterministic in a way that the real history of Europe has not always been, or at least not in every respect. Secondly, it is predominantly the 'history of the victors': it is the story of the gradual, global conquering of a superior civilization which allots little room to the less honourable episodes in the history of Europe. Thirdly, it does not critically address the nature of Europe, its inner divisions and conflicts, or its relationships with the rest of the world (Mikkeli 1998: 243).
As such, European identity would need to provide a symbolic order wherein a centripetal force might be able to counteract, yet not abolish the centrifugal forces of primary identifications (national, ethnic, regional, local).5 From this perspective European identity should be merely an invented tradition (Hobsbawm 2003), which contains a fragile hope that its far-reaching, inclusive agenda might appeal to a majority of the citizens and peoples of Europe. This is partly due to Europe's lack of a common language, and partly due to the fact that the European Union has not yet managed to build a satisfac-
5 As Michael Billig (1995) argues, nationalism and/or patriotism will remain constitutive and integrative elements in the everyday classification of majority and minority social groups within particular nation-states well into the 21st century.
tory series of images, values, convictions, concepts, and ideals that would transcend an individual's immediate existence. From this perspective, Europe will probably mean sharing institutions and agencies overseeing financial and labour transactions, while cultural spheres will remain limited to reciprocal tolerance, mutually encouraged passivity and lack of active interest in each other's immediate experience (Kymlicka 2000).
Simo Knuuttila regards the conflict of values as typical characteristics of Europeanness, such as the case of the tradition of political thought characterized by increasing competition between the community model, derived from the Antiquity, and the individual model, developed in the late Middle Ages, arguing that these conflicting perspectives are still causing tension today. Knuuttila (in Mikkeli 1998) also emphasizes the fact that the Europeans have generated common values that have simply accumulated without being ordered to form a harmonious synthesis. The dilemma of the sense of Europeanness lies precisely in this mass of values, yet to be organized into a balanced entity, and the economic and political European Union may therefore, according to Knuuttila, prove to be rather short-lived; earlier coalitions of this type in Europe have tended not to survive for long.
The issue of European supranational identity is also related to the more general topic of social identities. Questions regarding 'identity' have attracted a great deal of theoretical interest within the human and social sciences and there are scores of different attempts to understand or at least to address the issue from the most varied theoretical, as well as disciplinary, viewpoints. In various forms of sociological analysis, for example, the dominance of 'class' as the master identity of society has been challenged by the growth of various new social movements (e.g. feminisms, black struggles and the ecological movement) (du Gay, Evans and Redman 2002: 1), which has compelled researchers to acknowledge that the social fabric consists of many more layers than just one, and that these do not necessarily relate only to relations within the sphere of production.6
These two lines of the argument, along with their developments in the field of contemporary cultural studies of identity, make a convincing case that identities are constituted through the reiterative power of discourse to produce what it also names and regulates; that identities are constituted in and through 'difference' and that, as a result, they are inherently 'dislocated'; and that 'subjects' are 'interpellated' by or 'sutured' to the position made available in discourse through the operation of the unconscious (du Gay, Evans and Redman 2002: 1). Many research projects have been conducted and arguments developed along these lines (Rose 2005, Bhabha 2004; Craib 1998; Segal 2006; Gilroy 2002; Benson 1997; to name but a few), but recently there have been some challenges to this 'constructivist' perspective, primarily from the position of, as Martin Barker calls it, the science of sex (Barker 2002: 115). According to Barker, recent developments in evolutionary biology and psychology suggest there is at least a segment of human behaviour which cannot be explained away in terms of exclusively cultural factors, as some of it appears to be biologically driven (Barker 2002: 116). It is true that biochemistry and genetics are themselves languages and forms of cultural classification, which somehow diminish the impact of their developments, but much of the recent work on the issue of social identities is trying to come to terms with this new challenge from the natural sciences. Nevertheless, for the most
6 The issue has been raised by Louis Althusser, who proposed that our social identities, or as he has called them, subject positions, do not reflect our supposed trans-historical essences, but rather represent points of cultural reference, where subjects recognize themselves as a consequence of continuous processes of interpellations by 'ideological state apparatuses' (Althusser 2000: 53-110). The critique of the integral, self-sustaining subject which lay in the heart of post-Cartesian Western metaphysics, triggered by Althusser, has developed subsequently in two basic directions. On the one hand, there is a line of arguments related to psychoanalysis, stressing that the subject is not as self-conscious, integral and self-sustaining as it has been previously supposed, as it appears that subjects are to a significant extent subjected to unconscious drives completely beyond their control. The second line of argument conversely draws from the heterogeneous body of predominantly francophone theory (the works of Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida etc.) and claims that individuals are essentially subjects of language.
part, researchers remain firmly committed to the position of cultural constructivism (cf. Butler 2004; Hall 2002; Woodward 1997), and this is also the case of authors who discuss the issues of national identities that typically understand national identities as distinctively modern inventions or, as Benedict Anderson famously put it, 'imagined communities'. This applies to eminent researchers like Gellner, Anderson, Hobsbawm or Breuilly (cf. Gellner 2006; Anderson 2006; Breuilly 1993; Hobsbawm 1997) as well as to younger writers like Chatterjee, Walby and Verdery (cf. Chatterjee 1993; Walby 2006; Verdery 1998).
EUROPEAN IDENTITY AS POLITICAL INSTRUMENT
The construction of a European identity obviously represents a legitimate attempt to establish a more integrated association of European Union Member States reaching beyond the preliminary economic and political integration processes. However, the problem in this respect is, at least according to some authors, that this is an elitist project by the institutions of the European Union, based on the assumption that the economic and political integration procedures will be inevitably and invariably followed by the formation of a common European cultural identity (cf. Siedentop 2003: 150). A certain top-down approach is probably a necessity (after all proved by the processes of the construction of national identities), however, the concept of collective identity cannot be exclusively prescribed by European political institutions or implemented from above as a matter of practical politics. An attempt to create a European identity in such way is most likely doomed to fail if there is no corresponding element 'from below'. According to Jörn Rüsen (2006: 1-2), European identity beyond or above the established national, regional, and local historical cultures of the European countries cannot be simply implemented by the European institutions; it cannot represent an effective element in the cultural life of the European peoples unless it is grounded in the living and mentally powerful established historical cultures and memories. Spain and Belgium are just two examples within the European Union where the supra-national dimensions of identities are rather weak or are even in the process of dissolution. According to Rüsen, since these countries already refuse supra-national (Spanish and Belgian) identifications imposed on regional identities (Catalan and Basque, Flemish and Walloon) by their governments or ruling elites, it is very likely that they will also refuse an imposed European identity enforced by the institutions of the European Union.
Jürgen Habermas (2001) argues in this respect that further development of the European Union requires both the mobilizing of a political project and a formal Constitution submitted to a popular referendum. The overwhelming majority of the population that is currently resistant or hesitant can only be won for Europe if "the project is extricated from the pallid abstraction of administrative measures and technical discourse [and] is politicized". Economic justifications must be therefore combined with an interest in and affective attachment to a particular ethos or the attraction of a specific European way of life. During the last decades of the 20th century, (Western) European citizens developed a distinctive form of life based on a particular material infrastructure. Today, against perceived threats of globalisation, they are willing to defend the welfare state, which is the backbone of society still oriented towards social, political and cultural inclusion. This is the orientation that is capable of embedding economic arguments for a stronger Union into a much broader vision. Rapid economic growth was the basis for the welfare state that provided the framework for the regeneration of post-war European societies, but the most important outcome of this regeneration has been the production of ways of life that have allowed the wealth and national diversity of a multi-secular culture to become attractively renewed (Habermas 2001: 4). Habermas suggests a normatively loaded ('social-democratic') reading of the economic justification for the European project. Furthermore, a European constitution would enhance the capacity of the Member States to act jointly, without prejudices regarding the particular courses and contents of what policies might be adopted, to seek a certain re-regulation of the global economy, to counterbalance its undesired economic, social and cultural impacts, and therefore to have a reason for building a
stronger Union with greater international influence. According to Habermas, there are two lessons to be learned from the history of European nation-states. If the emergence of a national consciousness involved a painful process of abstraction, leading from local and dynastic identities to national and democratic ones, why should this artificial kind of civic solidarity come to a final halt just at the borders of established nation-states?
The argument for the constitution, however, is something that Ulrich Beck (2006: 1-7) disagrees with, as he claims that many people fear that those who are pressing for a European constitution are actually promoting the abolition of Europe, as it would rob it of its cosmopolitan diversity as well as its particular traits. The point is that Europe's reality can arise and can be understood only in contradiction to the established national(istic) political concepts (Beck 1998; Beck 2000). The key concept which can open the door to the new European reality is therefore the idea of cosmopolitan Europe, which is at the same time pre-national and post-national. For Beck, cosmopolitanism is a particular form of tackling cultural difference: in contrast to hierarchical subordination, universalist and nationalist homogeneity, and postmodern particularism, cosmopolitanism recognizes and respects otherness. In this context he warns against the argument about the European common origin and past and specifically European historical achievements, such as the Enlightenment: to define Europe in terms of origin, even if that means the Enlightenment, is a mistake. Whoever resurrects the principle of a Western-Christian lineage from the mass graves of Europe has misunderstood the inner cosmopolitanisation of Europe. He not only denies the reality of approximately 17 million people living in the EU who cannot lay claim to this ethnic-cultural heritage of 'being European' because they are, for instance, Muslims or coloured, but perceive themselves as culturally and politically European; he also misunderstands the microcosmic world society of Europe. In the world of the 21st century, there is no longer a closed space of the Christian West (Beck 2006: 5). In the face of growing trans-national interweaving, Europe has become an open network with fluid boundaries, in which the outside is already the inside. In accordance with this argument, Velikonja (2005) claims that Europe/the European Union should have been subjected to continual scrutiny and presented in a critical manner as a pragmatic and changing social construction, as a community of members of various sizes and strengths and as a scene of the confrontation of many interests, historical particularities and hardly compatible visions of the future. "It should be interpreted contextually rather than in an essentialist manner, as a union whose dialectic elements include divisions and antagonisms, as well as the strategies for overcoming and harmonizing these, both outwardly and inwardly, [...] and as a union with multiple contingent possibilities for development, several possible constructions, legitimacies, values and, ultimately, inclusions, rather than as an inwardly united and impenetrable fortress" (Velikonja 2005: 100).
CONCLUSION
The dilemmas regarding the artificial construction of European identity need be put into the wider context of different attempts in the recent past to construct identity more or less artificially from the top down beyond traditional national allegiances (the cases of Belgium, Austro-Hungary, Germany, Yugoslavia, Soviet Union and Great Britain). The existing debates within scientific communities on the issue of European identity would therefore transcend the limits of theoretical/hypothetical arguments, where they are at present, into the context of real experiences with similar processes and would accordingly provide well-founded conclusions on the possibility and efficiency of such processes.
We assume it to be particularly relevant and telling for the formation, evolution and conservation of distinctive supra-national identities when they emerged from a union of and co-existed with "minor" (comparatively quantitatively speaking) European national communities that had to conceive their identity processes in the context of a multi-national political community and in some sort of "co-habitation" with a supra-national identity. Relevant case studies appear to be those originating from national/ ethnic communities in Europe that have developed a distinct identity within multi-national communi-
ties such as the Catalans in Spain; French and Flemish in Belgium; Slovenes, Croats, etc. in Austria-Hungary and then Yugoslavia; Czechs, Slovaks in Austria-Hungary and then in Czechoslovakia; Irish, Scots, and Welsh in Great Britain; Greeks in Cyprus etc. These ethnic or national communities share a historical experience of a series of more or less successful supra-national frameworks even before "Europe". We all were and some still are part of multi-national states that developed particular nationalistic policies and implemented carefully orchestrated identity formation processes (the subordination of smaller communities to the dominant one: the examples of Austria-Hungary, Spain, Ireland, Yugoslavia at times) or "supra-national policies and identity formation processes (the search for some sort of "identity balance" as in the case of Belgium and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and Socialist Yugoslavia).7
In addition, one of the crucial issues for the future development of the idea of Europe needs be addressed, i.e. the uneasy co-existence of the concept of the "classical" modernist nation-building process and national identity, and multidimensional globalisation processes that inherently force national identities into continuous redefinitions and in some aspects even undermine them. Despite the rhetoric of multiculturalism, respect for national and local specifics, protection of minorities etc., the observed construction of a contemporary European identity to a large degree implicitly follows the pattern of European nationalisms from the late 18th century onwards (having as the ultimate goal "one nation in one territory in one state"). Similar to "old" national identities, the "new" European identity appears rather exclusive, self-centred and yet universalistic (and is already being fiercely criticised as part of "fortress Europe" and the "new Eurocentrism"). The merger of various identities into one highly homogenised national identity and simultaneous differentiation from neighbours or even "the rest of the world" was possible in the past, while today it seems not only obsolete but clearly dangerous, especially in view of European immigration issues. In order to design a workable and progressive common EU migration policy, EU Member States will not only have to come to terms with European nationalism, European colonialism and related racism, as well as Europe as a migrant society, but will need to recognize these features as constitutive elements of the European "character" (to use another of Anderson's terms) that may bring a cathartic crisis of European identity. "Identification with the European Union will involve selection of dispositions, inseparable from voice, memory, self-consciousness and mission." (De Beus 2001: 295). Immigrant populations are not to intervene in this process as an outside pressure.
Expressed in simpler terms, Europeans are Europeans because of migrations not in spite of them.
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POVZETEK
EVROPA DOMOVIN ALI DOMOVINA EVROPA: DILEME (EVROPSKE) IDENTITETE
Cirila TOPLAK Mitja VELIKONJA Jernej PIKALO Peter STANKOVIČ Ksenija ŠABEC Mirt KOMEL
Evropska unija se je danes znova znašla v krizi, tako institucij kot politik, tako demokracije kot demografije, posledično in domnevno pa tudi identitete. Evropska identiteta se je od velike širitve leta 2004 v političnem diskurzu izpostavljala kot vse bolj neogiben predpogoj za ponoven zagon evropskega integracijskega projekta, ki je bil dotlej predvsem v domeni evropskih političnih elit. Potrebo po krepitvi identitete so še dodatno podkrepili demografski problemi Evropske unije, zlasti znaten dotok priseljencev iz tretjih držav ob nizki rodnosti in staranju prebivalstva. Priseljevanje v Evropo seveda ni nov pojav; Evropa je bila celina migracij že od antike in obdobja množičnega izseljevanja in priseljevanja so si v zgodovini sledila. Priseljevanje se je v zadnjem času okrepilo predvsem zaradi neustavljivih globalizacij-skih procesov, ki so zajeli tudi populacije neevropskih držav, medtem ko notranje migracije v Evropski uniji, čeprav so se jih številni bali ali veselili, ostajajo na obvladljivi ravni. Po prevladujočih ocenah naj bi se populacija Evropske unije pomnožila do leta 2050 z najmanj 50 in največ 100 milijoni priseljenih "novih Evropejcev". Čeprav zmanjševanje števila prebivalstva v nekaterih evropskih državah postaja že zaskrbljujoč fenomen, politično in javno mnenje vztrajno nasprotuje dobrodošlici priseljencem in priseljevanje se še naprej šteje za demografski problem in ne rešitev. Eden izmed simptomov tega nelagodja je odsotnost skupne evropske migracijske politike, zaradi česar so države članice prepuščene lastni inici-
ativi pri uravnavanju dotoka (ilegalnih) priseljencev in se jim ni treba podrejati skupnim pravilom na ravni EU. Čeprav so priseljenci morda edina rešitev za demografske težave Evrope, se zdi, da teh »Drugih« za zdaj nikakor ni mogoče vključiti v ekonomsko in demografsko prihodnost celine.
Migracije in še zlasti nepripravljenost evropske politike in javnosti nanje je po mnenju avtorjev članka treba obravnavati v kontekstu evropske identitete in ne le v kontekstu z globalizacijo povezanih domnevnih ekonomskih in kulturnih groženj. Navsezadnje, v več kakor petsto milijonski populaciji Evropske unije približno 30 milijonov priseljencev ne more predstavljati realne "nevarnosti". Zato pa priseljenska problematika predstavlja realno spodbudo za identifikacijo geografskih in kulturnih meja evropskega integracijskega projekta oziroma za poskus odgovora na vprašanje, kdo je oziroma je lahko Evropejec in kdo ne more biti oziroma ne bo, kajti tukaj je vir razumevanja aktualnih nacionalnih migracijskih politik držav članic EU ter odziva javnega in političnega diskurza na priseljevanje.
S tem namenom avtorji članka skozi obsežen opus obstoječe literature o (evropski) identiteti soočajo različne teoretizacije kolektivnih identitet s političnim projektom evropske identitete, pri čemer izpostavijo zlasti evropske nacionalizme, socialne in druge identitete v odnosu do evropske identitete ter (zlo)rabo evropske identitete kot političnega orodja. V sklepu pa ugotavljajo, da je za razumevanje procesov umetne konstrukcije evropske identitete nujna kontekstualizacija raznih predhodnih poskusov krepitve kolektivnih identitet, presegajočih tradicionalno nacionalno pripadnost, od zgoraj navzdol, kot na primer v imperialni Veliki Britaniji Belgiji, Avstroogrski, Nemčiji 19. stoletja ali Jugoslaviji in Sovjetski zvezi 20. stoletja. S tem bi teoretične in hipotetične akademske razprave o evropski identiteti »prestopile« v realnost primerljivih zgodovinskih izkušenj, ki dajejo sklepati o dejanski možnosti in učinkovitosti tovrstnih poskusov.
Sočasno pa bi te razprave morale nujno nasloviti tudi aktualen nelagodni soobstoj »klasičnih« nacionalnih identitet in kompleksnih globalizacijskih procesov, ki silijo nacionalne identitete v stalno redefiniranje, v določeni meri pa jih tudi ogrožajo. Kajti kljub multikulturni retoriki ter spoštovanju razlik in manjšin, zaznan pristop k krepitvi evropske identitete le malo odstopa od identitetnih vzorcev modernih evropskih nacionalizmov (s ciljem »enega naroda v eni državi na sklenjenem ozemlju«). Tako kot »stare« nacionalne identitete, se tudi »nova« evropska identiteta zdi izključujoča in vase zaverovana, koncept pa je zato že deležen številnih ostrih kritik kot integralen element »trdnjave Evrope« in »evro-centrizma«. Zlivanje različnih regionalnih identitet v eno homogeno nacionalno identiteto in sočasno diferenciacijo od sosedov ali celo »preostalega sveta« je bilo mogoče koncipirati in izpeljati v preteklosti, danes pa se zdi tako gledanje ne le zastarelo, ampak prav nevarno, še zlasti z vidika priseljenskih tokov v Evropsko unijo. Če bodo države članice EU hotele sprejeti delujočo in progresivno skupno evropsko migracijsko politiko, bodo morale najprej obračunati ne le z evropskimi nacionalizmi, evropskimi ko-lonializmom in povezanim rasizmom, ampak tudi sprevideti Evropo ko družbo migracij ter prepoznati vse navedene prvine kot sestavine »evropskosti«, kar morda lahko privede do katarzične krize evropske identitete. Priseljenske populacije v tem procesu ne bi smele predstavljati negativnega zunanjega pritiska. Povedano še z manj besedami - Evropejci smo Evropejci zaradi migracij in ne njim navkljub.
Povzetek pripravila: Cirila Toplak