This essay traces events and ideas that have blurred the boundary between supranational and national conceptions of European identity, starting with the French Revolution and its ideological and geopolitical progeny. The essay is organized thematically, so following a section on “Foreground and background” are “Revolution and counter-revolution,” “Nation and supra-nation,” and “Remembering and forgetting.” Although the themes are paired opposites, the analysis shows how readily the oppositional character of the words breaks down under the pressure of historical contextualization. This notion of opposites in name only – a perception of difference that masks a profound similarity – is one that extends to the pair of opposites that appear in the title of this chapter; namely “East and West.”

Modern conceptions of European identity formed during the course of wars, revolutions, and utopian political projects that both “halves” of Europe experienced and interpreted in very localized ways, increasingly within national historical frameworks. This evolution made for disagreements regarding the nature of “universal” European values and projects between “East” and “West.” But if we pull back the curtain of false oppositions, we begin to see the outlines of a structural similarity in the way “Europeanness” is understood. The similarity rests on the premise that being “European” is not only compatible with being “national,” but is a constituent element of national identity.

The imperatives of European integration are inciting identity experiments, often involving dissonant and unstable forms of consciousness, that defy or exceed familiar categories of analysis. Rather than a mere shift in identity from, say, being German, Irish or Latvian to being European, a fundamental change in the underlying dynamics of identity formation is underway. Identities are coalescing on the level of intimate encounters, expressed in obscure and arcane cultural vernaculars, by which experience gains highly pluralist articulations posing unusual analytical challenges. Perhaps the most important challenge is to candidly acknowledge that “identity” has become, to a greater or lesser degree, an ambiguous and, at times, vexatious issue not just for us as observers, but also for our subjects (Boyer 2005). The people of Europe are at the outset of the twenty-first century negotiating among liberal and illiberal registers of consciousness, and these shifting configurations typically do not succumb to a single, stable, and unambiguous expression (see introduction to this volume).

I suggest in this chapter that what we awkwardly and imprecisely term “identity” has acquired a twofold nature. On the one hand, it is not merely or solely contingent on convention, tradition, and the past, but has assumed a future-oriented purview and experimental dynamic. On the other, citizens of the EU as they pursue these experiments are continually parsing the nature of cultural affinity and difference as they participate in the creation of a vast, multiracial and multicultural Europe.

The European Union has produced a remarkable set of agreements to guide the political interactions of countries across Europe in the past fifty years. These agreements have produced collective rules governing market transactions of all varieties, created a single currency, established a rule of law that includes a European court, and promoted increased interactions for people who live within the boundaries of Europe. Moreover, the EU has expanded from six to twenty-seven countries. The endpoint of the EU has been left intentionally vague and can be encapsulated by the ambiguous phrase “toward an ever closer union.”

Much of the political criticism of the EU has focussed on the lack of transparency in its procedures and in its accountability to a larger democratic public (Baun 1996; Dinan 2002; McCormick 2002). Many of Europe's citizens have little knowledge about the workings of the EU (Gabel 1998). This lack of “connectedness” to the EU by ordinary citizens has caused scholars to try to understand why a European identity (equivalent to a “national” identity), a European “civil society,” and a European politics have been so slow to emerge (Laffan et al. 2000). The main focus of these efforts is why, after fifty years of the integration project, there is so little evidence of public attitudes that reflect more feelings of solidarity across Europe. Even among those who work in Brussels, there are mixed feelings about being European (Hooghe 2005; Beyer 2005).

Europe historically has been made, unmade, and remade through the movements of peoples. Despite the image today of Europeans as a rather sedentary and socially immobile population – particularly when compared to the highly mobile spatial and social patterns of North Americans – contemporary Europe has essentially emerged out of a crucible of local, regional, and international population movements over the centuries.

In this chapter, I consider the crucial impact of migration in Europe on European identity, by building a bridge between historical analyses of the phenomenon and emerging patterns that are shaping Europe as a distinctive new regional space of migration and mobility. My contribution points to how migration is making and remaking Europe, less at the level of identity in people's heads – in fact, if anything, most migrations are contributing to the growth of anti-European sentiment – but more in a territorial and (especially) structural economic sense. This is less easy to see if a purely cultural view is taken of the question of Europe. After sketching the role of population movements in the making and unmaking of Europe historically, I explore in depth the three kinds of migration/mobility that are most salient to the continent today and its structural transformation: first, the ongoing, traditional “ethnic” immigration of non-Europeans into European nation-states; second, the small but symbolically important emergence of new intra-European “elite” migrations, engaged by European citizens enjoying the fruits of their EU free movement rights; and third, the politically ambiguous flows of East–West migrants – which fall somewhere between the other two forms – that have been connected to the EU enlargement processes formalized in 2004 and 2007.

Since the early 1990s, two factors have had a significant impact on the pace and character of European integration. The first factor is the end of the permissive consensus that had prevailed until then. The main symptoms of this change have been a steady decline, to historically low levels, in the level of popular EU support; and episodes such as the rejection of the European Constitution by a majority of French and Dutch voters. The second factor is division among European leaders concerning future institutional developments in a twenty-seven-member Union.

The two factors converged in the 2005 constitutional crisis, not because cleavages among the elites mimic those among the population, but rather because popular discontent helped to undo the fragile consensus that had been achieved by European Union elites around the constitutional project. At stake is disagreement between political elites and a significant segment of the population on the values that should sustain the European project (see Hooghe 2003) and also among the different national elites on the limits of supranationalism. In the context of the politicization of the European Union in the 1990s, triggered by the increasingly political character of the EU and signaled among other things by the repeated organization of referenda on new EU treaties, the permissive consensus prevailing until then has broken down (see Katzenstein and Checkel in this volume) and deep disagreement among elites has surfaced.

Since the 1980s, the European Union (EU) has undergone a process of profound politicization and a deliberate, though less striking process of de-politicization. These developments have left their mark on the identification of Europeans with Europe and the EU. This identification has some specific qualities: it is predominantly liberal; it attempts to encompass Europe's substantial internal diversities; it is based on common social and cultural rather than political experiences; and it is disappointingly weak in the view of some, surprisingly substantial in the view of others. These qualities, I argue, have much to do with the distinctive politicization the EU has experienced since the early 1980s. I start with a short outline of the history of the politicization and de-politicization of European affairs since the 1980s. In the second section I analyze changes in the identification with Europe under five separate headings. The final section develops my answer to the question of how politicization and identification with Europe have become deeply intertwined.

Politicization and de-politicization since the 1980s

Since the 1980s, the EU has experienced a period of politicization, as profound decisions affecting the character and future course of the EU became matters of public debate. Previously, there had existed a diffuse and largely uncontroversial general support for complicated expert decisions, for example on the creation of a common market, a common agricultural policy, and various European funds. After the mid-1980s, debates on Europe became more contentious, with increasingly clear contrasts between supporters and opponents of the European project.

The ship of European identity has entered uncharted waters. Its sails are flapping in a stiff breeze. Beyond the harbor, whitecaps are signaling stormy weather ahead. The crew is fully assembled, but some members are grumbling – loudly. While food and drink are plentiful, maps and binoculars are missing. Officers are vying for rank and position as no captain is in sight. Sensing a lack of direction and brooding bad weather, some passengers are resting in the fading sun on easy chairs thinking of past accomplishments; others are huddling in an openly defiant mood close to the lifeboats, anticipating bad times ahead. With the journey's destination unknown, the trip ahead seems excruciatingly difficult to some, positively dangerous to others. Anxiety and uncertainty, not hope and self-confidence, define the moment.

Many European elites, deeply committed to the European Union (EU) as a political project, might reject the vignette we sketch above. They see the EU as institutional machinery for the solution of problems that in the past had shattered peace, destroyed prosperity, and otherwise proven to be intractable for national governments. For them, it is a project rooted in the European Enlightenment, and an emphatic way of saying “never again” to the disastrous wars of the twentieth century. While the Union has not yet succeeded in crafting a common European sense of “who we are,” time is on its side.

When John Haslam, social sciences editor at Cambridge University Press, and Andreas Føllesdal, consulting editor for this series, first approached us to write a book on European identity, our response was along the lines of “been there, done that, why bother to do it again?” Yet, as we thought about the possibility, we began to warm to the idea. We relished the prospect of collaboration. Furthermore, existing scholarship seemed compartmentalized and missed one central feature of identity in the new Europe. European Union (EU) specialists, typically political scientists and often funded by the EU Commission, focussed overwhelmingly on the Union and the effects its institutions had in crafting senses of allegiance from the “top down,” as it were. At the same time and from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, students of immigration, nationalism, and religion explored how feelings of community in Europe arose from the “bottom up,” outside of or around EU institutions. Moreover, almost everyone was taken by surprise at how the return of Eastern Europe was profoundly and irrevocably changing European identity politics.

This book makes a start at addressing these omissions and oversights. We do not favor either top-down or bottom-up storylines. Instead, we explore the intersections and interactions between the two, and do so through the lens of multiple disciplinary perspectives. This approach allows us to capture the reality of identity in today's quasi-constitutionalized, enlarged, and deeply politicized Europe, where senses of “who we are” are fracturing and multiplying at one and the same time.

In this chapter I argue that the construction of European political identity does not necessarily rest on a definite conception of what it is to be European. This is so for two reasons – one related to the transformation of the very conception of political identification with one's own community in modern societies, and the other to the mixed nature of the European Union as a multilevel polity comprising both intergovernmental and supranational levels of governance. Any normative discourse about political identity in Europe must accommodate these two realities.

Political identity is both a social and a historical construct. As a social construct, it reflects the institutional nature of the political community As a historical construct, its emergence and consolidation is bound up with historical contingencies and with the way in which competing narratives and ideologies shape the self-perceptions of the members of the community. As suggested in the introductory essay to this volume, Europe's identities exist in the plural; and so it is for the more specific sense of political identities.

But there is an important functional element to political identity, insofar as this plays an important role in sustaining citizens' allegiance and loyalty to their political community. In this respect, the different kinds of motivations and cultural and psychological constructions that make different people identify with a political community may be irrelevant, as long as political identity helps to bring the members of a community together.