This article shows the transformation process of regional and national identities in Silesia in the context of changes induced by the processes of European integration and globalization. The author analyses the reconstruction of the identity of Silesians – a cultural borderland group –at...

This paper analyses the prominence, content and justifications of Euroscepticism as a form of EU legitimacy contestation. Support of and opposition to European integration have so far been mainly measured through the positions of political parties or citizens’ attitudes through public opinion...

By comparing European and US newspaper debates on the 2003 Iraq War, this working paper empirically tests whether a European public sphere exists regarding the contested issue of war and peace. This component of foreign and security policy represents a hard case for the evolution of European...

This article addresses the critical issue of how constitutional designing of the EU is related to the expression of collective identities. A European collective identity is perceived in terms of the discursive representation of the underlying demos of a European democracy. Against the common...

While in political debates identity is often considered as given, scholars of social sciences concentrate on the formation of new and particularly transnational identities. Insights from nationalism reveal mechanisms of identity formation but European integration has taken its own way. We...

AbstractIn our analysis we argue that the EU eastern enlargement did not result in significant change of predominantly ethnos based collective identity in the new EU countries. Consequently, we argue that, the EU eastern enlargement has, by and large, been understood by citizens of new EU...

The aim of this paper is to shed light on the identity problem of the European Union (EU). In order to do so the EU’s justifications of past and present enlargements are investigated. What kind of understanding of the EU do decisions to enlarge speak to? Given that the EU is based on more than...

It is often assumed that Turkey’s chance of accession to the EU would be enhanced were the European project to move in an inclusive, cosmopolitan direction. However, the inclusion of women’s rights and post-sexual revolution sexuality in the battery of ‘EU-niversal’ values could still...

Drawing on the classical distinction between community (Gemeinschaft) and society (Gesellschaft) by Tönnies (1963) and the related analytical distinction between strong and weak forms of collective identities, this paper analyses European identity constructions in ‘future-of-Europe’-debates...

In international relations the European Union has emerged as a new form of polity increasingly characterized by a unique mix of state-like attributes and intergovernmental organization traits. At the same time, it seems to be increasingly characterized by multiculturalism, which in its essence...