Europeanisation, National Identities and Migration ... - europeanization

116 Krystyna Romaniszyn
whether they are part and parcel of our European, German, Greek, etc., society?
Any answer requires justification that cannot be offered without referring to the
national and European identities. The revival of racist prejudice directed towards
immigrants confronts members of the receiving society with uneasy questions that
also involve reference to collective identity: Do we agree with it? Are we racists?
What are we to undertake to avoid it? The conversions to Islam pose another issue:
whether the converts still belong to ‘us’ or whether they have become alien because
of the religious conversion. Hence, who are we? Acceptance and inclusion of the
converts can be equated to a ‘domestication’ of their new denomination, that is
with admitting that the French (Dutch, Danish, etc.) and generally the European
may be Muslim. Their exclusion necessitates justification, again, impossible without
direct reference to the national and European identities, and to the national
and European creed(s). Even the explicit discounting of any religion as marginal
or not valid for modern national and European identities requires allusion to these
identities. Needless to say, as all the stated examples call for reference to national
and European identities, they may also imply their rethinking and possibly
reformulation.
Cultural diversification resulting from international inflows, among others,
adding the new, alien ingredients, such as Islam, into receiving societies, and
augmenting the revival of fallacious ideas such as ‘the new racism’, prompts the
explicit formulation and explication of the European creed. A confrontation with
the alien values and our own fallacious ideas necessitates the clarification of this
creed that would form a content of the European identity, and a point of reference
for national identities. It raises the issue of the tradition and heritage of European
civilization. No other issue is more fundamental than the recollection of the
European humanism – that implies liberal principles, but not the other way around
– and its philosophical and ethical background. The liberal principles extracted
from European humanism that organise the political, economic and social realms
of secularised European democracies, do not, by themselves, stand for European
humanism nor the European civilization creed. Undoubtedly, the future of
European civilization – confronted on its own grounds by distant cultures – depends
upon the kind of response given to this issue, that also forms the chief aspect of the
Europeanness as broadly discussed and Europeanisation processes.
Notes
1 In this text I adopt the understanding, well established in social anthropology, of
‘culture’ as composed of material, social and symbolic aspects.
2 ‘The following . . . types of migration flows moving across the new migratory space of
the CEE region have been distinguished: westward directed transit migrations, legal
and illegal; westward directed labour migrations, legal and illegal; westward directed
emigration; westward directed involuntary migration of refugees and asylum seekers;
the regional petty-trade mobility, generally illegal; the regional labour migration, both
legal and undocumented; the eastward petty-trade mobility; and the eastward labour
movements’ (Romaniszyn 1997: 27–8).
3 By ‘economic culture’ I understand organisation and work patterns, style of
consumption and management.