Europeanisation, National Identities and Migration ... - europeanization

12 Anna Triandafyllidou and Willfried Spohn
of national states. First and foremost, even though member states are reluctant to
concede any of their powers in matters of citizenship or migration to European
institutions, a common European migration and asylum regime has emerged
through intergovernmental cooperation. Most recently, immigration and asylum
matters have been incorporated into the areas of EU competence and a common
EU policy is envisaged to become effective in May 2004. Moreover, the decrease
in internal border controls makes EU partners inter-dependent. Inefficient borderpolicing
in Greece or Spain, for instance, may lead to undocumented immigration
towards Germany or France.
Apart from policy effects, the relationship between European integration and
immigration also has an impact on identity categorisations. Member state nationals
acquire equal rights to citizens of member states by means of their common
European citizenship. Immigrants from southern Europe residing in northern
European countries are thus fully integrated into the host society and distinguished
from third-country nationals, the famous ‘extracomunitari’. The role of the immigrant
Other is delegated to labourers coming from outside the EU, notably Asia, Africa
and Latin America. Moreover, the cultural, religious and physical difference of
these groups makes them a suitable target population for racialisation.
However, matters become more complicated by East–West migration within
Europe. The post-1989 period has been characterised by a dramatic population
influx from the former communist countries to Western Europe, including southern
European countries that had no previous experience as hosts. Hundreds of
thousands of Albanians, Poles, Romanians or Ukrainians, just to name some of the
most ‘mobile’ nationalities, have entered, with or without adequate documentation,
a number of EU countries in search of work and/or better life chances. Xenophobic
and racist reactions towards these people have been registered in a number of
EU countries especially in southern Europe (European Commission 1997). National
stereotyped images have developed towards specific nationalities (Palidda 1996;
Triandafyllidou 2001) and immigrants have been subjected to a process of
inferiorisation and subordination (dal Lago 1999).
The identity dynamics involved in the Othering of immigrants have to be seen
within their international context, namely the end of the Cold War and the Eastern
enlargement of the Union. Othering the immigrant has a double function for
national identity: it provides a means for affirming the unity and superiority of the
ingroup while, at the same time, it allows for and justifies the exploitation of
immigrant labour in conditions that would be unacceptable for fellow nationals.
This type of dynamic acquires new impetus after the disappearance of Western
Europe’s main threatening Other, namely the ‘Eastern bloc’. Immigrants from non-
EU countries provide the new threatening, internal Other: the negative image
against which the ingroup identity is constructed.
The situation of immigrants coming from Central and Eastern European
countries has however become ambivalent after the most recent opening of the EU
towards further enlargement. The example of Polish immigrants, for instance, is
particularly interesting, for Poles are subject to exploitation and inferiorisation in a
number of countries of northern and southern Europe (e.g. Germany, Greece or