Europeanisation, National Identities and Migration ... - europeanization

The enduring character of nations
Illusions of European integration 37
For many, the rise of the European Union arises from the inadequacy of the
nation-state in the new era of globalisation, defined here as an intensification
of interconnectedness between the populations of the world. The nation-state
has been until recently the primary political unit of modern humanity and exercised
a monopoly of political, juridical, cultural, economic, and military control over
bounded territories. However, for many scholars (Giddens 1990; Albrow 1996;
Castells 1996) because of the increasing global connectedness between populations,
nation-states cannot hope to resolve such contemporary issues as nuclear proliferation,
instabilities of world trade and finance, the power of multinational firms,
international economic migrations and refugee flows, area conflicts and threats to
the ecosystem. Only regional associations of states such as the European Union can
attend to the increased scale of problems. In the post-war period we see nationstates
pool sovereignty and a growing identification (at least at elite level) with a
European ideal. The unitary character of nation-states has given way as minority
nationalities and regions have demanded measures of territorial autonomy, and
their claims to cultural homogeneity have been undermined by large-scale immigration,
fuelling demands for their reconstruction as multicultural communities (on
this see, Guibernau 2001).
Many of the claims about the decline of national before European loyalties
are predicated on three assumptions. First, nation is conflated with nation-state,
and there is a presumption that a collective identification with nation-states arises
because they deliver economic and social progress. Second, the idea of a crisis of
the nation-state rests on a contrast with an alleged period in which nation-states were
unitary and bounded societies. Third, the intermeshing of national and European
loyalties, evident particularly at the elite level, is assumed to be unprecedented.
I reject all three propositions. First, national identities often predate the era of the
modern state, and the persistence or intensity of national identities cannot be
explained by the success of state-led modernisation, because the modern period
is also one of disruption to state authority. Second, the pooling of sovereignty is
not a revolutionary new development since nations have continually varied in
strength and in the degree to which they wish to regulate the sectors of social life.
Third, many, if not most, European national identities have been developed either
alongside or in relation to a sense of Europeanness, and most conceptions of
‘Europe’ arise out of prior national views of the world.
Nations as communities of fate
Scholars of the European Community, whether they believe that national loyalties
have been enhanced or weakened by membership of the EU, tend to equate nation
with nation-state. Alan Milward (1992) argues that membership ‘rescued’ the
European nation-states, since mass loyalty was deepened by high levels of economic
growth, employment, welfare provision, and of education that were unknown in the
nineteenth and earlier twentieth centuries. William Wallace, although agreeing that