Migrants, Minorities, Belongings and Citizenship. Glocalization and ...

has validity within the span of the glocal spaces it investigated; and further research is
needed to validate its policy-relevant results.
One finding in Glocalmig concerns the situations of people with high degrees of mind
mobility between diverse references of identification. Their common denominator is that
they participate in glocal spaces more than in national and ethnic spaces. They relate
themselves more to the globe and humanity than their national states and Europe. In
principle, they put an equality sign between their national states and the European Union
because they perceive the European Union as just another potential territorial-political
entity that will divide humanity. However, we also found that people with high mobility of
mind identify themselves more with Europe than with their countries of residence. In
other words, Europe is too small to accommodate their visions of an all-inclusive society.
They create their small diverse societies without borders in their localities, i.e. in glocal
spaces.
However, most of these persons do not state that they are without “rooting” or without
“belonging”. Some of them even state that they have strong ethnic, religious or national
belongings. Some others claim not to have a strong sense of belonging to any
conventional collective identity category. Still some others talk of their new belonging
modes, which cannot be expressed in terms of conventional references of identification.
Their common denominator is, however, that they are able to move in and out of their
own modes of being and relate themselves to others on an egalitarian basis. Another
important common feature is that they are dissatisfied with the existing institutions and
structures of citizenship that are not capacitated to do the same.
Most of the respondents we interviewed participate more in glocal spaces than national
and essentialized spaces. Although we do not have a comprehensive empirical basis to
suggest this, we suppose that the number of such people is not small in Europe. We also
suppose that part of the “home-sitters” in local, national, and European elections belong
to this group of people who do not relate themselves to the existing homogeneous
citizenship structures and institutions but to the alternative structures and institutions of
diversity, such as the glocal sites, which they perceive as more capable of responding to
their preferences and needs.
The above statement should be regarded as a scientifically justified and legitimate
hypothesis to be investigated further. Provided that this hypothesis proves valid in the
future through comprehensive qualitative and quantitative research in Europe proper, it
will be fruitful both for the European Union and for these individuals that the Union
encourage the further development of glocal spaces and the diversity mode of being that
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