European Identity - Individual, Group and Society - HumanitarianNet

206 EUROPEAN IDENTITY. INDIVIDUAL, GROUP AND SOCIETYsemi-structured interviews. We 3 did not question directly about beingor feeling European, but explored their sense of who they are andwhere they feel they belong. In response to this line of inquiry theparticipants talked about complex issues related to their exposure /experiences with bi-cultural identities (Portuguese and English). But,very few mentioned the European dimension. From a corpus of datathat includes in one project 30 Portuguese students, 18 parents, 30teachers (6 Portuguese and 24 English nationals), and in the other 11Portuguese women from different social / professional backgrounds,we could only find three participants who talked about beingEuropean. They were adult women of Portuguese origin. I’ll start myanalysis examining what being a European meant for these threewomen. What types of experiences enabled them to construct aEuropean cultural identity? Following this analysis and in order to beable to discuss some of the implications for teacher training I will focuson how the process of migrating from Portugal to England impacts onthe development of the cultural identity of Portuguese children andyoung people in English schools. I hope that through examining issuesrelated to the development of cultural identities 4 by the end of thispresentation I will be able to re-visit the issue of the «European Union»identity and teacher training.the world they find, make meaningful worlds and, in the course of doing thesethings, construct themselves as types of person and self who inhabits theseworlds.” (p. 11).—“… explicitly acknowledges that how one is located in one’s community, how thatcommunity is situated in its wider society, how that society stands in relation toother societies, and how these relationships are placed developmentally andcurrently in history, all have profound relevance for the kind of mind and self thatmay be formed. Its stress on acts of meaning-making, on the available tools withwhich the making is done, and on the constraints endemic to the times in whichthe meanings are made, are also central to understanding the formation of mindand selfhood. (p. 14)3When I shift from the first person to the plural WE the intention is to emphasisethe sharing of a view with the other colleagues, members of the research team involvedin the projects.4I am intentionally referring to identities in the plural. This reflects my theoreticalposition where I conceptualise (i) the development of personal identities in tandem withparticipation in historically situated socio-cultural practices; (ii) the person as developingand drawing on multiple identities associated with the cultural spaces and practices sheor he participates in (iii) cultural identities expressed in situated activities (doings) andsymbolic activity (narratives, social memory and cultural resources). This position drawson authors such as Alvarez and del Rio (1999); Duveen (2001), Hermans (2001).