European Identity - Individual, Group and Society - HumanitarianNet

THE EUROPEAN DIMENSION OF EDUCATION 87therefore it is based on voluntary political function in fields such asmultilingualism, education, and the university. It is about promotingspaces of exchange between nations which make up the Union, as wellas developing common projects in cultural, educational, and mediamatters, etc. (Domenach, 1990).From this approach those immigrants already installed in diverseEuropean nations and who do not participate in the common politicsare also excluded from the sense of being European. If the constructionof a European identity is defined by belonging to one of the nations orby belonging to a European culture of common origin, it excludesimmigrant populations settled within it.In this same sense, Hammer (1998) denounced the differentiationmade in the interior of the Union’s countries of three categories of people:citizens, denizens 6 , and foreigners. This author illustrates the necessity ofrevising the relationship between nationality and citizenship and exposesan alternative version of citizenship that is not based on the nationalitybut based on soil rights or blood, rather than the right of legal residence.Legal permanency would define, therefore, the quality of citizenship.European Identity Construction from Multiple Senses of BelongingDiverse authors propose a European identity model of constructionfounded upon multiple belongings, on the base of recognising that aperson can hold multiple civic identities and feel subject to multipleloyalties without becoming incompatible (Heater, 1990; Barthelemy,1999; Ryba, 1999; Leclercq, 1999; Schnapper, 2000). The context ofcircumstances make the citizen identify with his locality, his state, orthe world. For this multiple citizenship to be able to develop, theexperience that the citizen has of the state must change, in referenceto identity, loyalty, and acceptance of obligations, as well as in regardto the institutional frame which allows the exercise of rights andobligations, participating in public affairs, and the fact of counting witha recognised statute (Martiniello, 1995:239).This model underlines the necessity of taking into consideration anational and ethnic multiculturalism in the moment of defining theEuropean identity. Along this line go the contributions of Pinxten(1997), who considers Europe as diverse and with a diversity that will6“Denizens” are those foreign residents of the European Union who hold rightssimilar to those of nationals without being nationals.