Discovering Europe? Identity of the Migrants in the EU

Abstract

This paper focuses on migration in Europe and European identity. Above all, it aims to explore the capacity of European identity to offer an inclusive form of collective affiliation both for intra- and extra-European migrants. We argue that the probability for both, extra- and intra-EU migrants, to develop European identity is higher than the probability to develop country-of-residence identity since the later one is based on ascriptive criteria and therefore exclusive in its nature. Social scientists from different traditions started only recently to deal with those questions focusing, above all, on the effects of mobility within EU borders on identity and attitudes towards Europe (Favel, 2009; Recchi and Favel, 2009). Our research aims to contribute to this theoretical and empirical debate by analysing also extra-European migrants. The high magnitude of extra-EU immigration (more than 30 million, out of the total 47 million of migrants that reside in EU countries were born outside the EU according to Eurostat 2011) clearly shows the importance of the relationship between migrants and European identity. In our empirical analyses we will rely on 2009 Eurobarometer (EB) and 2009 European Election Survey (EES) data