First published 2000 by Ashgate Publishing
Reissued 2018 by Routledge
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Copyright Juan M. Delgado-Moreira 2000
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A Library of Congress record exists under LC control number: 00132840
ISBN 13: 978-1-138-72394-8 (hbk)
ISBN 13: 978-1-315-19278-9 (ebk)
I am especially grateful to the following colleagues: Renato Rosaldo (Stanford University, USA), Ian Craib (University of Essex, UK), and Yasemin Soysal (University of Essex, UK). This book would never have been possible without their help and world-class scholarship. I am also grateful to the Commission of the European Union for financing this project through the Training and Mobility of Researchers Program (Marie Curie Fellowships). And finally, I am grateful to the Sociology Department at the University of Essex for hosting me during the last two years.
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Introduction: Between Social Theory and European Integration
This book deals with two intertwined dimensions of multicultural citizenship of the European Union. ). The combination of the epistemological and empirical levels of inquiry, and its focus on the EU level are the main distinctive features of the book. My research shows that there are competing discourses in EU institutions concerning the best model for EU citizenship. Among other concepts, they construe multiculturalism and transnationalism as contested and sometimes opposing interpretations of citizenship. The book reveals the lack of substantive connection between EU citizenship and identity in the European Union, as well as the artificiality of EU attempts to build it anew. The negative effects of the assumption that identity of the Union should accompany EU citizenship are found to be in sharp contrast with the increasing connection between identities (in plural) and citizenship in the US. I conclude that a plurality of cultural constructions of EU citizenship, within the wider framework of liberal culturalism, may be a viable model for EU citizenship. Unlike the current alliance of Europeanness and liberal citizenship without cultural rights, that model will be capable of relating to a transnational public sphere, to a more complex relation between culture and territory, and to the diminishing role of the state.
The background of my work is a renewed interest in citizenship studies. As a result of global economic conditions. Western societies are experiencing increasing labor migrations and, therefore, they are becoming more culturally diverse. Simultaneously, they are going through a return to regionalism, nationalisms, identity and group-based politics. These two tendencies combined have rekindled the debate about membership and participation in the state. Three questions are often overlooked in such a debate in Europe and their study makes this book timely: Is citizenship still important in a postnational world? What are the theoretical and ideological frameworks of multiculturalism? What are the reality and prospects of multicultural citizenship of the European Union?
I will argue in favor of citizenship as a category of membership still relevant in postnational societies, particularly in the European Union. However, the central issue is how would citizenship be important in a future Europe, what type of citizenship and for whom. In this respect, there is a considerable variety of positions. Both multiculturalist studies and commentators of transnational movements have suggested that citizenship, as an exclusive membership of the state, must be challenged. Some forms of multiculturalism do just this by highlighting the contribution of identity politics. The so-called American radical multiculturalism, for example, focuses its criticism of neutral citizenship on the fact that it was conceived with the assumption of societies being almost homogeneous, was part and parcel of the constitution of the nation-state and has systematically alienated ethnic minorities. An alternative should include a concept of cultural citizenship, which combines political membership (and group identity) with multicultural policies in employment, education and other fields. Other liberal alternatives focus on the need to include the liberal politics of recognition in democratic citizenship. In turn, a radical emphasis on transnationalism advocates that labor mobility, the presence of universal human rights, and the transnational connections between communities will devoid of content any connection between citizenship and identity, at least throughout Western Europe. On the other end of the spectrum, defenders of classic citizenship point out that it is the only all-inclusive form of membership that performs the vital function of providing members of a polity with identity and solidarity. They also contend that any culturalization of citizenship will exacerbate divisions rather than contribute to united polities. In their view, citizenship is a noun that needs no modifiers. However, they seldom discuss the minutia of how it should be implemented in the European Union, how this citizenship will address the claims of radical multiculturalism, or how it could relate to an emerging transnational context in the European Union.
Explaining my Research Interest
How can anyone write a book about so many things that do not exist? At one of my first meetings with colleagues at the University of Essex, I was trying to explain what I was working on (multicultural citizenship of the European Union). But I was not doing well, because I could not get past faces of disbelief despite using all the right keywords. All of a sudden inspiration hit me and I cracked the joke - of course, everyone knows that none of these things exist. Et voila!
If one cannot help thinking that the EU is nothing more than the sum of intergovernmental negotiations and treaties, then this book is bound to look slightly off-target. As always, some theoretical assumptions are made and asked from the reader, if our time together is to be of any use to either of us. My premise is that the EU is a changing reality that cannot be reduced to relationships between a number of European governments over a certain period of time. Which is not to say that intergovernmental relations do not have any say in EU governance. Yet the Union is a process with its own supranational institutions, its own history, its own and complex decision-making and policy-making processes. And there is the worst-kept secret of national politicians: nowadays the EU has control over a substantial portion of the former sovereignty of the nation-state, in addition to having a body of legislation and experience that amounts to a model for multicultural citizenship. This approach took shape while I was doing field research on the consequences for Spain of the Uruguay Round of negotiations of the former GATT (now World Trade Organization) (Feito et al., 1995). In my interaction with Spanish policy-makers, bureaucrats and company executives, I discovered the relevance of the limits imposed and the opportunities created by EU legislation, the existence of sectoral networks with presence in Brussels, and the principle of partnership between central EU institutions and sub-national ones. Most importantly, I was astonished by how little I knew, how little of this made its way into the newspapers, and by the gap between that reality and the mirage of national politics that dominates every countrys media. Of course, I still know very little and the gap remains. To what extent can national office-holders continue to stick to the language of national interest, to preserve the fiction of state sovereignty (Richmond, 1997) continues to be an open question. As MacCormick (1997: 355) argues:
