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12. SUPRANATIONAL IDENTIFICATION
The EU consciousness above being European= both increasing mobility and supranational political identification
It is any kind of identification that goes beyond the national: European, worldwide… Scholars are interested in whether globalization facilitates the diffusion of supranational identification.
(clarification: nations are an extremely recent phenomenon. They were mainly created since the French revolution, last 1/3 of the 19 th^ century).
Developing an analogy between what happened at the state level and what is happening at the global level, two major factors contribute to this diffusion:
STATE
- Intensification of intranational ties (mobilities) that took place within states for several centuries (sociological explanation): supranational identification.
- Strengthening of the national state. (political explanation)
GLOBAL
- Intensification of transnational ties.
- Proliferation and strengthening of international organizations.
FROM PEASANTS INTO FRENCHMAN
12th^ century : INTERNAL COMMERCE. With the pacification of Europe, trade resumed. First it was short-distance, but eventually it reached wider distances. Most of trade was within national borders. This contributed to the emergence of a community of people linked through commercial exchange that saw themselves as part of the same group. As trade intensified, this community started to develop and it coincided more or less with state boundaries. Formation of kingdoms (not in the current sense), not much recognition.
16 th^ century : PRINT CAPITALISM. just after the invention of the print, merchants started to print books aimed at literal segments in society written in the vernacular languages. These books were exchanged through the developed trade routes. Most of them didn’t go beyond state boundaries. As they diffused, they contributed to the emergence of these communities by showing people the culture, myths or legends from other parts. Communities started to have some content and substance (stories refer to boundaries, places outside the kingdoms…)
17 th^ century : NATIONAL CONSCRIPTION. Modern states. Kings, to win the battles, started to build their own armies, national armies. States, which until then had often relied on mercenaries, in order to become more efficient and ensure the loyalty of their soldiers, started recruiting and mobilizing peasants from their own state. (they did so only when there was war, difference with 19th^ century). This strengthened in people’s minds the idea that there was a world around them and broadened their imaginary communities. People start to think too about enemies (outside the kingdom).
18th^ century : EFFICIENT STATES. States, which until then had been very small in terms of tax-collecting and war-making machines, started to evolve into modern bureaucracies that undertook many important changes for the emergence of nation: creation of internal markets (elimination of barriers within states that facilitated trade and further increased people’s feeling that they belong to the same community).
18 th-19 th^ century HISTORICISM. States started to go through the industrial revolution (tremendous increase in production) and urbanization processes. At the time, for most people, this must have been a moment of tragedy, probably one of the most horrible periods of life. Millions of people were pushed out of the land to move into cities, urban areas, they experienced terror: local peasants, teachers, etc. The process involved going from relative freedom in the countryside to deplorable conditions in the city: in factories, in crowded houses… Those who were more sensitive and able to detect what was going on were those closer to migrating peasants (teachers, clergy members…) they saw that the world was shaping into a new one, and they tried to preserve everything they could from oblivion, in order to make sure they wouldn’t disappear. By doing that, they added a cultural element to these imaginary communities that were being developed, the idea that they had a common culture that was being preserved. They started making tails... They were associated with History, the tradition, the Geography of concrete states. So people started to collect thing from the past to preserve tradition: Spanish History, French History…: Historiography (very regional movement). Giving imaginary communities realis, making them objective.
French Revolution showed the power a national army could have if boosted by national spirit, so state rules started to mobilize national discourses making people feel like they were the owners of their own destiny, that they were fighting for themselves and the nation instead than for the king.
19 th^ century: NATIONALISM. With this, became political changes. States moved from absolutism to constitutionalism, from the divine right of kings to national and later on popular sovereignty. Because part of the constitutional transition involved elections to legislative chambers, politicians and heads of state started to invoke the nation in order to legitimate what they were doing and find support. Little by little they started to build this nation as a group of citizens that shared a culture.
19 th^ century: UNIVERSAL CONSCRIPTION: national conscription became universal, that’s to say, everybody has to fight for the nation (national conscription did not mean that everybody must fight) This meant that every citizen had the obligation to serve part of their life to the army. People from all corners of a particular state got to meet one another. People: “the state call me part of the nation”.
19 TH^ century: GROWING STATE SIZE AND FUNCTIONS: The transition from absolutism to democracy legitimize rulers to tax citizens, so states had more resources to develop. With these new resources the state created a public economic sector, built railways… They acquired new functions such as education, they created public education and passed laws for universal education. This had an enormous transforming impact on these imaginary communities. Implementation of national education. State thought that to be more powerful, stronger, they had to educate everybody. This education provided basic knowledge but beyond that, this made people have national
- -Political participation takes place at the European level.
- (^) -European symbols exist.
- -The European Union has invested efforts in the creation of a European Identity
(CUADRO SLIDES) DATA FROM 2010. Luxembourg (79), Spain (78) …
But even 60 % are still very low.
We would expect European identification to be more prevalent that world identifications or other regional identifications. Data tells us that indeed the only region in the world where people can speak of supranational identification is Europe.
While European identification is already prevalent, it is not yet there with national identification.
Switzerland is widely multicultural but the different communities are very apart from each other, therefore there is little ground to believe there is national identification, very plurinational identification. However, when surveyed, we find that it has really high national identification. Spain have this problem too, example: first Spanish then Catalan (first Catalan then Spaniard).
Why some have more identification than others as Europeans? One explanation is: the groups of countries most likely to identify with Europe are either invaded countries or those which were part of the axis forces (Germany...)
Since 2004 there has been an increase on those people who identify as national 1 st^ and European 2 nd, people who identify just as national have decreased.
Each new cohort of Europeans tends to identify more as Europeans. However, as they become older, they become more national. European populations are becoming older, so the population structure is what is conditioning the change in European identification.
FACTORS THAT SLOW-DOWN THE EMERGENCE OF GLOBAL
IDENTIFICATIONS:
Sociological :
- Mobility tends to be ephemeral.
- (^) Long term mobility increases mainly among less educated individuals.
- Integration at national level increases faster than at supranational level (Deutsch).
Karl Deutsch: The same process that work in favour of supranational identification are working even faster in national identification (internal mobility, exchange of goods…)
this is called the signal/noise ratio. 1953- book. He said: when nation developed there were nothing that could being replaced, the big problem of supranational identifications is that when they emerged there was already something.
Political :
-Not enough political integration. States remain most meaningful in many ways:
-Functions (i.e. Welfare). The nation still remains the base for the constitutional part of institutions.
-Political representation: Citizenship is practiced mainly at national level
-Narratives: The state’s nationalizing resources are greater than the world and European polity’s supranationalization resources.
ILLUSTRATION FROM EUROPEAN UNION
What is specifically missing in Europe particularly?
- A European educational system: contents are still largely national, there is no homogenization. People keep learning about their own communities and states and not in a broader way.
- More European media: National media still center on the nation. International news are a small part.
- European welfare competencies: The source of physical and material security is still located at local or national level.
- National political discourse has precedence over European political discourse.
- (^) EU politics is articulated at the national level, European policies are implemented by national and local bureaucracies. European bureaucracy is probably smaller than that of a big city in Spain, so people don’t have contact in their daily lives with Europe.
- And… A YOUNGER POPULATION.
The world is experiencing the changes that happened within states form many centuries, but these changes took place over several hundred years, globalization and European integration have a very short relative history, perhaps we are asking for too much. National identifications were built over nothing, however building supranational identification over the strong national one is much more complicated.
