UNIT 4. National and European identity – in (or out of) sync?

Step 2. How exclusive or inclusive are collective identities (theoretical considerations)

Introduction

In Unit 1. Step 2 we have discussed different aspects of collective identities. Let’s come back to our conclusions for a moment. We said that collective identities are social constructs, they are contextual; they change and evolve; the borders of collectives are discovered and negotiated thorough intercultural encounters, and typically they are not mutually exclusive, but may coexist at different levels of an individual’s identification. Let’s look at this last aspect. What does it mean? How does it work?

As you already know we may belong to different groups. Being a student (belonging to the student community) does not exclude being a son/daughter/partner/parent (belonging to a family); it also does not exclude being a member of a music/sport/artistic group; nor does it exclude being a member of local community. Why? Because belonging to each of these groups operates at a different level of our identification; and as such it fulfils different functions.

Quite similarly, identifying with our town/city/village (of birth and/or of living) does not exclude our identification with our own region, and this does not exclude identification with our nation and country.

In order to comprehend how the multiplicity of those identities work, imagine that each collective can be graphically presented as a circle. In the first case (me being a student, family member, sport/artistic group member, local community member) the circles intersect (graph 1). In the second case they are embedded in each other (wider collective encompasses smaller ones) (graph 2).