Belonging to the nation, belonging to Europe? Varieties of particularism and universalism in migrant identity negotiation
Résumé
This article focuses on the relationship between migrants' identification with the national (destination) community and European identification. I investigate how first-generation "immigrant patriots", who consider themselves to be French, British, or Spanish (regardless of formal citizenship status) relate to European identity. Through a series of case studies of South Asian, North African, and South American migrants' identity narratives in the metropolitan areas of Paris, Madrid, and London, I argue that immigrant relationships to Europe vary a great deal. In addition, I find that (dis)inclinations toward the supranational dimension have a lot to do with how migrants achieve and conceive of belonging in the new homeland in the first place. Beginning with the ambivalent figure of the postcolonial migrant subject as a starting point for the analysis, I sketch out two different pathways toward inclusion at the (sub)national level that produce different relationships to the supranational level. One involves particularistic and culturally-defined orientations to belonging, while the other takes a universalistic and civic-based understanding of membership. Whether or not Europe is included in the identity equation depends on whether the conception of European membership is coherent with the identity work undertaken to achieve a sense of national belonging.
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