European Citizenship Revisited

European Citizenship Revisited

Monday, June 23 2008

One-day Conference

Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford

Since the mid-90s, citizens of European nations have legally become European citizens. Have what seemed to be distant but permissive attitudes toward a remote object - European integration - transformed into a more substantial pattern of opinions, feelings and beliefs?

Recent general use of the concept of European identity cannot conceal the fact that three main features of former citizens’ attitudes towards the EU still characterize today’s European citizenship.

• First, the way citizens consider the new European political community is highly sensitive to measurement: different methods lead to sometimes almost opposite conclusions;
• Second, national differences remain massive and nationality still constitutes the first predictor of support for European integration;
• Third, the social gap – that is, the enduring difference between Europhile elites and Eurosceptic working class people – continues to question the legitimacy of the European Union.

This conference aims to revisit European citizenship according to three dimensions: methodology, social and national differences. Each panel will introduce a leading specialist in European studies whose work contributes to better understand the problem at stake; and will also feature presentation of the first conclusions of a focus group research project - ‘Citizens talking about Europe’ – CITAE (funded by ANR, Sciences Po’s European Study Center, FNRS, Leverhulme Foundation and Nuffield College). The CITAE team is composed of Sophie Duchesne, Florence Haegel, Guillaume Garcia, Cevipof/Sciences Po Paris; Andre-Paul Frognier and Virginie van Ingelgom, Unité de science politique et de relations internationales , Université Catholique de Louvain; Elizabeth Frazer, DPIR, Oxford.

For more information about CITAE, please visit our website.

The conference was supported by the Department of Politics and International Relations, Oxford University and New College, Oxford.

Pictures of the conference

Programme

9.00 Registration and coffee

9.15
Session One: Problems of comparative qualitative research

Speaker: Jonathan White, European University Institute, Florence (paper available pdf)
CITAE: Guillaume Garcia and Virginie van Ingelgom (paper available pdf)
Discussant: Heather Hamill, Department of Sociology, University of Oxford. Chair: Andre-Paul Frognier

11.15
Session Two: Enduring national differences in citizens’ talk about Europe

Speaker: Juan Diez Medrano, University of Barcelona (paper available pdf)
CITAE: Florence Haegel (paper available pdf)
Discussant: Céline Belot, CNRS/Pacte, Grenoble

Chair: Olivier Rozenberg

1.15 Lunch

2.00
Session Three: The social gap

Speaker: Adrian Favell, UCLA (paper available pdf)
CITAE team: Sophie Duchesne (paper available pdf)
Discussant: John Corner, Department of Politics and Communication Studies, University of Liverpool

Chair: Elizabeth Frazer

4.00 Tea

4.30
Round Table

Chair: Kalypso Nicolaidis, Director European Studies Centre, St Antony's College

6.00
Public Reception: drinks

Presentation:
Elizabeth Frazer: Findings from the research project ‘Citizens Talking About Europe’
Kalypso Nicolaïdis: The future of European citizenship

Registration

Registration for this conference has now closed.