“We are Europeans”: Perspectives of European citizenship and identity in the European Union and Argentina.

Sammanfattning: The European Union is a supranational structure of its own, created to bring peaceafter years of war on the ground of shared economic interests. In the 1970s, the polity started torealize its need of a European identity to further pursue its integration process efficiently, openinga door on a whole new sphere. This latter shift brought new issues on the table, questioning thefeatures of a common identity bringing the European countries of the Union together andeventually introduced the concept of EU citizenship as a condition of (EU)ropean belonging. Onthe other side of the Atlantic, Argentina has been on the quest of its own identity since theindependence from Spain in 1810. In the twentieth century, the country started to identify withEurope, resulting in the creation of a European identity in a non-geographically Europeancontinent and far from the concept of EU citizenship. This thesis seeks to study the differentunderstandings of a European identity. The leading question is: How are European citizenshipand European identity interwoven in the expression of belonging to Europe in the officialdiscourse in the EU and Argentina? According to a model of the sociologist Delanty, we willdeconstruct the concept of citizenship according to three features and look at citizenship as acommunity of Rights, a participatory behaviour and an identity with means of culturalcohesiveness and historical traditions in both the EU and Argentina’s official discourse. Ourfindings show, neither the study of EU rights and participatory behaviour of Eu citizens inArgentina allow us to understand the identification of Argentina with Europe, in opposition withthe EU. Indeed, being a European in the EU refers to belonging and participating in a politicalsphere and eventually could lead to a political identity. In Argentina being European refers to acultural, if not eugenic identity which can be explained by the history of the country.