Narratives of European Identity and the Making of the Other Inside European Union.

The proposed research project focuses broadly on analyzing the narratives of European identity. A particular analytical emphasis is placed on the processes of othering that are involved in framing a European identitarian project. Inscribed in the establis hed tradition of constructivism and discourse analysis, the project aims to locate and unfold the alterity making processes within current European identity narratives. While existing literature on the topic is focused on the movement of a European proces s of othering towards EU borders, the proposed project follows two models of othering inside the European Union by arguing that, within EU identity making, a core-periphery nexus is involved in integration processes while the East-West slope retains speci fic features after the Eastern Enlargement. The research project focuses on two very different models: the model of Nordic exceptionality and that of laggardness or less Europeaness of Central and Eastern European EU members. These models are considered i llustrative samples of the centripetal dynamics of European identity making. The project seeks to evaluate the impact of these models of alterity on the force of contestation and types of resistance toward European identitarian constructs that lead to dec reasing popular support for European Union, Euroscepticism and the formation of anti-EU forces in Nordic and Central and Eastern European countries. It aims to identify a dual movement at national and transnational levels of identity building processes in the context of the EU enlargement. The argument is that European identity making creates and reproduces through daily practices an internal alterity while enlargement made the process of othering constitutive to most of European identitarian endeavours. Thus, in a reshaped paraphrase, a new spectre is haunting Europe: the spectre of the other.