Identity Shifts in Studies of Attitudes Toward Europe: Origins, Contributions, and Limitations

Despite the early appearance of political declarations concerning European identity, the sociological analysis of the identification processes of citizens towards their new Union only started to take shape in the first years of the 21st century. Quantitative analysis thus led to many studies aiming to take into account the affective or emotional dimension of attitudes to integration - in opposition to support based on evaluation and utility. This article shows how these studies converge both in their results (the multidimensionality of these attitudes, the persistence of social variables and the importance of the national context, identifications with Europe maintaining strong but complex relations to the nations) and in their limitations. They draw attention to the lacunae and the limitations in the quantitative data available and reflect the difficulty in analyzing a phenomenon that is as context-dependant as identification to Europe