Cross Analysis of the Case Studies

Our methodological innovation, ethnography of Europeanization, offers a multi-dimensional and intersectional approach to how people construct Europe and their notion of belonging to it at different social and cultural locations. We explore this in data sets from three EU cultural initiatives – the European Capital of Culture (ECOC), the European Citizen Campus (ECC), and the European Heritage Label (EHL). In our three case studies, various social locations and demographic aspects, such as age, gender, education, nationality, country of residence, and level of active engagement in cultural participation, had a major impact on our research participants’ answers dealing with Europe and the ‘European’. These socio-demographic factors affected both people’s agency and their imaginations of Europe, and intersected with other social and cultural phenomena that participants addressed, such as mobility, cultural diversity, and ideas of participation. People’s social location plays a role in deepening and/or creating opportunities for engaging in such phenomena and contributing to processes of belonging. In this chapter, we bring together the core findings from our three case studies and cross-analyze them in relation to spatial and temporal contexts, including the specific contexts in which the EU cultural initiatives occurred. While we address the overlap in our data, we have no intention to conduct a comparative study. Our qualitative analysis takes into account only the answers of EU citizens and of citizens of Russia, Ukraine, and Switzerland, which includes all respondents and participants in the ECOC and ECC data sets and 230 interviewed visitors to EHL sites. In order to interpret and understand our data and its meanings more extensively, we have quantified certain answers from our interviews and survey. These findings are valid and representative only for the respective case study in which the responses were collected. Bearing in mind the small numbers of informants, particularly in the ECC and EHL cases, we do not claim that our results are as representative as larger surveys like Eurobarometer. However, grouping the answers enabled us to discuss belonging to Europe from different perspectives and in various contexts, and to consider the factors affecting the answers that referred to the respondents’ relationship to Europe and views on the ‘European’. Grouping answers also helped us to identify important topics