EU identity visions and narratives of ‘us’ and ‘them’ in European Schools

ABSTRACT In ‘European Schools’, created for children of EU officials, narratives of European identity among students could match EU visions. Yet, students’ individual narrations of their identities are more complex. The study systematises these narratives of Europeanness: cosmopolitan, multinational and transnational notions of ‘us’ and ‘them’. Qualitative thematic analysis provides perspectives on what ‘being (not) European’ means for EU, European Schools and teachers – and most importantly, it disentangles identity narratives of European School students. Based on interviewing 101 students across three schools, the analysis shows that EU and European School propositions of a multinational European identity differ from teachers’ and students’ cosmopolitan and transnational narratives. At the EU level, Europeanness implies an ‘out-group’ of a nationalist, war-torn past. Students contradict EU visions by widening teachers’ antinationalist narrative and excluding people within Europe. They exclude intolerant and narrow-minded, but more generally people who are more national and less mobile than their ‘in-group’. Systematically comparing European identity narratives thus helps to uncover these contradictions. Not all narratives about Europe are available to everyone and individual opportunities to partake in mobile, multilingual Europeanness need reconsideration.