ABSTRACT
European Union citizenship is underdeveloped when compared to national citizenship, but it is also ideally poised to address the very same contemporary trends that are undermining the national systems. In the United States, citizenship studies are connected with identity politics and with postmodern epistemology. Collective identities form part of a recurrent process of identity continuity and a reinvention of identity that affects society as a whole. The two main paradigms for explaining identity are constructivism and essentialism. Both essentialism and constructivism in identity theory are inconclusive for the dynamics of change of social identities. Among the available theories of citizenship, the best is to be found within what some political philosophers are calling liberal culturalism, which combines liberal nationalism and liberal multiculturalism. Multicultural citizenship is included in that group. The ultimate goal of cultural policy, as interpreted by the Commission, is the strengthening of the citizens' feelings of belonging to the European Union.
