ABSTRACT
This chapter compares the concept of cultural citizenship, based on an anthropological study of Latino communities in the United States, with the proposal of European identity made by the European Union during the 1990s. Cultural citizenship and European identity are two contemporary and circulating discourses on the relationship between cultural identity and citizenship. The chapter examines the connection between rights and identity. The oxymoron 'cultural citizenship' designates a corpus of discourse captured by several researchers, mostly through doing fieldwork as participant observers. What is widely known as the Maastricht Treaty emphasizes the European identity as being a goal to achieve in military defense, based on a common defense, being independent and asserting its identity on the international scene. The two projects, cultural citizenship and European identity, differ in various dimensions; content production, political strategy, political rival, political goal, the idea of citizenship, the idea of cultural identity and relation between citizenship and cultural identity.
