ABSTRACT
While recent research has raised the question of how support for integration is influenced by identity and utilitarian factors (Hooghe & Marks 2005; Gabel 1998), in this essay we step back and ask what the underlying structures of supranational identity are. European identity, a complex phenomenon, may be approached by examining, among other aspects, attachment to Europe. Checkel and Katzenstein (2009), who depict European identity formation with darker colours of uncertainty and anxiety rather than hopes and assurance, distinguish between two versions of European identity. In one it is a process, an outcome of deliberation, exchange and the unintended consequences of spontaneous social processes such as increasing cross-border communication. In the other case supranational identity formation is more purposeful; it is the result of elites' identity-building efforts. There is little doubt about the ability of elites and the media to influence identity-formation using consciously-applied symbols (Bruter 2005), and even the projection of reinvented myths and a strengthened sense of imagined communities (Anderson 1983).
