Studies have shown that climate change causes large scale human displacement. With this as background this thesis investigates the connection between climate change and immigration/asylum in EU documents. The EU is an institution that has not acknowledged the existence of climate change induced migration despite outside awareness that the phenomenon exists. This thesis analyzes discourses about climate change and immigration/asylum in the EU in order to find out how EU regards climate change induced migrants, and why it has not acknowledged their existence or provides protection. The thesis found that discourses of inclusion and exclusion based on European ethnicity and culture restricts possibilities for migrants from developing countries to come to Europe. It also found that EU represents its strategy to fight climate change as comprehensive and leaves no room for changes in that strategy. These two findings in combination explain why climate change induced migrants are not acknowledged, and in extension do not get protection from the EU. The research found that the absence of an acknowledgement and protection for climate change induced migrants is influenced by political discourses in the EU that see unskilled immigrants from developing countries as a threat and danger to Europe and its current climate change strategy as sufficient for coping with the effects of climate change.

Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) is a topic of increasing importance in the private andpublic sectors. The reason behind growing investments in D&I can be found in thebeneficial effects of embracing and implementing D&I policies for public and privateorganisations. Indeed, D&I has multiple positive effects in terms of economic returns,productivity, creativity, attractiveness, reputation, employees’ wellness, and visibility.In May 2021, the Directorate General (DG) of the European Commission specialised injustice, consumer rights and gender equality (DG Justice) organised the EU DiversityMonth, aimed at raising awareness about the importance of D&I in the workplace. Theprogramme included many initiatives, and part of the campaign took place on socialmedia. #EUDiversityMonth and #UnionOfEquality were the two hashtags dedicated tothe campaign on social media by DG Justice. This research analyses the content sharedon Twitter using these two hashtags during the entire month of May 2021 by theofficial account of Helena Dalli, EU Commissioner for Equality, and the official accountof the European Commission's Justice and Consumers DG. This sample represents agood reference for the analysis of D&I representation and EU social mediacommunication, despite the fact that a low number of tweets were posted, showing anunderuse of social media as a strategic tool for communication for social change.

Le Conseil de l'Europe a lancé en 1987 le programme des itinéraires culturels européens qui vise à promouvoir l'identité culturelle à travers le tourisme en utilisant une politique touristique et culturelle. Les itinéraires culturels offrent un énorme potentiel de collaboration, mais il est nécessaire d'examiner quelles sont les pratiques qui caractérisent ce secteur. Cette thèse analyse les mécanismes et instruments mis en place par les itinéraires en réseau dès leur création et leur application sur le territoire par les acteurs concernés. Nous optons pour une analyse multiscalaire afin d'étudier les différentes échelles de gouvernance qui apparaissent dans un itinéraire et qui vont de l'Européenne jusqu'à la locale. Nous sélectionnons trois itinéraires réseaux pour un examen plus approfondie, lesquels ont leur représentation en Espagne et France : la Route européenne des cimetières, l'itinéraire européen du Patrimoine Juif et les Sites clunisiens en Europe. Ces itinéraires réseaux n'ont pas une identité antérieure ni d'interconnexions entre territoires à l'inverse des itinéraires linéaires. Il s'agit d'analyser les processus à chaque échelle pour bien comprendre la complexité de ces projets transnationaux dans leur fonctionnement en tant que produits touristiques unitaires compréhensibles pour les touristes. / In 1987, the Council of Europe launched the European Cultural Routes program, which aims to promote cultural identity through travelling using a tourist and cultural policy. Cultural Routes offer enormous potential for collaboration, but it is necessary to examine the practices that characterize this sector. This thesis analyses the mechanisms and instruments put in place by the network routes from their creation and their application in the territory by the actors concerned. We opt for a multi-scalar analysis for the study of the different governance scales that appear in a route ranging from European to local. For a more in-depth examination we select three network routes represented in Spain and France: the European Cemeteries Route, the European Route of Jewish Heritage and the Cluniac Sites in Europe. ln contrast to linear routes, these network routes do not have a previous identity or interconnections between territories. This means analysing the processes at each scale in order to fully understand the complexity of the transnational projects needed for them to function as unitary tourism products that are understandable to tourists.

The chief preoccupation of the dissertation revolves around the European Union's project of calling forth a collective sense of "European identity" amongst people in the Union. It focuses specifically on how the European Union's identity politics plays out once the ethnic minorities with immigrant background now living in the Union are brought into view. The main purpose can be described as twofold; involving, firstly, a mapping and examination of how the EU construes and defines the identity it seeks to mobilize, and, secondly, a thorough discussion of the types of consequences or implications that stem from this endeavour. In demonstrating the strong tendency on part of the EU to articulate a common identity for the Union in ethno-cultural terms — whereby the EU is conceived as primarily a cultural community whose members are said to share the same origin, cultural heritage, religion and history — the study goes to great length in discussing the excluding implications that an ethno-cultural identity politics gives rise to. The dissertation argues that such an ethno-cultural disposition partly must be seen in light of the European Union's gradual adjustment to a largely neoliberal order; an order which has worked restraining on the feasibility of a social and political articulation of identity and citizenship in the Union. An introductory chapter outlines the discourse theoretical approach which guides the analyses in five essays. The essays mainly explore how the European Union's discourse on identity manifests in various policy areas - immigration, citizenship and education - all of which in one way or another address the issues of culture, the multicultural society, ethnic exclusion, racism and the situation for ethnic minorities and migrants. The complex of problems concerning ethnic, cultural and social exclusion in today's European Union thus constitutes a central theme engaged with throughout the dissertation. / digitalisering@umu

Šio magistrinio darbo pavadinimas „Kolektyvinės tapatybės formavimas SSRS ir ES: ekonominio veiksnio įtaka“. Istorinės ribos apima laikotarpį nuo SSRS susikūrimo iki šių dienų aktualijų, žodis "formavimas" nurodo analizuojamo proceso t��stinumą. Pagrindinė darbo analizės ašis – kolektyvinė tapatybė. Darbo pagrindinis tikslas yra įvertinti ES kolektyvinio tapatumo formavimo perspektyvumą, remiantis Sovietų Sąjungos patirtimi ir nustatyti ekonominio veiksnio ryšį su kolektyvinio tapatumo formavimo procesu. Siekiant užsibrėžtų tikslų, reikia atlikti šiuos išsikeltus uždavinius: visų pirma, reikia išsiaiškinti kaip yra konstruojamas kolektyvinis tapatumas, kokie veiksniai tai lemia ir kokia yra ekonominio veiksnio reikšmė kolektyvinio tapatumo formavimui; antra, reikia išanalizuoti SSRS kolektyvinio tapatumo formavimo trūkumus; trečia, reikia išanalizuoti ES kolektyvinio tapatumo formavimo ypatumus bei į perspektyvą nukreiptą formavimo politiką, įvertinant ekonominio veiksnio svarbą; ketvirtą, reikia palyginti ES ir Sovietų Sąjungos kolektyvinio tapatumo formavimo specifiką, remiantis gautais duomenimis, padaryti išvadas. Darbe yra keliamos šios hipotezės: 1. ekonominis veiksnys yra svarbus kolektyvinio tapatumo formavimo procese; 2. kolektyvinio tapatumo formavimo specifika SSRS ir ES turi sąryšio taškų, tai yra - juos įtakoja tie patys veiksniai; 3. ES turi daugiau perspektyvų suformuoti kolektyvinį tapatumą nei SSRS. Darbe taikomi tyrimo metodai: analitinis – aprašomasis... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / The title of this master thesis is “Formation of Collective Identity in USSR and EU: Impact of Economic Factor“. It defines historical period from USSR foundation till nowadays. The main aspect according to which these multinational blocks are analyzed is collective identity. Special efforts are given to analyze factors which have impact to collective identity formation, but the biggest attention is paid to analyze importance of economic factor. Identity – the sense of dependence. This concept at one time contains as the connective as also separative elements. This is a result of identification process which helps to define human or group exceptional indications. As individual or collective identity formation problems are widely discussed in today’s society discourses. Its importance is comprehensible as to the individual as also to the communities behavior motivation. The perception of identity allows to know better your historical or cultural roots, and also to know yourself and others better. But the concept of identity is so wide and variant, that it leaves a lot of place to the following discussions. This work appoints a lot of attention to collective identity forming and it’s specific. Actuality of the topic remains also in today’s political discourses undisputed – if we clear, how to construct common identity it would emerge a possibility to evaluate, what main mistakes in it forming maid USSR and what perspectives in common identity constructing has EU. This... [to full text]

In the end of the 1980s and in the beginning of the 1990s Europe and the world witnessed the collapse of the Soviet Union. In the mid-1990s the member states of the European Union decided to enlarge the Union towards the Eastern Europe. Thus European integration entered into an unprecedented phase. Integration of the Eastern Europeans with the Western Europe contributed to the debates on the notions of European identity and the idea of Europe. Adherence of the East Europeans to the ideals of the Western European civilization brought up some questions about the changing identities and shifting boundaries of Europe. Various theories deal with the problems of identity in general and European identity in particular. However to a great extent they are limited within a rigid description of self-other relationship. They do not intend to investigate the real motives or purposes behind these transformations of the prevailing identities and shifting of the boundaries of Europe. So, it will be argued that, in order to understand construction/reconstruction process of the new European identity, one should also take into consideration the more dynamic effects on changing European identity and shifting borders of Europe.

This paper has two aims. The first aim is to study and describe the manifest ideology of the EU's social policy. The second aim is to analyse to what extent the manifest ideology might be a part of building a common European identity - by finding common solutions to commonEuropean problems (problems, more or less constructed as common). The research is a critical ideology analysis, made up of a qualitative text analysis of EU social policy documents and National strategy reports (NSR). I ask two questions. Firstly, which are the main features in the manifest ideology of EU social policy as described in the texts? Secondly, what picture of a European identity is visible when reading the EU social policy texts and the National Strategy Reports? I have found five main features of the manifest ideology. These revolve around: how the world and change in the world are described according to the EU; the mutual interaction between the Lisbon objectives and greater social cohesion; the creating of social cohesion; the importance of how policies are constructed and implemented and the EU's self-image. The texts offer either two quite different pictures with regards to the question of a European identity or ones that is partly incoherent. The analysed EU policy texts put across a picture of a uniform Europe, suggest that there is something genuinely European and a common European identity. However, the picture obtained when reading the NSRs and the collected picture of the EU policy texts and the NSRs is much less coherent. The paper argues that the manifest ideology could be a part of building a European identity, but it does not manage to prove that it actually is.

The UK's departure from the EU marks a pivotal moment in the history of intra-EU migration, one which foretells significant consequences for the identities and future plans of EU27 citizens who call the UK home, as they try to navigate the uncertainty and xenophobic othering sparked by the referendum result in June 2016. This thesis proposes five hypotheses on the cause-and-effect relationships that link migrant identity to subsequent decision-making in the context of Brexit, through coping strategies and other determining factors. Findings are based on thematic and comparative analysis of qualitative in-depth interviews with 22 Italian, Polish and Romanian citizens living in London, which were conducted between March 2018 and April 2019, prior to the UK's departure date and during a period of considerable uncertainty regarding their future in the country. In terms of Brexit's impact on their identity formation, xenophobic othering plays a key role in reinforcing and reconfiguring collective identities, and provokes contests to citizenship-identity hierarchies within the EU27 community in London. Despite the three nationalities' differing patterns of belonging and resulting identity reconfigurations, Brexit has broadly increased their attachment to, and solidarity through, a transnational European identity. In terms of the practical impact of Brexit on significant life-course decisions, the referendum has not triggered a 'Brexodus' or mass emigration of EU27 citizens from the UK, as emigration decisions are primarily governed by individual and circumstantial factors. Citizens who do not emigrate either face analysis paralysis and adopt avoidance tactics to delay decision-making, or they opt for instrumental naturalisation which often leads subliminally to a greater sense of belonging in the UK. Alongside the general hypotheses, this thesis also depicts the diverse attitudes and coping strategies that differentiate Italians, Polish and Romanians from one another, with regards to their distinct national and cultural backgrounds.

Over the last decade, Europe has been the scene of an increased and generalized sense of ‘Euroscepticism’, expressed through a growing feeling of rejection towards the European Union, its institutions and values. This phenomenon has further resulted in a questioning of the EU’s legitimacy, with an emerging opposition to the principle of supranational governance executed by the EU observed across the Union. While this reveals an issue of general identification with the EU and the European project among individuals, the European Union has sought to respond to this through specific means, particularly through the approach of shaping a greater sense of European identity for and among ‘Europeans’. This has been going through the European Commission’s financial contribution, and the Council of Europe’s establishment of a wide range of organisms, programs, or projects working to establish this identity through multiple aspects, for instance through cultural and legal aspects, as well as to increase identification with this sense of identity. This research seeks at conducting a close study of specific programs created or funded by the EU, and establishing this sense of European identity. Our findings suggest that the shaping of a sense of European identity has remained a challenge despite the institutions’ efforts in that sense, as the concept of European identity still represents an unclear, blurred concept for many people. Moreover, the outcomes of this research have highlighted the issues behind the process of identity-shaping in the case of European identity, that is the persisting lack of identification with this identity, as well as the shaping of an exclusivist identity, rather than an inclusive identity promoting integration and inclusion for all individuals.

Since the establishment of the Erasmus exchange programme in 1987, its potential in various aspects has been evident. Many researches have been conducted regarding the Erasmus programme and its possible effects on European identity in higher education students, providing varying outcomes. Based on a survey of 200 Greek former Erasmus students, this thesis, examined the European identity among Greek students that have participated in the Programme proving its potential in terms of fostering European identity. The European identity in students was conceptualizes in terms of its spontaneous, civic and cultural aspects while its analysis was based on the theories of social constructivism and orientalism. Furthermore, the thesis conducted a correlation examination between the European identity levels of students and the destination country of their sojourn, in the hopes of establishing if the rising Euroscepticism in European countries affects the enrichment of the European identity in any way. However, the data largely reported against such a relationship.