Ethnic and Racial Studies

ISSN: 0141-9870 (Print) 1466-4356 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rers20

Minorities of Europeanization: The new others of

European social identity
Thomas Johansson
To cite this article: Thomas Johansson (2016) Minorities of Europeanization: The
new others of European social identity, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 39:3, 512-514, DOI:
10.1080/01419870.2015.1095320
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2015.1095320

Published online: 12 Oct 2015.

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References
Biehl, Flore. 2008. Cultural Capital during Migration, Working Paper 8.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1986. The (Three) Forms of Capital. In Handbook for Theory and Research for the
Sociology of Education, edited by C. Richardson John, 241258. New York: Greenwood.

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Shereen Hussein
Kings College London
shereen.hussein@kcl.ac.uk
2015 Shereen Hussein
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2015.1095334

Minorities of Europeanization: The new others of European social

identity, by Hakan Ovunc Ongur, London, Lexington Books, 2015, vii + 187
pp., ISBN 978-0-7391-8148-5
This study is offering a historical and conceptual approach to Europeanization,
European identity and social minorities. Using social identity theory (SIT), the
author aims to analyse the possibility of constructing a European identity, and
what this means for our understanding of national and supranational minorities.
The book consists of ve chapters. The main analysis is structured into and developed in three main chapters on Europeanization, Late modern European self-denitions and minorities of Europeanization. The purpose of chapter two is to
present and analyse a European history narrated by European identity. Different
understandings of the concept of Europeanization are presented and discussed.
The different phases of what it has meant to be a European are unpacked. One
conclusion drawn is that Europeanization has never been able to construct a
thick core of European culture, but instead contributed to a thin pool of
common memories and experiences. In chapter two Europeanization is also discussed. In 1973 the term European identity was established at the Copenhagen
European summit by the Heads of the states (of the nine members). However,
the conclusions drawn chapter two is that we are still far from a European
common identity and democracy.
In chapter three, the focus turns towards the concept of identity. The author
frames his discussion in terms of, for example, postmodern narratives of European
identity and European integration as a late-modern phenomenon. Although the
concept of late modernity is put forward as a central conceptual tool, the distinction between modernity and postmodernity is also brought into the discussion on
European identity. In chapter three there is also a lengthy discussion on the
concept of social identity. Leaning heavily on Henri Tajfel and SIT, the differentiation between in- and out-groups becomes central tools, used to understand
and approach issues on European identity and the construction of minorities. In
short, this is a social psychological theory, used to study and analyse relations
between different groups. The main focus is directed towards social psychological
processes leading to the construction of us and them. This type of social

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ETHNIC AND RACIAL STUDIES

513

psychological analysis of the relation between groups aims at creating a linkage

between collective phenomenon and cognitive and personal processes. The creation of out-groups does not necessarily lead to aggression and negative feelings
towards the people in this group, but sometimes the out-group is constructed as
the Others. Using this terminology EU is today an in-group for a specic number
of national states. The author poses the questions on who are the Others and Signicant Wes of the Europeanization process, thus turning our attention towards
the contextual and complex in- and out-group dynamics of this structural and historical transformation process.
Chapter four is concerned with the issue of the Europeanization of minorities
and the minorities of Europeanization. The construction of European minorities
is analysed in a historical and contextual framework. According to the author
European societies faced considerable difculties during the 1970s in managing
multiple sovereign states as well as religious, linguistic and ethnic diversity
within the European boundaries. In the 1980s, the discussion was framed in
terms of multiculturalism, in an attempt to bring minority groups into the denition of the people. In the 1990s and onwards, the concept of multiculturalism has been questioned and increasingly immigrants, asylum seekers and
guest workers are denied the rights of citizenship and belonging. The situation
varies and differs between the European national states. However, increasingly
minorities are denied human rights, and there are considerable problems with
discrimination of, for example, the Roma population in East European countries.
At the end of this chapter the author is focusing on some of the more dominant out-groups in Europe, The Roma people, guest workers and Muslims.
According to the International Organization for Migration, by 2010 there were
almost seventy millions migrants in Europe, approximately 10% of the whole
European population. The management of immigration and minority groups
are thus becoming gradually more complex and complicated in contemporary
Europe.
In the concluding chapter of the book the increasing anti-European tone in the
political debate is discussed. The author concludes that the Others of Europeanization have been selected in order to emphasize the united destiny, history and
heritage of selected European nationals. Consequently, Russophones in the
Baltic States, immigrants and guest workers, Muslims residing in European
countries and the Roma people have been excommunicated from the European
social identity.
This is a highly interesting and well-developed overview of research on the
Europeanization process. The three main chapters bring out and discuss in a systematic way the key concepts of the study. The concepts are also put in motion
in especially chapter four. The central arguments are clear and consistent, and it
is easy to follow the structure and line of arguments throughout the book.
However, I have difculties with the sometimes loose application of concepts
such as postmodern and late modern conditions. The concept of postmodernism
seems a bit out-dated. In addition, I am not entirely sure about the concept of
late modernity. Consequently, there is a need to discuss and elaborated on
this further. The concept of social identity, and the use of in- and out-groups

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works, although I nd this social psychological approach somewhat simplistic

and static. At the end of the book, as the author tries to bring all the different
threads together, the theoretical framework does not necessarily help us to
understand the complicated identity processes in Europe. Also, a more elaborated and deeper discussion of the processes of marginalization taking place
both inside and in between nation-states in Europe would have been benecial
for this study. I am not condent that this study brings forward something new
in respect to analysis of Europeanization and minorities, but it is certainly an
excellent introduction to these issues and central questions on European
identity.
Thomas Johansson
Department of Education, Communication and Learning, University of Gothenburg,
Gothenburg, Sweden
thomas.johansson@ped.gu.se
2015 Thomas Johansson
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2015.1095320

Making Hispanics: how activists, bureaucrats and media constructed a

new American, by G. Cristina Mora, Chicago, University of Chicago Press,
2014, xxi +227 pp., $27.50 (paperback), ISBN 9780226033839
Since the 1980s, when Hispanics were ofcially counted in the US Census, our
scholarly interest in the meaning and content of Latino/Hispanic identity on the
one hand, and the role of Hispanics as a group in shaping our social world on
the other, has exploded. Certainly, many scholars have done extraordinary work
unpacking the paradox of Latinidad (A Spanish language term that refers to the
shared attributes, identity, and interests of people of Latin American descent),
and, in the process, shored up an entire interdisciplinary programme dedicated
to this work.
Nevertheless, our understanding of the production of Hispanics as a category is
relatively thin. As Mora points out, the scholarship that seeks to explain the production of Hispanic panethnicity generally highlights one key set of actors
either state bureaucrats, activists, or the media as the locus of action. In
Moras concise analysis, however, she argues that between the 1960s and
1980s, these three core groups of actors engaged in a dialectical process to
make Hispanics. That is, it is the interaction of these three actors who engaged
in conict, negotiation, and consensus that produced the ambiguous and yet
enduring category of Hispanic. Moreover, she argues, it is the very success of
this process that has obscured its origins. Mora aims to recuperate this history
with her thorough, yet and accessible analysis.
The book is set up chronologically to highlight the bumpy and contested
process by which Hispanic panethnicity was adopted over time, across distinct
elds. Mora argues that in the 1960s, the invisibility of Latinos as a population