Europe's New Diversities

3 units

Since the late 1980s, three major upheavals have transformed European senses of identity. The demise of the Soviet Union has forced citizens of new post-socialist' nations to forge new senses of belonging and new strategies of survival. The rise of a new public presence of Islam and the growth of children of Muslim immigrants to adulthood have challenged notions that Europe is a secular or post-Christian space. Finally, the heightened authority of European institutions has challenged the nation-state from above, and the granting of new forms of subnational autonomy to regions and peoples has challenged it from below. The new Europe is increasingly constituted by way of regional identifications, transnational movement(s), and umbrella European legal and political organizations; these new realities occasion new rhetorics of secularism, nationalism, and ethnic loyalties. We examine these forms of diversity, movement, and debate by way of new works in anthropology, sociology and political science.