Nation and Identity in Contemporary Europe

The resilience of nationalism in contemporary Europe may seem paradoxical at a time when the nation state is widely seen as being in decline . Why should so many movements across the continent be seeking to preserve or replicate a mode of political organization whose efficacy and legitimacy is increasingly open to doubt? Challenged from above by the imperatives of globalism and from below by the complex pluralism of modern societies, less and less are able to deliver the goods in terms of policy or to provide the primary focus for social identity, the nation state faces an uncertain future. This book examines the many manifestations of this ambivalent process across Europe, focusing both on the specifics of national identity in individual countries and on the external forces that are shaping contemporary perceptions and reactions - economic globalization and European supranationalism, the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Eastern bloc, mass migratory movements and North-South tensions. In this wider context, the resurgence of nationalism appears less like a paradox than like an epiphenomenon of the crisis of nation-state structures.