Citizens of nowhere? Some thoughts on Europe and class identity
For many of us living in Britain, the past year has been a test of our identity: we were told that if we believe that we are citizens of the world, then we are citizens of nowhere. This is not only insulting to those of us who have committed ourselves to being a part of Britain and its plural fabric, it is also a deep threat to deeply held beliefs; To an identity – European, cosmopolitan - both essential and vulnerable, as all identities are.
Through the prism of Brexit and of national sovereignty, the debate about national identity became once again about class. And about the relationship between a European identity and class identity.
Despite the fact that, as has been pointed out, ‘The well-travelled polyglot is as likely to be among the worst off as the best off – as likely to be found in a shantytown as at the Sorbonne’,[1] feeling European in Britain (but in many parts of Europe too) seems increasingly determined by class: The divide between support for, and refusal of, the EU is one that mirrors the divide between the winners of the last 20 or 30 years and the losers of those same decades. The ‘winners’ are those armed with high levels of education and the kind of confidence in the future that comes from the security of professional prospects, a choice in where to live, the promise of leisure, interesting pursuits, and rich social and professional circles. The ‘losers’ are those whose jobs are in the process of being annihilated (or have already been), whose skills and training do not satisfy the demands of a knowledge (and, increasingly, robotised) economy, and for whom the last three decades have seen rising debt and declining promise for themselves and their children. The picture is a caricature, but it is not without foundation. And, I have to admit that one of the things that has stopped me writing about my attachment to Europe, about my ‘European identity’, over the years, has been the quiet conviction that my Europeanness would be taken as no more than the expression of a privileged upbringing and of the luxury of choice. This is not an ideal vantage point from which to extoll the democratic virtues of Europe!
The element of class seems inescapable because it is: betrayed in one’s tastes in music, in literature, the un-pin-downable accent; embodied, perhaps above all, by the comfort and pleasure found in the challenge of diversity, which prompt curiosity rather than fear; optimism rather then resentment.
It is quite clear that, for as long as those who ‘make’ Europe do not understand that to embrace Europe, people need to feel secure in their primary social and cultural identities and supported both economically and culturally--then the difficulties faced by those who feel on the periphery of Europe’s culture, locked down by its borders, but vulnerable by virtue of its borderless-ness, excluded by its complexity and alienated by its easy, surface cosmopolitanism, will continue to overwhelm any European political project, and undermine any European identity.
European institutions used to understand this. It is the work that they began to do in the 1960s and 1970s: a modern polity, coming to terms with divisions they knew to be deadly (cultural and political, but also socio-economic), by attempting to set up a system that would gradually address them, diminish their relevance. And this is the work that must recommence now.
European discussions are nothing but a starting point—but they are a useful microcosm: the upheaval of the past year in Europe (and its populist political ripples) should stand as a broader and more universal encouragement to understand how we conjugate our global interdependence with our personal, social, political, cultural, class identities. In our world we are both human, and particular; We are not simply human beings, we are Canadian, French, Singaporeans, sisters, writers, singers, Christians, etc etc—and a myriad other things, the categories of which are constantly shifting but, nevertheless, ground us and give our lives beliefs and meaning.
Talking about our identities (plural, infuriating and necessary) is the necessary conversation about understanding the uniqueness of the ‘distant millions’[2], and what we share with them; And the differences amongst our fellow citizens.
[1] K. A. Appiah, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers, Penguin, London, 2006, p. xvi.
[2] In the words of Bikhu Parekh