Europaidentitet och flyktingkris : Om EU:s identitetskonstruktion i ord och agerande

In this thesis I look at the historical development of the European identity constructed by the EU through official EU-documents. My main focus is on the contents of the identity and on the values assigned to it, and I argue for the need to question these. In reacent years the European identity has been the subject to many studies, and consequences and contradictions of the EU´s constructed identity have been pointed out. What has not been shown is, however, the relation between the European identity expressed by the EU and the identity that can be said to present itself in action. I mean that this relation highlights the necessity to deconstruct the European identity constructed by the EU. With the deconstructivistic approach I do not intend to dismiss the European identity but instead to show displacements in it and question its status, in order to think otherwise about the European identity. Through the EU´s handling of the refugee crises and by using Hannah Arendt´s political theory I show tensions and dislocations in the identity’s attributed values. I argue that the European identity shown in the refugee crises turns freedom into freedom from otherness and equality into equality only within the identity. This, in turn, eventuate in a division of humanity and conflicts with the enforcement of human rights. To live up to its values the European identity has to emancipate from its essentialism and devolve into a rootless identity which is in a never ending becoming