Competing discourses on Europe: the divided case of Estonia

Historical and cultural context and individual experience are likely to influence the ‘imagination of Europe’. Such discourses exist according to specific social patterns that may critically divide societies into different and competing social constructions of Europe. Is there a transnational discourse on ‘Europe’, and if so, who exactly is part of this discourse? How are these imaginations embedded in processes of identification with (the) nation-state(s) and with Europe?This study deals with these questions within three specific cases: Italy, the Netherlands, and Estonia. At the time of the EASA2010 conference, the first Estonian fieldwork period will be nearly finished, and this paper therefore reports on the imagination of Europe among Estonians and ‘ethnically Russians’. Special attention will be paid to the use of ‘Europe’ within the discursive divide between these two groups, and to how this is mediated by one’s social group and individual experience.