Description
A stated objective of the European Union's (EU) Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) is to reinforce collective European identity (Treaty of Maastricht, 1992). In recent years, the EU has faced several crises which have challenged the role and viability of European identity and the cohesiveness of the European polity (Kaschuba, 2000; Billing, 2008; Lambert, 2023). We know that the CFSP is a significant tool in EU crisis governance, and that European identity can serve as a predictor of support for European integration, especially during crises (Mayer and Palmowski, 2004; Hooghe and Marks, 2008; McNamara, 2015; Nicoli et al., 2020). Despite this, existing scholarship has overlooked the role of the CFSP in managing and promoting European identity during times of crisis. This paper fills these gaps by asking the following question: “how does the EU produce conceptions of European identity through the CFSP during times of crisis?” Examining primary documents produced under the framework of the CFSP in response to the “Schengen Crisis”, COVID-19 Pandemic, and Russian Invasion of Ukraine, this paper argues that the EU defines who is European, and who is not predominantly through its strategies of public diplomacy, especially in the realm of migration. The EU’s public diplomacy strategies contribute to clear racialized, and place-based ideas of belonging in Europe; for audiences both within and beyond Europe. Competing policies and rhetoric of inclusion and exclusion demonstrate the ways in which European identity is defined through crisis, and how the EU uses the CFSP to reinforce certain senses of belonging. This study contributes to greater understandings of the EU specifically, and the role of public diplomacy more broadly; including how scholars can better understand the ways in which it influences senses of belonging in global politics.
