IDENTIDAD - IDENTITY

Un blog es una manera de desarrollar su identidad...

Who am I as European?

First of all, I feel more French than European.

Indeed, France is a part of my identity whereas I think Europe is in my personality (mind) but Europe doesn’t train my identity.

My French identity seems to me acquired whereas I have to build my European identity. I think our country influence our way to think and act.

In fact, we all learn the same things at school, we follow the same events (on TV, newspaper…) so we have some values and references in common. I think that school has an important impact on our identity, it shows us a way to think, schools are very patriotic. I have the sensation that I don’t know enough about Europe and European countries like their culture for example.

My studies stress the fact of being European but I feel this identity as European more like a choice than like an absolute which is the case for my French identity.

Obviously, be French is evident for me since I was born, I’ll never pass my French identity under review. Not because of France in particularly but because I always lived with French habits, so think like a French. So I think that it’s the society which makes an important part of our identity; indeed the sociology can explain lots of habits.

Each time I visit a country (even if I have only visited European countries) I compare habits, way of lives with French one’s. Not because France is better but because it’s that I known well. I think that my French identity is a part of me even if I don’t want to because of my education, my socialisation which was influenced by France. My family has always lived in France, so they communicate me almost only a French vision and behave.  

However, feel “European”, means that Europe makes part of my personality because of a personal choice. I don’t think that to live on the continent and to have the European citizenship make you feel like as European. I feel European after feeling French because I support the European Union. I’m for this project of union but it’s something which characterizes me personally and not because it’s where I live.

To my mind, European Union is too much technocratic, diplomatic and so far for people to create an identity and a feeling of affiliation. The election of European Parliament since 1979 in Direct Universal Suffrage make EU implicates more Europeans but we miss information to interest us at the Union. Indeed, if we don’t research information about European advancement and Parliament decisions, we can’t know the importance of the EU. To my mind, European identity is a will because it doesn’t remain a common heritage or way to think and live. Our points of commons in Europe are because we have occidental way of lives, we have as similarities with USA as other European countries.

So, if I go to another continent I will present me like French and not like European because Europe is more abstract than France. I’m proud of EU but it can characterize somebody only if he is a real defender of EU. I feel more pro-Europe than “European”. Maybe, this way of thinking will change if I travel more. Maybe I will write another vision next year because I will spend one year in Spain. Thanks to Erasmus I will study on Madrid. Perhaps I will feel Spanish after French and behind European. Maybe people who travel a lot feel European and not citizen of one particularly country.        

But I would like to feel more European than French; it will mean that EU succeeded. Real European identity needs commons point between all citizens stronger than nowadays. But I hope it will be possible for the next generation…