European Identity in Switzerland

Abstract

We analyze the impact of intermarriage, and transnational social relations and experiences on the emergence of European identity. According to the structuralist theory of identification, European social relations, with European intermarriage as an especially important relation, and experiences should explain European identifications. Our analysis is based on a survey in Zurich, Switzerland, providing a broad array of data that allow testing the impact of a European partner on European identification for Swiss and how transnational social relations and experiences contribute to both Swiss and non-Swiss feeling European. Overall, we find that a partner from another European country (for Swiss natives) and transnational social relations and experiences have an important role in explaining European identification. The most important differences are between Swiss and EU citizens living in Switzerland where, for the latter, the meaning of Europe is differently constructed. Specifically, EU citizens see less conflict between national and European identification.

Fostering European Identity

“…European identity research has covered various types of exchange that range from travelling (Ceka & Sojka, 2016;Westle & Buchheim, 2016) and personal transnational relations (e.g. being an intra-EU immigrant, Verhaegen, Hooghe, & Quintelier, 2017) to relationships including marriages (Schroedter, Rössel, & Datler, 2015;Van Mol, De Valk, & Van Wissen, 2015). While travelling has a positive effect on European identity, being exposed to a high number of tourists at home does not show any effect on European identity (Buscha, Muller, & Page, 2017).…”

Transnationalism and intra‐European mobility among Europe's second generation: review and research agenda

“…Studies on EU mobility and identity, by contrast, are mainly quantitative, often relying on data from the Eurobarometer, which probes mobility behaviour as well as national and European identity. However, there are also some new quantitative datasets, such as the Swiss EUMARR survey, which looks at intermarriage, transnational social relations and European identity (Rodríguez-García et al 2015). Combining the two streams could thus also present an opportunity to think about methodological innovations.…”

Confidence Across Cleavage: The Swiss Rural–Urban Divide, Place‐Based Identity and Political Trust

“…In this sense, place‐based research is different from concepts such as localism or regionalism (Briffault, 2000), which are about one specific location, e.g., a canton or a municipality. While such local or regional identities certainly matter, too — especially in federal Switzerland (see also Müller, 2013; Schroedter et al., 2015) — this new research defines place through different attributes such as socioeconomic composition, values, political power or the common feeling of being left behind (Cramer, 2016; Hochschild, 2018; Maxwell 2020; Wuthnow, 2018; Zumbrunn & Freitag, 2023). This is why place can form an identity through a number of characteristics, e.g., a spatial dimension such as the landscape, a political‐economic dimension, as for example universities are usually located in cities, shared social experiences, e.g., a higher likelihood of mingling with foreigners in cities, or a symbolic understanding of the place and its values (Bell, 1992; Cain, 2021).…”