Two and a Half Tales of Europe: How the European Commission Narrates Peoplehood in Migration and Citizenship Policy

• Published date: 01 January 2024
• Author: Johanna Hase
• Date: 01 January 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/jcms.13479

Two and a Half Tales of Europe: How the European

Commission Narrates Peoplehood in Migration and

Citizenship Policy

JOHANNA HASE

WZB Berlin Social Science Center, Berlin

Abstract

Since 2019, the European Commission has had a vice president for ‘promoting our European way

of life’, but whether a European ‘we’exists at all is disputed. This article investigates whether and

how the Commission has constructed this ‘we’through narratives of peoplehood. Analysing off‌i-

cial communications in migration and citizenship policy between 2007 and 2020, it traces three

narrative elements: characters, plot and main theme. The article argues, f‌irst, that the Commis-

sion’s narrative of ‘realizing European citizenship’creates a sense of peoplehood more than its nar-

rative of ‘achieving a comprehensive migration policy’and, second, that it has largely repeated its

citizenship narrative while adapting its migration narrative. The f‌indings suggest that the Commis-

sion is a rather subtle narrator of peoplehood and call into question whether it has a clear idea of

the ‘we’whose ‘way of life’it seeks to promote.

Keywords: citizenship; European Commission; migration; narrative analysis; peoplehood

Introduction

In September 2019, Ursula von der Leyen, the incoming president of the European Com-

mission (hereafter: Commission), selected Margaritas Schinas as her vice president for

‘protecting our European way of life’. Afterwards, a heated discussion erupted about

whether there is a ‘European way of life’and whether it needs protection (Herzenshorn

and de la Baume 2019). Eventually, the portfolio was renamed ‘promoting our European

way of life’, but the title raises similar questions. This article addresses the most

fundamental one –how has the Commission imagined the ‘we’that supposedly shares

a common way of life?

The article uses the lens of European peoplehood, a notion that has fascinated scholars

across the disciplines at least since the European Union (EU) became closely integrated.

The mere existence of this sui generis polity begs the question whether its limited degree

of statehood has been or should be accompanied by a sense of peoplehood. From a nor-

mative perspective, theorists and philosophers have debated whether European people-

hood is needed, realistic, or desirable to ensure the EU’s democratic legitimacy

(Martí 2018).

1

From an empirical perspective, social scientists have studied whether dif-

ferent expressions of European peoplehood are evident in the attitudes and experiences

of citizens (Bruter 2005; Hobolt and De Vries 2016; Sanders et al. 2012; Siklodi 2020),

in the media (Koopmans and Statham 2010; Trenz 2010) and in the discourse of national

1

Although many people identify as European without feeling ‘EU’ropean, ‘Europe’has de facto come to mean ‘the EU’in

large parts of the public and the academic debate (Risse 2010, pp. 50, 102).

JCMS 2024 Volume 62. Number 1. pp. 74–90DOI: 10.1111/jcms.13479

© 2023 The Authors. JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies published by University Association for Contemporary European Studies and John Wile y&Sons

Ltd.

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium,

provided the original work is properly cited.

and European elites (Katzenstein and Checkel 2009; Pukallus 2016; Risse 2010). As a

part of this endeavour, scholars have begun to utilize a narrative lens, in what Luis Bouza

describes as the ‘narrative turn in European studies’(Bouza García 2017; see also Della

Sala 2010; Manners and Murray, 2016; McMahon and Kaiser 2021).

The article is a part of this turn, as it uses narratives both as its theoretical frame-

work –by assuming that the Commission builds peoplehood through evolving narra-

tives in migration and citizenship policies –and in its methodology. The article covers

the Commission’s migration and citizenship communications since the Lisbon Treaty.

It focusses on the narratives in which the Commission has embedded its policies rather

than on the policies themselves and on the image of ‘us’rather than visions of ‘them’.

The article shows that the Commission advanced different narratives across policy

areas. In its citizenship communications, it promised to ‘realize European citizenship’,

whereas in its migration communications, it called for a ‘comprehensive migration

policy’. The article argues that the citizenship narrative has more potential to construct

peoplehood. While the Commission maintained its citizenship narrative in core elements,

it adapted character, plot and main theme of its migration narrative in the mid-2010s,

when many people sought protection in the EU. However, it did not completely replace

this narrative, and the aim of a comprehensive migration policy remained. The analysis

leaves the overall impression that the Commission has been telling what f‌iguratively

amounts to two and a half tales of Europe –one narrative in the area of citizenship and

one and a half in the area of migration.

The article f‌irst details the theoretical framework and its implications for studying

European peoplehood. It then sketches its narrative analysis, presents and discusses the

Commission’s two and a half tales of Europe and points to avenues for future research

in the conclusion.

I.Theory: The Commission as a Narrator of Peoplehood?

Psychologists, sociologists and cultural theorists have understood humans as storytellers,

homo narrans, who make sense of themselves and create their social world through nar-

ratives (Bruner 1991; Koschorke 2018; Somers 1994). From this perspective, political

communities, as a part of the social world, are ontologically grounded in narratives. Un-

like descriptions or arguments, narratives connect events and characters on a timeline into

a plot (forming the story), express this story in a certain form (the text) and convey it in a

communicative act from a narrator to an audience (narration) (Shenhav 2015, pp. 16–17).

Rogers Smith’s concept of peoplehood lends itself well to this approach: He argues that

while a people partly relies on coercion, it depends on an ‘imagined scenario of how

the future will unfold, made credibly by a certain account of the past and present’

(Smith 2003, pp. 43–45).

2

The concept is productive for further reasons –for instance,

it is not conceptually bound to any polity (as opposed to many conceptions of

nationhood). In fact, while state-building in terms of ‘constructing effective institutions

of governmental power’eventually requires a sense of peoplehood, a people does not nec-

essarily have a state (Smith 2003, pp. 51–52). Furthermore, the concept clearly captures a

2

Smith uses narrative and story interchangeably (Smith 2003, p. 44). As this article uses ‘story’as one of three narrative

components, Smith’s concept is referred to as ‘narratives of peoplehood’.

Two and a Half Tales of Europe75

© 2023 The Authors. JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies published by University Association for Contemporary European Studies and John Wile y&Sons

Ltd.