Are All Britons Reluctant Europeans?

Constructing national and European identities: the case of Greek‐Cypriot pupils

“…Instrumental reasons for supporting Europe as an institution are based on a cost-benefit analysis, whereas affective reasons represent a more emotional and powerful attitude. The former were found by Cinnirella (1997Cinnirella ( , 2001 to be manifested by British university students, whereas the latter by their Italian counterparts, who seemed to have a more affective sense of Euro-identity, associated with common cultural and historical ties. In the study presented in this paper, the instrumentality of pupils' thinking in considering Cyprus' EU membership also occurred in the reasons they gave for Cyprus entering the EU or not: 68.29% of the reasons provided fell into the category labelled as 'advantages for Cyprus' (Philippou, 2004).…”

“…Research so far has indicated that it is not strong among adults and adolescents, particularly in some countries-e.g. the UK (Hewstone, 1986;Convery et al, 1997;Cinnirella, 2001). Chryssochou (1996) questions the very existence of 'European' as an identity category, due to the lack of group beliefs and a perceived lack of participation in the construction of Europe among her Greek and French adult participants.…”

“…In terms of selfcategorization theory, the fact that pupils perceived European identity as a threat to their national identity indicates that they perceived both identities at the same level of abstraction and therefore as mutually exclusive (something which Cinnirella (2001) argues to explain Euroscepticism among British university students). Becoming a European also entailed for the pupils taking on board European customs and lifestyles, a process which was seen to threaten their own national customs and indicated an anxiety of 'loss': this term was used by Cinnirella (2001), who conceptualized the antiEuropean discourse manifested by British media with 'loss' (e.g. loss of autonomy) and 'threat' (e.g.…”