Introduction: Heritage and the making of ‘Europe’

Abstract

The notion of ‘European heritage’ plays an increasingly important role in the discursive constructions of a collective sense of European belonging. This Special Issue critically reviews some of the contemporary instrumentalizations of European heritage as processes of borderwork by which various political and non-political actors demarcate the boundaries of Europe and European identity. Specifically, the nine contributions shed light on some of the top-down and bottom-up uses of European heritage and explore whether the borderwork of European heritage delineates and separates Europeanness as an exclusive and singular identity, or whether it constitutes a space of exchange, flow and entanglement where Europeanness is defined as inclusive and pluralistic. Characterized by interdisciplinarity, methodological variety and a conception of Europe broader than the European Union, this Special Issue aims to broaden the scope of scholarship in European studies and (critical) heritage studies.