Abstract
The authors of this rich contribution to European Union scholarship present a study of citizen ‘reactions’. The term captures the essence of the method and argument. Based on focus groups in Paris, Oxford and Brussels, the approach is to examine how and how far questions of European integration provoke a response from citizens when pressed. Exploiting the merits of qualitative research, the authors probe the variety of resources citizens use to grapple with Europe, and how views are produced, accepted and declined. Concretely, the suggestion is that the familiar vocabulary of ‘attitude research’ is misleading. Rather than being consistently viewed positively or negatively, the EU is often the subject of mixed feelings, and across large swathes of the citizenry prompts few feelings at all.
If the lead argument thus takes the form of a corrective, the detail and insight go considerably further. Themes largely overlooked in the existing scholarship are persuasively brought forward – notably, popular hesitancy towards the EU as a form of class alienation. Employers and activists, the authors suggest, are generally more ready to take opinions on Europe than workers and employees. It is not so much that the losers of European integration are counting their losses: an awareness of the stakes of the process, and the confidence to assess it, are among the things the dis-advantaged may lose. Innovative analysis of this kind is paired with subtle additions to existing discussion of cross-national variation. The authors emphasise that their aim is to build on Eurobarometer research – not to embarrass it. The substantial methodological section reflects sensitively on the prospects for cohabitation between quantitative and qualitative approaches.
As the research was conducted in 2006, one wonders whether subsequent events have made the book obsolete. Arguably the EU has gained a more distinct profile in the intervening years, firmly establishing itself as an object of reproach. An emphasis on citizen indifference and ambivalence might seem out of step, in particular for the parts of Europe the study does not cover. Yet the book's findings should make one more cautious. Those who have borne the worst of the economic crisis may also be those least attentive to the political and media discourses that Europeanise it, and least receptive to the agents of polarised opinion. Moreover, to the extent we have all learnt how to ‘blame the euro‘, what is it we have learnt how to blame? For many EU citizens it will be not the design flaws of the Eurozone, but a series of more hazy phenomena: globalisation, migration and the ebbing of power to elites. It is the merit of this book to force us to think of such themes as entwined.