Building the EU Identity from Latin America`s perspective

. Mass – media study case.

European identity has been a preoccupation from the beginning of the European
project. The need of one common value has been recognized as of 1992, once Maastricht Treaty
came into effect, installing European citizenship. This citizenship has drawn the line between
what is inside and outside European Union and it has made a clear delimitation of what is
European and what is not, creating European group and non-European groups.

I am developing in my thesis why is necessary to create an European identity. There

are two trends in literature that consider European identity as already existing and recent
events being an identity crisis. The other trend is stating that European identity is an ongoing
process and migration same as Brexit are not considered a crisis, but more part of the process.

But more important is that an identity is necessary in order to have better economic
development, a more efficient decision-making process, more competitivity at international
level, better security. All this would be possible only with the support of the citizens and they
will get more involved in the process as they will feel to be part of the project, of European
group, in this case.

Tajfel and Turner developed in 1981 the Social Identity Theory, studying the
relations between the members of the group, but also the members of different groups, how
the dynamics influence their characteristics.

Minimal group experiments show that mere awareness of an out group is sufficient
to stimulate in-group favoritism (Doise & Weinberger, 1973; Ferguson & Kelley, 1964; Rabbie &
Wilkens, 1971.

In order to make European aware of an outgroup they need more contact with the
out-group. “Consensual definitions by others can become, in the long run, one of the most
powerful causal factors determining a group's self-definition.(Tajfel and Turner)”

This is the starting point of my thesis and I will try to prove by the end of it that
European identity can be built by making Europeans conscious of the definition Latin-
Americans have about them.

Due to the large number of outgroups and extent of the theme, the thesis has
been limited to the Latin-American mass-media, but interviews have been carried out at
University of Guadalajara and on online groups of Latin-American citizen.
 Partial results show so far that Europe and European Union are used
interchangeable and Latin-Americans very rarely make a distinction between the two.

Even if Europe is investing continuously in Latin America, Unites States are most
present in online media.

Europe is seen as cultural and having high living standards. Applying the theory of
Tajfel and Turne here, we observe that Latin-America is considered and considers itself as a
subordinate group in the relation with Europe/European Union.

The challenge consists primarily in the fact that within European group there are
other groups that consider each other out-groups for one another. And lately this has been
more obvious than ever with the migrants and refugees more present ever day and rising
nationalism in countries like Poland or Hungary and culmination of it – Brexit.

In this point I will argue that this was possible to happen due to multiple identities
European have and they have been clashing as contacts have become more and more recurrent
between them, activating different interests in each one of them.

The solution proposed (if this theory will stand until the end) is a project that will
involve European citizen collaboration outside European frontiers in contact (competition or
collaboration) with non-European citizen.