Do people genuinely feel they are a 'European Citizen'? And why?

[mrsvilliers]

Genuinely interested and not having a dig at anybody. This has come up on my social media a lot recently and culminated today in DM informing me she had managed to dredge up an Irish relative from somewhere which meant she could apply for an Irish passport. When I asked her why she informed me she was a European citizen and want to remain one. Fair enough but I am genuinely baffled. I speak two European languages, have travelled, worked and lived extensively in Europe and would never refer to myself as a European citizen. European yes, in that I am not African or Asian or North/South American etc but not in reference to being a citizen. Honestly genuinely interested and can't ask on social media as would get flayed!!

I spent most of last year working between Romania, Bulgaria and parts of Hungary. A lot of that culture is very, very different to what is seen as British. DH spent 2 years in Slovakia. Again, took him a while to settle to an "alien" culture.

I love our Slovenian family and friends but they do shock me with how intolerant they are in relation to migrants, religion and the LGBT community.

Using Hofstede as a comparison, countries like the UK share more similarities in culture with Australia, South Africa etc than with Slovenia, Romania etc. On some counts, UK and Slovenia/Romania are almost polar opposites.

An accident of geography does not equate with a shared culture.

See, I'm British but I find visiting other Anglophone countries, especially the US, often feels slightly surreal - as if the common language means I should somehow 'get' the culture, but in many ways I really don't - e.g. with the US all the things others have mentioned (gun laws, the legal/penal system generally, different labour rights, food culture, the influence of religion) feel far more alien to me than their equivalents in e.g. Germany or Italy. I might just be an odd one though!

I went to see Michael Moore's 'Where to Invade Next' at the cinema as few days before the referendum, in which he was cherry-picking aspects of European culture (approaches to education, maternity rights, holiday pay, prisons, school food etc) he'd like to see implemented in the US. As controversial as MM can sometimes be, the film convinced me more than ever that we'd be better off looking to Europe in some of these matters rather than always trying to ape America (apparently he said he deliberately didn't visit the UK as we were just as f*ed up as the US!)

Jamie you'd find that same intolerance in large swathes of the bible belt, and segments of Australia's population too away from the big cities...

TBH you'll find it in certain parts of the British population too... and in sections of the population almost everywhere else.

TempsPerdu exactly - the phrase "separated by a common language" is sometimes appropriate... Sometimes if you scratch the surface of language you find more in common with people with a different mother tongue than those who happen to have a broadly similar one...

Completely European. I've benefitted from various exchange programmes during my education, have lived in four European countries, learned to speak four languages, and couldn't be more grateful for those experiences.

The EU has been instrumental in making all this possible; it isn't a 'nanny superstate', it's a facilitator to bring people and peoples closer together, maximise opportunities, foster peace and integration, and share the burden of sorting out emergencies.

I don't think nationalistic thinking will help people prosper in a globalised world, nationalism and parochialism set boundaries that ultimately lead to conflict. Counterproductive and hugely anachronistic.

Using Hofstede as a comparison, countries like the UK share more similarities in culture with Australia, South Africa etc than with Slovenia, Romania etc. On some counts, UK and Slovenia/Romania are almost polar opposites.

You mean ex-British colonies share more similarities with Britain than countries which were not peacefully colonised by the great Empire? Now who would have thought that? Btw, I assume you count the Aboriginal Australians among them too, they definitely benefited from being ruled by the British,
Oh, I just read that the main Eid celebration in Britain was just cancelled due to post-Brexit xenophobic attacks so ju might want to rephrase your portraying Britain as the paragon of tolerance and respect.

Yes, I do. I always have, not really sure why. Oddly I have never felt British. I've not even ever been to Wales or Northern Ireland haha, although I will have to make a point of changing that soon!

Oh, I should add, I feel like an EU citizen, and also very very much Scottish. But never British. I like England (never been to the rest as I say) and I like having them as a neighbour, but whenever I've been there I feel like a total outsider, whereas I don't feel like that here in Germany or in the other EU countries I've been to (except maybe France, but I can't speak French no matter how hard I try so that has a lot to do with it!).

I have to say, the Schengen Zone is wonderful as is the fact that I can hop on a train here and be in another country in an hour for 10€. If it was that easy and cheap to travel from the UK to the other EU countries I think a lot more Brits would feel like away citizens too.

I think it also doesn't help how we are taught languages in the UK, in my experience anyway. I mean firstly I had no choice what language I was doing (French), and secondly we were just being taught phrases to mesmerise. It's been much easier now to pick a language I'm actually interested in and also to have been taught the language entirely in that language. Now I'm learning two other EU languages after becoming fluent in German. I feel so connected with the rest of the EU this way and can really get to know and love the individual cultures.

I agree about language education. I would make foreign language learning central to the curriculum. It doesn't really matter which one, but one language taught daily from Reception upwards would be so beneficial. Obviously age appropriate in terms of activities and time, but even 4 year olds could sing some songs, play games and absorb some basic vocab by osmosis. I have learnt a non-European language as an adult and really clicked with it in a way that I never did with French at school.

In a way.

I'm British, no EU ancestry, I've been searching desperately to find some. The thing that upsets me most about this is that myself and my children stand to lose our EU citizenship (I know, no such thing) and all the rights and freedoms that go with that. If the economy goes down the pan it might be just when we need it most as well.

fake Germany are things king of offering young British people refuge duel citizenship (previously only an option for those with dual nationally by birth) ... nows the time to move over for a few years to secure your ongoing EU membership :o

*thinking not things king