Social representations of national identity in culturally diverse societies

The concept of identity, although quite recent in the social sciences (it was popularized by Erikson in the 1950s; see Gleason, 1983), is one of the few concepts to have been so widely studies and theorized. Psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, even political philosophers, have used the term to shed light on a variety of sociopolitical phenomena, ranging from belonging to exclusion and from stability and homogeneity to social change and cultural pluralism. As such, identity has acquired an array of conflicting meanings, from essentialist notions which focus on unity and distinctiveness to conceptions which emphasize the fragmentation of the modern subject (Brubaker and Cooper, 2000). The challenge in defining identity stems from the fact that it refers to both an individual's sense of self as well as to an individual's relations with others. It is, in other words, a concept that resists the individual-social dichotomy which has traditionally dominated the social sciences in general, and social psychology in particular. In this chapter we adopt a social representations perspective to theorize identity at the social-individual interface. We focus on national identities which have been particularly problematized in the context of growing cultural diversity within nation-states and are often seen as declining or changing. The chapter is structured as follows: we start with a brief account of the theory of social representations and then present our main argument of identity as a social representation embedded in strategic projects. Then, in two different sections, we discuss national identity projects in culturally diverse societies with a particular focus on Britain and Greece. We conclude with a brief discussion of the implications of these national identity projects for the integration of migrants

It means Europeans aren’t at the front of the queue: beyond the liberal/ cosmopolitan divide

Leavers are prejudiced and Remainers are elitists – or so the popular caricature goes. Eleni Andreouli (Open University) finds much more nuanced strands of public opinion about Brexit

Social psychology and citizenship: a critical perspective

The paper advances a critical social psychological approach to the study of citizenship. It builds upon recent social psychological work on the subject, particularly in discursive and rhetorical psychology but also other critical approaches such as social representations theory. The paper also borrows insights from the interdisciplinary field of citizenship studies in order to conceptualise citizenship in both its conventional (enacting well-established scripts of political action) and its transformative aspects (making rights claims that are disruptive of established scripts). The paper is divided in five sections. The first section considers the relationship between social psychology and citizenship; the second section offers a conceptualisation of citizenship that takes under consideration citizens’ practices from the ground up and constraints posed by existing norms and laws; the third section considers the value of adding citizenship into the social psychological conceptual toolkit. The fourth more substantive section advances a critical social psychological approach to citizenship which focuses on the study of the different ways that ‘ordinary’ political actors engage with political matters in the mundane practices of everyday life. The last section concludes the paper and makes some suggestions for future directions, such as the study of emerging forms of citizenship through a more nuanced examination of intersecting political affiliations

Social representations: a revolutionary paradigm?

Against the prevailing view that progress in science is characterized by the progressive accumulation of knowledge, Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions of 1962 introduced the idea of revolutionary paradigm shifts. For Kuhn, everyday science is normal science in which scientists are engaged in problem solving activities set in the context of a widely accepted paradigm that constitutes a broad acceptance of a fundamental theoretical framework, an agreement on researchable phenomena and on the appropriate methodology. But, on occasions normal science throws up vexing issues and anomalous results. In response, some scientists carry on regardless, while others begin to lose confidence in the paradigm and look to other options, namely rival paradigms. As more and more scientists switch allegiance to the rival paradigm, the revolution gathers pace, supported by the indoctrination of students through lectures, academic papers and textbooks. In response to critics, including Lakatos who suggested that his depiction reduced scientific progress to mob psychology, Kuhn offered a set of criteria that contributed to the apparent ‘gestalt switch’ from the old to the new paradigm. But that is another story, as indeed is Kuhn’s claim that the social sciences are pre-paradigmatic – in other words, that the only consensus is that there is no consensus

Psychology and human mobility: Introduction to the special issue and ways forward

In this introduction to the special issue on psychology and human mobility, we begin by outlining the particularities of the European sociopolitical context to which the studies included in this special issue refer. We discuss internal European mobility, overseas migration to the European Union, the refugee ‘crisis’, and its sociopolitical implications for the European Union. Subsequently, we discuss the ways that the different studies relate to and extend existing literature to new directions, focusing on three different facets of immigration addressed by the studies: (a) the ideological resources used in discourse to achieve certain political ends in relation to immigration, (b) the ways that a dialogical engagement with the social other is established or blocked, and (c) the perspectives of mobile people themselves in experiencing different forms of immigration. As a conclusion, we argue that the studies contribute to the field of human mobility by offering a methodologically plural, processual, and critical analysis of immigration and by showing four different directions as ways to advance the field further. These are: (a) the importance of understanding processes rather than states in the study of immigration, (b) the value of studying discursive practices but also moving beyond discourse to achieve methodological pluralism, (c) the need to engage with multiple perspectives involved in immigration and to understand how they relate to each other, and (d) the need to problematize the taken-for-granted categories that researchers use in studying immigration (e.g., locals/migrants, us/them)

Stakeholders' perspectives on naturalisation in the UK: implications for citizenship and national identity

Naturalisation, the process whereby a non-national becomes a citizen, is a space where the national boundaries are demarcated institutionally and symbolically. Despite this, social psychology has generally disregarded citizenship as a topic of research. Against this background, this thesis argues that citizenship is a dynamic concept embedded in a system of self-other relations. The thesis examines processes of national identity construction within the naturalisation context of the United Kingdom. In particular, this research explores representations of citizenship held by three key stakeholders: naturalised citizens, citizenship officers and the British government. Thirty-three interviews with new British citizens, twenty interviews with citizenship officers and four key policy documents on earned citizenship have been analysed. Building on the theory of social representations and on a dialogical understanding of human thinking and identity, the thesis draws links between identity and processes of knowledge construction. Identity is defined as a process of positioning towards social representations and others. In studying processes of identity construction and negotiation, emphasis is placed on the quality of self-other relations and on the antinomic and argumentative nature of thinking about the social world. This research shows that Britishness, within this context, is constructed on the basis of the opposing themes of progress and decline. Consequently, identity construction takes the form of a complex negotiation between opposing positions or voices. For new citizens, 'becoming British' is constructed as both enrichment for the self and as identity threat. Furthermore, for citizenship officers, migrants are seen as both a resource and a burden, which resonates with the official distinction between skilled (elite) and unskilled (non-elite) migrants. These findings illustrate the interplay between the symbolic and institutional aspects of positioning processes and highlight the need for further social psychological study of citizenship

What Constitutes 'Discrimination' in Everyday Talk? Argumentative Lines and the Social Representations of Discrimination

Most people agree that discrimination is wrong, but the boundary between 'discrimination' and 'not discrimination' is often highly contested in everyday practice. We explore the social representations of 'discrimination' as an object of study in qualitative interviews and focus groups with both minority (self-identified as BAME and/ or gay men) and majority (self-identified as white and/ or heterosexual) participants (n= 54). Our analysis suggests three repeated and pervasive argumentative lines in social representations of discrimination; (1) that there are two distinct kinds of discrimination (hard versus soft), (2) that you need to understand the intention of the actor(s), and (3) that a claim of discrimination requires strong evidence. We outline the macro Functions of these resources to argue that each was non-performative: they appeared to be tools to make claims of discrimination, but in practice they were much more effective at making claims of what was not discrimination

Dilemmas of sexual citizenship: a critical social psychological analysis of Civil Union law representations in Greek Cypriot newspapers

In this article we bring a critical social-psychological approach to the study of sexual citizenship. This approach seeks to understand how citizenship is constructed through ideological resources and negotiated in local contexts. We do so by studying newspaper representations of the Civil Union (CU) law in the Cypriot context. This law represented a major legal development for a largely heteronormative, patriarchic social context and sparked debate around sexual rights in general. We analysed 82 opinion articles that appeared in four newspapers of different political orientations between 2011 and 2015, through thematic and critical discourse analysis. The analysis revealed that CU was debated in terms of two oppositional themes. The first theme debated whether CU protects universal rights or introduces special rights, which are either not deserved or create inequality. The second theme approached the CU law as a sign of a much-needed societal progress or as a sign of decline and national degeneration. We show how these themes draw upon two broader ideological dilemmas, that of universalism versus particularism and that of Occidentalism versus Orientalism and discuss the implications of these ideological streams in constructing the boundaries of citizenship for LGBT+ in this context

Brexit and emergent politics: in search of a social psychology

In this paper we develop a conceptual and methodological approach which psychologists and other social scientists can employ to study emergence. We consider relevant social psychological approaches and conclude that, for the most part, social psychology has tended to focus on processes of normalisation following disruptions, rather than examining emergence in itself. An exception to this is G.H. Mead, whose work we draw on to theorise emergence with a focus on contemporary ‘affective politics’. In the second part of the paper, we use focus group data on the EU referendum in the UK to empirically illustrate our theoretical points. We discuss in particular three axes for exploring the emergent politics of Brexit: political values, political authority, and the authority of affect. We conclude our discussion by reflecting on some of the theoretical and political implications of our analysis