Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

This article reflects on historical arguments about migration in conceptualisations of Europe, highlighting an ambivalent support of migration within Europe on the grounds of mutual cultural enrichment. There is a strong tradition, dating back to French and German eighteenth-century thinkers, such as Herder, Voltaire and Fichte, of citing cultural diversity, plurality and exchange to construct an idea of Europe. ‘Europolitanism’, the ideal of Europe as an open space of welcome movement and unprejudiced exchange, conceals, however, exclusionary tendencies: exchange has never been intended for all social groups. Contemporary theorisations of Europe, based ostensibly on cultural exchange, synthesis and plurality, have their roots in Romantic and Enlightenment thought, but then as now there are questions to be asked about participation in pan-European identity formation.

Keywords

culture diversity European identity Europolitanism Fichte Herder Voltaire

In recent years, migration has taken centre stage in crucial political and cultural debates within and about Europe. These contemporary discussions are prefigured by a long history of migration which frames discussions about Europe, European identities and policies determining who can move where. With a focus on texts written in and about Europe during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, this article reflects on historical arguments about migration and other forms of mobility such as the Grand Tour in conceptions of Europe. More concretely, it highlights an ambivalent support for migration within Europe embedded in the realm of culture, which emerges in tandem with a recurrent aversion to cultural and other forms of nationalism. However, the pivotal role of difference or otherness materialises through exclusionary categories, such as class and race. These exclusions, whether explicitly intentional or not, continue to complicate these discourses. Locating antecedents for contemporary ambivalences thus allows us to ground today’s tensions in discussions on Europe and migration in a wider history.

The article is organised in three parts. The first examines the tradition of citing cultural diversity, plurality and exchange to construct an idea of Europe, in which by necessity intra-European migration plays a key role. The second part draws out some of the exclusionary tendencies of migration-positive arguments made to conceive of Europe by focusing on issues of social class. I postulate that endorsing migration specifically in the name of free circulation of ideas and culture amounts to the promotion of free movement only for élite producers and disseminators of prescribed notions of those ideas or culture. In closing, I consider the continued contemporary relevance of Romantic and Enlightenment thought, underlining how contemporary trends towards nationalism and xenophobia are actually incompatible with aspects of Romantic and Enlightenment emphases on cultural exchange, synthesis and plurality as important for defining Europe and European identities. From this view, the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century texts explored come into conversation with themes in contemporary migration discourses in Europe, notably, the rise of cultural nationalism and anti-multiculturalism, coupled with the construction of ‘Fortress Europe’. I distinguish what we understand today as the ‘free movement of persons’ within Europe and larger scale immigration from non-European countries, which only emerged on its current scale in the latter half of the last century.

Conceiving Europe as a space of diversity and cultural exchange

Arguments posed in favour of free movement have historically cited the idea that European civilisation is both produced and enriched by the movement of peoples and the exchange or synthesis of cultural aspects within it. By emphasising elements of cultural mingling and hybridity, migration is given as an inherently necessary characteristic which enables this vision of Europe to come about. At the same time, we can notice a recurrent aversion to isolationism bound by singular cultural or national borders.

In considering visions of Europe as a space of cultural hybridity, I begin with a thinker who has often been invoked to meet the discursive needs of cultural nationalists: Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744–1803). Herder’s role in the development of cultural nationalism as a concept is widely acknowledged (Ergang, 1966; Hayes, 1927; Schmidt, 1956). However, in line with Schmidt (1956: 407), I assert that the ‘concept of cultural nationalism does not outweigh all other aspects of his thought’. Hence, rather than debating to what extent Herder’s voice has been reasonably appropriated by those of particular political persuasions, my intention here is to complicate Herder’s position by examining his attitudes towards migration.

In Ideas for a Philosophy of History of Humanity (1784–1791), Herder discusses the history of Europe as being immensely influenced by the movement of its people. He observes the extent to which cultural exchange across borders and ethnic blending have provided fertile grounds from which a wider ‘universal spirit’ of Europe has mushroomed. I quote:

In no other part of the world has there been such a mingling of peoples as in Europe; nowhere have they changed their place of habitation, and with it their way of life and customs, so markedly and with such frequency. [. . .] in many countries it would now be difficult for the inhabitants, especially some families and individuals, to say from which race or people they come [. . .] Down the centuries the ancient original formation of several European nations has been tempered and altered by a hundred causes, and without this fusion it is unlikely that Europe’s universal spirit could ever have been woken. (1784–1791, quoted in Kulessa and van Seth, 2017: 115–116, emphasis added)

By emphasising the ‘fusion’ enabled by the ‘mingling of peoples’ through intra-European migration, Herder acknowledges, without negative judgement, what we can describe as the métissage which typifies the character of Europe and each European’s provenance. Furthermore, the ‘spirit’ of Europe is both positively endorsed and historicised in a long trajectory of intra-European migration. This celebration of movement within and across European nations or cultures vaguely echoes ‘a sense of a transnational European identity, based on common values, rooted in a common past, distinguishing the continent from the rest of the world while connecting the nations with vastly different cultures’ (El-Tayeb, 2008: 649). Hence, we see that even a strong advocate of distinct national cultures expressly acknowledges a common Europe as rooted in cultural hybridity. Herder’s position locates itself within a complex space of ambivalence towards free (intra-European) migration and the cultural exchange it enables as well as the preservation of national cultures – a position we will see re-emerge again throughout this article, particularly in the thought of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814).

Thinkers such as Voltaire (1694–1778) and Goethe (1749–1832) espoused freedom of intellectual and cultural exchange across borders. Such sentiments were fairly widespread. By at least the sixteenth century, moving across borders was considered an important activity for educational improvement, with the numbers taking the ‘Grand Tour’ (which covered mainly Western Europe) peaking in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. As Grand Tourist Martha Coffin Derby (1783–1832) notes in her travel diaries, ‘It is impossible to travel without improvement [. . .] Every object serves to improve the taste and mind’ (1802, quoted in Lanier, 2007: 37–38). The Grand Tour operated as an activity that appreciated culture as positively existing beyond and between the borders of each of Europe’s nations, enabling ‘a common European culture and heritage’ to be ‘defined and disseminated’ (Black, 1991: 33). In the eighteenth century, large numbers of mainly well-educated élite men voyaged across Europe, liberally digesting their choices from a pick ‘n’ mix of cultural resources and thus could trek ‘home with trunks filled with the latest volumes from the printing presses of Amsterdam and Antwerp, Paris and Venice, as well as folios of prints celebrating the new architecture being commissioned by European ruling élites, civil and religious’ (Darley, 2008: 19). Evidently not everybody had the means to take part in what was primarily ‘a crucial rite of passage for many members of the élite’ (Black, 1991: 33). Such voyages simultaneously held domestic importance as a cultural practice that helped to delineate the élite as a social class but also served as a process which produced an idea of Europe by actively observing as well as producing its hybridised culture(s). In a word, the Tour, like the arguments of Herder, Goethe, Voltaire and Fichte, occupied an ambivalent space, being at once ‘culturally expansive, yet socially exclusive, reaffirming the socio-political power of a male ruling elite’ (Kriz, 1997: 89). That said, despite its exclusionary realities, the Grand Tour captures a spirit of ‘Europolitanism’ preceding the twentieth century.

I use the term Europolitanism here to articulate the notion of Europe as a hybrid space of welcome intra-European cross-border movement and exchange. The term derives from cosmopolitanism, the idea of subjects being able to live as ‘citizens of the world’. However, Europolitanism distils the universe (cosmos) down to the topography of Europe within which its citizens roam freely and exchange without prejudice. Europolitanism falls short of cosmopolitanism because in its commitment to the cultural idea and physical geography of Europe it is not totally universal in outlook. Nevertheless, it does transcend national borders. Pivoting back to the Grand Tour as a phenomenon, then, we can see how Europolitanism is produced by such cross-border mobility. Grand Tourists generated an idea of Europe before they even set out by demarcating the coordinates of their journeys as a means to participate in the exchange and advancement of culture in both the individual and more collective senses. They also contributed to the actual production of Europe’s hybridised culture(s) by importing, exporting and synthesising cultural goods and ideas. The Tour is argued to have constituted ‘a highly significant phenomenon within Western culture, shaping artistic tastes, forming political subjects, and profoundly affecting social memory’ (Kriz, 1997: 89). Gramsci’s concept of cultural hegemony points to the significant power of dominant élite activities and the discourses which they both produce and are produced by. Élites who took part in the Grand Tour were deeply embedded in a Europolitan discourse which produced Europe and its pertaining culture(s) as a blend of cultural goods procured and exchanged through the act of intra-European cross-border mobility. Therefore, although the discourses and activities of élites are, of course, class-specific, they nonetheless play a decisive role in shaping a common culture and idea of Europe.

Indeed, the very emergence of this common culture and idea of Europe is itself a political project, which, in more recent times, we have seen develop into a formal discourse. The European Commission’s official ‘Culture and Creativity’ project roots its raison d’être in the introduction to the Treaty on European Union (1993) which draws ‘inspiration from the cultural, religious and humanist inheritance of Europe [. . .] respect [of] its rich cultural and linguistic diversity, [. . . to . . .] ensure that Europe’s cultural heritage is safeguarded and enhanced’ (Article 3, Treaty on European Union, 2007, cited in European Commission, n.d.). Hence, we see the historically inflected ways in which migration as an act has contributed to the creation of what has come to be understood as Europe as a location at which common culture (and therefore identity/ies) can be produced. Moreover, this envisioned culture feeds back into the politics of creating European unity and European identity/ies, as state actors devise concrete policies to ‘protect’ and ‘promote’ this culture and therefore, implicitly, European interests. These policies mobilise cultural activities in service of the idea of Europe.

The parameters of this article mean that I have not provided a comprehensive view of the role of culture in historical migration discourses. Nevertheless, it is possible to trace migration as an important given characteristic of Europe as articulated in terms of culture. It is possible also to turn to thinkers associated with cultural nationalism to elucidate the extent to which Europe and the production of its hybridised culture(s) belong within a long and continuing history of migration. A celebration of this hybridised culture exposes an underlying endorsement of free movement within Europe – a Europolitan spirit that produces and is produced by proto-‘good Europeans’ across the continent. Far from simply the view of one thinker, the Europolitan spirit of the Grand Tour echoes through the voyages of many writers in the centuries preceding ours. These included Goethe, to whom the spirit of cosmopolitanism in the yet-to-be-born Germany would be indebted before being swept away by the ravages of nationalism, ignorance and extreme prejudice by the völkisch movement in the first half of the twentieth century. Nevertheless, even the progressive Euro/cosmopolitan spirit of free exchange relies on social exclusions, which are played out in assumptions of who and what the notion of culture is made up of. Such exclusions reverberate into the contemporary period with serious implications for how and who we include in conceiving Europe and the place of migration within it today.

Conceiving Europe through class-privileged mobility

The emphasis on the ideational and the intellectual as the crux of exchange across European space implies the free movement of the intellectual and artisan classes, potentially to the exclusion of others. Thus, it is important to consider not only the endorsement of migration in the conceiving of Europe but, crucially, also the subjects invoked in such discussions. When we emphasise the role of culture in the argument for migration, we beg the question: if the value of migration or cross-border mobility within Europe lies in its capacity to enable the exchange of culture and ideas, whose migration becomes important, necessary or permissible? With this in mind, I continue my focus on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European thinkers, looking at some of the ambivalences in the ideas of Goethe, Fichte and Voltaire who argue for or against migration from a specifically classed perspective.

The notion of freely exchanging culture thrives at the heart of Goethe’s observations about the literary status of Europe in his imagining of ‘world literature’ (Weltliteratur). In this great cosmopolitan imagining of culture intellectualised in the form of literature, Goethe ‘directly questions the viability of national literature and calls for authors the world over to work together to bring about a literature informed by the knowledge and insights of literary discourses around the world’ (Pizer, 2019: 2). He places great emphasis on literary and linguistic exchange as a positive uniting force, concluding,

It is pleasant to see that intercourse is now so close between the French, English, and Germans, that we shall be able to correct one another. This is the greatest use of a world literature, which will show itself more and more. (Goethe, 1852: 230)

With a notable focus on European examples, Goethe designates cross-border literary exchange as the ideal use of culture. The proper function of culture, or at least literature, therefore, finds its roots in migration. Furthermore, this ideal use of culture is planted in a utopian vision of the world or, at least, of Europe, beyond the limitations of national borders, as Goethe observes that ‘National hatred is altogether a most peculiar thing. In the lowest levels of culture, you’ll always find it at its strongest and most passionate’ (quoted in Parry, 1982: 21). At the ‘level where it [national hatred] completely disappears’, however, ‘a person can stand to some extent outside or above nationhood and feel the happiness or misfortune of a neighbouring people as if these were happening to one’s own people’ (quoted in Parry, 1982: 21). Through such evocative and emotive language, we see a veiled appeal to a sense of morality that emphasises practising cosmopolitan empathy, markedly in times of crisis where we collectively experience the emotional burden of difficult times. Although not explicitly mentioned here, migration becomes a crucial aspect in the birth of this shared collective entity that is Europe, transcending the insularity of national borders. During Goethe’s pre-Internet epoch, the cross-border movement of ideas, feelings or culture logistically demanded the cross-border movement of people, either as messengers or mediators. In this sense, the idealised communal cross-border spirit is only possible with the principle of free movement. Exchange becomes crucial to the cohesion of Europe as a cultured and sophisticated entity wider than the limits posed by nationalisms. Put crudely, a common Europe could only exist beyond culturally ignorant forms of inward-looking national hatred and xenophobia which refuse cultural synthesis by throwing up impenetrable national borders. Understood in this way, the ‘peculiarity’ of cultural nationalism is a characteristic extraneous to an ideal Europe or, even further, an ideal world.

Highlighting the importance of ideational or cultural exchange as a positive force for civilisation necessitates a distinction between those who produce and exchange culture and ideas (and are therefore permitted to move across borders) and those who do not. It becomes simultaneously necessary to differentiate between that which may pass for ideas and/or culture (and therefore qualify for cross-border importation and exportation) and that which may not. As such, we see that what may have initially appeared as a simple call for increased intellectual activity across borders reveals itself to be quite entangled in the complexities of social class. Voltaire’s République des lettres, which is restricted to the space of Europe, embodies this elitist proposition. By envisioning Europe as a republic of letters, Voltaire recognises the intellectualised cultural commonality of Europe and promotes the free movement of culture and ideas and, therefore, of educated and cultured people. In Voltaire’s argument, the permitted playground of intellectual exchange transcends borders but still stays limited both to the space of Europe and to a certain social class (read: a well-educated minority élite). While his exclusive Europolitan stance is arguably narrower than Goethe’s, the elitist theme of intellectualised cultural exchange is present in both thinkers. By focusing on culture limited to the arts, seeing learning as the medium of exchange and Europe as the product of intellectual cross-border, cross-language mobility, a significant proportion of Europe’s population is disregarded.

Both Voltaire’s République des lettres and Goethe’s Weltliteratur show similarities in their Euro/cosmopolitan tendencies. It would be misleading, however, to claim a simple unitary stance in the historical discussions surrounding Europe. As evidenced by Herder and the ambivalences of his arguments, cultural nationalism clearly has a complicated role in historical (and contemporary) migration discourses. Another voice in the discussions around the migration of ideas and culture as well as people is Fichte. For Fichte, the argument against non-class-differentiated migration is coupled with an inward-looking approach which privileges the national as the primary unit of importance. Despite his isolationist stance, he acknowledges the necessity for migration. In a way, the argument mitigates this acknowledgement by articulating the necessity for migration through classed specificities. He postulates,

Only the scholar and the higher artist will have to travel outside of a closed commercial state. [. . .] The travels of the scholar and the higher artist happen for the benefit of humanity and the state, and the government, far from trying to prevent these trips, should even encourage them, sending scholars and artists on trips at public expense. (Fichte, 2013 [1800]: 193)

Most remarkably,

[in] a nation that has been closed off [. . .], with its members living only among themselves and as little as possible with strangers, obtaining their particular way of life, institutions and morals from these measures and faithfully loving their fatherland and everything patriotic, there will soon arise a high degree of national honor and a sharply determined national character. (Fichte, 2013 [1800]: 66)

The argument that only the ‘scholar’ and the ‘superior artist’ should venture beyond a nation’s borders operates within a logic that accepts migratory movement but only when it is justified through specific class-distinguished qualifiers. This provokes several questions on the veritable exclusions of certain classes, first, from the act of migration, and second, from the cultural fabric of Europe and European identity more widely. We can ask: If only the artisan and scholar need travel, does a common Europe or European culture simply become a product of European artisan and intellectual classes? Is there no Europe outside of the migratory intermingling of exclusively élite classes? What does an emphasis on Europe as a space of hybrid culture as produced by élites say about the inclusion of numerous social classes as an existing and integral part of Europe? Does this line of reasoning even allow for a notion of a Europe or European culture(s)? Fichte (2013 [1800]: 66) perhaps begins to answer this last question by citing the objective of selective migratory exchange as arriving at a strong sense of ‘national honour’ or ‘national character’. There is, therefore, a different character to his argument than to those we have seen in this article so far, an insularity that privileges what lies within one nation’s borders. Here, the nation is valued much more explicitly than the arguments put forward by more cosmopolitan or at least Europolitan thinkers, heretofore mentioned, such as Goethe and Voltaire. Fichte’s ‘paradoxically patriotic cosmopolitanism’ (Pizer, 2019: 3) recognises the need for migration in cultural terms while wishing to limit it for the sake of preserving what lies within national borders (puzzlingly this applies ostensibly also to culture). Here, culture is uniquely embedded in a strange ambivalence as Fichte seeks continental fusion at the same time as national preservation.

Citing Goethe, Voltaire and Fichte allows us to see a recurrent and explicit emphasis placed on culture when considering Europe and migration. However, Fichte’s frank allusion to the primacy of national characteristics leaves us in no doubt that the emphasis comes with caveats. Nonetheless, a thematic privileging of culture and ideas in cross-border mobility repeatedly reveals itself among these three thinkers. For the cosmopolitan Goethe and more Europolitan Voltaire, the sharing of culture across borders is represented as a positive act for the quality of culture itself, as well as a prerequisite for transcending the physical and intellectual boundaries delimited by nationalisms. In the context of Europe, this is a tradition we see continued in practice today, even in the face of the threats posed by the contemporary ascent of nationalism across Europe. Despite increasingly hostile immigration policies for certain groups,¹ a thriving Erasmus exchange programme enables the free movement of European students and scholars among its higher educational institutions, as if enacting the stipulations of Fichte. However, Goethe’s prescriptions about nationalism resonate strongly today as the Erasmus project has been shown to strengthen feelings of ‘belonging’ to a wider Europe through a shared ‘Europeanness’ (King and Ruiz-Gelices, 2003; Mitchell, 2012), trumping national allegiances. By making formative experiences of intra-European mobility available to young Europeans, cultural policies such as Erasmus feed directly into the political project of the European Union (EU) – a political entity which is arguably founded on the notion of Europolitanism. From the context of the academy, arguments for migration which are grounded in the importance of the free exchange of ideas and knowledge via the mobility of students and scholars might appear to be one of the most appealing pro-migration stances. Yet, it is important to consider the types of people such programmes largely benefit. While mobility via the Erasmus programme can be accessed by taking up an apprenticeship, the European Erasmus scheme primarily targets and benefits those with access to academia and the arts. Indeed, these are spaces which are heavily mediated by class and race (Arday and Mirza, 2018; Bates and Ng, 2021; Sang and Calvard, 2019). Such cultural policies thus perpetuate political constructions of Europe as spaces which largely enable the free mobility of a certain class (which has racialised implications), while pursuing a hostile migration agenda to those who fall outside of this category. Evidently, we should take into consideration the ways that the instrumentalisation of superfluously Euro/cosmopolitanisms can fall short of the pure ideals of these concepts as the subjects envisioned to roam freely across borders are explicitly classed and, as we will see shortly, implicitly racialised even today. Even in arguments that, at first glance, appear to be inclusive and progressive in their espousal of free cultural exchange, the spectre of social exclusion in migration crystallises around those who are often treated with both material and epistemic indifference or disdain, often groups who are hegemonically represented as different or other from the above. These exclusions are perceptible at times and more obliquely visible at others. In particular, here, the exclusion of non-élite classes was developed through the invocation of (high) culture and its cross-border exchange. Thus, based on categories such as social class, exclusion through difference or otherness has complicated (and continues to complicate) migration discourses in Europe.

From ambivalence to hostility: Historical migration discourses in the context of new xenophobic nationalisms

In this final part, I link the contemporary moment to history by considering the ways in which today’s conceptions of Europe through discourses on migration betray the tradition of imagining Europe as a space of free movement for the exchange and synthesis of culture. I move the discussion towards thinking about the continued relevance of the ideas examined in previous sections for contemporary discourses.

As Europe entered the twenty-first century, we saw an extraordinary resurgence of xenophobic nationalism across the continent (Gündüz, 2010; Halasz, 2009; Kende and Krekó, 2020; Kuhelj, 2011; Witteveen, 2017) and therefore a sharp turn away from the influences of the cosmopolitan, and even Europolitan, discourses seen above from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. While nationalism is certainly not a novel phenomenon in itself – a reality that the atrocities of the very recent twentieth century can attest to – we can certainly think about the ways in which this resurgence of national inwardness and intolerance contradicts the (hi)stories of Europe as a space of cultural diversity and exchange. The politics of migration frequently lies at the forefront of the new nationalist discourses, rejecting the idea that ‘Europe historically has been made, unmade, and remade through the movements of peoples’ (Favell, 2012: 167). These new nationalist discourses often advocate against any or all kinds of migration. In doing so, they perform a nostalgia for an apparently culturally and racially uncontaminated ‘before’ time; a nostalgia which, interestingly, is not present in Herder’s work. The autochthonous ideals of these discourses reject the presence of the differences necessary for cultural exchange and synthesis. Rzepnikowska (2019: 61) recounts instances of the increased xenophobic violence in the United Kingdom which both coalesce around the identification of linguistic difference and the corollary response of violent rejection:

Arkadiusz Jóźwik, a 40-year-old Polish factory worker in Harlow, died after being punched to the ground for speaking Polish in the street. Bartosz Milewski, a 21-year-old student was stabbed in the neck with a broken bottle because his perpetrators heard him speaking Polish with his friend in Donnington, near Telford.

These instances of violence must be understood within the context of xenophobic sentiments in mainstream discourses which reached great intensity in the run-up to and fall-out from the 2016 EU referendum in the United Kingdom. Attacking someone because they are not speaking the national language of a country directly contravenes the spirit of Europolitanism in which Goethe and Voltaire praised the act of exchange among the diverse languages of Europe and the opportunities for enrichment they carried in their differences. Such attacks take place as discourses move sharply away from celebrating the history of European plurality towards the villainisation of difference. Evidently, ‘immigration is not a threat in itself but it becomes a threat for the way it is perceived by Western societies (e.g., invasion of national/European identity, competition over jobs, etc.)’ (Buonfino, 2004: 42). Violence is one of many responses to this perceived threat. This glimpse into the consequences of new xenophobic nationalisms is a world away from the republic of letters imagined by Voltaire or Goethe’s visions of world literature bringing Europe, and the wider world, together. Even Fichte and Herder’s more ambivalent spirits of Europolitanism are in the process of being quashed by the rise of cultural nationalism. The immediate withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the Erasmus exchange programme, which was replaced by the far less well-resourced Turing Scheme, illustrates these political contours of state-led approaches to cultural activities, where nationalistic sentiments move to reject even class-privileged iterations of exchange and plurality in Europe.

Conclusion

What the thinkers explored in this article all endorse albeit to different extents is a positive past, present and future coloured by cultural diversity and plurality across Europe. This commonality is made possible by allowing for the physical exchange of culture and ideas which, in a pre-digital context, was necessarily migratory. Whereas some thinkers of the Enlightenment have been critiqued (justly) for contributing to unenlightened ideals of violence, exclusion and oppression across the world (Curran, 2011; Sala-Molins, 1992), in certain thinkers of the period, we can identify what we might think of as a ‘progressive’ tendency towards intra-European migration. While today’s trend of nationalistic introversion may attempt to invoke nostalgically bygone golden era of Europe which is distinctly classed and raced (Duyvendak, 2011; Norocel et al., 2020), their politics contradict the spirit of cultural exchange which was privileged by these thinkers. We should, however, take care to appreciate these historical discourses of migration in Europe through a lens which privileges nuance. The historically ‘pro-migration’ stances of which I write are – as I demonstrate by introducing the concept of Europolitanism – tempered with ambivalence. A closer look at the emphasis on culture reveals the ways in which this focus on exchange, especially as an intellectual activity, can formulate a class-exclusionary stance. Conceiving Europe as a space that produces and is produced by cultural and ideational exchange explicitly allocates social class as a decisive distinguishing factor. It metes out cross-border mobility as a cultural activity for the élites of Europe. Whether the exclusions are implicit or explicit, as we have seen, the questions raised by them are numerous. Far from abstract theoretical exploration, these are the very questions to which the answers indicate who stands where in the collective (hi)stories we tell about Europe.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Professor Shane Weller, Dr Angelos Evangelou, and Dr Manjeet Ramgotra for insightful feedback on earlier versions of this article.

Notes

Author biography

Lydia Ayame Hiraide is a PhD student in the Department of Politics and International Relations at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her doctoral research aims to increase transnational learning among environmental groups in relation to inclusive action and philosophies of environmentalism by interrogating the experiences, views and praxis of activists in France and in the United Kingdom. Her alma maters include the University of Kent, the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, L’Institut d’Études Sciences Politiques de Paris and the Conservatoire for Dance and Drama.

References

Arday

Mirza

(eds) (2018) Dismantling Race in Higher Education: Racism, Whiteness and Decolonising the Academy. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Bates

(2021) Whiteness in academia, time to listen, and moving beyond white fragility. Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal 40(1): 1–7.

Black

(1991) On the grand tour in 1771–1773. The Yale University Library Gazette 66(1/2): 33–46.

Buonfino

(2004) Between unity and plurality: the politicization and securitization of the discourse of immigration in Europe. New Political Science 26(1): 23–49.

Ceyhan

Tsoukala

(2002) The securitization of migration in Western societies: ambivalent discourses and policies. Alternatives 27(1): 21–39.

Curran

(2011) The Anatomy of Blackness: Science and Slavery in an Age of Enlightenment. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Darley

(2008) Wonderful things: the experience of the grand tour. Perspecta 41: 17–29.

Duyvendak

(2011) The Politics of Home: Belonging and Nostalgia in Europe and the United States. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

El-Tayeb

(2008) ‘The birth of a European public’: migration, postnationality, and race in the uniting of Europe. American Quarterly 60(3): 649–70.

10.

Ergang

(1966) Herder and the Foundations of German Nationalism. New York: Octagon Books.

11.

European Commission (n.d.) EU competences in the field of culture. Available at: www.ec.europa.eu/culture/policies/eu-competences-in-the-field-of-culture (accessed 30 November 2021).

12.

Favell

(2012) Immigration, migration, and free movement in the making of Europe. In: Checkel

Katzenstein

(eds) European Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 166–92.

13.

Fichte

(2013 [1800]) Closed Commercial State (trans. AC Adler). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

14.

Gündüz

(2010) The European Union at 50: xenophobia, Islamophobia and the rise of the radical right. Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs 30(1): 35–47.

15.

Halasz

(2009) The rise of the radical right in Europe and the case of Hungary: ‘Gypsy crime’ defines national identity? Development 52(4): 490–4.

16.

Hayes

CJH

(1927) Contributions of Herder to the doctrine of nationalism. The American Historical Review 32(4): 719–36.

17.

Kende

Krekó

(2020) Xenophobia, prejudice, and right-wing populism in East-Central Europe. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences 34: 29–33.

18.

King

Ruiz-Gelices

(2003) International student migration and the European ‘year abroad’: effects on European identity and subsequent migration behaviour. International Journal of Population Geography 9(3): 229–52.

19.

Kriz

(1997) Introduction: the grand tour. Eighteenth-Century Studies 31(1): 87–9.

20.

Kuhelj

(2011) Rise of xenophobic nationalism in Europe: a case of Slovenia. Communist and Post-Communist Studies 44(4): 271–82.

21.

Kulessa

von Seth

(eds) (2017) The Idea of Europe: Enlightenment Perspectives (trans. von Seth

Kulessa

). Cambridge: Open Book Publishers.

22.

Lanier

(2007) Martha Coffin Derby’s grand tour: ‘it’s impossible to travel without improvement’. Woman’s Art Journal 28(1): 37–44.

23.

Mitchell

(2012) Student mobility and European identity: Erasmus study as a civic experience? Journal of Contemporary European Research 8(4): 491–518.

24.

Norocel

Hellström

Jørgensen

, et al. (2020) Nostalgia and Hope: Intersections between Politics of Culture, Welfare, and Migration in Europe. Cham: Springer Open.

25.

Parry

(1982) Goethe observed and observing. PN Review 9(1): 20–1.

26.

Pizer

(2019) Goethe’s world literature paradigm: from uneasy cosmopolitanism to literary modernism. In: Seigneurie

(ed.) A Companion to World Literature. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell. Available at: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/9781118635193.ctwl0192 (accessed 13 February 2022).

27.

Rzepnikowska

(2019) Racism and xenophobia experienced by Polish migrants in the UK before and after Brexit vote. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 45(1): 61–77.

28.

Sala-Molins

(1992) Les misères des lumières: sous la raison, l’outrage. Paris: Laffont.

29.

Sang

KJC

Calvard

(2019) ‘I’m a migrant, but I’m the right sort of migrant’: hegemonic masculinity, whiteness, and intersectional privilege and (dis)advantage in migratory academic careers. Gender, Work & Organization 26(10): 1506–25.

30.

Schmidt

(1956) Cultural nationalism in Herder. Journal of the History of Ideas 17(3): 407–17.

31.

Goethe

(1852) Conversations with Goethe in the Last Years of His Life (trans. M Fuller). Boston, MA; Cambridge, MA: James Munroe & Co.

32.

Witteveen

(2017) The rise of mainstream nationalism and xenophobia in Dutch politics. Journal of Labor and Society 20(3): 373–8.

33.

Zedner

(2019) The hostile border: crimmigration, counter-terrorism, or crossing the line on rights? New Criminal Law Review: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal 22(3): 318–45.