• This article investigates consumerism in post-socialist Slovenia with respect to the formation of the shared European Union (EU) commodity market. It asks how, through forms of consumption, Europe is made present to the EU citizens in the post-socialist states and how political imaginaries of the ‘new Europe’ are being formed. It is argued that consumerism presents a cultural site on which the meaning of citizenship acquires its symbolic positioning. This positioning is then illuminated with respect to the emergence in post-socialist Slovenia of public discourses of ‘two Europes’, ‘two markets’, ‘first- and second-class’ EU citizens, which evolve around the perceptions that, after the two enlargement waves in 2004 and 2007, commodities in the EU differ in their origin of production and quality between the West and the East. The perceptions are linked to memories of socialism. However, this inconspicuous side of consumerism is also discussed as a selective mechanism by which the imagined community of the EU citizens is being constructed. •
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