» Self-identity. Identification. Identifying others.

During several ESN meetings, I took a lot of notes on people very often addressing the question of identity in relation to themselves or others. This happened during presentations, speeches or simply random conversations with people in the network. Here are some of the things I found interesting.

Jokes

During a presentation talking about “life in Brussels” (the headquarters of ESN International), one of the members of the International Board referred to their nationality in a very interesting way – “I don’t know what nationality I am. My parents are Italian, but I’ve been born and raised in France. I speak both languages natively. So people ask me – what are you really? I never know what to tell them so what I do, I like to use this for my advantage – When people are talking about football, I am Italian. When they’re talking about food and books and culture, I am French. When they’re talking about politics…”. The break after the sentence was intentionally for people to laugh. I thought it was a very interesting though not only how he pointed out the beauty of variety, but also how he said, and repeated it often, how people confront him about his identity – who he is, what he identifies himself mostly with, the need of people to know and put their finger on something they cannot make sense of.

National identity and understandings of oneself

We once had this external presentation on multiculturalism that was absolutely amazing. It was a scholar from the university of Utrecht who took part in our celebration of 25 years of ESN. On one of her PowerPoint slides, she posted the following quote from the film L’auberge Espagnole: “Je suis Français, Espagnol, Anglais, Danois. Je suis pas un, mais plusieurs. Je suis comme l’Europe, je suis tout ça. Je suis un vrai bordel.” (“I am French, Spanish, English, Danish. I am not one, but multiple. I am like Europe, I’m all of it. I’m a real mess.”). She then asked everyone in the room who identifies with the sentence to put their hands up. More than two thirds of the group did so. My friend sitting next to me put his hand up quite shy, then put it down, then up again. He then firmly put his hand down and said – “No, I feel quite British, I’ve always felt quite British”… I found his hesitation very interesting, he was debating who he was in that moment and then firmly decided, same as the participant in my focus group (see last blog post), that he is and always has been “quite British”.

Personal traits as national identity

In one of my many discussions with a friend from the organisation, I jokingly told him that the first time I met him he came across a bit arrogant, but I then changed my mind about how I perceived him and I thought it was really funny how I saw him at first. That was the only statement I made, and to my surprise his answer made a reference to his national identity: “Well, I’m French. Us, the French, are very often perceived as arrogant. And we are, of course we are. We are raised to believe we have the most beautiful country in the world, the most beautiful language, the best culture and most amazing food. I don’t know how you can be raised like that and not be a bit arrogant”.

Being identified by others

Lastly, my very identity was always a very interesting topic to be brought up by people. Very often people assumed that I was British just because I come from ESN UK and I have a slight British accent. A lot of references about me being “a total Brit and acting like one”, “being honorary British in ESN” and answers like “of course you’re British…” were always a source of amusement for me. The identity you create in the organisation is strongly related to the ESN country you’ve started with. The current president of ESN International is originally from Germany, but has been on Erasmus, started in ESN and lived for a while in Sweden. He refers to himself mostly as being Swedish. I am the National Representative-elect of ESN UK, yet I am Romanian, our president is Spanish, the one from Sweden is Finnish and so on. The interesting thing is that most of the time people will ask you not about cultural references, food, habits, stereotypes, jokes from your country of origin, but from your “adoptive” ESN one. Once you started in an ESN country different than the one you are born, there’s no way out – you’ve been given a second nationality, at least in the eyes of ESNers.

Oana Dumitrescu says:

March 25, 2015 at 3:11 pm

Dear Lisa, thank you for your nice feed-back! In response to your questions, I wouldn’t necessarily say those who identify with that quote identify more as “European”, it was more of an observation. I am saying this because, going a bit more into my interviews at the moment, I can see (and I sort of expected to see this) that there are very different understandings of what it means to be European, which will actually be one of my focuses in my project. There is some common ground to as what “European” should be generally, and this is more the top-down approach of creating identity that the EU has induced in a way through their “European” values, but there is a lot of variety in personal approaches in what means to identify oneself with Europe.

As for the second questions, yes, I would dare to assume there is a stronger sense of national identity with British people. I have some assumptions why that might be so (and in now way related to the UK being a Eurosceptic country), but no obvious connections in my research have been made. Some people say it’s because geographically Britain is an island, or because of the British Empire legacy, my very informal, not backed up by evidence assumption is that actually it’s more to do with the outside expectations of non-British people towards British people. I personally don’t know a country who embraces their stereotypes more gladly than Britain. It might sound like a very provocative statement, but I honestly feel that their statements are more what is expected of them to say/feel and they kind of comply with it. Again, this is all speculation not backed up by evidence, I just wanted to share this idea with you.

Lisa Bernasek says:

March 25, 2015 at 12:25 pm

I agree with Claire and Marion that these observations are very good – you are doing a good job of keeping track of these moments with an ‘ethnographic eye’. It seems from these posts like the relationship between ‘national identity’ and ‘european identity’ is something coming out consistently here. Would those ESNers who identify with the quote from L’auberge Espagnole and have a mixed sense of national identity identify more with a ‘European’ identity? Is a strong sense of national identity more easily expressed (in this context) by British ESNers?

Marion Demossier says:

March 21, 2015 at 3:39 pm

Well done Oana,! A good example of the post- modern turn affecting identity constructions! Keep the good work.
Marion

Claire Eldridge says:

March 8, 2015 at 2:11 pm

An interesting array of observations. Your ethnographic notes are clearly yielding valuable material and it is good to see you organising this by category/theme as this will help you in terms of structuring your YARP. Obviously these observations will need to be anchored in wider contexts and discussions but, so far, your primary data is proving very rich.

Leave a Reply