The Politics of Identity and Regional Integration – Updating Global Perspectives

The “PoI” refers to the body of knowledge that studies the construction of human identity as it relates to a general political economy. This includes traditional categories of identity (race, class, gender, creed, and sexuality) but also incorporates ways the constantly evolving way that people represent belonging to communities and how those tensions manifest as a body politic (Keith and Pile 2004). This differs slightly from the vernacular usage of “identity politics,” which now often refers to political ideologies defined within polemical politics (e.g., criticisms of people using “identity politics” in their agenda). In most cases, these terms are conflated in the literature, but given recent usage of the term, we rely on the more standard academic phrasing that emphasizes a politics “of” identity rather than presuming that identity is an immutable object within the theater of political discourse. More importantly, we were less interested in making the distinction between the two, but rather wished to understand how various forms of identity are evoked when discussing ways that economic cooperation evolves. Given how easily terms such as “identity” and “economic cooperation” could appear in the same discussion, we allowed “identity” to appear with a broader range of distinction and turned our attention to the more technical terms that could be used to describe RI or economic cooperation. We did this to see whether (and how) “identity” appears as a thematic concept in literature that employed the technical economic vocabulary of regional integration. Identity is a broad concept and one that captures the attention of people in different ways. Among the many ways identity is discussed, our definition leans heavily on the way that identity is discussed as a problem of cultural economy—how people imagine themselves to belong to political institutions and how identity forms across changing social and cultural landscapes (Anderson 2006).

“RI” may be broadly defined as any relationship between two or more countries that coordinates economic or political behavior. It can take several forms and levels of intensity. Thus, to distinguish each form of RI, we defined them as follows:

Free Trade Agreement: a pact between two or more nations to reduce barriers to imports and exports among them;

Based on these definitions, treaties and other political compacts and their corresponding organizations did not necessarily qualify as a form of RI. For example, while NATO is an important political body that does organize political and economic choices, it was not included as a “political union.”

Fig. 1

For the survey component of this paper, we conducted a combination of a search of the Web of Science and Google Scholar databases peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters that searched for keywords that related to RI and combined them with a search for the term PoI. We searched for academic materials starting in the year 1993. Because much of the literature available focuses on the EU, we selected the Treaty of Maastricht as the point of reference for any writing on RI that followed the formation of the European Community and its influence on the resulting global discourse. The following table represents the outcome of that search:

Appendix A contains a full account of the search results, including specific citation information for each journal and how they were coded in the review process. The next section summarizes how the reviewed literature discussed RI in a PoI context.

This kind of integration does not interfere with identity and sovereignty, as each country remains free to adopt its own trade policies with other countries and, while goods and services might be allowed to flow with limited or no restrictions, workers do not typically have any facilitation in emigration between countries. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is a good example of this. Galvez (2018) establishes a useful ethnography of the way that free trade agreements impact foodways, which in turn have a dramatic effect on personal identity. This book represents many of the thoughts presented in the literature specific to free trade agreements. It is not surprising, therefore, that much of the discussion regarding PoI and free trade agreements is focused on two major themes: the goods traded across borders and their symbolic significance, and the labor associated with producing those goods. Galperin suggests that in the early years of the EU and the burgeoning discussion on Mercosur that all objects traded across borders are cultural objects, and thus, have a symbolic meaning that has political implications. In each of these discussions, the “free” part of free trade represented a liberalization of the cultural barriers that were significant to identity (Galperin 1999, Gouvea and Montoya, 2014). In this sense, much of what free trade is about is the negotiation of what objects become part of the cultural economy, which reinforces the concept of free trade as a vehicle for neoliberalism. This itself produces larger questions about why and how objects create the sentimentality and nostalgia that activates nationalistic sentiments. In most of the literature observed, free trade agreements serve as a proxy for economic cooperation. For example, Dorn et al. (2016) suggest that polarized politics have used free trade as the shorthand for all aspects of economic cooperation because it is a widely popular and accessible term. Piccolino (2020) further emphasizes the role of populism in debates over the influence on trade on the welfare of the population. In most cases, the liberalization of cross-border trade activates a sentiment among the general population because the softening of borders is the most symbolic theme for change for most people (DeSoucey, 2010; Galvez, 2018).

While the literature recognizes that a customs union requires its member states to give up part of their sovereign freedom by agreeing to adopt common external policies, this level of integration also has a limited impact on identity issues. One of the most significant processes has to do with denomination of origin, and specifically the liabilities of foreignness associated with these denominations (Onis 1999). Country of origin labeling and the taxonomies required to calculate tariffs are a significant part of the PoI. Surprisingly, the literature does not readily make this connection. Even though customs issues are significant to the discussion of economic impact, there are not many steps taken in the literature to directly connect the way that traded objects are classified (and later taxed or regulated) to the way that people formulate an identity. For example, while entities like Benelux have a relevant level of cultural and social closeness, the EU had maintained for a long time a customs union with Turkey, a country with very profound cultural and religious differences with the European bloc, even in the more tense relationships developed in the past few years, as the country seems to develop in a more illiberal and potentially theocratic regime (Mansfield and Milner 2012). Customs unions are by far the most technical form of RI we explored in the literature and rarely appears in relation to a concept of identity unless bundled into discussions that have more symbolic significance to a wide audience. This further supports our assumption that when more technical economic terms are introduced, the literature disconnects from the cultural and social dimensions of identity. It is noteworthy that there are several examples of customs issues that have a very indirect influence on how groups of people discuss a sense of threat or a loss of identity. For example, recent studies of customs unions in Canada (Cote-Boucher, 2013) describe the “micro-politics” of customs at the Canadian border to explore how border officials have evolved from processing commodities into a security force.

While not affecting fundamental issues such as taxation and spending policies, or monetary policy and political decisions, the freedom of movement of persons between member states requires compatible economies and cultures to avoid major pushbacks from the local population, who might feel threatened by a disruption of their economic and sociocultural surroundings. The literature suggests that the majority of discussions surrounding common markets focuses on two themes: migration and transnational identity. In the case of migration, the discussion about changing demographics becomes the key factor. For example, Rwengabo describes the development of the East African common market as the transition of a mobile labor market to habits and political choices that then create a form of transnational citizenship. It is in this transition from laborer to citizen that an “additional but not-necessarily competing social contract” develops over time within common markets (Rwengabo 2015).

Thus, common markets transition from being largely transactional to a question of regional and national emotional sentiments. In the EU, for instance, the Common Market was completed in the late 1980s, subsequent to the Single European Act, at a time during which the appreciation of European people for the institutions created after World War II was still extremely high, based on the double psychological positive effect of the regained peace after World War II and the sense of necessary unity during the Cold War. However, notwithstanding a strengthened internationalism in the years immediately after the end of the Cold War, which represented the limit of emotional acceptance for many segments of European population, after which the view of the EU construction started changing rapidly toward a more critical perception (Gerrits 2016). These two examples in the literature represent how the emotional connection to people and the way they are affected by change steers toward a more demographic focus, where people are replaced by “populations.” Wajner and Roniger (019) describe how the discussion of free moving populations then turns into a question about how changing demographics then ignite sentiments of a loss of identity. As economic cooperation turns toward the free movement of people among those who cooperate, the physicality of people moving across borders serves as highly political linchpin. We observed, however, that there is a disconnect between migration patterns that are seen as threatening (the “illegal alien”) and those patterns forged out of an evolution of economic cooperation. Rarely does the idea of a common market ignite a sentiment about resources becoming scarcer because of people freely moving across borders. In fact, Kurtis and Kopytowska (2014) submit that common markets produce a sense of equity among places that more often suggests that “one can return home” in a common market because the participants in a common market see each other's spaces as having more equality and hence having less propensity for the movement of people to happen more by choice than by force or conditions of great disparity. For this reason, common markets have a very different relationship to a PoI perspective given the relatively egalitarian conditions wherein that term operates.

The literature suggests that this is the point where the discussion of identity aligns with the concept of citizenship. The most recent scholarship finds that economic policies become “artificial,” meaning the documents and policies constructed here become “heritage objects” (Lähdesmäki and Mäkinen 2019). Regulations become a part of daily discourse and thus compete with other questions or debates of the time, which in turn become a point of reference for how people define themselves both as citizens and as human subjects (Mycock 2012). The elevated status of economic policies further highlights the importance of those processes to a larger number of people. Hence, it becomes popularized as a space where the stakes of one's identity are claimed. This was demonstrated by the then-new resistance to the ratification of the Maastricht agreements, represented in referenda held at the time in France, the Netherlands, and Denmark. While most people “felt European” to some extent, the Maastricht Treaty made that question a more integrated part of the reality of European citizenship. No longer an abstract fantasy, forms of economic union become the turning point for larger questions of nationalism and cultural economy.

Monetary unions include the added dimension of having a specific and meticulously composed symbolism embedded in the circulation of a common currency. This has been long understood, particularly among philosophers and cultural critics. Georg Simmel famously noted that money is a “highly signified form of language” and that money takes on one of the most significant cultural forms from which citizenry is derived (Simmel 2004). Again, the question of identity transitions to a concept of citizenship and in the case of money, heritage. As mentioned above, the institution of the euro with the Maastricht Treaty has led in fact to the first moment of resistance against further integration, with French people only narrowly passing it in a referendum and the Danish people initially refusing it. Since then, however, the euro has become a fundamental feature of European life, with some warning about the reciprocal relationship between money and identity. To this point, several authors suggest that money has an added function, as a symbol of sovereignty, which produces tensions about a common identity each time a new currency or new symbolism is introduced (Coparoso and Keeler, 1993; Kaelberer 2004).

Since the Maastricht Treaty crisis, tensions about national identity grew in many EU member states, their roots being linked to economic crisis, pushback against perceived identity threats (such as the monetary union and the failed proposal for a European constitution), and immigration (Gerrits 2016), eventually leading to the growth of nationalist populist movements in most of the leading countries. The literature suggests that the perceived importance of economic policies and the development and maintenance of money connect the PoI to the importance of citizenship and heritage, which combined becomes a fundamental root of modern nationalism.

The literature suggests that, as a form of policy, coordinated efforts to achieve a political union tell us much about the contested bodies (goods, services, people, and embodied ideas) that are shaped by the processes of regional economic integration. Scholars of regional financial policies suggest that economic policies are often predicated upon the fantasy of a political union (Bhalla, 2016; Jones 2019). Much like Alexander Hamilton argued for a common currency to create a common identity to wage against a common enemy, economic policies are often about responsiveness to a perceived external threat that contains a market force. It is notable that at this level, there is a conflation of the terms “market” with “citizen,” which at this junction crystallizes as a hard boundary, wherein a distinction between a market and a citizen is not made as much as it would in a free trade agreement. In short, markets have no PoI until they are contained by the state.

This leads to an interesting discussion on supranationalism. Once political unions are seen as static (the “state” in nation-state), the political and cultural economy that produces the PoI becomes much more complex. This explains why the concept of nationalism is such a common expression of the PoI.

As the 2008 economic crisis revealed, multilateral institutions have largely focused on processes and outcomes for addressing global problems. This was particularly evident in the treatment of the sovereign debt crisis in Greece. Already in 2010, various authors were noticing that the management of the crisis was reducing the credibility of the EU both as an intergovernmental organization and as a more integrated area (Zahariadis 2010), while more recent studies have highlighted how the Greek crisis and the subsequent adoption of the Stability and Growth Pact has greatly impacted the political dimension and voters’ positions on financial issues in Europe, which tend now to be defined in terms of respect of the criteria or opposition to the monetary union (Katsanidou and Otjes 2016). However, as economic disenfranchisement, public health, and national security matters become manifest, it becomes clearer that these institutions have not focused on “detailed considerations of agency” that are, at their core, the most comprehensible parts of what makes a civil society function (Kahler 2013; Scholte 2004).

Thus, economic nationalism is described in the literature as an escape from the perceived failures of multilateral governance. More particularistic forms of governance move away from larger cooperative institutions (e.g., a nation from a regional economic union, or a group of nations from a global economic forum) as an expression of agency within civil society. Terms such as “popular sovereignty,” “self-determination,” and “agency” are used as motivations to withdraw a part of one's stakes from multilateral processes. However, as Helleiner and Picker (2005) suggest in their edited volume Economic Nationalism in a Globalizing World, we cannot merely assume that economic nationalism necessarily translates into a form of protectionism.

Overall, it was notable that the literature itself proved that market driven, commercial, and often technical aspects of RI tend to move very quickly to questions of citizenship and heritage. In the following section, we will discuss themes that emerge from our review. Given the massive changes taking place globally, specifically renewed racial and ethnic tension amidst a global pandemic, we believe this section to be a valuable way to move the discussion forward.

Much has already been written about the nation-state as a political concept. Several studies of nationalism have noted that nationalism is a term conflated as a universal concept when in fact there are many varieties of nationalism. Nationalism is difficult to define: It can be considered an idea, idiom, belief, or ideology. Within this complexity, the political dimension of nationalism seems to be the most important one: nationalism is a way to operate, highlighting how to identify issues, although often empty as an ideological signifier (Gerrits 2016).

The most commonly known classification of the concept of nationalism distinguishes between ethnic nationalism and civic nationalism. This definition was first utilized by Hans Kohn in The Idea of Nationalism in 1945 and has been more recently embraced by Michael Ignatieff, who notes how these two types of nationalism determine the credibility of institutions meant to contain several sovereign powers (Ignatieff, 1994). Ethnic nationalism is based on blood and ethnicity, while civic nationalism is based on rules and civic cohesion. A variation along this classification is the distinction between nationalism and patriotism, or rather populist nationalism and patriotic nationalism. Although the modern concept of nation-state first emerged with the peace of Westphalia of 1648, it was during the twentieth century that distinctions were made between “good” nationalism and “bad” nationalism (Greenfeld 2018).

More recently, nationalism has been linked not only to historical processes that developed in a specific country, but also to a psychological process that elevates the importance of the nation-state as the “institution of choice” to mediate collective values and beliefs (Spruyt 1994). Pioneers in the field of cultural geography would use the idea that we select social structures to meet practical needs, and later, would rationalize those choices as having been produced from some organized narrative about collective destiny and sentiment, what Raymond Williams (1977) would refer to as a “structure of feeling.” It is this conflation that ultimately becomes problematic: if nationalism is converted into a discourse on sentiment and nostalgia for a shared past, then it is predisposed to think about itself as a problem entirely about the PoI (Reus-Smit 1999; Gubrium and Holstein 2001).

As mentioned, RI appears more as a technical process, one about trade regulations and infrastructure, than it is about the historical consciousness of a people. Nationalism, on the other hand, contains and determines the sentiments of a people, has designated mythmaking properties. Nations are capable of discrediting regional systems by turning largely technical discussions into sentimental discussions. It is the resulting tension that makes nationalism such an important factor in understanding how the PoI manifests in RI.

As global phenomena such as COVID-19 and climate change continue to shape national agendas, the need for transnational agreements is clear. What is not clear, however, is how those agreements will include more stakeholders, particularly across socioeconomic barriers. It has been widely established within the literature on development that economic agendas form vis-a-vis “zones of proximity”. In other words, organizations that set economic agendas such as G8 or OECD nations happen as a result of shared values and not necessarily in relation to achieving shared objectives (Payne 2008; Carranza, 2017). This has led to more attention paid to concerns that “developing” nations are often left out or marginalized from key economic discussions (and decisions) based purely on how they are perceived as foreign or institutionally distant from those who have traditionally demonstrated progress. These concerns have led to a growing body of literature criticizing the use of binaries such as “First World/Third World,” “Developed World/Developing World,” and “Global North/Global South.” Effectively, these categories become regional designations unto themselves, separating out groups of people based on economic indicators that imply other social renderings. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the communist/capitalist dichotomy that encapsulated a large part of global relations shifted to another set of categories.

As great power politics based on military strength and Cold War ideology diminished, attention shifted to issues of development, poverty, and inequality. Several scholars suggest that great power conflict then became a discussion about ethnic conflict, and the word “ethnic” became a placeholder for those groups of people who were a) neither dominant in setting the global international agenda, and b) seen as fragile or failing states (Bowen 1996). In his seminal article on nation, race, and ethnicity, Connor (1978) suggested that ethnic states are places that have not passed an unspoken legitimacy test and therefore occupy a general field of belonging that we term “Third World.” Consequently, states that do not meet a set of criteria imposed upon them during the Cold War, an era of power building that encouraged the development of sophisticated atomic weaponry and rewarded that development with voting power in international institutions (i.e., the UN Security Council), were informally designated as “ethnic” communities, nations in the sentimental/heritage sense, but with “undeveloped” capacity to participate in the prescribed world order. Scholarship in the fields of anthropology and international education have expressed this as a problem of hegemony, similar to “whiteness.” Those who are developed/First/North participate in the world order without having to present themselves as having an ethnic background (Loftsdóttir 2009). It is only when one is deemed vulnerable, or when a state has failed, that institutions rely on ethnic designations (Menon, 2007; Katsanidou and Otjes, 2016).

Consider how nationalistic resentment of RI corresponds with white nationalism. The binary discourse on development contains a specific form of the PoI, one that presents ethnic groups as always vulnerable to the global agenda. As members of the “First World’ encounter the result of a global development agenda, this has manifested as a form of “white grievance,” which largely conveys guilt to structures that have facilitated global development (Thomas 2003). As discussions of regional integration continue, the question posed by these developmental binaries will become an increasingly active part of that discussion.

The concept of “identity” can easily become an overly complicated concept, especially when one introduces the way that globalization planetary-scale issues influence our lives. As we reviewed the literature, several key topics became increasingly salient, either because they were presented clearly in connection to our questions, or because they were absent. The themes described in the previous section are supplemented by the analysis of a number of global phenomena, as described in this section. We believe these themes serve as a way to refine and bridge the connections between a PoI and RI—themes that are seemingly apparent but not readily connected in initial discussions between the two.

That constant attention to revising and supporting the openness of trade within the United States has elevated certain products to have a symbolic meaning that substantiates what they believe makes them belong to the world, which means it inheres in their beliefs as a moral right. Harley Davidson motorcycles must continue to be made to be both distinctly American and must themselves be able to fill in the space desired by Americans to produce Americana. The moment it is taxed or regulated in a way that obstructs that sense of American-ness validates a desire to break a contract with those that threaten that symbolic meaning. This is why Arjun Appadurai (1990) argues that all forms of political economy have a corresponding cultural economy. When RI contains technical aspects that are too removed from the ethical aspects that create “shared value,” or “substance,” agreements tend to break down. This is why Appadurai cites “cultural economy” as the vital corresponding tool in understanding the agenda of states. Without understanding the flow of objects, or the movement of things as contested objects, there is no way to understand globalization as part of a unified process of ethics and technical processes—the processes whereby people feel loss and nostalgia within their own cultural preferences and the process whereby people find a reason to sense a common good that deregulates the passage of people, places, and things. The field of cultural geography emanated from a consolidation of the study of politics and place, which itself turned to the process of mapping. This, added to the notion that ideas, sentiments, and habits can be mapped as much as much harder political borders created what we now commonly refer to as cultural geography (Cresswell 2004; Mitchell, 2008). Consequently, a framework for understanding RI would be served by using a cultural geographic framework. This both acknowledges the systemic features of RI while simultaneously attending to the ever-changing and evolving concept of “culture” and “identity.”