Post-, Trans-, or De-Nationalization? Fine-Tuning Political Identifications Above and Beyond Nation-State Allegiances

The literature on emerging global identifications tends to use ‘post-national’, trans-national’ and ‘de-national’ as convenient synonyms. However, these terms are better employed to single out distinct forms of disalignment of political identification from historically solid national identities. The paper describes these forms one by one and illustrates ideal-typical contents and conditions of such diverse configurations of detachment from nationhood in practices and attitudes. The empirical part of the paper draws on a 8,500 cases survey and 160 in-depth interviews with EU citizens living in six different countries (Denmark, Germany, Italy, Romania, Spain and the UK) as part of the EUCROSS project (www.eucross.eu).