The perception of citizenship in the English press

This paper reports research conducted by the two authors for the European Union-financed project IntUne (Integrated and United: A Quest for Citizenship in an ever closer Europe) involving 29 European institutions across Central and Western Europe involved. The project is multidisciplinary in nature and calls on scholars and practitioners from different fields of study: political science, sociology, public policy, media, linguistics and socio-psychology. The aim of the project is to study the changes in the scope, nature and characteristics of citizenship which result from the political and geographical enlargement of the European Union. The project focuses on how processes of integration, at both national and European levels, affect the three major dimensions of citizenship: identity, representation and the scope of governance. Problems of citizenship are addressed under this threefold approach by looking at the relationship between the general public and elite groups – politicians and senior civil servants – and between the European and the domestic dimensions of political life. In this paper we consider how the question of European citizenship is projected in a number of UK newspapers.