O impacto da cidadania europeia na integração social ao longo e uma geração

Abstract

Citizenship has emerged as one of the main elements responsible for the strengthening of social integration in the development of modern State Nations. The evolution of an european citizenship raises curiosity due to its supranational nature and its potential as a cohesion element between societies with different cultures and languages. This research tries to understand in what way the european citizenship, which was institutionalized at the Maastricht Treaty in 1993, can assist in the social integration strengthening of an European Union that was consolidated without the participation of european societies. Can the creation of european regional rights have the potential to promote the development of a feeling of belonging to Europe? Would this process facilitate the construction of an integrated community, not only in its economic or judicial sense, but also socially? By employing a constructivist approach, this research tries to systematize the data on the use of european rights (available on Eurostat) with the data on perception and public opinion (available on the Eurobarometer survey) as analysis sources to verify eventual attitude changes from the european population in the course of twenty-five years of existence of european citizenship.