Aune Valk, a Pascal Associate and Director of the Open University Centre of the University of Tartu in Estonia, is the first author of a Pascal Hot Topic (HT) to be written from a country within the former Soviet Union or ‘second world’ block. Her areas of expertise embrace the Bologna process, lifelong learning including e-learning and the  accreditation of prior and experiential learning, and, most relevant to this HT, collective - especially ethnic – identity.

This study of Identities in plural societies draws on some of her own empirical research, reflecting some of the stress and distress suffered by displaced people during the turmoil of last century and earlier along the Baltic and elsewhere through modern Europe. The Baltic States have experienced centuries of war, invasion and occupation, their distinctive and persisting strong sense of identity and nationhood threatened or denied by larger neighbours who have marched over their territories, used them for refuelling, or incorporate them into their own territories, to the point of denying the use of the native language. Like its neighbours, Estonia became part of the European Union within the recent enlargement process. As for other small states already in the Union, and other such as Croatia aspiring to join, this new super-national political and economic entity probably represents the best hope in centuries of enjoying political independence, with a sense of autonomy and the prospect of future stability and development.

Dr Valk writes in this European context about fundamental issues to do with individual and collective identity which are important for the political and cultural future of Europe, but which are also universal in their significance, and  which have risen dramatically and often tragically in importance in recent years. Distinguishing between ethnic and national identity, and noting the relationship between personal and social identity, she asks how far it identity is ascribed or can be chosen and, a crucial matter of power, who has a right to ascribe identity to whom. Identity is reinforced by differentiation, which may involve the denigration of others, or out-groups. Aune Valk looks into multiplicity of identities, and the capacity for some to have and to choose between several identities.

At one point, building on identity as a function of otherness or oppositionality, she poses the question whether the new Europe is defined by opposition to others – regions, cultures, perhaps religions – or rather and only be opposition to its own turbulent and bloody past. More immediately and tangibly in a policy sense, she writes about how (and how slowly) values and the acceptance of others change with waves of new immigrants including within-Europe migrants, whether politically or economically driven; and the importance of retaining the culture and social structure that are familiar and have sustained them in the past, to immigrant communities struggling to come to terms with a new environment. It is easy see how a reciprocal sense of threat to values is heightening a mutual sense of crisis on the part of both the Islamic world and the West.

There is much in this study that merits reflective attention: the discussion of ‘goodness’ in identity; and identity and attitudes towards out-groups. Moving closer to policy implications, Dr Valk writes about different acculturation models, and the social and psychological stresses associated with acculturation; she explores the pros and cons of biculturalism through the example of Estonians living in Sweden. Returning to the enlarged EU she probes the happy slogan ‘unity in diversity’, and discusses the recent nationalistic backlash against an enlarged and strengthened Union which has seen the Turkish case for admission look more fraught, and resulted in ‘no’ votes on the constitution in The Netherlands and France.

The study concludes with three models to promote European unity: ‘family of nations’; ‘constitutional patriotism’, which ignores rather than deals with cultural differences and problems; and ‘space of encounters’, within which ‘European identity’ would encompass multiple and changing meanings and relationships.

This authoritative, well argued and well sourced Hot Topic is timely. In many countries multiculturalism is in retreat. The consequence of economic and military competition and conflict in recent years, now centred in the Iraq, Iran and Afghan region but spreading much wider, with its underpinnings of religious belief in Christian, Islamic, and also Hindu, fundamentalism, has made identity a central political and policy concern, as security becomes a major growth industry.

How should governments at all levels, from international and regional, like the EU, to the nation state, regional planning authority, local authority, village, parish and commune, behave in the face of complex and perturbing cultural-political issues of this kind? Aune Valk by implication calls for political courage – for example bringing home to citizens that they do not need more monetary wealth to be happier and more secure. It is an issue of similar magnitude to that posed for governance by global warming. Can short-cycle electoral democracies find the means to take a long view on questions of this order? This paper at any rate shows what the important underlying issues about identity in plural societies are.

Chris Duke is the CEO of the PASCAL Observatory