Identifying with Europe? The views of some Turkish and British postgraduate students taking part in a university exchange programme

The project, from which this research arises, is an EU funded student exchange programme between three Universities in Turkey and Leicester University, England (UK). The research investigates understandings of Europeanness and European citizenship in Turkey in relation to the proposed Turkish accession to the EU. It is explicitly designed to allow participants to explore their perceptions and understandings of citizenship at a crucial time in the reshaping of European identity. It investigates where and how they locate their constructed identities in a period of fluidity and tensions caused by shifting pattern of cultural identity, globalisation and the emergence of additional layers of identity, such as the European Union (Giddens, 1991; Kearney 2003).