Nation-states and national identities are a product of European history and have been the most salient framework of spatial identification since the nineteenth century. In the past decades, however, the EU has attempted to foster a supplementary European sense of identity, embodied in the notion of European citizenship. Moreover, the European continent encompasses various macro-regions that have been presented as having certain historical significance and that play a role in identity politics. Two prominent examples are the Baltic and the Mediterranean regions.

This study reconstructs through interviews the overlapping identifications of Latvian and Greek migrants, respectively – migrants who have moved to Sweden in different time periods after the Second World War up to the present. The interviews focus on issues related to integration, feelings of belonging and spatial identification with the countries of origin (Latvia, Greece) and residence (Sweden) in order to understand the significance of the nation in the current European context. Another aim is to examine how the idea of a common European identity, as an aggregate based on national and regional affiliation, works in practice. Furthermore, the interviews executed in this study give an account of how migrants position themselves in relation to the Baltic Sea region and the Mediterranean as well as to alternative macro regional spaces. The study of immigrants’ narratives about their social and everyday life, and their personal experience of coping with public authorities seeks to improve our understanding of the current phenomenon of internal European migration, which is still an under-researched field.

The analysis shows that the nation, both that of origin and of residence, remains the most significant space of identification for the interviewed EU-migrants. It is obvious that the EU has not brought forth a European identity parallel to the national one. However, elements of European identification and belonging exist in the responses of the migrants, revolving around their benefitting from free mobility inside the EU. This study shows also that there barely is any particular identification with the Baltic and Mediterranean regions among the examined migrants. However, other macro regional identifications appeared, such as the Baltic States for Latvian and the Balkan for Greek interviewees.

Nationalstaten och nationell identitet är produkter av europeisk historia som sedan 1800-talet är den viktigaste utgångspunkten för individers upplevelse av rumslig identifikation. Under de senaste decennierna har EU också försökt att aktivt utveckla framväxten av en kompletterande europeisk identitet, uttryckt i idén om ett europeiskt medborgarskap. Förutom det rymmer den europeiska kontinenten olika makroregioner som presenterats som historiskt viktiga och som spelar en identitetspolitisk roll. Två centrala exempel är Östersjöregionen och Medelhavsregionen.

Genom intervjuer med lettiska och grekiska migranter som kommit till Sverige under olika tidsperioder, från andra världskriget fram till idag, syftar denna avhandling till att rekonstruera intervjupersonernas överlappande identiteter. Frågan om vilken betydelse identitet kopplad till nationen har i dagens europeiska kontext utforskas genom att intervjuerna fokuserat på frågor som handlar om integration, känslor av tillhörighet och rumslig identifikation med ursprungsländerna (Lettland eller Grekland) och till det land där de nu bor (Sverige). Avhandlingen bidrar även till att undersöka hur strävanden att åstadkomma en gemensam europeisk identitet, som en kombination av nationell och regional tillhörighet, kan fungera i praktiken. Intervjuerna som genomförts för denna studie ger vidare en inblick i hur migranterna positionerar sig i relation till Östersjöregionen respektive Medelhavsregionen och till andra möjliga makroregionala rum. Migranternas berättelser om bland annat sociala nätverk, vardagsliv och personliga erfarenheter av att hantera offentliga myndigheter, bidrar till att ge insikter om inom-europeisk migration, ett fält där forskningen för närvarande är begränsad.

Analysen visar att nationen, både ursprungslandet och vistelselandet, är den viktigaste rumsliga enheten för identifikation hos de intervjuade EU-migranterna. Det är tydligt att EU för dessa migranter inte har åstadkommit en europeisk identitet som motsvarar den nationella identiteten. Samtidigt återfinns vissa element av europeisk identitet och tillhörighet i migranternas intervjusvar, framför allt i förhållande till den fria rörligheten inom EU. Denna studie visar också att de intervjuade migranterna i väldigt liten utsträckning upplever en specifik tillhörighet till Östersjöregionen respektive Medelhavsregionen. Däremot framkom betydelsen av andra makroregionala identiteter, såsom Baltikum för de lettiska intervjupersonerna och Balkan för de grekiska.

Surveys were conducted in ten schools: five in locations around the Baltic Sea and five around the Mediterranean. Students were asked to delimit the two regions on a map of Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa, to assess how much they would like to live in each region, and to write down the advantages and disadvantages associated with living in each region. Students tended to describe the two regions in terms of a North–South dichotomy, describing the Baltic Sea region as cerebral, advanced, and wealthy, while culture, food, and climate were described as advantages of the Mediterranean region.

Mental maps and historical consciousness, which describe the spatial and temporal dimensions of worldviews, are not, as commonly stated, twentieth century concepts. Historical consciousness was coined simultaneously by several German scholars in the mid-1800s. Mental maps, used in English since the 1820s, had a prominent role in US geography education from the 1880s. Since then, the concepts have traveled between practical-technical, educational, and academic vocabularies, cross fertilizing fields and contributing to the formation of new research questions. However, when these initial periods of reflection gave way to empirical investigation, strict intra-disciplinary definitions of the concepts have strengthened disciplinary borders by excluding the interpretations of the same concepts in other fields.

Little empirical research has considered the way in which macro-regions are perceived outside academic and political circles. Such studies alone can determine what regional narratives mean for the wider public, and the extent to which they coincide with region-building images produced by elites. This article examines the mental maps of high school seniors in 10 cities in the Baltic Sea and Mediterranean regions, focusing upon their perception and knowledge of other countries in those areas. Despite efforts at region building since the Cold War, the two regions remain divided on mental maps. Students have little knowledge of countries across the sea from their own, although such knowledge is generally greater among those from coastal (and particularly island) locations. A comparison with maps constructed by Gould in 1966 reveals that the perception of countries within one's own region among Italian and Swedish students has become more negative over the last 50 years.

This round table discusses a collection that explores the circulation of ideas across and beyond the Mediterranean in the long nineteenth century, a space normally consigned to the margins of historiographical concerns and studied in discrete geographical areas. The commentators agree that the diasporic approach centred on biography taken by the collection demonstrates the existence of a plurality of liberal strands and political projects, highlights the importance of exchanges between European peripheries like Russia, the Adriatic and Greece, and challenges the notion of the derivative nature of eastern and oriental political culture. At the same time, the round table suggests new paths for future research, pointing to the desirability of producing a transnational conceptual history of liberalism that connects and compares East and West, and of applying the same transnational methodological approach to other seas.

‘Mental map’ is a term referring to the way people orientate themselves in their spatial surroundings and how they perceive the world. Alongside ‘cognitive map’, its approximate synonym, the concept of a mental map is established in geography, the behavioral sciences, and psychology. Over the past two decades the idea of mental maps has been adopted by historians in analyzing the construction and dissolution of historical regions, the world views of political elites, and patterns of dominance and subalternity. Despite the resonance the concept of mental maps has had in several disciplines, an international multi-disciplinary conversation on mental maps with an emphasis on cultural patterns is still in its earliest stages. The present special journal issue addresses this situation by bringing together scholars from the fields of history, geography, economics, anthropology, and linguistics, and by using a variety of quantitative and qualitative research methods. The idea of this themed issue emerged at a workshop entitled “Mental Mapping – Historical and Social Science Perspectives”, held 12–13 November 2015 at the Institute of Contemporary History, Södertörn University, and the Italian Cultural Institute “C.M. Lerici” in Stockholm. The workshop was arranged by the research project Spaces of Expectation: Mental Mapping and Historical Imagination in the Baltic Sea and Mediterranean Region, a joint venture between Södertörn University and Ca’ Foscari University in Venice.

The article investigates the temporal and spatial structure of historical consciousness among secondary school students from ten locations around the Baltic and Mediterranean seas. It examines what eras and spaces in history that are important to the students, and discusses how the mental maps of individuals at a certain location are affected by geopolitics and interpretations of historical experiences.

The results are mainly based upon one open survey question: Write down the name of as many important historical figures as possible within five minutes. Psychological theories of memory are used in order to explain how such simple memory retrieval can be used in studies of historical consciousness. The data from the survey is presented in the form of maps, using techniques of mental mapping developed by geographers,

The empirical investigation reveals three categories of historical consciousness: national, found in Italy and Morocco, Americanized, found in Sweden, and multipolar, found in Estonia and on Åland and Malta. The article argues that each of the three strands of historical consciousness is linked to specific historical and geopolitical circumstances.