Pop Goes the EU: Framing European Identity in Popular Culture constitutes an innovative addition to the scholarship on European identity by bringing together the worlds of politics, the European Union, and popular culture. This edited volume highlights empirical cases studies, which analyze popular culture that focus on the European Union, its policies, and political activities. Popular culture is no longer considered “just entertainment”, but rather a clear reflection of socio-political realities, bringing politics to an individual level and expanding traditional understandings of political participation. This also applies to the European Union. From football, museums, television, movies, Eurovision Song Contest and more, the book’s chapters illustrate how European identity is framed and consumed, raising questions about the European Union’s behavior and institutions, criticizing or praising its policies, or adding to a top-down understanding of European identity. Acknowledging the complexity of what it means to be or feel European, it positions popular culture as a modern extension of a European public sphere in which the meaning of European identity is continuously repackaged, discussed and negotiated. The inclusion of popular culture about the European Union contributes to the vast scholarship on European identity, what its changing boundaries are, who defines them, and what it means to be and feel European.
