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Eurowhiteness: Culture, Empire and Race in the European Project
The European Union is often seen as a cosmopolitan rejection of violent nationalism. Yet the idea of Europe has a long, problematic history--in medieval times, it was synonymous with Christianity; in the modern era, it became associated with "whiteness."
Eurowhiteness exposes the EU as a vehicle for imperial amnesia. Narratives of European integration emphasise the lessons of war and the Holocaust, but not the lessons of colonial history. The EU is about power as much as peace--and civic ideas of Europe are being displaced by ethnic and cultural ones.
Since the 2015 refugee crisis, whiteness has become even more central to European identity--a troubling new turn in Europe's long civilisational project. It is time to confront the relationship between ideas of Europe and ideas of race.
Eurowhiteness exposes the EU as a vehicle for imperial amnesia. Narratives of European integration emphasise the lessons of war and the Holocaust, but not the lessons of colonial history. The EU is about power as much as peace--and civic ideas of Europe are being displaced by ethnic and cultural ones.
Since the 2015 refugee crisis, whiteness has become even more central to European identity--a troubling new turn in Europe's long civilisational project. It is time to confront the relationship between ideas of Europe and ideas of race.
248 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2023
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
October 7, 2025
eurowhiteness is brilliant!!! as an european studies student i 100% think this book should be mandatory reading (goodreads posting my review twice? idk man)
July 16, 2025
I found this book as extremely effective in analyzing and rightfully criticizing the way sin which whiteness has been linked with the European project. As a former student on European politics, history, and economics, I think the author did a great job of deconstructing the EU and the poking holes in the arguments by centrists and pro-European types that view the EU as cosmopolitan and progressive.
The last chapter on the UK and Brexit, however, has flaws in my opinion. As an ethnic minority that spent time in the UK, I agree with the author that the UK is much more advanced than the rest of Europe in terms of how it discusses, recognizes, and address race in the country, However, some of the author's points about the UK could be seen as wishful thinking, if not full-right ahistorical. The argument that we should not center immigration in terms of understanding the Brexit core, for example. It is true that Brexit does nothing to stop non-white migration (with the exception of European minorities, mostly based in Western Europe) however does the author truly think that all leave voters understood that, particularly for a country that has always been on the periphery of the EU and its understanding of how it works?
I agree with the author that you cannot fully view Brexit as a reactionary, racist, anti-cosmopolitan vote but you cannot argue that a huge portion if the population did think this way. Furthermore, the use of qualitative data I think hinders the argument, as a plethora of quantitative data exists to explain voting patterns and Brexit, Finally, the positing of increased non-white migration to the UK post-Brexit as an example of the UK's increased comfort with immigration is a bit absurd. The desperation of a country to bring in any workers in order to prop up its dithering economy is the primary motivation. Plus, look at current migration polling and the dissatisfaction with the current government's handling on migration and you can't truly claim this is a post-racial, cosmopolitan country (to be fair the author never did claim this.) Overall, I think the hope placed on a future Labour government is nothing short of extreme wishful thinking the question is not whether the UK will accept its position as a destination country for migration (it won't) but whether the EU can reach the UK's level of tolerance for living in a multi-ethnic democracy.
The last chapter on the UK and Brexit, however, has flaws in my opinion. As an ethnic minority that spent time in the UK, I agree with the author that the UK is much more advanced than the rest of Europe in terms of how it discusses, recognizes, and address race in the country, However, some of the author's points about the UK could be seen as wishful thinking, if not full-right ahistorical. The argument that we should not center immigration in terms of understanding the Brexit core, for example. It is true that Brexit does nothing to stop non-white migration (with the exception of European minorities, mostly based in Western Europe) however does the author truly think that all leave voters understood that, particularly for a country that has always been on the periphery of the EU and its understanding of how it works?
I agree with the author that you cannot fully view Brexit as a reactionary, racist, anti-cosmopolitan vote but you cannot argue that a huge portion if the population did think this way. Furthermore, the use of qualitative data I think hinders the argument, as a plethora of quantitative data exists to explain voting patterns and Brexit, Finally, the positing of increased non-white migration to the UK post-Brexit as an example of the UK's increased comfort with immigration is a bit absurd. The desperation of a country to bring in any workers in order to prop up its dithering economy is the primary motivation. Plus, look at current migration polling and the dissatisfaction with the current government's handling on migration and you can't truly claim this is a post-racial, cosmopolitan country (to be fair the author never did claim this.) Overall, I think the hope placed on a future Labour government is nothing short of extreme wishful thinking the question is not whether the UK will accept its position as a destination country for migration (it won't) but whether the EU can reach the UK's level of tolerance for living in a multi-ethnic democracy.
July 26, 2024
Expected a lot more from the book, hoped for more in depth arguments. Author references other authors and policies often, in this sense the book is rich. Just had different expectations from it.
October 25, 2024
Eurowhiteness is personal. Though one of his parents is from the Netherlands, the other hails from India, and thus Kundnani, who grew up in the UK, says he always felt only “partly European”. Even so, he used to be a firm believer in the European project, in the idea that “the EU was a force for good, both internally in Europe and in the world beyond.” Kundnani’s disillusionment with this story is where Eurowhiteness got its start.
In the book, Kundani’s former Euro-optimism is represented as an implausible form of cosmopolitanism. The Union’s professed ambition, as we all know, was to make the warring nations of Europe come together to form one home. As the Commission president Manuel Barroso said in 2012 about the bloc winning the Nobel Peace Prize, the EU was proof that “it is possible to overcome the differences between ‘them’ and ‘us’”.
Rather than representing any such cosmopolitan triumph, Kundnani sees the EU as a transition from a nationalist logic of exclusion to a regionalist one.
It is rather customary to see the EU as a precursor to Kant’s world government from Zum ewigen Frieden. For Habermas, as one example also picked up by Kundnani, the EU represented the first stage in “overcoming the territorial principle” and de-centering political governance from attachments to ethnos and land. With Markus Brunner as the commissioner responsible for immigration affairs, Frontex gearing up to act as a pseudo-colonial police force in the “Neighbourhood”, the far right gaining its biggest wins in parliamentary elections, and so on and so on, one probably needn’t even recite all the reasons this picture seems rosey-eyed in retrospect. The Union now appears toothless even to stop border controls internal to it from appearing.
The original sin of EU-cosmopolitanism is “mistaking the EU for the world”. The likes of Beck and Habermas, whenever they fantasise about the “inherent connection of the EU and cosmopolitanism”, were really in the business of articulating a logic within very distinct boundaries. And those boundaries of integration were Kundnani’s “Eurowhiteness”.
The fundamental point is obvious: when you say you feel “European”, your expression is not synonymous with “I am a citizen of the world”. We often act like it is, but it is not. A Portuguese-Estonian couple is European, a Japanese-Maltese one is not - the former are evidence to Europe’s internal inclusivity, the latter to its external exclusivity.
But the question is, in what ways is this operative, and why? Kundnani's chosen metaphor -- I would really hesitate to call it a methodology -- is that of Anderson's Imagined Communities. Eurowhiteness, the territorial and ethnic boundaries of the white racial imaginary, are the imagined community for the regionalist entity that is the European project, just as birth and language were for the nation states of the 19th and 20th centuries.
This gets to some of my gripes about the book and generally about people using terms like "imagined community" and "social construct" etc. all willy-nilly. Anderson's case studies are varied, and they all have unifying features: linguistic cohesion gets feedback-looped through new print cultures, print cultures have an audience in bourgeois reading cultures, who in turn form a domestic market more or less coextensive with the national state. Sprinkle in some stuff about the temporal structure of the novel and, voila!, you have a theory of nationalism.
None, and I repeat, NONE of these features is present with Europe. There is, as your's truly is noting in the belly of the beast, a new political class of eurocrat-to-bes, who come to Brussels looking for political power, little caring about the polities they assumedly represent. Kundnani gets a lot of negative points for his central point being more of a gesturing than a real political theory.
Nonetheless there is a lot to take away here. I think I put up 10 books on my to-read list, and the book sent me on at least as many Wikipedia rabbit holes. Especially the fact that Algeria was - thanks to France's insistence - a member of the EEC, and even so until technically until 1976, came as a huge surprise. Kundnani has written a sort of concise presentation of post-colonialism-coded EU-skepticism, and that can be a really valuable resource.
I just wish it were more precise.
In the book, Kundani’s former Euro-optimism is represented as an implausible form of cosmopolitanism. The Union’s professed ambition, as we all know, was to make the warring nations of Europe come together to form one home. As the Commission president Manuel Barroso said in 2012 about the bloc winning the Nobel Peace Prize, the EU was proof that “it is possible to overcome the differences between ‘them’ and ‘us’”.
Rather than representing any such cosmopolitan triumph, Kundnani sees the EU as a transition from a nationalist logic of exclusion to a regionalist one.
It is rather customary to see the EU as a precursor to Kant’s world government from Zum ewigen Frieden. For Habermas, as one example also picked up by Kundnani, the EU represented the first stage in “overcoming the territorial principle” and de-centering political governance from attachments to ethnos and land. With Markus Brunner as the commissioner responsible for immigration affairs, Frontex gearing up to act as a pseudo-colonial police force in the “Neighbourhood”, the far right gaining its biggest wins in parliamentary elections, and so on and so on, one probably needn’t even recite all the reasons this picture seems rosey-eyed in retrospect. The Union now appears toothless even to stop border controls internal to it from appearing.
The original sin of EU-cosmopolitanism is “mistaking the EU for the world”. The likes of Beck and Habermas, whenever they fantasise about the “inherent connection of the EU and cosmopolitanism”, were really in the business of articulating a logic within very distinct boundaries. And those boundaries of integration were Kundnani’s “Eurowhiteness”.
The fundamental point is obvious: when you say you feel “European”, your expression is not synonymous with “I am a citizen of the world”. We often act like it is, but it is not. A Portuguese-Estonian couple is European, a Japanese-Maltese one is not - the former are evidence to Europe’s internal inclusivity, the latter to its external exclusivity.
But the question is, in what ways is this operative, and why? Kundnani's chosen metaphor -- I would really hesitate to call it a methodology -- is that of Anderson's Imagined Communities. Eurowhiteness, the territorial and ethnic boundaries of the white racial imaginary, are the imagined community for the regionalist entity that is the European project, just as birth and language were for the nation states of the 19th and 20th centuries.
This gets to some of my gripes about the book and generally about people using terms like "imagined community" and "social construct" etc. all willy-nilly. Anderson's case studies are varied, and they all have unifying features: linguistic cohesion gets feedback-looped through new print cultures, print cultures have an audience in bourgeois reading cultures, who in turn form a domestic market more or less coextensive with the national state. Sprinkle in some stuff about the temporal structure of the novel and, voila!, you have a theory of nationalism.
None, and I repeat, NONE of these features is present with Europe. There is, as your's truly is noting in the belly of the beast, a new political class of eurocrat-to-bes, who come to Brussels looking for political power, little caring about the polities they assumedly represent. Kundnani gets a lot of negative points for his central point being more of a gesturing than a real political theory.
Nonetheless there is a lot to take away here. I think I put up 10 books on my to-read list, and the book sent me on at least as many Wikipedia rabbit holes. Especially the fact that Algeria was - thanks to France's insistence - a member of the EEC, and even so until technically until 1976, came as a huge surprise. Kundnani has written a sort of concise presentation of post-colonialism-coded EU-skepticism, and that can be a really valuable resource.
I just wish it were more precise.
July 14, 2025
EU:sta, rasismista ja kolonialismista
Hans Kundnanin pitkä essee Euroopan unionin kolonialistisesta syvärakenteesta avaa hyvin eurooppalaisen projektin synkempiä sävyjä. Kundani lähtee purkamaan käsitystä siitä, että EU olisi kosmopoliittinen rauhanprojekti – sitä tarinaa Saksan ja Ranskan sitomisesta yhteen taloudellisin sitein.
EU:n kanta-asiakirjana pidetyssä Schumanin julistuksessa (1950) esimerkiksi todetaan, että ”lisääntynein resurssein Eurooppa voi tavoitella yhtä keskeisimmistä päämääristään, siis, Afrikan mantereen kehittämistä”. Euroopan hiili- ja teräsyhteisöä muodostettaessa Ranskan ja muiden maiden välillä käytiin kiistaa siirtomaiden sisällyttämisestä – erityisesti Italia ja Alankomaat halusivat ne mukaan päästäkseen käsiksi Ranskan siirtomaiden rautamalmivarantoihin. Ranska vastusti tätä aluksi, mutta muutti näkemystään, kuten Megan Brown kirjoittaa ”Ranskalaiset valtaapitävät alkoivat nähdä eurooppalaisen integraation tapana säilyttää Ranskan rooli imperialistisen voima”. Viisikymmentä luvulla Suezin kriisin kaltaiset tapahtumat lisäsivät halua pitää tiukemmin kiinni afrikkalaisista resursseista. Puhumattakaan nyt Algerian itsenäisyyssodan kaltaisesta koloniaalisesta väkivallasta.
Kundnani argumentoi, sangen pätevästi, että tämä koloniaalinen historia on peitetty holokaustin muiston alle. Holokausti on se eurooppalaisuuden trauma, johon eurooppalainen integraatio vastaa. ”Ei koskaan enää” ei koske kolonialismia.
Kolonialismi ottaa toki erilaisia muotoja – erityisen keskeinen näistä on eurooppalainen sivistystehtävä, ylemmyydentunto, joka ottaa erilaisia muotoja kehitysyhteistyöstä jokseenkin kaksinaamaiseen ihmisoikeuksien edistämiseen. Illuusio kosmopoliittisesta EU:sta murtuu viimeistään viimeisimmän pakolaiskriisin aikana. Kundnanin mukaan paljon rehellisempää olisi puhua regionalismista, alueellisuudesta, koska siitä on lopulta kyse. Jo Itä-Euroopan maiden ottaminen mukaan blokkiin on osoittautunut vaikeaksi (ovatko romanialaiset ja bulgarialaiset edes oikeasti valkoisia?). Eurooppa ei ole mikään soihtu maailmanpolitiikan yössä vaan taas yksi esimerkki alueellisesta imperiumista.
Hans Kundnanin pitkä essee Euroopan unionin kolonialistisesta syvärakenteesta avaa hyvin eurooppalaisen projektin synkempiä sävyjä. Kundani lähtee purkamaan käsitystä siitä, että EU olisi kosmopoliittinen rauhanprojekti – sitä tarinaa Saksan ja Ranskan sitomisesta yhteen taloudellisin sitein.
EU:n kanta-asiakirjana pidetyssä Schumanin julistuksessa (1950) esimerkiksi todetaan, että ”lisääntynein resurssein Eurooppa voi tavoitella yhtä keskeisimmistä päämääristään, siis, Afrikan mantereen kehittämistä”. Euroopan hiili- ja teräsyhteisöä muodostettaessa Ranskan ja muiden maiden välillä käytiin kiistaa siirtomaiden sisällyttämisestä – erityisesti Italia ja Alankomaat halusivat ne mukaan päästäkseen käsiksi Ranskan siirtomaiden rautamalmivarantoihin. Ranska vastusti tätä aluksi, mutta muutti näkemystään, kuten Megan Brown kirjoittaa ”Ranskalaiset valtaapitävät alkoivat nähdä eurooppalaisen integraation tapana säilyttää Ranskan rooli imperialistisen voima”. Viisikymmentä luvulla Suezin kriisin kaltaiset tapahtumat lisäsivät halua pitää tiukemmin kiinni afrikkalaisista resursseista. Puhumattakaan nyt Algerian itsenäisyyssodan kaltaisesta koloniaalisesta väkivallasta.
Kundnani argumentoi, sangen pätevästi, että tämä koloniaalinen historia on peitetty holokaustin muiston alle. Holokausti on se eurooppalaisuuden trauma, johon eurooppalainen integraatio vastaa. ”Ei koskaan enää” ei koske kolonialismia.
Kolonialismi ottaa toki erilaisia muotoja – erityisen keskeinen näistä on eurooppalainen sivistystehtävä, ylemmyydentunto, joka ottaa erilaisia muotoja kehitysyhteistyöstä jokseenkin kaksinaamaiseen ihmisoikeuksien edistämiseen. Illuusio kosmopoliittisesta EU:sta murtuu viimeistään viimeisimmän pakolaiskriisin aikana. Kundnanin mukaan paljon rehellisempää olisi puhua regionalismista, alueellisuudesta, koska siitä on lopulta kyse. Jo Itä-Euroopan maiden ottaminen mukaan blokkiin on osoittautunut vaikeaksi (ovatko romanialaiset ja bulgarialaiset edes oikeasti valkoisia?). Eurooppa ei ole mikään soihtu maailmanpolitiikan yössä vaan taas yksi esimerkki alueellisesta imperiumista.
January 12, 2024
A brief, but interesting read on the ethnic/cultural element of European regionalism that the author calls "Eurowhiteness" that has informed the post-war European project
Thought the discussion on the countries of central and eastern Europe was particularly engaging in highlighting the contradictions of joining the EU as it would mean not only liberalising their economies, but also accepting constraints on national and popular sovereignty at the exact moment they thought they were finally recovering them. Drawing on Larry Wolff's work in tracing the idea of eastern Europe as distinct from western Europe originating in the Enlightenment, as up to and including the Renaissance, the fundamental conceptual division of European had been between a barbaric north and civilised south, but a conceptual reorientation emerged dividing western Europe, which had replaced southern Europe as the centre of civilisation, and eastern Europe including Russia that remains to the present
Finally the chapter on the new civilising mission of the EU and its relation to Turkey underlined the implicit differentiation between white and non-white countries, undermining the idea of Europea as an inclusive project based on universal values, and instead showing that the EU was a regional, rather than a cosmopolitan, project that defined its borders in ethnic and cultural terms
Thought the discussion on the countries of central and eastern Europe was particularly engaging in highlighting the contradictions of joining the EU as it would mean not only liberalising their economies, but also accepting constraints on national and popular sovereignty at the exact moment they thought they were finally recovering them. Drawing on Larry Wolff's work in tracing the idea of eastern Europe as distinct from western Europe originating in the Enlightenment, as up to and including the Renaissance, the fundamental conceptual division of European had been between a barbaric north and civilised south, but a conceptual reorientation emerged dividing western Europe, which had replaced southern Europe as the centre of civilisation, and eastern Europe including Russia that remains to the present
Finally the chapter on the new civilising mission of the EU and its relation to Turkey underlined the implicit differentiation between white and non-white countries, undermining the idea of Europea as an inclusive project based on universal values, and instead showing that the EU was a regional, rather than a cosmopolitan, project that defined its borders in ethnic and cultural terms
June 9, 2025
El llibre Eurowhitness de l’analista polític Hans Kundnani ofereix una crítica al projecte europeu a partir d’una anàlisi històrica sobre la mateixa comunitat. Tanmateix, tal com argumenta Hans, per entendre de manera correcta la crítica hem de pensar en la UE com a una expressió de regionalisme (semblant al nacionalisme, però a gran escala).
Un dels punts més rellevants en els que l’autor incideix és en el passat colonial d’Europa. Kundnani argumenta com la regió ha tractat d’encobrir el seu passat colonialista a través de l’Holocaust. En conseqüència, es genera una amnèsia imperial, la qual donarà pas a discursos i idees basades en el supremacisme blanc.
Al llarg del llibre l’autor analitzarà altres esdeveniments històrics com la crisi migratòria, el Brexit o la integració dels països de l’est d’Europa, aspectes que donaran continuïtat a les dinàmiques colonialistes.
En definitiva, Kundnani a través d’aquest llibre tracta de reflectir la idea on la Unió Europea tot i intentar establir una identitat col·lectiva basada en principis com la diversitat i igualtat ha desenvolupat una identitat jerarquitzada. Realitzant així una forta crítica i desafiant el concepte d’identitat europea.
Un dels punts més rellevants en els que l’autor incideix és en el passat colonial d’Europa. Kundnani argumenta com la regió ha tractat d’encobrir el seu passat colonialista a través de l’Holocaust. En conseqüència, es genera una amnèsia imperial, la qual donarà pas a discursos i idees basades en el supremacisme blanc.
Al llarg del llibre l’autor analitzarà altres esdeveniments històrics com la crisi migratòria, el Brexit o la integració dels països de l’est d’Europa, aspectes que donaran continuïtat a les dinàmiques colonialistes.
En definitiva, Kundnani a través d’aquest llibre tracta de reflectir la idea on la Unió Europea tot i intentar establir una identitat col·lectiva basada en principis com la diversitat i igualtat ha desenvolupat una identitat jerarquitzada. Realitzant així una forta crítica i desafiant el concepte d’identitat europea.
January 9, 2024
Problematic, racist book.
I'm not sure why the author characterizes as 'disturbing' the growing desire in Europe to reduce immigration. The fact is that cities are overcrowded across Europe, unemployment and underemployment are very high, and assimilation is simply not working in many countries, as Angela Murkel has pointed out. These are legitimate concerns for Europeans across the spectrum, particularly poor and working class Europeans, whom the bourgeois bureaucratic class seems to hold in disdain.
White Europeans are indigenous to Europe.
According to Article 8 of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples:
1. Indigenous peoples and individuals have the right not to be subject to forced assimilation or destruction of their culture.
I'm not sure why the author characterizes as 'disturbing' the growing desire in Europe to reduce immigration. The fact is that cities are overcrowded across Europe, unemployment and underemployment are very high, and assimilation is simply not working in many countries, as Angela Murkel has pointed out. These are legitimate concerns for Europeans across the spectrum, particularly poor and working class Europeans, whom the bourgeois bureaucratic class seems to hold in disdain.
White Europeans are indigenous to Europe.
According to Article 8 of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples:
1. Indigenous peoples and individuals have the right not to be subject to forced assimilation or destruction of their culture.
December 23, 2025
A very interesting book, although not as well-articulated or original as I had been expecting. It certainly offers a refreshing perspective on the EU, but the argument is not as clearly sustained as it might be, and it is a bit clouded by the continual referencing and citing of other authors. It is an interpretation, without too much empirical evidence, but it is reasonably convincing. The final chapter is a kind of add-on (for British readers?) and the interpretation of Brexit is rather forced, not backed up with empirical evidence and not very convincing.
January 22, 2024
A new concise perspective on the EU’s integration story. It appears convincing that the European empires rebranded their past to escape forward into a new future that strongly bears the marks of the past. Even though he warns the reader in the Introduction that he’d approach the theory along the story of integration, I would have spread more words on actual EU policies of development aid and immigration policy that also strongly underpin the idea of Eurowhiteness.
February 23, 2024
Short, sharp read offering a very pointed exploration of particular shortcomings and racial/imperial blindspots within the concept of the European project. Uncomfortable reading in the best possible sense
November 19, 2023
Op zich een goed verhaal. Meer een lang essay dan een echt boek, maar voor mij niet erg veel nieuwe gezichtspunten. Wel in het laatste hoofdstuk over de Brexit en het oude imperialisme in Engeland.
December 15, 2023
A thought-provoking book that has stimulated me to reflect on my own understanding of the meaning of Europe.
May 20, 2024
Thought provoking read which allows you to get another view and history on the EU project. Always interesting!
January 5, 2025
Really interesting read. Was disappointed by the lack of conclusive chapter. Why only focus on the UK at the end?
January 12, 2025
I need to mention I read it in English 🌟
February 3, 2024
I agree with the thrust of this book which is the critique of liberal-centrist smugness about universal values of the EU and all the rhetoric that goes with it; much more can be said on the topics of race and the eventual borders of the EU than Kundani does here. Most of the right and far right in continental Europe has accepted the hegemony of the existing political entity and are busy re-making it in their own image anyway.
December 5, 2023
A missed opportunity. The author seems to re-discover what every student of European affairs or history has always known: two discourses and positions cohabitate within the EU, as a civic/cosmopolitan project and as a more civilisational/power one. It's not one or the other and the EU needs to take the rest of the world into account. Also conflating nationalism and regionalism as if these could carry the same kind of exclusionary effects seems to me highly debatable, if not a lunacy. Very interesting pages on Brexit though and some interesting facts about former colonies in the EEC after the Rome Treaty.
February 1, 2024
This is an interesting contribution to debates around migration, racism and colonial continuities in the EU. If you identify as pro-European and would like to engage more critically with the history of the EU, this book could be a good starting point!
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews