Let Us Europeans Move: How Collective Identities Drive Public Support for Border Regimes inside the EU

After three decades of European integration, during which border controls seemed like a relic from the past, the refugee crisis and Brexit have brought the issue to the centre of public debate. Existing research points towards the relevance of collective identity for attitude formation in the field of high politics, but has so far not answered the question of how far collective identities explain support for different intra-EU border regimes. My article closes this gap. It is based on an original representative EU-wide survey from 2017 (N = 10,827), which analyses the nexus between border regime support, identity and migration experience, as well as contextual factors like immigration rates. Support for Schengen membership is significantly stronger among respondents with a European identity than those identifying exclusively with their nation-state. These findings suggest that the endorsement of open borders and further integration in this policy area is strongly dependent on an inclusive European collective identity.