We tend to think people choose to be nationalist in the same way people choose to be vegetarian or opt to support one football team over another. It’s a lifestyle decision to wave the tricolour or recite odes to 1916. Or is it?

Sociologist Neil Fligstein has tracked nationalist sentiment in Europe in the wake of the economic downturn, showing that people have become more nationalistic in those countries that were worst hit economically, particularly the Baltic states, Britain, Italy, Ireland, France and Greece.

He cites Eurobarometer data for Ireland that shows those who describe themselves as “Irish only” rose from 49 per cent in 2005 to 60 per cent in 2010, whereas those describing themselves as European, either exclusively or as a precursor to their national identity, dropped from 9 per cent to 6 per cent.

By 2014, with the economy recovering, the proportion of respondents describing themselves as "Irish only" had fallen back down to 49 per cent, but those identifying as European (either "European only" or "European-Irish") had dropped further, to 5 per cent.

The data shows the latter group of individuals tend to be from higher-income brackets and more widely travelled. According to Eurobarometer, “respondents who say they almost never have financial difficulties are also more likely to identify as Europeans”.

An inference that could be drawn from that is you don’t chose to be nationalist: nationalism chooses you. Just how Irish you feel is related to the extent to which you have been slugged by austerity.

This idea is useful to hold on to when reflecting on the rise of populist, nationalist movements in Europe and the US. They are not necessarily driven by xenophobia and racism (although that might be part of the equation), they also reflect disquiet over the way in which international law, international banking and finance and other aspects of globalisation are letting people down.

Prof Fligstein of the University of California, Berkeley, was in Dublin recently for a TCD-UCD sociology event to discuss an article he cowrote on this topic in the Journal of European Public Policy.

The concluding thoughts from that paper provides today’s idea: “Without a positive agenda that appears to directly help all of the citizens of Europe, the EU is in danger of finding its entire structure delegitimised by citizens who increasingly do not identity with other Europeans but only the nation.”

Is there a way of encouraging people to think of themselves as European rather than just Irish?

“We have theories of how these identities form, and what our theories tell us is that if you interact with other people that are like you, then you end up identifying with them. If you have ongoing social relations with them, then you strengthen your sense of ‘we’re in this together’, and if you have a common adversary or foe – whether real or imaginary – then it becomes ‘us versus them’.

“So you’d expect to find a European identity in people who would interact with people from other countries, and form relationships with those people, and then come to see themselves as being Europeans as opposed to just being Germans or Irish.

“About 10 per cent of the people in Europe have this identity, which is a large number: it’s 35 million people out of 350 million. But what we know is they’re disproportionately drawn from the most educated part of the population; they tend to be younger, and make more money, and belong to the higher, white-collar, professional occupations.”

Does this point to a contradiction at the heart of the European project, as member states are competing with each other financially while also purporting to work together?

“Whose project is the creation of a European identity? A lot of people think that’s the outcome of this integration process, and if you go back to the people who started this, like

Jean Monnet

, this was not their immediate goal, but they thought that over time people would come to appreciate each other and think they were alike.

“I think the group that is the most on the outs – and this brings us to immigration and those other questions – are people in countries who have more of a national identity, who do tend to be blue-collar service workers and older people. Those folks have seen the high fliers go out and make all the money, and then they look at their own situation and say, ‘I’m not benefiting from all this.’ ”

Is that why Donald Trump and other

American politicians playing the nationalist card are polling so well? “I think people were always nationalistic but the financial crisis has got a lot of people thinking

, Where was the government protecting me? They didn’t. And in American politics at the moment, you have the political and economic elite freaked out by this populism, and the reason they’re freaked out is because they are the direct objects of it; they are the ones who ran the show.”

Is European identity at a turning point?

“If the British decide to leave, one could imagine a really negative consequence, but one could also imagine it being turned into a positive opportunity, in the sense that the rest of the Europeans can say, ‘Good riddance to you; now we’re going to realise the kind of co-operation you’ve made impossible all along.’

“Also, the negotiations with Turkey could turn out to be very important if people can see that there’s a humanitarian operation under way and feel ‘We’ve crafted a collective solution to help solve this problem.’ ”