In 2005 Irina Hristova, a successful Bulgarian journalist in one of the national dailies, told me about her exasperation with reading a recent article in the newspaper Trud, one of the most widely read publications in Bulgaria. The article was by Anton Donchev, a well-known writer, who argued that despite suggestions that Bulgarian children today need to study English but prefer to read Terry Pratchett instead of old Bulgarian children's books, the study of Bulgarian language and literature in the schools was more important than ever. In Irina's words, Donchev insisted that ‘we need to have our Bulgarian passports close to our hearts as we enter the EU' and ‘ had this nasty, jingoist, awful rhetoric’. Irina ‘ got scared’ after reading this, because she realized how popular such rhetoric is, considering that it is typical of Trud and considering that this newspaper has one of the highest circulations in the country:

This chapter looks at the position of young cultural producers, such as Irina, and investigates how they negotiated the tension between Bulgarian national identity and European belonging on the eve of Bulgaria's accession into the European Union in 2007. ‘Europe’ impacts the Bulgarian context, not just through actual political and economic interaction with the EU, but also as a mental concept that can be strategically mobilized by social agents to improve their life chances.