Global mobility, migrations and a growing cultural and religious diversity are shaping the identity of 21st century Europe. But many obstacles are still in place before European societies will become genuinely pluralist societies: in an age of economic turbulences, politics of fear, spreading populisms and new racisms, political imagination and democratic forces still need to be mobilized in order to break out of the trap of reciprocal rejection or misrecognition and the spiraling of negative feelings. Part of this enterprise can focus on understanding different facets of the trap itself, unraveling the nature of reactive and hostile identities, the political-mediatic creation of ‘exceptionalisms’ and the construction of so-called ‘communities of fear’ through the stigmatization and securitization of migrations.