Abstract
Young people in Europe are often described as apolitical non-participants in the civic culture of their own states and the European Union (EU). Using empirical data based on group discussions (n = 324) in 29 European states (104 locations; 2000 young people aged between 11 and 19), this paper challenges this, and suggests that many young people have distinct political views and are motivated to participate in both political discussions and traditional and non-traditional forms of participation. They are particularly interested in a range of current issues, largely around human rights, migration and (anti-)nationalism, and the article illustrates this with examples from a range of countries. Human rights issues raised concerned their perception of contemporary injustices, which were constructed as European values and formed a significant element in their self-identification as Europeans, and a general unwillingness to be identified with ‘the nation’. This broad pan-European analysis suggests that young people see themselves in many ways as a politically distinct cohort, a generation with different political values than those of their parents and grandparents.
Highlights
IntroductionThe narrative that that young people are increasingly uninterested in politics is widespread{xe “politics: young people’s lack of interest”} [1,2,3], there are some alternative analyses (such as Ekström [4], Ross and Dooly [5] and Kiisel et al [6])
The narrative that that young people are increasingly uninterested in politics is widespread{xe “politics: young people’s lack of interest”} [1,2,3], there are some alternative analyses
Hahn suggested that many studies of political socialization construct young people as passive recipients of political messages from the social environment [7] (p. 20): her study of citizenship education programmes in the UK, Denmark, Germany, The Netherlands and the USA concluded that political culture and educational ethos interact to limit the extent to which educational programmes contribute to the construction of political identity
Summary
The narrative that that young people are increasingly uninterested in politics is widespread{xe “politics: young people’s lack of interest”} [1,2,3], there are some alternative analyses (such as Ekström [4], Ross and Dooly [5] and Kiisel et al [6]). Hahn suggested that many studies of political socialization construct young people as passive recipients of political messages from the social environment [7] Resistance to political and social education is sometimes associated with a denial that young people can understand sophisticated political concepts (Maitles [8]). This paper is a study of the social construction of political identity, rather than of ‘political socialization’: the methodology described assumes that young people have agency in their active construction of the political, rather than being the passive recipients of some ‘socialization’. It suggests that many of these young people construct themselves as a generationally distinct cohort from their elders: more inclined to a cosmopolitan world-view, with an emphasis on what they see as distinctively European values of rights and equalities, and less inclined to identify with their ‘nation’
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