The Europeans of tomorrow: Researching European identity among young Europeans

Huyst, Petra (2009) The Europeans of tomorrow: Researching European identity among young Europeans. In: UNSPECIFIED.

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Abstract

After the rejection of the European Constitution in 2005, and more recently the rejection of the Lisbon Treaty by the Irish, questions were raised about if and how European citizens feel connected to the European Union. What does it actually mean to feel European? Not much empirical study has yet been undertaken, especially in political science research, on this topic. This is due to the difficulty of dealing with identity questions. Not only are identities amorphous, contextually influenced and sometimes fluid, it is hard to get a full understanding of this concept by using just one methodological approach. This paper‟s analysis is based on the writings of M. Bruter (2005) who makes a conceptual distinction between a civic and a cultural European political identity, thus overcoming the often acclaimed theoretical deadlock that exists in literature on political identity. Theoretically, this paper thus elaborates on this framework as proposed by Bruter. Empirically, the paper focuses on the potential European political identity among young people, presenting a research framework that combines both a quantitative and a qualitative approach. It draws upon an in-depth case-study of a specific target group, namely young Europeans between the age of 17 and 24, in the European Union. As this group has grown up with the EU as an evident entity it could be expected that some form of European identity has arisen. However, the recent rejection of the Lisbon Treaty whereby young people predominantly voted no and the first results of our empirical research seem to indicate otherwise. The study highlights young people‟s perception of the EU on the one hand, and scrutinizes if and how they feel connected to the EU on the other.

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