Youth Citizenship and the European Union

This book applies a number of different disciplinary and geographical perspectives to ascertain whether and how European youth identify with the EU, trust EU institutions and engage in EU issues. It investigates the factors and processes that predict the different ways in which young Europeans engage (or do not engage) with social and political issues and become active European citizens. The volume is based on results from the first two years of the Horizon 2020 CATCH-EyoU project (“Constructing AcTive CitizensHip with European Youth: Policies, Practices, Challenges and Solutions”). It addresses different dimensions of active citizenship in the EU and different processes and contexts that explain the construction of youth active citizenship, including societal-level factors such as policy context and media; interaction-level contexts such as school and family; and individual-level factors. The final chapter emphasizes the impact of the current historical context on the development of young Europeans’ civic identity and their understanding of the social and political reality. With contributions from a variety of disciplines including psychology, political science, communications and education, and spanning geographic contexts across Europe, this book will be of interest to researchers studying contemporary European youth and the construction of young people’s identity. This book was originally published as a special issue of the European Journal of Developmental Psychology. Chapters 1 and5 are available Open Access at https://www.routledge.com/products/9780367236557.

Introduction – Bringing the European Union closer to its young citizens: Youth active citizenship in Europe and trust in EU institutions Frosso Motti-Stefanidi and Elvira Cicognani 1. Citizenship’s tangled web: Associations, gaps and tensions in formulations of European youth active citizenship across disciplines Shakuntala Banaji, Sam Mejias, Ragne Kouts, Filipe Piedade, Vassilis Pavlopoulos, Iana Tzankova, Alena Mackova and Erik Amnå 2. Being both – A European and a national citizen? Comparing young people’s identification with Europe and their home country across eight European countries Monique Landberg, Katharina Eckstein, Clara Mikolajczyk, Sam Mejias, Petr Macek, Frosso Motti-Stefanidi, Ekaterina Enchikova, Antonella Guarino, Andu Rämmer and Peter Noack 3. Apathy or alienation? Political passivity among youths across eight European Union countries Viktor Dahl, Erik Amnå, Shakuntala Banaji, Monique Landberg, Jan Šerek, Norberto Ribeiro, Mai Beilmann, Vassilis Pavlopoulos and Bruna Zani 4. Young European citizens: An individual by context perspective on adolescent European citizenship Jan Šerek and Philipp Jugert 5. Cross-border mobility, European identity and participation among European adolescents and young adults Davide Mazzoni, Cinzia Albanesi, Pedro D. Ferreira, Signe Opermann, Vassilis Pavlopoulos and Elvira Cicognani 6. Trust in alternative and professional media: The case of the youth news audiences in three European countries Jakub Macek, Alena Macková, Vassilis Pavlopoulos, Veronika Kalmus, C. Michael Elavsky and Jan Šerek 7. Commentary: Who among European youth are active citizens at the EU level and why? Constance Flanagan

Elvira Cicognani is Professor of Social and Community Psychology at the University of Bologna, Italy. Her current research interests concern forms and processes of civic and political participation and active citizenship, particularly in adolescence and young adulthood; sense of community and psychosocial well-being; psychosocial and community processes in health behaviors; and health promotion interventions. Frosso Motti-Stefanidi is Professor of Psychology at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece. She has served as President of the European Association for Developmental Psychology, and as President of the European Association of Personality Psychology. Her research has mainly focused on the study of immigrant youth adaptation and wellbeing, which she examines from a risk and resilience developmental perspective.