Defining The Identity Of The Younger Europe

This book is available in open access thanks to the generous support of the Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań Defining the Identity of the Younger Europe gathers studies that shed new light on the rich tapestry of early modern “Younger Europe” — Byzantine-Slavic and Scandinavian territories. It unearths the multi-dimensional aspects of the period, revealing the formation and transformation of nations that shared common threads, the establishment of political systems, and the enduring legacies of religious movements. Immersive, enlightening, and thought-provoking, the book promises to be an indispensable resource for anyone interested in the complexities of early modern Europe. This collection does not just retell history; it provokes readers to rethink it. Contributors: Giovanna Brogi, Piotr Chmiel,Karin Friedrich, Anna Grześkowiak-Krwawicz, Mirosława Hanusiewicz-Lavallee, Robert Aleksander Maryks, Tadhg Ó hAnnracháin, Maciej Ptaszyński, Paul Shore, and Frank E. Sysyn.

This open access book presents findings from 15 European countries participating in the second cycle of the IEA International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS 2016). The study investigates the ways in which young people are prepared to undertake their roles as citizens in a range of countries in the second decade of the 21st century. It responds to new and persisting challenges in the area of civic and citizenship education. The main results presented in this book are based on data collected using a European student questionnaire and provide insights into lower-secondary students’ views on European identity (such as whether they identify as European, or have opportunities to learn about Europe in school), perceptions of freedom of movement and immigration (such as attitudes toward immigration, restriction of freedom of movement, and the freedom of European citizens to live and work across Europe), and perceptions of Europe and its future (such as views on European cooperation, expectations regarding Europe’s future, and attitudes toward the European Union). For the 12 countries that participated in the previous cycle (ICCS 2009), ICCS 2016 reveals changes in young people’s perceptions of immigration and European identity between 2009 and 2016. Test and questionnaire data from the international core study are used to review the extent to which region-specific perceptions are related to other factors, such as students’ level of civic knowledge and social or educational contexts.

Peaceful, prosperous, democratic and respectful of people’s rights, building Europe is an ongoing challenge. For many years it seemed that Europeans lived on a continent of shared values and a common destiny. No one paid attention to the alarm bells warning of growing divisions across the continent, which have become more insistent since the economic and social crisis. Europe and its values, previously taken for granted, are now being contested. These clouds are casting a shadow across Europe’s future, and old demons, long dormant, have started to raise their voices again. With a deepening values divide there is an urgent need for public debate and a reconsideration of how Europeans can strengthen the European project. Is a “Europe united in diversity” still feasible? Can a consensus be forged on a set of values pertaining to a common European identity? What should be done to preserve European unity? The Council of Europe, with its membership covering Europe from Vladivostok to Lisbon and from Reykjavik to Ankara, and its mission to promote democracy, human rights and the rule of law, provides an excellent framework for discussing the current state of thinking and dynamics behind the concept of European identity. For these reasons, the Council of Europe, together with the École nationale d’administration in Strasbourg, held a series of European Identity Debates featuring eminent personalities from a variety of backgrounds including politics, civil society, academia and the humanities. This publication presents the 10 European Identity Debates lectures. The authors identify major issues and challenges and provide an original analysis of different aspects of European identity within their fields of expertise. The authors formulate proposals on how to better understand the multifaceted nature of Europe, what it means today to be European, and what should be done in terms of ideas and strategies to keep Europe dynamic and to build a sustainable future.

Throughout history, much has been written on why wars and crises occur and why human beings kill each other or are often so ready to do so. While some blame human nature, state structures or the anarchic order within the international system, others hold prejudices and the "othering" or dehumanizing of those different from us as being responsible. The region in which we live has particularly suffered a great deal from these violent processes. Nationalist ideologies, most of which were defined in opposition to one another, alienated "others," abstracted them from their humanity, and made them subject to various kinds of tyranny. Turks, Bulgarians, Greeks and many others had their share in this process of mutual alienation. Across the Euro-Mediterranean region throughout history immigrations have been imposed, publics extorted, crises fomented, and interventions and wars suffered through. The study in your hands sheds light on the processes of "othering" and alienation in large part responsible for this troubled history. It serves as a tool through which the past and the future can be understood. And it examines prejudice, the largest obstacle facing Turkey on its path to EU membership, while touching on various issues such as minority rights, the notion of culture, the role of symbols and other visual images in politics, the narration of culture within the capitalist order and its political outcomes, and finally the EU's Mediterranean politics.

This book examines how young people in Europe construct their political identities. Based on small discussion groups with 2000 young people across 29 European states, Alistair Ross explores how 13 to 20 year olds build identities in contemporary society, creating contingent narratives of local, national and European identities with families, friends and social media. As well as exploring what these kaleidoscopic identities look like and the sources they draw on, it also examines how these accounts are assembled and integrated with each other. The study uses deliberative discussions to allow young people to develop their own constructs and terms in conversation with each other. This analysis presents a complex polyphonic of political beliefs and values of rights, which young Europeans attach to political structures and institutions that often transcend traditional boundaries of state and nation. Finding Political Identities will be of interest to postgraduate students and academics across Education, Sociology, Politics and European Studies, especially those with a focus on Social Constructionism, Citizenship, Identity Studies, Social Policy, and Youth Studies.

This book on European Identity aims to «promote reflection on the mutual relationship between educational processes and European construction». It attempts to get down to what this means at the everyday level, the notion of European Identity for all citizens, specially in the educational field, and identify elements for the promotion and anchorage of this concept. To this end the authors have contemplated articulating the topic around the axis «individual - group - society», and the content has been distributed in two blocks: europe read from an educational perpective, and European Identity, new challenges for the school.

This volume contends that young individuals across Europe relate to their country’s history in complex and often ambivalent ways. It pays attention to how both formal education and broader culture communicate ideas about the past, and how young people respond to these ideas. The studies collected in this volume show that such ideas about the past are central to the formation of the group identities of nations, social movements, or religious groups. Young people express received historical narratives in new, potentially subversive, ways. As young people tend to be more mobile and ready to interrogate their own roots than later generations, they selectively privilege certain aspects of their identities and their identification with their family or nation while neglecting others. This collection aims to correct the popular misperception that young people are indifferent towards history and prove instead that historical narratives are constitutive to their individual identities and their sense of belonging to something broader than themselves.

The EU is to-day at a crossroad: either it becomes a great supranational union or it goes back to being an array of separate independent states. Alberto Martinelli and Alessandro Cavalli draw a grand fresco of the society in which the European Union is taking shape.