Los Jóvenes y la Unión Europea: Identidad y Política en Cataluña

Abstract

In a Europe based on the idea of equal membership, where there is an ongoing collective institutional attempt at creating a shared European identity in multi-regional Europe, it is considered vital to understand the attitudes of youth toward this shared identity in order to obtain clues about future attitudes, and thus, future cohesion of the European Union. This article presents results from a survey of 1709 students aged 15-16, attending 30 Catalan high schools, in which participants are asked questions about their identification (or lack thereof) with Europe and, indirectly, their interest in whether or not they would like to continue to form part of the current supranational structure. This article takes into account a number of socio-demographic variables, relevant in the international literature, regarding European Union identification and its continuance. Moreover, given that it is currently an intriguing time to delve into youth attitudes in Catalonia, the particularities of the Catalan political situation in 2014 are briefly elaborated on and taken into consideration in the data analyses in some measure. The discussion centers on comparing the findings of the survey with those of other studies in different European contexts and proposes new areas of inquiry for future research.