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Being European. Lithuanian Youth's Understandings of European Identity and Lithuania's Membership in the EU Since the creation of European Economic Community Europe has faced a lot of integration processes which have heavily influenced Europeans lives. The beginning of political and social integration led EEC transformation into the European Union. In 1992, the creation of European citizenship was established by the Maastricht Treaty, encouraging people to be more involved in the decision-making processes. As a result, the discourse of European Identity was reinforced and gained more attention in the academic field. Throughout the time European Identity became more and more present in vastly utilitarian discourse of the European Union support. As a result, economic variables were redefined and supplemented by more vague ones as a sense of belonging and solidarity between European communities. Numerous quantitative researches have been carried out on the relation between European integration support and European Identity. Scholars argue what impact European Identity has on the perceptions of European integration. However, it is not clear how European Identity is understood between European countries and what does it mean to Europeans. Based on earlier researches this Bachelor’s thesis focuses on youth’s understandings of European Identity and Lithuania’s membership in the EU. Ronald Inglehart states that youth had more financially stable and physically secure upbringings than previous generations, thus young people should prioritize postmaterial values. In this case youth should emphasise sense of belonging and solidarity while explaining their attitudes towards European integration. In addition, this research takes into consideration theoretical opposition of National and European identity. According to Gerard Delanty, European and National identities are compatible and can live in accordance with individuals’ perceptions of who they are. Considering complexity of the topic under study, in this case qualitative research seemed most appropriate. The method of semi-structured interviews was adopted in order to encourage participants of the research to construct their own arguments and explain their attitudes towards European Identity and Lithuania’s membership in the EU. Interviews took place in the presence of quarantine thus they were conducted through Skype and Zoom online communication platforms in April and the very beginning of May of 2020. The total number of 15 people have participated. The vast majority of research group are students and high school graduates between 18 to 25 years. All participant names have been removed from the thesis. The findings of this study show that European Identity is understood in a pragmatic way, closely related to membership in the EU. Benefits of Lithuania’s membership in the EU are the most commonly mentioned arguments enabling youth to feel sense of belonging in Europe and define themselves as Europeans. On the one hand, postmaterial values are used to define European Identity. On the other, those values are overshadowed by the pragmatic views towards European integration. However, future researches should focus on more representative samples and consider elder generations in order to get deeper knowledge of the understandings of the European Identity in Lithuania and how it is connected to European integration. |
