Orientations of young people from Bratislava and Prague to citizenship and European identity

This report presents the results of the empirical research carried out with young people (18-24) from Bratislava and Prague within the project "Youth and European Identity". The aim of this project is to provide an insight into the orientations of young people from strategically selected regions in 6 European countries (UK, Spain, Austria, Germany, Slovak and Czech republics) to 'being European' and to European citizenship. In each studied region, a random sample and a sample of people who are more likely to have a European career ("target group") are compared. The most important items in our respondents' definition of what is Europe are 'certain values and traditions' and 'membership of the EU'. Young people from the Bratislava random sample consider being future EU citizens as more important for their overall identity than their peers from the Prague random sample. The young people from the target groups in both cities think of themselves more often as 'European citizens' than the young people from random samples. Also, more young people from target groups reported very strong or strong feelings about being European. In both cities there is no difference between the attachment to Europe expressed by the target groups and random samples.