Good citizenship at European crossroads: Studying senses of belonging and norms of citizenship among young people

Expectations about who good citizens are and how they behave have changed considerably in recent years and this is especially apparent in the case of young people in Europe. On the one hand, the introduction of European Union citizenship has called into question the assumed exclusivity between citizenship and the nation state and the implications of this no-longer exclusive relationship for citizens’ senses of belonging, i.e. fostering the unity of political communities at the national and EU/European levels. On the other hand, there has been a broader shift in young people’s norms of good citizenship across advanced democracies – norms that shape people’s political behaviour. This shift has been repeatedly ascertained in contrast to older generations. So, while a growing segment of European youth has been noted to adopt engaged norms of citizenship, taking part in issue-based participation, such as protests and volunteering, older generations have tended to adhere to duty-based norms, participating in politics via institutionalised routes, such as electoral and party politics. There is, however, growing evidence that showcase these norms do not exist in a vacuum, with most (young) people adhering to multiple norms of citizenship at the same time, including for example support for traditional norms which essentially feed into passive support for the existing socio-political status quo. This paper sets out to address these two developments simultaneously in order to explore their implications for European citizenship. Specifically, it studies the relationship between young people’s senses of European and national belonging and distinct norms of good citizenship, including duty-based, engaged and passive norms via multilevel modelling of the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study 2016 dataset (N= 52,758) using SPSS. The paper demonstrates that norms of good citizenship, especially engaged and duty-based norms, can strengthen young people’s sense of European belonging and, consequently, their European citizenship. By comparison, passive norms emerge as negative predictors or, at best, show ambivalence. These dynamics remain stable when socio-economic predictors at the individual (gender, migrant and socio-economic background) and country levels (East/West regional location, migration integration policy and globalisation indexes) are considered. However, once young people’s sense of national belonging is accounted for, the relevance of citizenship norms appears significantly reduced. The overall findings of this paper underscore that norms of good citizenship concurrently support young people’s sense of European citizenship, broadly defined. Yet, the broader implications of the interplay between their senses of European and national belonging and various norms of citizenship demand further and immediate research, particularly in light of how the national dimension can challenge what may be seen as a more ‘inclusive’ model of European citizenship.