Good Citizenship at Crossroads? Youth Citizenship and the Illiberal Turn in Europe

There is increasing attention paid to how citizens respond to threats to liberal democracy. This is especially relevant in the context of Europe, where not only national but also some supranational institutions – traditionally presented as the pinnacle of liberalism – seem to increasingly embrace illiberal norms, e.g. around migration and by extension citizenship policy. However, we know relatively little about how young people's norms of democracy and citizenship and their perceived political roles as "good citizens" are reflected in these broader shifts. Considering that young people shape the future of both the shape of political systems that govern them, and so broader norms of democracy and citizenship, understanding their perspectives is crucial. Against this backdrop, the proposed paper constructs a model of "good" national citizenship among European youth. It applies structural equation modelling to data from the European segment of the 2022 International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS) to investigate whether and to what extent youth approaches to democracy and citizenship reveal an illiberal shift. Specifically, the paper explores the relationship between different norms of young people’s good citizenship—such as duty-based, engaged, and passive norms—and how these norms reflect young people’s political identities and, in turn, shape approaches to democratic politics. Understanding how young people conceive of "good" citizenship and how this informs their civic and political engagement has important implications for likely significance and longevity of Europe’s apparent illiberal shift.