Identity and Multiplicity of Belonging in a Europe in Search of Democracy

Abstract

The research we present concerns the narratives of political and social identity of young adolescents sampled in Northern, Central and Southern Italy. Our qualitative analysis is based on constructivism and aims to enhance narratives by privileging the communication of meanings elaborated by the young people. Consistent with this perspective is our choice of the paradigm of pedagogical personalism, which places the human being as a ‘person’ at the center of reflection. The diverse universe of youth manifests multifaceted aspects that it is possible to bring out using interaction with deliberative, open, and non-pre-conceptual discussion. The link between semantic cores such as democracy, freedom, rights, interculturalism, and citizenship runs through the analyses of the entire research (based on the study by Ross’s work in 2019, Finding Political Identities: Young People in a Changing Europe), examined here specifically in the Italian context. The article presents some contrasting aspects of the way young people living in Europe. They harbor uncertainties and discontinuities from the universe of values inherited from previous generations. However, from the tunnel of doubt young people show that they know how to emerge by outlining the forms of a promise of social commitment containing a hope for change, defined as the design of a future in which alternatives to the current situation can be found. In the background, the theme of democracy shows as an aspiration for something still struggling to be born.