Abstract:

People’s sense of belonging to a cultural space relates to their individual and collective identity and reflects their system of cultural values. In Latvia, due to its historical peculiarities, the issue of developing a national identity is extremely urgent, since the time of existence of an independent state is rather short. This issue is particularly significant in Latvia today since Latvia celebrated its centenary in 2018. Currently, national identity is widely discussed and supported by the Latvian official power and is seen in the national policy as a consolidating factor under the current circumstances of globalization. The aim of the study is to analyse in what way young people’s regional, national, and European identity is developed within a general education school, and what its peculiarities are.

The fieldwork at schools took place from 10 February 2019 to 30 May 2019. A total of 60 students and 9 teachers in the selected three schools of Latvia were interviewed. All informants were citizens of the Republic of Latvia. The average duration of interviews with teachers was 51 minutes and those with students – 37 minutes. The interviews were transcribed and coded by employing NVivo 12 software, in the Latvian language. A thematic analysis of interviews was undertaken using an iterative, inductive approach to the generation of codes and themes guided by the aims and objectives of the analysis.

Young people are aware of the fact that the cultural identity building process is not easy. It does not depend solely on the ethnicity of the young people themselves or that of their parents, but develops individually. It is affected by external agents (the socio-cultural situation, a specific cultural environment, opportunities, etc.) and by an individual’s personality traits, acumen, etc. Young people interviewed in Latvia acknowledge being part of the European culture based on the geographical aspect and taking into account the shared values of democracy, tolerance, appreciation of diversity, etc. However, their sense of belonging to their country, region, city or village clearly prevails over the sense of belonging to a European space. Young people’s knowledge of European culture is relatively general and, often, quite abstract. Young people often lack a subjective and emotional sense of belonging to Europe. National identity is not the opposite of European identity but an integral part of it.

Keywords:

National identity, European identity, cultural education, young people, general secondary education.