engleski

National Identity and Attitudes toward Europe

In this chapter we have analyzed the national identity and linked it to the attitudes toward European integration. The relationship toward one's own nation was investigated with a battery of 11 attitudes that participants reacted to on a Likert agreement scale with five degrees. The answers indicate that the attitudes most accepted by the young are moderate national identification, followed by those that signify openness to the world, while ethnocentric statements are the least represented of the obtained hierarchy of attitudes. The fact is that the attitude that best represents national identification is, for the first time in our research projects, at the top of the rank, as is evident that the nationally infused attitudes, both moderate and the extreme, are more represented in comparison to 1986 and 1999. It would be arbitrary to ascribe this increase in national identity in the young to some isolated factor. It can be assumed that the growing uncertainty regarding the future, the decreasing trust in political leadership, the more and more pronounced existential problems, the growing differences between the rich and the poor, and narrowing perspectives all result in a search for a safer model of relationship toward others, to the society as a whole and to some of its parts. The nation represents the only safe haven, such as the family and the Church, and it is understandable that in the context of social instability, they gain importance. Aside from that, we need to mention that the attitudes of openness to the world, that are often complementary and not opposed to attitudes of national identification, remain stable and strong. This, at the same time, points to the complexity of the problem of national identity and the fact that it does not have to be exclusive, but it may coexist along with attitudes that contribute to the European association processes. Regarding their national identity, of course, the young are not homogenous, but rather different subgroups react in different ways. The three obtained factor structures of national identity (moderate national identification, radical ethnocentrism and pronounced cosmopolitism) produce the strongest differences regarding religious self-identification, regional status and the party preferences of the participants. Thus the nationally oriented youth are significantly more religious than others ; they vote for the conservative parties and live in Dalmatia, Central and Eastern Croatia. They are more often than others from rural areas, from families in which the father has a lower level of education, they are themselves less educated, and within the youth sample, they belong to the youngest cohort (15-19 years of age) and the pupil group. A greater national identity is also demonstrated by the unemployed, which is in line with the view of ethnocentrism as a protective mechanism of an individual's personality. An extremely low national identity is expressed by young participants of an Istrian, Zagreb and Northern Croatian provenience, by those that are religiously undecided or atheists, from an urban area and with a higher level of family and personal education. On the other hand, the young demonstrate much more homogenous results with regard to cosmopolitism. The control group of participants (those older than 30) produced a similar hierarchy of attitudes related to national identity, with an analogous structure, with the specific of almost all the attitudes being more strongly expressed, which might have to do with the polarization and, most probably, petrifaction of internalized attitudes. The phenomenon of polarization is a necessary by-product of an accumulation of experience, while petrifaction on the one hand is a product of age and the psycho-physiological changes it brings with it, and on the other, channels experience in one direction and enhances its selective accumulation. National identity was related with the perception of the European Union and the support for Croatia’ s accession to the EU. Aware of the mutability of such attitudes, that must often be treated primarily as an expression of public opinion, we decided to approach them with caution and include only the main tendencies. Thus, we can conclude with a sufficient amount of reliability that the more ethnocentric participants and, to a lesser degree, those with a pronounced national identification, have a negative perception of the European Union more often than others, while cosmopolitism again fails to produce any statistically significant differences. In regard of the need for Croatia to enter the EU, only ethnocentrism differentiates the young in a statistically significant manner, where the nationally more exclusive participants tend to refuse to support Croatia’ s accession to the European Union more often than others, while cosmopolitism and (a moderate) national identification have no predictive value. Finally, we decided to investigate the social (ethnic) distance toward certain nations, both those that Croatia built with the former Yugoslav federation, as well as Western and Central European nations. In general, the nations of the former Yugoslav federation and the Russians are at the end of the rank, with low grades, while as somewhat under averagely validated, are the members of some Central European nations (Czechs and Hungarians), who are in the middle of the ranking scale. The inhabitants of the European West and Southwest, especially Italians, who take up the first position after the Croats themselves, and Germans, demonstrate satisfactory results just by being evaluated with average grades. The degree of social closeness young citizens of Croatia feel toward other Croatian men and women, finally, indicates a certain dose of self-criticism, because approximately one third of the young participants have no personal affinity toward, in the most part, their own nation, who they would rather not form more permanent institutionalized intimate relationships with. Similar data was obtained from the adult participants: the ranking of social distance is for the most part identical ; however, they on average demonstrate a greater social distance than the young. Thus, it is significant that no nationality, aside from Croats, reached an average grade of ethnic closeness (3.5). We conclude that in regard of the distance toward persons of other nationalities, as well as ethnic attitudes toward them in Croatia, some old habits have not yet been eliminated, especially in citizens that are of middle or elderly age. This more emphasized ethnocentrism in the adult generations would, theoretically speaking, corroborate the theory of integration of the SIT and the SCT models, versus the socio-cognitive model. The integrated SIT and SCT model does not presume it is possible to reduce prejudice and ethnical preference after a certain age in childhood, after which prejudice might increase, including ethnic prejudice, and preference of the in-groups in certain social contexts. It is obvious that we belong to just such a (multi-ethnically burdened) social context. We must emphasize the fact that, in spite of the intergenerational differences in national identity to the benefit of the adult group, we found intergenerational differences that focus on the youngest participants in our sample (15-19 years of age). Several authors have already noticed this phenomenon and have described it with a so-called U-curve, which vividly illustrates the higher national focus of an individual in the earlier and later stages of life, as an expression of, respectively, an adolescent transitional crisis and a long-term perseverance in perceiving and producing (obviously) negative experiences with a certain out-group.

Youth, Croatia, national identity, Europe

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