European Identity and Citizenship in Textbooks/Educational Media

The special issue includes five empirical papers built around four key questions. 1) To what extent are textbooks and curricula able to provide young people with opportunities to acquire the skills and the practical competencies (i.e., critical awareness, media literacy, etc.) necessary to take part in contemporary political, economic and social life? 2) To what extent do textbooks and curricula promote (or hinder) active engagement of young people in their social, political and educational communities, at the local, national and European level? 3) To what extent is Europe and/or the European Union presented as a community that offers young people the opportunity to practice citizenship, and in more general terms, which discourses on Europe and European identity are conveyed by textbooks? 4) To what extent are visions of “us, the Europeans” or “us, the Nationals” presented as complementary or opposing, and how is diversity, within Europe and within the Nation, represented (positive vs. negative, desirable vs. undesirable…)?Three papers (Arensmeier; Albanesi; Piedade et. al) are based on results from the Horizon 2020 CATCH-EyoU project - standing for Constructing AcTive CitizensHip with European Youth: Policies, Practices, Challenges and Solutions - which involves scholars coming from different disciplines (Psychology, Political Science, Sociology, Media and Communications, Education) from eight European countries (Sweden, Estonia, U.K., Germany, Czech Republic, Greece, Portugal, Italy). The two remaining papers analyse school textbooks to address how they deal with European integration in Slovakia (Sulikova) and with representations of otherness, the Sami ethnic minority and colonialism in Sweden (Eriksen)