Transnational European Memories among Young People: Conflicting Trends between Nationalism and Cosmopolitanism

The essay investigates the process of transnationalization of memory among young people in a European perspective. Since the 1990s, the EU has tried to promote a European identity, through the promotion of its founding ideas and values. Many studies have addressed the importance of a shared memory among the peoples of Europe, but there is still little empirical evidence on the dynamics of the transnationalization of memory at the European level, particularly in relation to young people as a target group. Our research involved young Italian students, aged between 16 and 19, and was conducted between November 2019 and January 2020 using the focus group technique. The results show two opposing trends in young people’s attitudes towards memory: on one hand, a closure and opposition to all that is alien to local and/or national memories; on the other hand, a cosmopolitanization of memory which push young people towards the maturation of a shared European identity. It is mainly transnational practices and school education that foster the cosmopolitization of memory among young people.