Young people/students and Europe. What we know and what we need to study ? A critical review in political science and sociology

This paper aims to provide an overview of academic work on the ordinary relationship of citizens of the Member States to the European Union with a specific focus on the students and the process of (de)politicization of European Union. What is the ordinary relationship between individuals and the European Union? What does Europe mean to them, professionally, politically or socially? How do these relationships vary between countries, social groups and generations? What characterises the more elitist relationships to this transnational space of government? These reflections are the subject of a long-standing concern of the European institutions themselves (Bréchon and Cautrès, 1998), seeking on the one hand signs of popular and shared support for the strengthening of European construction, and on the other hand the effects of their communication policy aimed at the general public (Aldrin, 2010, 2011; Belot et al., 2016). Over the last decade, a large number of qualitative studies have emerged, notably in response to the so-called crisis of legitimacy of the EU (Rohrschneider and Loveless, 2010), and to the major enlargement (Ruis Jimenez et al., 2004). On the one hand, they sought to question the concepts on which to base an analysis of the relationship between citizens and the EU - European 'identity' (Duchesne, 2010), European 'citizenship' (Favell, 2008). On the other hand, they have also been interested in qualitative survey techniques that make it possible to grasp the different dimensions of the relationship between European citizens and the EU, the processes through which this relationship is constructed (Belot and Bouillaud, 2008; Michel and Robert, 2010), and its determining factors, particularly national (Diez Medrano, 2003) and social (Fliegstein, 2008; Duchesne et al, 2010). Among these, a series of studies have combined semi or non-directive interviews with other techniques such as focus groups (Duchesne and Haegel, 2004; Duchesne and Ingelgom, 2008). In line with studies focusing on the ordinary relationship to politics (Buton et al., 2016), the work of Gaxie et al. (2011) used this type of data to highlight the tools and resources mobilised by 'ordinary' citizens to build their relationship with Europe and their social determinants. In this paper, this academic litterature will be put into perspective with the first results of a focus group survey of students. We hypothesise that this population is particularly interesting for two reasons: it is a population in which a very wide variety of relationships to Europe can be observed (from the most distant to the most elitist/expert, from the most critic to the most enthusiast) (Mercenier, 2019). It is also a population for which the EU has targeted specific policies, including the famous Erasmus programme, in the hope, among other things, that it will promote positive/favourable attitudes to European integration (King et Ruiz‐Gelices, 2003 ; Close, 2011).