Realizing how youth absorb, uphold, and (re)produce national rhetoric and discourses is critical for understanding contemporary and future politics and society. It is through young peoples’ engagement with historical narratives that ideas about the past are realized in the contemporary day, feelings of national attachment and belonging are developed, and ideals of the nation and good citizenship are framed. In Youth and Memory in Europe, Félix Krawatzek and Nina Friess integrally remind us of the importance of elevating the voices of this subgroup of the population.
By tactfully bringing diverse social science and humanities scholars into an interdisciplinary dialogue, this edited volume of twenty-five essays explores how youth across Europe respond to ideas about the past, as well as the constitutive nature of historical narratives for contemporary identities and senses of belonging. As the transition from childhood to adulthood has become exceedingly complex in the twenty-first century because of globalization, the importance of this volume lies in its focus on the experiences of contemporary youth. The book also moves beyond the traditional institutions of socialization to uncover the historical perspectives presented to and expressed by young people in the modern day. The foci of analysis in Youth and Memory in Europe is therefore the relationship—including both points of convergence and divergence—between the cultural realm and young peoples’ historical memories and visions.
To illustrate young individuals’ engagement with the historical narratives embedded in culture and cultural artefacts, the volume is divided into two sections. Comprising fourteen chapters, Part I centers on the experience of young people in Belarus, Russia, Turkey, Spain, and Yugoslavia. The editorial decision to highlight these specific cases is not explicitly outlined, and at first appears slightly bewildering. Nevertheless, the contributing authors effectively reveal how youth in each of these countries relate to and perpetuate historical narratives, including challenging and even redefining dominant norms and hegemonic discourses. The unique combination of case studies moreover convincingly demonstrates the relevance of political rhetoric for shaping young individuals’ sensibilities about their worlds, their states and nations, and themselves.
Diverging from the first section's regional focus, Part II of Youth and Memory in Europe is thematically arranged. The uniqueness of the volume was most clearly exemplified in this section as the authors analyzed young peoples’ engagements with, and reproductions of, historical narratives through a variety of social science and humanities disciplinary lenses. By showing how youth absorb, transmit, and express the historical representations embedded in culture while bringing in other cases not analyzed in-depth in Part I—such as Poland, France, Northern Ireland, and Portugal—this section underscores the importance of young peoples’ perspectives for understanding national identity and belonging. When taken together, Parts I and II thus distinctly illustrate the power of young people for shaping contemporary and future societal experiences and expectations, social change and cultural reproductions, and processes of nation- and state-building.
One of the volume's strongest features is hence that it brings together diverse epistemological and methodological approaches to examine the fluid, complex, and non-linear nature of identity construction. As education and socialization are foundational for the transmission of national narratives, it is not particularly surprising that several authors drew on educational materials to explore how young people engage with their nation. These include Nina Weller's analysis of Belarusian comics, graphic novels, and animated films; Jade McGlynn's study of military history camps and tours in Russia; and Karoline Thaidigsmann's examination into Polish children's books. These approaches are nicely complemented by the inclusion of inquiries using other novel qualitative and mixed-method approaches. Krawatzek's own chapter into young Belarusians’ socio-cultural memories drawing on two cross-sectional online surveys and the use of narrative-biographical interviews with youth of ex-Yugoslav backgrounds in Dilyara Müller-Suleymanova's study are noteworthy examples. Although the volume draws on diverse methodological approaches and disciplines to study how young people engage with their nations, the authors do an impressive job of speaking across these divides. Whereas this consistency is indeed the outcome of good penmanship and communication across contributors, credit is especially due to the editorial team for their remarkable efforts and leadership in ensuring the book's solidity.
Despite the cohesion of the text itself, it is worthwhile to consider whether there are incongruences in how “Europe” is defined and understood by the volume's contributors and readers alike. As a book centered on youth and “issues spanning the European continent” (2), the inclusion of some countries not typically considered to be “European” in popular discourses seems slightly peculiar, particularly Russia and Belarus. Whereas the project's incorporation of countries outside of the European Union, and Yugoslavia as a dissolved state, encourages an important expanded conceptualization of “Europe,” some readers may not agree that all countries included in the volume are located in “Europe” as the title suggests. The Russo-Ukraine war acutely reminds us of the long-standing split loyalties between Europe and the former Soviet Union, as well as the complexities in defining where Europe begins and ends. Notably, several references embedded in individual chapters do engage with this issue, and point to possible changes in modern young peoples’ views about Europe, such as Krawatzek's claim that young Belarusians feel “a higher self-identification with Europe rather than Russia” (56). As this nuance is significant for understanding both historical and contemporary political events, it could have perhaps been addressed more explicitly, either in the book's introduction or in the framing and titling of the volume.
Nevertheless, Youth and Memory in Europe still very much achieves its aim of promoting “a future research agenda that pays more attention to the production and reception of historical narratives” (17). By accentuating how young peoples’ engagements with historical narratives shape past, present, and future notions of state- and nationhood, the book elevates the perspectives of individuals who are often disregarded in academic studies. Beyond serving as a laudable contribution to a necessary intellectual endeavor, Youth and Memory in Europe's publication comes at a time when the voices of youth in Europe need to be heard more than ever before. The significance of this volume will accordingly remain for generations to come.
