Young people's national and social identity

Abstract

The article reflects on the main problems arising from the empiric data gathered in one of the areas of a national survey carried out by the project «Young Portuguese People: situations, problems, aspirations». The aim of the article is not so much to summarize the results but to analyse the main questions and theoretic prospects arising from them. In the different areas covered by the survey we find a proximity of practices, consumption and habits of young people and a generation identity emerges, formed by the collective sharing of values and opinions which are naturally imposed on the social diversity of their different profiles. This identity, going back to the communion which has always been the basis of being young and bringing back the barriers between generations, must be considered in a relative context, i.e. in the context of the plurality of the relationships that young people establish with their social milieux and with members of other generations. Thus, the concept of identity becomes inseparable from that of alterity and the author has tried to analyse the social identity of young people, bearing in mind not only their degree of cohesion and the system of references which distinguishes the different segments of young people but also the differences and the nature of the relationships which develop between young people and others.