National and European Identity: An Empirical Research on How Romanian Students Experience Identities during Their Long-term Studies Abroad
National and European Identity: An Empirical Research on How Romanian Students Experience Identities during Their Long-term Studies Abroad

Summary/Abstract: The present paper focuses on Romanian students who have recently completed or are about to complete their university studies in the UK, and aims to capture the influence that the foreign experience exerts on students’ identities. There were three main objectives guiding our approach: to reveal if participants in this study felt Romanians, Europeans, foreigners or otherwise during their study abroad; to show how national identity works in relation to European identity, if the latter was experienced; to explore the influence that studying and living abroad had on students’ identification as Europeans. Though, as current research shows, foreign study practices are deeply related to young people’s feelings of Europeanness (Green, 2007; Fligstein, 2008, 2009; Favell, 2009), these theoretical ideas are seldom sustained by empirical evidence. Furthermore, experiences of students from newly integrated states, such as Romania, are rarely discussed and analyzed in a qualitative manner. Therefore, by means of 15 in- depth interviews, our paper highlights Romanian students’ personal perceptions of and experiences with Europe in an attempt to reveal the extent to which they foster the creation of a European identity among participants in this study.

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