Global Cultural Identity Among Young People in Slovakia

Abstract

It is becoming increasingly obvious that young people are facing the globalisation of personal identity. It is the result of ongoing interaction between individuals and their globalised socio-cultural environment that leads to changes in self-identification. Cultural openness and the “de-territorialisation” of identity are the key aspects of this process. The paper explores the globalisation of identities among secondary school students, using the concept of global self-identification. The analysis employs quantitative data from the Survey of Young People’s Cultural Literacy. The globalisation of identity is captured by the Global Identity Scale (Türken, Rudmin, 2013), which consists of two dimensions – “Non-nationalism” and “Cultural Openness”. The aim of the study is to examine to what extent young people in Slovakia can be characterised in terms of global self-identification and to identify what affects the propensity for global self-identification. Furthermore, it tests the relationship between global self-identification and other phenomena that are supposedly related to global identity. The results show that the global identity is present among young people in Slovakia. By applying multilevel modelling, we identified a variety of culture-related phenomena that affect cultural openness and non-nationalism, including multicultural interaction and cultural participation. In addition, the study confirms that type of school has a significant effect.