Integrationists, Critical Europeanists and Pessimist Europeanists: EU attitudes among students in a German university

Abstract

We investigate attitudes toward the EU of a sample of students enrolled in a German university by using a mixed-methods data design. We conducted an online survey among students at the University of Göttingen (N=730) and asked them closed questions on the EU enlargement, the allocation of authority at the EU level, the way democracy works at the EU level, and an open question on their wish for the future of the EU. We then ran a latent class analysis of the recoded answer categories from the open question and of our set of closed questions. Our three-class solution highlights variation in support for the EU among students. Indeed, while the vast majority of the respondents take highly supportive attitudes towards the EU, we can distinguish between ‘Integrationists’ (in favour of pursuing the EU integration project; 68% of the sample), ‘Critical Europeanists’ (supportive of the EU but dissatisfied with the way democracy works at the EU level; 20.50% of the sample) and ‘Pessimist Europeanists’ (supportive of the EU but afraid of the implosion of the EU; 11% of the sample). Our study highlights the importance of the use of non-standardised measures and mixed-methods data collection for understanding citizens’ attitudes towards the EU in a more nuanced way.