Concepts of citizenship, social and system integration among young people in post-Soviet Moldova

Abstract

The paper looks at changing concepts of citizenship among young people in Moldova in a context of social and system disintegration. Due to the protracted economic and political crisis there, young people were disengaged from political, economic and social citizenship but are socially integrated at the level of family and friendship networks, which gives them a sense of belonging in Moldovan society. This led to a particular view of citizenship in the sense of loyalty to the nation but alienation from the formal system and the state more generally. The result was that only a small number saw a future for themselves in Moldova, another group were prepared to try to find ways to survive there and a third, large group preferred to seek their fortunes abroad by migrating either to Russia or to the European Union. Both of these latter two options entailed serious risks and resulted in their further legal and economic marginalisation. The reconstruction of the life course into a fragmented, individualised, risky and highly uncertain trajectory was characterised, like that of the country in general, as an unending transition.

Keywords:

• Moldova
• young people
• social and systems disintegration
• strategies for survival

Acknowledgements

The research on which this paper is based on was carried out with the support of INTAS Grant No. 05-104-7647 under the INTAS collaborative call with Moldova, 2005. We acknowledge the support of the European Union, the Government of Moldova and the partners in the project. We would especially note our debt to the deputy director of the project, Professor Tudor Danii, the head of OPINIA and an Academician of the Moldovan Academy of Social Sciences, whose untimely death occurred while we were still working on the project. His contribution to sociological research in Moldavia and the CIS more generally was immense and he is sorely missed. The authors alone remain responsible for the content of the paper.

Notes

1. For example, working-class young people usually enter the labour market earlier than their middle-class peers who spend longer periods in education, and in Britain the transition to adulthood is more accelerated than in other countries such as Germany (Wallace and Kovatcheva 1998, Leccardi 2006).

2. Social networks were an important aspect of the communist system enabling the mobilisation of resources through complex reciprocal favours (Ledeneva 2006).

3. See World Health Organisation regional data base for Europe: http://www.euro.who.int/hfadb

4. Ethical approval was obtained through Glasgow Caledonian University and all informants gave their informed consent.