Kin state's youth, party membership, ideology, and conflict understanding: youth in Albania on ethnic Albanian's conflicts in Kosova and in Macedonia

Official URL: http://risc01.sabanciuniv.edu/record=b1558815 (Table of Contents)

Youth are important political actors and through their party membership they may contribute to either peace or conflict. Youths engaged in political parties might also influence kin state’s approaches towards its kin groups. Their understanding may shape youths’ contribution and approaches towards peace and conflicts. This study attempts to explore the understanding of youth in the kin state concerning their kin groups’ conflicts. In this research, the focus is on the understanding of youths who are members of political party youth forums in Albania, on ethnic Albanians’ conflicts in Kosovo and in Macedonia. Specifically, youths members of four political youth forums in Albania were interviewed. Adding the interviewees done with a control group of youth not engaged in any political party’s youth forum, a total 14 semi-structured interviews were conducted. The interviewees were selected via snowball sampling and text analysis was employed to analyze the collected data. In this research political ideology appeared as an important factor that might influence youths’ understanding of their kin groups’ conflicts. Moreover, youth with nationalist ideology supported the nationalist approach and youth from the parties that were not based on the nationalist ideology supported the cooperative and peaceful approach towards their kin groups’ conflicts. Additionally, the need for more inclusion of youth in Albanian politics appeared. This study suggests that inclusion of youths without nationalist ideology in politics would bring more positive contribution to the resolution of their kin groups’ conflicts, and inclusion of youths with nationalist ideology may bring negative contribution, due to their support to the nationalist approach. This research has theoretical and practical implications. The theoretical implication focuses on enriching the literature on the factors that can influence youths’ understanding of peace and conflict and adds to the literature knowledge on the influence of political ideology on youth’s understanding. The practical implication lies at providing knowledge to the governments to validate the potentials of youth with a vision of peace and be aware that political ideology of youths might shape their attitudes and behaviors toward peace and conflict.