Integration and Identity - The Strategies of Young Europeans – Interpretative Tracks and Motifs

Abstract

In the article, the question is raised whether human knowledge, abilities, emotions and socialization are capable of shaping social structures according to the idea of multiculturalism (which faces a critical situation), introducing the humanistic quality to the principles of coherence and integration. With my own research results in the background (diagnostic polling and individual interviews), integration and identity are presented as strategies determined by aims, subjects (players) and profits (rewards). What has been indicated is the idea worth promoting in the field of pedagogy, in educational institutions and in whole societies, i.e., shaping the culture which re-builds the real power of group life. The postulate to shape such culture in multicultural communities is very hard to implement, but not impossible. The presented results of the studies conducted on a specific group of young Europeans – the participants of a short-term international voluntary workcamp – indicate and illustrate the development of cognitive functions, motivation and interactive activity of kindness- based character. The interpretative tracks and motifs for the obtained results are sought in K. Illeris’s holistic concept of learning and in other theories of various origin, not much known in the field of pedagogy: H. Simon’s concept of bounded rationality and R. Aumann’s theory of repeated games (otherwise called the theory of “conflict and cooperation” or “interactive decisions”). Applying two different approaches into the discussed issues – the theoretical and empirical, detailed and partially generalized approach – is cognitively interesting and useful in the practical dimension. This might help both to specify the stimuli which cause the evolution of human attitudes and strategies of acting and to design and organize education.