The focus for my research is the EU-sponsored Erasmus+Program, created 29 years ago to develop and transfer a common sense of community and European cultural identity through study exchange throughout the EU. The longstanding goal of participation in the Erasmus+Program is that current and former Erasmus+students will be catalysts and sustaining members of this shared European identity. My research questions: how do European university students, who each bring their own individual notions of nationalism and cultural citizenship, experience this program in Germany?
To answer this question, over the 2015-2016 academic year and during the turbulent Syrian refugee influx period, I have documented the Incoming & Outgoing- Erasmus+students' experiences at a historic German university, Georg-August-Universität-Göttingen in Lower Saxony, Germany. My infield ethnography comprises of multifaceted semi-structured interviews (with Erasmus+students, university coordinators, and EU policymakers), personal observations, surveys, spontaneous conversations, and demographic data.
In conclusion, this research probes deeply the larger questions of how are students practicing citizenship in Germany and how does the German university foster transformative notions of cultural or political European citizenship?
