Today there is, at the European level (EU), an intensive work going on promoting a European identity. Embedded in these efforts there is an idea about the possibility and significance to identify such an common European identity. Our point of view is however not to discuss the possibility and significance of European identity, but instead we want to problematize what is at stake when people in contexts as educational- and youth politics, speak of Europe in this way. The study is rooted in a Foucauldian, or rather Post-Foucauldian tradition of governmentality studies (Foucault, 1991; Larner & Walter, 2004; Dean, 2007). Studies in governmentality pay special attention to mentalities of government. In our study we are interested in the changing ways in which political authorities, as well as those who contest those authorities, pose the questions: How should we govern? What should we govern? Why do we need to govern? By focusing on modes of thoughts and reasoning around these questions, it is possible to study how rules, norms and styles of thinking also function by giving direction for how the individual as subject should think, behave and talk in these political spaces (Novoa 2002). The aim of this study is to analyze how the youth subject is problematized and constructed in relevant European political documents. This study is a part of a larger research project financed by The Swedish Research Council. The Formation of National Teachers in the European Educational Space. A cooperative Study of the Governance of Teacher Education in Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Norway (2008-2010). The project is a collaboration between Linkoping University, Stockholm University and The University of Aarhus.

As empirical material we are using various kinds of contemporary European political documents such as White Papers, policy-documents, youth programs, reform programs, Communication from the Commission and evaluation-reports. In the study we have a discursive approach to the analysis of the documents, which means that we are styding how the. European Union and its young citizens are thought of and problematized. We are focusing concepts, meanings and relationships that frequently recur in the documents.

The project will make a contribution to an understanding of how the political discussion of European identity, in this case the European youth subject, is linked to the political problematization of the European Unions position in the global competition. The study will also demonstrate how the problems formulated in the political narratives about the future of the European Union are inscribed as desirable dispositions of the subjects. Prominent dispositions in this construction are for example mobility, flexibility, employability and responsibility The documents in the study of the arena of youth policy and politics will tell us about the dominant ways in which the practices of European government have been thought. The European construction of the youth subject will tell us about the general art of governing Europe.