Impact of Global Processes on Local Territorial Community: The Youth Perspectives

Abstract

The study of globalization is one of the most relevant topics in the scientific community today. However, the most research is devoted to the study of global processes at the macro level, with the issues on how globalization influences an individual and local territorial communities being paid less attention to. Scientific novelty of the work is a proposed approach to study the influence of global processes at the meso-level, i.e. an intermediate level between an individual and the states. Studying the responds of the local residents on how the global processes transform their daily lives, allows us to assess the stability of social associations of people, which has a direct impact on the reproduction process of the local territorial community. The purpose of the study is to analyze the influence of global processes on the changes in the reproduction process of a local territorial community. The youth is one of the main actors who are highly influenced by the global processes. Besides, young people are able to identify the areas for the future development of their territories of residence. A series of focus groups was conducted in order to study the opinions of young people about the impact of global processes on their territory of residence. The results of the study show that the connection with the territory of residence for different groups of young people may vary. The study also revealed the presence of hybrid global-local identity of the young people, which implies both their active inclusion in the processes of globalization and the feeling of being part of a local community. This type of identity can be one of the ways to preserve the integrity of the community.