Who are we? Discursive construction of collective identity in youth organisations in Poland: a citizenship orientation perspective

Collective identity (CI) is one of the levels of the social construction of citizenship. It was assumed that since citizenship as a state-centred notion is difficult to maintain today, an analysis of CI should exceed national, ethnic, language and cultural identifications. What does it look like in the case of CI constructed discursively by youth organisations? The aim of the research presented in the paper is to reconstruct collective identities (CIs) based on a discourse analysis of selected youth organisations operating in Poland and an assessment of their community-individual orientation. The research material constituted 696 documents produced in 2018 by six youth organisations on their official websites and Facebook profiles. The approach by Ruth Wodak and Martin Reisigl was adopted. We analysed the application of discursive strategies in the texts referring to the 'we' and 'they' categories. The conclusions indicate, among others, that in the analysed discourses the CI is differentiated by the manner of distinguishing from 'others' and the constellation of predicates relating to the category 'we'.