Human beings have always been on the move, and young Europeans nowadays are no exception. We move to different cities, countries and cultures seeking a challenge, a better life, or simply because we need to do it.
During Turku 2025 - International Session of the European Youth Parliament, we did a set of interviews with people from very different backgrounds, but connected by a common thread; none of them live in their country of origin. This journal intends to explore their experiences, feelings, and challenges as people that have been navigating cultural and national differences in their lives.
Hopefully this article will allow for a deeper understanding of the lives of ordinary young people moving around Europe and, perhaps, even inspire the readers to take their own leap of faith, not only in their decisions, but in empathy towards others.
ELISABETH
When Elisabeth was nine years old, her parents moved with her from Germany to Finland. She tells us how moving at such a formative age was “very much like the end of being a proper child to moving on into growing up.”
This move cut her life into different phases, and it is still relevant to how she looks back at her life, at how her childhood and adulthood interact.
She also feels that, as a child, she experienced much more than she could actually understand to its full extent. It was not until recent years, as a young adult, that she has started fully comprehending how such a change influenced her whole life.
Elisabeth tells us how one of the biggest outcomes of this change was her openness and curiosity towards other cultures and countries. That, even though growing up between two nations was difficult and challenging at times, she “was always excited about it.”, which is also what connects her to EYP and its values.
Recently, Elisabeth made the decision of moving back to Germany to study in university. Despite being German, she expresses how, since she was nine years old, her identity has been divided between Finland and Germany, and how this has affected her (re)adaptation to Germany. “Moving back gets you into a bit of an identity crisis of like, who am I, where do I belong?“, she said.
She also sees herself moving abroad again, feeling open to explore different countries and cultures.
And even though “home” is a hard thing to define for Elisabeth, she gives us a perfect idea of home, that we believe everyone feels connected to.
LEILA
Coming, as she describes, “from a lovely, lovely mountain region in the north of Italy”, Leila now lives in Maastrich, the Netherlands.
She made the decision to move around two years ago, to somewhere she believed, and still believes, that would allow her to reach her goals in life, something that she could not find in her place of origin, both in terms of academic studies and job opportunities. “So I really needed, especially for a masters studies, a bit of concreteness.”
Even though she has finished her studies, Leila is not considering moving back to Italy, feeling that there will be no place or proper job for her there as a young woman starting a career in a mainly male-dominated field.
Leila, as most of us who get out of our comfort zones, was mostly scared of feeling lonely when she moved countries. Scared that it would be difficult to find people who felt the same way as she did, she “was afraid of the loneliness of finding your new people.”
Starting from scratch, she was able to connect with people, with EYP having become a great factor in establishing bridges with other young people from the Netherlands.
Cultural shocks were also very present in Leila’s experience, both things she was expecting, and others she only realized after moving. For example, the time of day for eating meals or the quality of the food (and how much this matters to people). Living in another country also made her realize “the privileges” of Italian food, and what she values most about it.
When answering where home is, Leila refers to “both my little house in Maastricht and my parents' house.” Through every fear and apprehension, Leila would still do it again, challenging herself and always looking for a better future ahead of her.
MAYA
For the (almost) two decades of her life, Maya has lived in Sweden. She has also always lived in an Indian household. A bit before she was born, her parents moved from Tamil Nadu, one of the southermost states in India, to Stockholm, where they have lived for the past 19 years.
Maya describes herself as an Indian in Sweden, and that feeling is also endorsed by the presence of an Indian community in Stockholm to which she belongs. Like many second generation migrants, she tells us her story of feeling a lack of belonging to both countries, cities or cultures, seen as “too Indian for Sweden and too Swedish for India.”
Some of the things she tells us that have affected her the most are the feeling of “barely speak[ing] my mother tongue, which is Tamil, from South India” or the lack of connection to her extended family, never having lived in the same country as them.
However, being part of a community of people that understands her grounding in the world has been very important for Maya. It has allowed her to forge her connection to her culture of origin, through dancing, movies and festivities, but also to a whole new and unique cultural identity that she and her community create daily in their lives, to be an Indian and a Swede.
Through her participation and representation of EYP Sweden outside of the country, EYP has allowed Maya to feel validated in her Swedish identity, which she regards as a unique experience that allowed her to feel more connected to her identity. Because, “(...) to Swedish people, I'm not Swedish. But to people from all over Europe, I am Swedish. I am representing Sweden.“
Not only that, but travelling and meeting new people and places in Europe allowed her to better comprehend and share her Swedish experiences with other Swedes, validating how she herself is, in fact, very Swedish.
Maya also shared some of the challenges of being part of an ethnic minority living in a European country, especially regarding harmful stereotypes perpetuated through social media and in real life about Indian people, or the cultural appropriation of Indian traditions for commodification reasons, like yoga or traditional attire.
For Maya, home takes two forms. A physical home, which she finds in Stockholm, where she has lived for 19 years. And a cultural home, the culture of her parents, entire family and country of origin.
Maya, as a lot of second generational migrants, is creating their own cultural identity in the mix and match of both places, or as Maya puts it it:
ECLAIR
Eclair started his EYP journey in 2018. Because of it, 3 years later, he had to leave Belarus, his country of origin. Since then, he has lived in multiple countries.
In 2021, people connected and engaged to several NGOs around Belarus were interrogated by the government. EYP was one of the organizations, and Eclair was one of those people questioned. The day after the interrogation, he left the country and hasn’t been back since.
During these years, he has encountered multiple countries and cultures, Georgia being the one that surprised him the most. Cultural shocks don't quite fit the description, but there were “some things I had to get used to”.
One thing that has helped him is finding people from the same background, fellow belarusians, in wherever country he finds himself in.
When thinking about cultural identity and how this has changed since he had to leave his country, he says that “absolutely, I feel like it's a very weird moment of life because it's like I'm existing in between being a Belarusian or being a European.”. At the same time, having been away from Belarus for four years, Eclair does not feel much connection to the culture as he once did. On the contrary, he has been adapting and integrating other cultures and building new parts of his life wherever he goes.
Eclair also tells us a bit about the experience of being an immigrant through the books he is writing, and because of that positionality and identity, the extra challenges of finding yourself and building a personal identity. “I can describe myself as a Belarusian living in Europe.”
Coming back is only a possibility in the (unlikely) future that the region changes drastically. At the same time, the more time Eclair spends outside of Belarus, the less he sees himself coming back, since he sees himself and the life he led there slowly being erased from the city that saw him grow up.
The feeling of safety, which so many of us take for granted, is what Eclair misses more about being away. Navigating a future where you do not know where you will be next year, which language to learn next or the safety of a house to call yours, are all things Eclair does not have. He still keeps thriving, through all the challenges.
As for a place to call home, Eclair mentions Berlin, as a city that takes all in as “no one’s home”, a city of immigrants.