Do Young People Know ASEAN?

Eric C. Thompson, Chulanee Thianthai, Moe Thuzar

In 2007, a survey - the first of its kind - was carried out to gauge young people's awareness of and attitudes towards ASEAN, following the decision by ASEAN heads of state and government to accelerate the date for accomplishing an integrated ASEAN Community by 2015. Views and attitudes from university undergraduates in the ten ASEAN member states who participated in the survey indicated a nascent sense of identification as citizens of the region as well as their priorities for important aspects of regional integration. An update to the 2007 survey was carried out in 2014-15 among the same target population but with an expanded scope of twenty-two universities and institutes of higher learning across the ten member states. In the updated survey, we found that there are more ASEAN-positive attitudes region-wide, but there are also increases in ASEAN-ambivalent attitudes at...