The debate on young people and participatory citizenship. Questions and research prospects

Abstract

For quite some time, experts and policy-makers in Western societies have been looking at young people with concern, extending their analysis from the potential for conflict and divergence, to socio-cultural dynamics and inter-generational relations. There is certainly intense debate as to how close or distant young people are to forms and content of citizenship as experienced in the creation of modern democracy. Such a debate, developed at both the institutional and the scientific level, focuses particularly on concepts of participation and active citizenship and identifies in the civic engagement and participatory citizenship of young people the key factors for the maintenance of democracy and social cohesion. By bringing to light the meanings, implications, and ambivalences of the concepts at the centre of the debate, also with a view to European policies, the article aims at highlighting rhetoric, voids, and emerging contradictions and pointing out questions and possible research paths.

Keywords:

• youth participation
• active citizenship
• Europe
• agency
• policies

Notes

1. To exemplify the peculiarities inherent to youth, a few phenomena are consolidating, so much so that experts are beginning to talk about a ‘new adolescence’, on the one hand (Galland 2008), and the appearance of individuals, on the other hand, who are older than 35 and can be defined, due to their way of life and orientation, as ‘young adults’ (Cesareo 2005).

2. A recent contribution stemming from developmental psychology has become part of the debate on the nature and peculiarity of youth in relation to adult life. In particular it argues on the theoretical and conceptual perspective that can better frame it and comprehend it in its formation and development as a phase (between the ages of 18 and 25) between adolescence and young adulthood. See: Debating Emerging Adulthood: Stage or Process? (Arnett et al. 2011). On the concept of emerging adulthood we refer back to contributions by Arnett (2004) and Bynner (2005).

3. Estimates seem to indicate that this trend will continue into the next decades (European Commission 2010).

4. For a subjective and biographical analysis of citizenship as a constant daily practice of young people, see Thomson et al. (2004).

5. As an attempt in this direction, see the contributions collected by Best (2007).

6. It should not be forgotten how political activism, in both conventional and innovative terms, has always been, for duration and intensity, a prerogative of a minority, except for historical periods of high and temporary collective mobilisation.

7. On the relevance of new communicative technologies for language, youth engagement, and cultural manifestations, as well as on the ambivalence, ties, and traps that characterise it, see Loader (2007), Vromen (2007), Harris (2009).

8. The European Commission (Directorate-General for ‘Education and Culture’, ‘Youth’ Unit) in 1982, 1987, 1990, 1997, and 2001 has conducted a series of surveys ‘The Young Europeans’ on young adults aged 15 to 24, as part of the Eurobarometer Special Surveys. Starting from 2007, Eurobarometer covers more countries than the previous surveys and has been extended to young Europeans aged 15 to 30 years (See ‘Youth survey among people aged between 15–30 years in the 27 Member States’ – Flash Eurobarometer 2007).

9. In the definition and manifestation of the subjectivity and identity of young people, it is important to note the interplay between the global and local dimension (France 2007).