Youth Policies in Europe: Towards a Classification of Different Tendencies in Youth Policies in the European Union

Abstract

Drawing upon material from several research projects, this article attempts to classify youth policies in the European Union according to a variety of dimensions: the organisation of the youth sector, the target groups for youth policies, the definitions of youth and the main purposes of youth policies. One problem in undertaking this exercise is that not only are youth policies highly diverse between countries, but they are also diverse within countries, being decentralised towards the regional/local level and the voluntary sector in many countries. The paper goes on to look at aspects of the ‘Europeanisation’ of youth policies.

Key Words:

• Youth policy
• European policy
• policy regimes
• young people
• European comparison

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the European Commission DG Education and Culture for funding this research and our collaborators on the project, especially IARD for their help. Some information here is drawn from the project ‘Families and Transitions in Europe’ (FATE) HPSCE-CT2001-00079.

Notes

¹ IARD research institute, Milan, co-ordinated the study with a number of team members, including these authors.