This book applies a number of different disciplinary and geographical perspectives to ascertain whether and how European youth identify with the EU, trust EU institutions and engage in EU issues. It investigates the factors and processes that predict the different ways in which young Europeans engage (or do not engage) with social and political issues and become active European citizens. The volume is based on results from the first two years of the Horizon 2020 CATCH-EyoU project (“Constructing AcTive CitizensHip with European Youth: Policies, Practices, Challenges and Solutions”). It addresses different dimensions of active citizenship in the EU and different processes and contexts that explain the construction of youth active citizenship, including societal-level factors such as policy context and media; interaction-level contexts such as school and family; and individual-level factors. The final chapter emphasizes the impact of the current historical context on the development of young Europeans’ civic identity and their understanding of the social and political reality. With contributions from a variety of disciplines including psychology, political science, communications and education, and spanning geographic contexts across Europe, this book will be of interest to researchers studying contemporary European youth and the construction of young people’s identity. This book was originally published as a special issue of the European Journal of Developmental Psychology. Chapters 1 and 5 are available Open Access at https://www.routledge.com/products/9780367236557.

What is it like to be young in a Europe faced with conflict and austerity? Volume 3 of the series Perspectives on youth focuses on “healthy Europe”, not just in the narrow sense, but in the broader sense of what it is like to be young in a Europe faced with conflict and austerity, and what it feels like to be young as transitions become ever more challenging. The assumption when planning this issue was that health in this broader sense remains a controversial area within youth policy, where the points of departure of policy makers, on the one hand, and young people themselves on the other are often dramatically different; in fact, young people tend to interpret the dominating discourse as limiting, patronising, maybe even offensive. The question of health brings the old tensions between protection and participation as well as agency and structure to the forefront. Not all questions are addressed in detail but many are touched upon. It is, intentionally, an eclectic mix of contributions, to provide a diversity of argumentation and to promote reflection and debate. As has been the intention of Perspectives on youth throughout, we have sought to solicit and elicit the views of academics, policy makers and practitioners, presenting theoretical, empirical and hypothetical assertions and analysis. Perspectives on youth is published by the partnership between the European Union and the Council of Europe in the field of youth in co-operation with, and with support from, four countries: Belgium, Finland, France and Germany. Its purpose is to keep the dialogue on key problems of child and youth policies on a solid foundation in terms of content, expertise and politics. The series aims to act as a forum for information, discussion, reflection and dialogue on European developments and trends in the field of youth policy, youth research and youth work while promoting a policy and youth work practice that is based on knowledge and participatory principles. The editorial team of this volume is composed of 12 members representing the supporting countries, the Pool of European Youth Researchers (PEYR), the co-ordinator of the youth policy reviews of the Council of Europe, the EU-Council of Europe youth partnership and the co‐ordinator of the editorial team.

Mobility is considered to be important for the personal development and employability of young people, as well as for intercultural dialogue, participation and active citizenship. Learning mobility in the youth field focuses on non-formal learning as a relevant part of youth work, with links to informal learning as well as to formal education. Different stakeholders at European level, particularly the Council of Europe and the European Commission, but also individual member states, foster programmes and strategies to enhance the mobility of young people, and particularly the learning dimension in mobility schemes. This book on learning mobility is a joint Council of Europe and European Commission publication, and provides texts of an academic, scientific, political and practical nature for all stakeholders in the youth field - youth leaders and youth workers, policy makers, researchers and so on. It should contribute to dialogue and co-operation between relevant players and to discussion on the further development and purpose of youth mobility schemes and their outcomes for young people.

The study makes an analysis of the legal framework which Member States must take into account when designing their policies on citizenship education. The Charter on Education for Democratic Citizenship and Human Rights Education of the Council of Europe and the international right to education are read in conjunction with EU law. Suitable content for the EU dimension in mainstream education is explored. A method for objective, critical and pluralistic EU learning is proposed, based on the Treaties and on case teaching (stories for critical thinking). Member States are invited to take more action to ensure quality education. The EU has the legal competence to support the EU dimension in education. In the present state of EU law, quality education is no longer conceivable without an EU dimension incorporated in various key competences. At present the author works at the implementation of the ideas developed in the book as an Affiliated Senior Researcher at Leuven University (Case4EU-project in Belgium and other EU Member States).

This book explores shifts in international social policies, looking at how they affect national trends and the context for social work practice. It investigates the responsibilities for social welfare held by the state, the market and civil society, elaborating a concept of citizenship-based social work.

This edited collection contributes to studies of intra-EU migration and mobility, welfare, and European social citizenship by focusing on transnational labour movements from new to the old EU member states (Hungary–Austria, Bulgaria–Germany, Poland–UK and Estonia–Sweden). The volume provides a comparative analysis of formal organization and mobile individuals’ use of European social security coordination, which involves mobile Europeans' access to and portability of social security rights from the sending to the receiving country (and back). The book discloses the selectivity criteria of welfare provision in four areas (unemployment, family benefits, health insurance, and pensions) that lay at heart of European cross-border social security governance. It also identifies specific discourses of belonging (gendered, ethnicized/racialized and class-related images of ‘Us’ and ‘Them’) that frame the institutional selectivity by constructing images of mobile EUcitizens' ‘deserving’ or ‘non-deserving’ social membership. The collection offers a detailed examination of inequality experiences mobile EU citizens from the new EU countries encounter while accessing and porting social security rights across borders. It will be of interest to a wide range of social science and interdisciplinary researchers, students, and practitioners as well as those interested in intra-EU migration and mobility, social security, European social citizenship, and transnational studies.

This edited volume presents findings from a major cross-European research project mapping the civic and political engagement of young Europeans in the context of both shared and diverse political heritages. Drawing on new survey, interview and ethnographic data, the authors discuss substantive issues relating to young people’s attitudes and activism including: attitudes to the European Union and to history; understanding of political ideologies; how attitudes to democracy are shaped by political heritage; activism in radical right wing groups and religion-based organisations; and digital activism. These contributions make the book’s case that transnational and multi-method projects can enrich our understanding of how young people envisage their place and role in Europe’s political and civic space. The book challenges methodological assumptions that survey research shows the big picture but at the cost of local nuance or that qualitative research cannot speak beyond the individual case, and demonstrates the added explanatory value of triangulating different kinds of data. Understanding Youth Participation Across Europe will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of disciplines, including Sociology, Political Sociology, Youth Studies and Political and Civic Participation.

The EU-CoE youth partnership stems from the close relations that the Council of Europe and the European Commission have developed in the youth field over the years since 1998. The overall goal is to foster synergies between the youth-oriented activities of the two institutions. The specific themes are participation/citizenship, social inclusion, recognition and quality of youth work. What is youth policy, and what major elements should a national youth policy strategy include? How can young people be consulted and otherwise involved in developing youth policy? How do institutions such as the European Union, the Council of Europe and the United Nations address youth policy, and how can this work be concretely linked to the efforts of a national government to develop a youth policy agenda? How is youth policy organised in specific countries of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region? These are some of the essential questions addressed in this publication. The Youth policy manual should be considered a source work, a tool and a helpful guide both for policy makers in the youth field and for non-governmental organisations and other stakeholder groups who advocate improved youth policy at the national level. This manual proposes one possible model for how a national youth policy strategy can be developed. It is a revised version of the Youth policy manual (2009) and takes into account relevant specificities of the MENA region.