In a period when social unrest and youth dissatisfaction has manifested itself through highly public protests, the question of youth participation in democratic societies is at the forefront. This book offers a fresh look at youth participation, examining official and unofficial constructions of participation by young people in a range of sociopolitical domains. It explores the motivations and rationales underlying official attempts to increase participation among young people and offers a critique of those various efforts' effectiveness. Based on original research data from a significant study, it provides a thorough analysis of an important sector of democratic societies.

EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.Policymakers throughout Europe are enacting policies to support youth labour market integration. However, many young people continue to face unemployment, job insecurity, and the subsequent consequences.Adopting a mixed-method and multilevel perspective, this book provides a comprehensive investigation into the multifaceted consequences of social exclusion. Drawing on rich pan-European comparative and quantitative data, and interviews with young people from across Europe, this text gives a platform to the unheard voices of young people.Contributors derive crucial new policy recommendations and offer fresh insights into areas including youth well-being, health, poverty, leaving the parental home, and qualifying for social security.

This book contains a report of an extraordinary study about life perspectives of young people in different countries in Europe. It reveals remarkable differences in perspective for the future of the young people in these countries. Are we in the process of establishing a society in which future generations will feel at home and in which they can put their faith? The European Union should support this kind of research.

This edited collection provides the first in-depth analysis of social policies and the risks faced by young people. The book explores the effects of both the economic crisis and austerity policies on the lives of young Europeans, examining both the precarity of youth transitions, and the function of welfare state policies.

In Backpack Ambassadors, Richard Ivan Jobs tells the story of backpacking in Europe in its heyday, the decades after World War II, revealing that these footloose young people were doing more than just exploring for themselves. Rather, with each step, each border crossing, each friendship, they were quietly helping knit the continent together.

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.

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.

If we consider the 50 states having ratified the European Cultural Convention of the Council of Europe or the member states of the European Union, the multiple and divergent nature of the realities, theories, concepts and strategies underlying the expression 'youth work' becomes evident. Across Europe, youth work takes place in circumstances presenting enormous differences with regard to opportunities, support, structures, recognition and realities, and how it performs reflects the social, cultural, political and economic context, and the value systems in which it is undertaken. By analysing theories and concepts of youth work and by providing insight from various perspectives and geographical and professional backgrounds, the authors hope to further contribute to finding common ground for - and thus assure the quality of - youth work in general. Presenting its purified and essential concept is not the objective here. The focus rather is on describing how to 'provide opportunities for all young people to shape their own futures', as Peter Lauritzen described the fundamental mission of youth work.The best way to do this remains an open question. This Youth Knowledge book tries to find some answers and strives to communicate the strengths, capacities and impact of youth work to those within the youth sector and those beyond, to those familiar with its concepts and those new to this field, all the while sharing practices and insights and encouraging further reflection.

Although many scholars are convinced of the apparent civic disengagement of youth, others suggest that civic participation of young people is stable and increasingly expressed through non-institutionalized forms of practicing politics. This book makes a key contribution to this discussion by asking whether the "decline or shift" paradigm is sufficient in understanding political participation of the youth. It argues that we need to move beyond this framework and develop a renewed reflection on the meaning of "civic and political engagement". It asks crucial questions such as: How can the young be educated into assuming civic and political responsibility? Why and how do young people engage in social and political action? How do the principal mediating institutions (education, media and the family) contribute to new or different forms of youth civic engagement? This text contains contributions from acknowledged specialists such as Constance Flanagan, Mark Elchardus, Marc Hooghe and Bert Klandermans and will be of key interest to students and scholars of youth and young citizens, civic & political involvement, European politics, youth studies, sociology, political participation and electoral behaviour.

V.1. The different authors highlight the youth work policies in Belgium (Flanders), Germany, England, Poland, Malta, France and Finland.