Young People’s Participation. Группа авторов
Revisiting young people’s participation: an introduction
Maria Bruselius-Jensen, E. Kay M. Tisdall and Ilaria Pitti
Over 30 years after the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) was ratified by the United Nations (UN) General Assembly in 1989, young people’s active citizenship and participation rights have gained increased attention in both academia, policy and practice (Westwood et al, 2014; Gal and Duramy, 2015; McMellon and Tisdall, 2020). In particular, young people’s civic participation is promoted at local, national and regional levels through such organisations as the European Union, UNICEF and international non-governmental organisations (NGOs). Young people’s participation has become a major rights issue and one gaining increasing policy and practice importance.
While the UNCRC addresses the human rights of children under the age of 18, attention to participation also extends to older young people. Political institutions, research and society are concerned about young people’s societal engagement, carried by fears that new generations of European youth are unengaged and disinterested in politics and have lost trust in democratic institutions (Loncle et al, 2012), and that this will lead to a crisis in democracy. Such a deficit perspective has been counteracted by recent research, which demonstrates that young people are often not uninvolved but they use forms and means other than formal participation to engage in society and to influence politics (Quintelier, 2007; Pohl et al, 2020). Whether constructing youth participation as in crisis or changing, institutions from social work to education are investing in supporting, facilitating and educating young people to be engaged societally as the ‘citizens of tomorrow’ (Walther et al, 2020).
Young people of recent generations have grown up not only with the right to be consulted, but also with multiple initiatives to support their democratic education and facilitate their engagement (Taru et al, 2014). Key actors such as municipalities, institutions and NGOs advocate giving ‘voice’ to young people and consulting them on matters that concern their lives (Kjellander et al, 2016). However, professionals can be unsure about how to include young people in change and decision making, while institutional structures may create barriers as well as opportunities (Tisdall et al, 2014). With participation activities proliferating, the book is timely in assessing the ways in which young people experience such activities, their transformative potential both personally and for society, and the ways in which adults and organisations do or do not support such participation.
This book comes at a time of considerable upheaval and change for young people in Europe. The 2008 global financial crisis has led to a rise of youth unemployment in many European countries, while the challenges fostered by massive migrations and climate change are putting pressure on political and economic systems. This complexity is further exacerbated by the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. While young people have so far been relatively spared from serious illness, the long-term effects of this new crisis on the European economies and labour markets are likely to hit them harder, primarily in terms of accessing stable jobs and social security. The pandemic crisis could foster another global economic crisis. In turn, this could lead national governments to adopt austerity measures similar to those enacted in response to the 2008 global financial crisis, limiting education, youth work and other social services that could support young people.
The current scenario results in uncertainty for young people, but it also creates spaces for experimentation and innovation through participation.
This book showcases original research evidence and analysis, arising from a network of European social science researchers from childhood and youth studies. It revisits how, under what conditions and for what purpose young people1 – in different contexts – participate in making decisions and foster changes on issues that concern them and their communities. It does so by drawing on research undertaken after the 2008 financial crisis but before the COVID-19 pandemic. The chapters are aligned by a shared focus on the interplay between the concepts of youth, participation and inequality. The book provides an opportunity to update these three long-standing and central concepts for young people’s participation, and to critically consider them in the current environment. Thus, the book both contributes new insights for contemporary young people’s participation and strengthens the core concepts for participatory research and practice. The following sections further explore the concepts of participation, youth and inequality and their application in this book.
Participation
To promote young people’s participation, formal structures have been established in numerous countries, from pupil councils within schools (Cross et al, 2014) to children’s or youth parliaments (Cushing and van Vliet, 2017). Examples abound of young people being invited to comment on community, service and policy developments, at local, regional and national levels; sometimes their involvement goes further, in forms of co-design and co-production (Tisdall et al, 2014). Participation projects and activities have proliferated, from young people influencing their local contexts (for example, care-experienced young people influencing local authority services2), to young people speaking to international decision makers on issues ranging from child marriage to equal opportunities.3 The recent profile of young people’s activism in climate change, including Greta Thunberg’s speech to the UN General Assembly4 and the widespread marches of school children and youth (Sengupta, 2019), have gripped the public imagination and flooded both traditional and social media. Young people’s participation is now high profile for the public, as well as being of policy, practice and research interest.
Despite or perhaps because of its popularity, participation as a concept is used widely but differently, with no consensus across literatures, research and policies on its definition. A very basic definition of ‘participation’ – for example, ‘the fact that you take part or become involved in something’ in the Cambridge English Dictionary5 – is very generalised, lacks links to decision making and impact, and thus provides only a starting point from a rights perspective. Inspired by Cotta (1979), the concept of participation is defined here as having two interconnected meanings. On the one hand, participation does refer to ‘taking part’ in something and particularly to taking part in civic and political activities. On the other hand, participation refers to ‘being part’ of something, included in a society with a series of rights and possibilities. Through a wide variety of case examples, this book demonstrates how the two dimensions of participation are interconnected in young people’s possibilities of being part of and taking part in different welfare societies.
Youth
As a second focus, the book interrogates the conditions of ‘youth’ and ‘being young’ in contemporary Europe and how