Italian case study: Palermo and Bologna

This chapter is part of the Annex of the Thematic Report "Youth participation, agency and social change", which presents the final finding of the EU-funded research project “Youth – Actor of social change” (UP2YOUTH, May 2006 until June 2009). This is an EU-research project concerned with the agency of young people in the context of social change. The focus is on young parenthood, transitions to work of migrant or ethnic minority youth and youth participation. With regard to participation the analysis started from institutional concerns with an observed decline in young people’s political participation (e.g. abstention from elections) and membership in social organisations. This was interpreted as an increasing discrepancy in the meaning institutional actors and young people ascribe to participation. This discrepancy has been analysed with regard to the following issues: Formal participation is replaced by informal and spontaneous forms of participation yet involves only a minority of youth (e.g. anti-globalisation movement, alternative consumption); Participation in education is being reduced to preparation for formal participation later (civic education classes) while competencies of ‘student councils’ tend to be restricted to organizing social events in school; Participation in transitions to work is interpreted in terms of self-responsibility rather than individual choice, reflected by the trend towards activating labour market policies; Youth cultural activities tend to be classified as non-political, hedonistic or deviant. However, they reclaim public space (social center) or lead to conflict with authorities (riots in suburbs or schools) and therefore can be regarded as a public articulating of individual needs and interest. The increasing difficulty in distinguishing participation from non participation implies that all activities of young people in the public may be referred to as potentially participatory. The chapter analyses whether - and eventually how- two very different Italian cities (Palermo and Bologna), which represent the socio-economic gap existing between Southern and Northern Italy, has acknowledged this new trend of youth. The chapter is readeble at: participation.www.up2youth.org/downloads/task,doc_download/gid,73/