Cittadinanza attiva e partecipazione sociale: modelli e prospettive teoriche

This volume aims at offering a contribution to the studies on youth participation and active citizenship, according to a perspective that places both constructs in relation to the urban space dimension, understood as the scene of the expression of participation practices and the exercise of citizenship. The study of a city, developed with an interdisciplinary approach, shows how local governments promote specific political visions that justify equally peculiar ways of providing education: raising awareness, in this regard, is crucial and inevitably involves education professionals, the exclusive designers of inclusive processes and active citizenship. The theoretical analysis of the concepts of participation and citizenship implies an analysis of the “youth issues” from a historical-political and legislative point of view, showing that the analytical categorisations applied to youth and participation studies may result in a specialised vocabulary with negative connotations, and in a collection of educational projects developed differentially, absolutely distant from youth cultural practices. Finally, the results of a qualitative research carried out in Pescara, which involved students aged 15 to 19 years and was aimed at investigating the social representations of participation and citizenship, will be discussed.