young People as citizens in the making: ambivalences and ambiguities of participation

The following reflections focus on the ambiguities and ambivalences of young people‟s participation. Although participation is being referred to as reinforcing and innovating active citizenship in most programmes and policy discourses it remains limited to superficial rhetoric. At the same time it coincides with the discourse of the activating welfare state which underlines individual self-responsibility for the own social and labour market integration; in most cases without assuring the necessary resources and opportunities of individuals. Both perspectives imply that young people apparently do not follow societal expectations in terms of citizenship rights and responsibilities. This perspective leads to questioning the subjective meaning of participation within the biographies of the young people themselves. Our starting point is that current discourses refer to a narrow concept of participation while many actual activities of young people are not acknowledged as attempts of participation or even stigmatised as deviant, riskful or as criminal acts. Our reflections are based on two EU-funded research projects: The project Youth Policy and Participation (YOYO) was concerned with the motivational careers of disadvantaged youth in transitions to work and the impact of possibilities of participation in this respect. It consisted of reports on the National transitionsn systems, biographical interviews with 300 young people on their transition experiences and 27 case studies on participatory projects for young people in transitions to work. It was funded under the EU‟s 5th Framework Programme for Research 2001-2004 (Walther et al. 2006; see also www.iris-egris.de/yoyo). The project Youth – Actor of Social Change (UP2YOUTH) was concerned with the relationship between young people‟s agency and social change. Funded as a Coordinated Action under the 6th Framework Programme for Research (2006-2009), three thematic working groups carried out secondary analysis with regard to the topics young parenthood, transitions to work in a migration society, and youth participation (Loncle & Muniglia 2008; see also www.up2youth.org). In the following, we will first clarify our understanding of participation and its relation to social integration in late modern societies. Second we will present some findings on participation in relation to the areas of education, transitions to work and youth culture. Third, we will briefly reflect on the findings in a comparative perspective. Finally, we will conclude by some reflections regarding the way participation should be addressed by youth policy and youth research.