Participation and youth cultures

The 20th century has witnessed the emergence of specific youth subcultures which were in many respects unknown to pre-modern societies. Unfortunately, construction of indicators pertaining the cultural aspects of youth conditions is often vulnerable to many methodological problems, stemming from the impossibility of direct observation and the distortions implicit in self-reporting in survey contexts. These problems are further aggravated in an international framework, in that there are relatively few cross-country studies dedicated specifically to youth or in which youth sub-samples contain a sufficiently high number of cases to justify generalisation of findings. The fact that young people take actions differently with regard to familiy, citizenship or work compared to the generation of their parents and to the expectation of institutional actors may be either ascribed to different demand and constraints by which they are confronted, or it may be interpreted as different cultures of practice, of parenthood, work or citizenship. Culture is one way of understanding the meaning of practice as it evolves both individually and collectively. It embodies the sets of practices developed by groups, communities of societies. These sets of practices are the totality of social actions which are interlinked within a given social context and which share values, principles and norms. Thereby they represent the repertoire from which individuals construct meaning and relate it to specific forms of practice. The present chapter deals with two major trends in the field of youth culture: youth counter culture expressions in Italy, Austria, France, Ireland and Slovakia and young people’s participation through the internet. We will discuss cases of apparently deviant or criminalized behaviour of young people such as urban riots and ask to what extent these need to be viewed and addressed as an expression of young people’s participation.