Young People and the Struggle for Participation: Contested Practices, Power and Pedagogies in Public Spaces 9780429432095

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Young People and the Struggle for Participation

Young People and the Struggle for Participation rethinks dominant concepts and meanings of participation by exploring what young people do in public spaces and what these spaces mean to them, individually and collectively. This book discusses how different spaces and places structure and are in turn structured by young peoples’ activities. Drawing on findings from a comparative study in eight European cities, insights into different styles of youth participation emerging from formal, non-formal and informal settings are presented. The book provides a comparative analysis of how transnational discourses, national welfare states and local youth policies affect youth participation. It also investigates how it comes about that young people get involved in different forms of participation in the course of their biographies. This book will appeal to academics, researchers and post-graduate students in the fields of youth studies, community studies, sociology of education, political science, social work, psychology and anthropology. Andreas Walther is a Professor for Educational Sciences and Director of the Research Centre ‘Education and Coping in the Life Course’ at Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Janet Batsleer is a Reader in Education and Principal Lecturer in Youth and Community Work at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. Patricia Loncle is a Professor of Sociology at the French High School of Public Health, Rennes, France. Axel Pohl is a Senior Researcher at the Institute for Social Work and Social Spaces at the FHS St. Gallen, University of Applied Sciences, Switzerland.

Young People and the Struggle for Participation

Contested Practices, Power and Pedagogies in Public Spaces

Edited by Andreas Walther, Janet Batsleer, Patricia Loncle and Axel Pohl

First published 2020 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 Andreas Walther; Janet Batsleer; Patricia Loncle; A xel Pohl The right of Andreas Walther, Janet Batsleer, Patricia Loncle and A xel Pohl to be identified as editors of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in- Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in- Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978 -1-138 -36242- 0 (hbk) ISBN: 978 - 0 - 429- 43209-5 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by codeMantra

Contents

List of figures and tables List of contributors Acknowledgements

ix xi xv

1 Contested practices, power and pedagogies of young people in public spaces: an introduction 1 A x el P o hl , J a n et B atsleer , Patricia L o n cle a n d   A n dreas  Walther

Part I

Conceptual and contextual frameworks of youth participation

13

2 Researching youth participation – theoretical and methodological limitations of existing research and innovative perspectives 15 A n dreas Walther , A x el P o hl , Patricia L o n cle a n d Nigel Patrick T h o mas

3 Discourses of youth participation in Europe 34 Val é rie B ec q uet, S iyka Kovacheva , B o ris P o piva n ov a n d T o rbj ö r n F o rkby

4 Do youth policies matter? National and local youth policies as contexts of youth participation 49 Patricia L o n cle , M o re n a C uc o n at o, Dari o T u o rt o a n d B j ö r n A n derss o n

vi Contents Part II

Empirical insights into forms and meanings of youth participation

65

5 ‘This is a compressed political system’. Ambivalences of formal youth participation 67 D emet L ü k ü sl ü, A le x a n dre Pais , Dari o T u o rt o a n d   A n dreas Walther

6 Young people’s appropriation of public space: participation through voice, sociability and activity 82 B j ö r n A n derss o n , C hristia n R eutli n ger , Patricia Ro th a n d D o mi n ic Z immerma n n

7 Making a home in the city: how young people take part in the urban space 97 Valeria P iro, Nic o la de L uigi , C hristia n R eutli n ger a n d D o mi n ic Z immerma n n

8 Examining styles of youth participation in institutionalised settings as accumulation of capital forms 113 Z ulmir B e č evi ć, B erri n Osma n o glu, B o ris P o piva n ov a n d H arriet Rowley

9 Participation and everyday life: emerging meanings in youth cultural practices 130 I laria P itti , Yağ mur M e n gilli , A lessa n dro M artelli a n d   Patricia L o n cle

10 The interplay between life trajectories and participation careers 146 M o re n a C uc o n at o, S ilvia D em ozzi a n d Val é rie B ec q uet

11 Participation biographies: meaning-making, identity-work and the self 161 G rai n n e M c M ah o n , S usa n n e L iljeh o lm H a n ss o n , L arissa vo n S chwa n e n fl ü gel , J essica L ü tge n s , M arta  I lard o

Contents vii Part III

Towards new ways of understanding and supporting youth participation

177

12 Everyday pedagogies: new perspectives on youth participation, social learning and citizenship 179 B arry P ercy- S mith , Nigel Patrick T h o mas , J a n et  B atsleer a n d T o rbj ö r n F o rkby

13 Struggle over participation: towards a grounded theory of youth participation 199 J a n et B atsleer , A n dreas Walther a n d D emet L ü k ü sl ü

Index

219

List of figures and tables

Figures 13.1 Recognition of different forms of practice in public spaces

203

Tables 1.1 3.1 12.1 12.2

Overview over in-depth case studies in the eight cities 5 Relation between national and European discourses 44 Action research projects grouped by project aims 183 A framework for pedagogies of participation 194

List of contributors

Björn Andersson, Associate Professor and Senior Lecturer in Social Work at the Department of Social Work, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Janet Batsleer,  Head of the Centre Childhood, Youth and Community, Faculty of Education, Manchester Metropolitan University, United Kingdom. Zulmir Bečević, PhD in Childhood Studies and Lecturer in Social Work at the Department of Social Work, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Valérie Becquet,  Professor of Sociology, University of Cergy-Pontoise, France. Morena Cuconato, Associate Professor of Pedagogy and Social Pedagogy at the University of Bologna, Italy. Silvia Demozzi,  Assistant Professor at the Department of Education, ­University of Bologna, Italy. Torbjörn Forkby, Professor in Social Work, University of Växjö, Sweden. Susanne Liljeholm Hansson,  Post-doc Research Fellow and Lecture at the Department of Social Work, University of Gothenburg, Sweden Marta Ilardo, Post-doc Research Fellow at the Department for Education, University of Bologna, Italy. Siyka Kovacheva, Associate Professor in Sociology and Social Policy of the Faculty of Philosophy and History at the University of Plovdiv, and Senior Researcher at the New Europe Centre, Plovdiv, Bulgaria. Patricia Loncle, Professor of Sociology and Head of the Research Chair on Youth at the High School of Public Health in Rennes, France. Nicola De Luigi,  Associate Professor at the Department of Political and Social Sciences, University of Bologna, Italy.

xii  List of contributors

Demet Lüküslü,  Professor of Sociology, Yeditepe University Faculty of Arts and Sciences Sociology Department in Istanbul, Turkey. Jessica Lütgens, M.A. in Educational Science, PhD student at Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Alessandro Martelli, Associate Professor of Sociology at the Department of Sociology and Business Law, University of Bologna, Italy. Grainne McMahon,  Senior Lecturer, Centre for Citizenship, Conflict, Identity and Diversity, University of Huddersfield, United Kingdom. Yağmur Mengilli, M.A. in Educational Science, PhD student and Lecturer at Goethe University of Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Berrin Osmanoglu,  M.A. and PhD student in Political Science at Université Paris 8 Vincennes – Saint-Denis, member of CRESPPA – LabToP (Centre de recherches sociologiques et politiques de Paris – Laboratoire théories du politique), Paris, France. Alexandre Pais, Reader at the Faculty of Education, Manchester Metropolitan University, United Kingdom. Barry Percy-Smith,  Professor of Childhood Youth and Participatory ­Practice and Director of the Centre for Applied Childhood Youth and Family Research at the University of Huddersfield, United Kingdom. Valeria Piro, Post-doc Research Fellow at the Department of Sociology and Business Law of the University of Bologna, Italy. Ilaria Pitti,  Marie Curie Fellow, School of Humanities, Education and ­Social Sciences, Örebro University, Sweden. Axel Pohl,  Senior Researcher at the Institute for Social Work and Social Spaces, FHS St. Gallen, University of Applied Sciences, Switzerland. Boris Popivanov, Associate Professor in Political Science at Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski and Junior Researcher at New Europe Centre, Plovdiv, Bulgaria. Christian Reutlinger, Professor for Social Pedagogy and Social Geography and Head of the Research Institute of Social Work University of Applied Sciences St. Gallen, Switzerland. Patricia Roth, M.Sc. in Urban Design, Research Associate at University of Applied Sciences St. Gallen, Switzerland. Harriet Rowley, Post-doc Researcher and Lecturer in Education and Community at the Faculty of Education, Manchester Metropolitan University, United Kingdom.

List of contributors  xiii

Larissa von Schwanenflügel,  Professor for Social Work, Frankfurt ­University of Applied Sciences, Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Nigel Patrick Thomas,  Professor Emeritus of Childhood and Youth, ­University of Central Lancashire, United Kingdom. Dario Tuorto, Associate Professor in the Department of Education at the University of Bologna, Italy. Andreas Walther, Professor for Social Pedagogy and Director of the ­research centre Coping and Education in the Life Course at Goethe University of Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Dominic Zimmermann, M.A. in Social Sciences, Senior Research ­Associate at Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Switzerland.

Acknowledgements

This book is the expression of a collaborative work of more than 30 authors who stand on the shoulders of more than other 30 researchers and research assistants who have been involved in previous steps of the research without getting visibility in this book. Our first thank you goes to these colleagues whose contributions have been a key prerequisite for being able to write and publish this book. We particularly thank Jessica Rhein for preparing the typoscript. Second, we would like to thank all those young people in Bologna, Eskis¸ehir, Frankfurt am Main, Gothenburg, Manchester, Plovdiv and Zurich who have contributed through interviews, group discussions and action research projects and accepting us as observers of their practices. Of course, we are also grateful to the many experts from research, policy and practice with whom we conducted expert interviews and/or who accompanied the research in local and European advisory boards. The research was conducted in the project ‘Styles and Spaces of Participation. Formal, non-formal and informal possibilities of young people’s participation in European cities’. This project received funding from the E ­ uropean Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 649416. The views expressed in this book are the sole responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Commission.

Chapter 1

Contested practices, power and pedagogies of young people in public spaces An introduction Axel Pohl, Janet Batsleer, Patricia Loncle and Andreas Walther

Youth as a life phase has emerged in modernity parallel to the idea of democracy. Both youth and democracy reflect the need to institutionalise ways of coordinating the lives of individuals within a secular societal order. Since then, youth research has been concerned with the degree to which young people accept and reproduce this existing order. Studies focused on political interest, democratic orientations or participation in elections or voluntary ­engagement signal either concern because of apparently declining participation rates or – on the contrary – refer to persisting acceptance and support of democracy, yet in other forms. The attention to young people’s participation has increased since the end of the 20th century marked by policy acts of international organisations such as the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child (1989) or the European ­Commission’s White Paper ‘A New Impetus for European Youth’ (2001). Historically, this increase in attention coincides with the de-­standardisation of the institutionalised life course and of youth transitions in particular. ­Precarious work and life conditions, unemployment and poverty as well as uncertain life perspectives imply a suspension of full citizenship status. The emerging discourse, therefore, conceptualised young people’s participation as involvement and engagement in decisions ‘which concern them and, in general, the life of their communities’ (ibid.: 8). However, at the same time, there is evidence that policies related to and resulting from this discourse tend to be ‘weak’ in terms of implementation and are limited to pre-defined themes and forms of involvement with limited power (cf. Loncle et al., 2012). In fact, there is a broad critique that most youth policies aimed at facilitating youth participation are tokenistic and that consequently most young people are reluctant, sceptical or even unaware of them. In the dominant discourse, however, this constellation is ascribed more to young people’s lack of information, knowledge and competence than to the weakness of these ­policies. Consequently, a key aspect of these policies is educating young people in terms of providing them with ‘participation competence’ (EC, 2009: 9). This means that although aimed at empowering young people, they involve

2  A xel Pohl et al.

a deficit-oriented perspective that makes participation conditional on accepting to learn how to participate in a specific way claimed to be the ‘right’ one. However, there is increasing discomfort in youth research and – to a lesser extent – in youth policy and practice with this discourse and understanding of youth research, even if this has not yet led to significantly different ­approaches. The most important critique formulated against ruling conceptualisations of (youth) participation regards the definition of youth participation (the deficit-oriented approach, the implicit norms, the forms and contents of the approach) and the exclusion of some groups of young people according to age, gender, ethnicity, class or milieu or level of education. While in policy and practice, there is an increasing call for innovative methods of youth participation these tend to be limited to ways of attracting young people to ‘get involved’ – in activities that have been pre-defined and are held as relevant for society – rather than asking if young people are already participating on their own terms in activities and spaces of their own. There is a new series of European research projects that have started taking another route relying not exclusively but to a significant degree on qualitative research, which permits the analysis of the meaning of youth participation by including the perspective of the young people. The project ‘Youth as Actor of Social Change’ (UP2YOUTH) analysed how the de-standardisation of youth transitions affects young people’s status, practice and meaning of citizenship (Loncle et al., 2012). The project ‘Memory, Youth, Political Legacy And Civic Engagement’ (MYPLACE) analysed the ways in which young people in general and young activists in particular refer to and/or break with traditions of political ­ ilkington et al., 2017). The proculture in their local and national contexts (cf. P ject ‘Spaces and Styles of Participation. Formal, non-­formal and informal possibilities of young people’s participation in European cities’ (PARTISPACE) has undertaken an even more fundamental approach of re-thinking youth participation and it is the findings of this project that represent the basis of this volume.

Exploring contested practices, power and pedagogies of young people in public spaces In contrast to many other publications on young people’s participation, this book is not primarily concerned with the question if, and to what extent, young people do participate. On the contrary, it starts from the assumption that young people do participate, but in different styles and spaces not all of which, however, are recognised by other societal actors as participation. In fact, we start from the assumption that not only do different local and national contexts involve different representations of and policies for young people, but also that both their position in social structure and their positioning with regard to youth culture contribute to a high level of diversity of young people’s participation in public spaces. In fact, being active in public spaces is the main sampling criterion underlying the fieldwork of the ­PARTISPACE ­project. Thus, the research question was operationalised in terms of asking

Contested practices, power and pedagogies  3

what young people do in public spaces and what it means to them. Only ­after that analysis was concerned with the question of whether these activities include claims of being part of society – and in what way. The project relied on a broad concept of participation defined as biographical self-determination in the public and/or through the use of public institutions. This implies that potentially all actions (and therefore different styles of action) of groups or individuals carried out in and/or addressing the public (which is not homogeneous but consists of a variety of formal, non-formal and informal spaces) can be interpreted as participation – unless dialogue has revealed that the individual actor does not refer to a wider community or society (Walther, 2012). Such a broad concept of participation allows for the inclusion of actions by which young people articulate interest in being and aspiration to be part of society. These include actions which are normally not recognised as participation, such as youth cultural practices, conflicts with authorities, ‘filling the gaps’ of public action and/or meeting the needs of other societal groups and finally ‘riots’ and ‘unrest’. This required, first, broadening the concept of participation in terms of contexts (spaces) and forms (styles) beyond formal participation in order not to reproduce the limitations of dominant views while neglecting other p­ articipatory activities of young people. Therefore, activities occurring in formal, non-­formal and informal spaces and styles were analysed. Second, ­participation was understood as a practice of individuals in cooperation with and/or in relation to others. This required a research design which was able to understand the meaning that such practices have for the individuals as well as reconstructing how such practices evolve in interaction with others. Third, participation is constructed by discourses, policies and stakeholders. These need to be analysed in their official and/or explicit forms as well as in the ways they interact with young people’s practices. Fourth, it was ­assumed that participation biographies and practices of young people develop from ­concrete issues and experiences in everyday life to more generalised ­orientations. This accounts also for the participation at different institutional levels and across a range of geographical dimensions. Fifth, the local level was considered as ­appropriate for analysis as it permitted the exploration of specific constellations of convergence versus conflict, of interaction and interdependency, the examination of the roles of decision makers, youth workers and other providers of non-formal spaces of participation and the comparison of official policies, collective practices and individual meaning. For this purpose, the PARTISPACE project has applied a multilevel and multi-perspective research design combining an in-depth qualitative fieldwork in major cities in different European countries with context-related studies. It was conducted in Bologna (Italy), Eskis¸ehir (Turkey), Frankfurt (Germany), Gothenburg (Sweden), Manchester (United Kingdom), Plovdiv (Bulgaria), Rennes (France) and Zurich (Switzerland). These cities are comparable in terms of dimension and relevance in the respective country. They do not represent but are embedded in different national contexts and ­welfare states. In fact, sampling reflected the model of welfare regimes (Esping-­ Andersen, 1990) and of youth transition regimes (Walther, 2006) which have

4  A xel Pohl et al.

both been developed on the basis of comparative analysis of different modes of integration between individuals and society. The study evolved in three phases. The first phase was concerned with providing a contextual framework, especially regarding knowledge at European and national levels. On the one hand, country reports were produced describing youth policy structures at national level, reviewing national youth research, reconstructing discourses on youth participation and contextualising the selected cities with regard to the national context (cf. Andersson et al., 2016). On the other hand, recent European policy discourses on youth participation were analysed including analysis of how they have been taken up and interpreted at national level (Becquet et al., 2016). Apart from this, a secondary analysis of data of the sixth wave of the European Social Survey was conducted in order to see what patterns of youth participation emerge from quantitative data in a cross-country perspective (Kovacheva et al., 2016). Outcomes of this first phase provided the contextual data necessary for the analysis of young people’s practices of participation at local level. Against this backdrop, the core of the project consisted in qualitative fieldwork in the eight cities (phase two). Extensive local studies have been conducted consisting of two major parts: first, mapping processes were undertaken aimed at getting an overview of and insights into different ‘arenas’ (cf. Laine and Gretschel, 2011), practices and representations of youth participation. Expert interviews with policy makers and practitioners from different fields concerned with young people (20 per city) and 12 group discussions per city with young people covering different age groups, social milieus and institutional contexts were conducted. Some of the group discussions included city walks during which young people presented their neighbourhood to the researchers. One result was the selection of different settings of participatory activities which were subject to ethnographic in-depth case studies as a second step of the local studies. In each city, six settings were selected ensuring contrast and diversity across formal, non-formal and informal spaces and modes of participation. Formal settings are those in which youth participation is explicitly institutionalised and in most cases initiated by adults such as student or youth councils or youth sections of political parties. Non-formal settings refer to institutionalised practices in which participation is not an explicit goal but an implicit objective and integral work principle. Although departing from adult and/or professional intentions, activities start from young people’s interest and are developed by or jointly with the young people. Finally, informal settings are activities emerging from young people coping with their everyday lives in public spaces without being initiated or guided by adults and often also without being intended as participation by the young people themselves. These in-depth cases consisted of participant observation, group discussions, and sometimes expert interviews with ‘gate keepers’ or external actors. The aim was to reconstruct the emergence, the meaning and the functioning of the respective groups and practices, the ways in which they are addressed by and interact with their social environment (for an overview see Table 1.1).

   Informal

Formal

Eskis¸ehir

Self-managed Local football social club fans centre Ultras centre Street musicians

High School Youth centre anti(ministry) corruption group Islamic youth Youth centre association (local authority) Youth Extreme sports section of centre humanitarian NGO University Left-wing Student student Network initiative

Bologna

Informal girls group

Graffiti crew Hoodboys

Political cultural centre

Youth section charity organisation

Educational centre for artistic development Drama group The Box – arts Youth Non-profit and social entrepreneurship association care agency foundation supporting refugees Non-profit Young feminist Ecological Web magazine Parcour group movement/ organisation by young groups people Asian music fans Music group Network for arts NDE social movement Youth work

Youth section political party

Sustainable food network Alternative education centre

Move free training group

Scouts group

Youth job exchange

LGBTQ youth group

Students and socialism

Youth centre

Zurich

Cooperative for youth

Rennes

Open cultural centre

Plovdiv

Residential care home

Manchester

Regional youth School information student centre committee

Gothenburg

Youth & student Youth Formal youth University student representation representation organisation council

Frankfurt

Table 1.1  O  verview over in-depth case studies in the eight cities

6  A xel Pohl et al.

Additionally, biographical interviews have been conducted with two young persons per case (12 per city). The aim was to reconstruct how young people got and stayed involved in different activities in public space and what this involvement meant subjectively to them in the context of their life stories. All qualitative interviews and group discussions conducted in the project have been audio-recorded and fully transcribed, and all observations have been protocolled by extensive field notes. Transcripts and field notes have been subject to an open coding process according to grounded theory (Corbin and Strauss, 1990; Charmaz, 2014), even if some sensitising concepts have been applied to all interviews across cases and cities to allow a minimum of comparative analysis. The analysis of the biographical interviews combined grounded theory with biographical case reconstruction following Rosenthal (2004) which allows relating the life trajectory with the subjective biographical construction. From all qualitative data sets, English summaries were produced and ten data sets per country were translated for joint analysis. The analysis of the mapping phase and of the in-depth case studies was documented in national case study reports on the basis of which a comparative case study report was produced (Batsleer et al., 2017). From the local studies, two to three groups per city encountered in the mapping phase or with whom case studies had been conducted were selected to carry out participatory action research projects. This step of the research process implied shifting from analysis to action and also sharing or even handing over the power to define themes, research questions and activities as well as approaches to young people. The aim was to give young people the chance to raise issues and views and to observe and analyse learning processes involved in young people’s participation processes. The action research projects have been documented by young people while the processes have been analysed and documented nationally and in a synthesis report (McMahon et al., 2018; see also www.partispace.eu/download). The third phase of the project consisted in thematic and comparative analysis as well as in dissemination of findings. Analysis occurred in five thematic working groups on comparative analysis of local constellations of participation (Lüküslü et al., 2018), on spaces of participation (Zimmermann et al., 2018), on styles of participation (Rowley et al., 2018), participation biographies (­Cuconato et al., 2018) and on the learning processes involved in the process of ‘staging’ participation. At local level, hearings were held with experts and stakeholders as well as with young people to disseminate and validate the findings and to stimulate processes of policy making. At European level, findings were discussed during a policy seminar together with practitioners, policy makers and researchers from the studied cities, from other European countries and the European institutions. Further, findings were used for a manual for the training of youth workers and other professionals working with young people (­McMahon et al., 2018). Based on documentations of the action research projects, a video has

Contested practices, power and pedagogies  7

been produced and a series of policy briefs addresses practitioners and policy makers (see www.partispace.eu/download). In sum, the project findings have been elaborated in a diverse range of ways to address different target groups in order to stimulate a debate and to widen the dominant understanding of youth participation.

Overview over this book This book documents a range of key findings and reflections concerned with spaces and styles of participation and the formal, non-formal and informal possibilities of young people’s participation in European cities. After this ­introduction, this book is structured by three parts: Part I provides conceptual and contextual frameworks of youth participation. Chapter 2 by Andreas Walther, Axel Pohl, Patricia Loncle and ­Nigel Patrick Thomas is concerned with the theoretical and methodological implications of revisiting and reconceptualising youth participation. The chapter introduces and outlines research perspectives that allow to deconstruct dominant discourses and reconstruct meanings of participation from young people’s practices in public spaces. It starts from a critical review of existing research in political theory, childhood studies and youth research revealing that there has been increasing discomfort with a narrow understanding of participation in research, yet without significant changes. Against this backdrop, a perspective is suggested that balances openness in terms of a grounded theory emerging from the meanings that individuals ascribe to participation and constructivism focusing on reconstructing processes of meaning-making in social practice. Six sensitising concepts and their methodological implications are presented: discourse, institutions, spaces, styles, biographies and learning. These perspectives represent the theoretical and methodological framework of the PARTISPACE project and are the foundations for the following chapters of this volume. In Chapter 3, Valérie Becquet, Siyka Kovacheva, Boris Popivanov and ­Torbjörn Forkby set the scene by analysing European discourses of youth participation in Europe and their interpretation at national level. Based on the analysis of key documents of three major institutions that are active in shaping youth ­policies: the European Commission, the Council of Europe and the ­European Youth Forum, the chapter examines the policy framework of young people’s participation from 2001 to 2015. The analysis focuses on the similarities and differences in the approaches to youth participation at the European level. It also reflects the variations of national interpretations of these discourses and reveals how discourses on youth participation are informed by a complex ­array of meanings, values, actors and institutions concerned with young people and how socio-economic context can reshape the political and social definition of youth participation.

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Taking up the thread of European discourses aimed at pushing national youth policies to strengthen youth participation, Chapter 4 by Patricia ­Loncle, Morena Cuconato, Dario Tuorto and Björn Andersson is concerned with the links between youth policy and youth participation at different levels of the decision-making process. The question is to what extent youth policies contribute to different constellations of youth participation at local level. The data analysed in the chapter consist mainly in secondary analysis of national documents and of interviews with experts, policy makers and young people. The chapter provides descriptions of local youth policies and the ways in which they address youth participation by elaborating patterns of youth partici­pation at local level. Further, these local constellations are discussed with regard to the ways in which youth policies are framed by welfare regimes at national level thus contributing to discuss the relationship between local and national policy levels in facilitating youth participation. Against the backdrop of concepts and contexts, the chapters of Part II provide empirical insight into different forms and meanings of young people’s practices in public spaces. Chapter 5 by Demet Lüküslü, Alexandre Pais, Dario Tuorto and Andreas Walther lays the focus on formal settings of youth participation which can be seen as direct reflections of local youth policy choices. The aim of the chapter is to analyse the relationships between adults and youth and the function of these relationships in the power arrangements in the respective contexts. The chapter analyses empirical data from ethnographic case studies of formal settings of youth participation. On the one hand, the focus lies on the positioning of these settings between youth and adulthood, on the other hand, processes of negotiating the agenda between young people and adults are analysed. These findings are discussed with regard to the power relationships that become visible and with regard to the roles of these forms of youth participation for young people, institutional actors and society. It discusses what actions these relationships enable, which actors are involved and what are the possibilities as well as constraints offered to actors by these settings. Since this book aims at extending the view beyond formalised spaces of participation, Chapter 6 by Björn Andersson, Christian Reutlinger, ­Patricia Roth and Dominic Zimmermann analyses young people’s practices of ­appropriating urban public space. Three main patterns of appropriation are distinguished and discussed in relation to empirical findings. The first one is labelled ‘voice’ and has to do with the tradition of holding political demonstrations in public. The second one, ‘sociability’, is about the use of public space for social relations and gatherings. The third one is ‘activity’ and is connected to practical action: young people meet in public space to ‘do’ something, and these activities form the basic reason why they are there. These three forms of social activities show how important access to public space is for young people and also how these spaces allow participation to develop in quite different forms. This includes the explicit formation of political

Contested practices, power and pedagogies  9

views, as well as occasional gatherings where young people just socialise and, through this, make claim to their right to the city. Chapter 7 by Valeria Piro, Nicola de Luigi, Christian Reutlinger and Dominic Zimmermann takes up the perspective of the spatial constitution of participation. The chapter looks at public and semi-public spaces in the city that young people appropriate as their ‘homes’, focusing on processes that, within the home and urban studies debates, are commonly defined as domestication of public space. The chapter scrutinises how through domestication young people turn spaces into meaningful and familiar places. The analysis of the empirical material shows, first of all, that, for young people, home does not necessarily take place in private spaces. Instead, home can also be in public or semi-public spaces. The homes the young people create usually involve strong emotional components, going along with the attribution of great symbolic values to objects, activities and people who constitute homes. Home-making processes, moreover, can stand in opposition to control by state authorities or youth workers when their control is experienced as coercive. In Chapter 8, Zulmir Bečević, Berrin Osmanoglu, Boris Popivanov and Harriet Rowley shift the perspective towards the different styles in which young people participate. The chapter understands styles of youth participation in terms of how young people can participate in a given socio-political context. It focuses on young people’s motivations and expectations and on the ways in which they are formed in established forms of youth participation. Based on the analysis of ethnographic observation and group discussions in four case studies, the question it addresses is how young people re-signify and reproduce or transform the styles of practice inbuilt in the settings. ­Using a Bourdieusian frame, it emerges that young people engage in processes of re-signification of existing practices. It is argued that where capital is ­a lready available limited re-signification takes place, while for those outside the game, institutional arrangements limit processes of recognition. Ilaria Pitti, Yağmur Mengilli, Alessandro Martelli and Patricia ­Loncle ­apply the style perspective for the analysis of informal settings of participation. Chapter 9 focuses on the practices of three informal, youth-led ­initiatives. The chapter analyses the processes through which young ­people transform their cultural practices and in what ways they undergo processes of formalisation and politicisation. Based on data from ethnographic ­observation, ­biographical interviews and action research, the chapter explores how young people make sense of the participatory potential involved in their ­cultural practices and in the course of their relationships with institutional actors. In so doing, it aims at shedding light on opportunities and difficulties young people encounter in creating new forms of participation which are not ­commonly recognised as such. In Chapter 10, the perspective changes from the collective to the individual asking how young people’s life course trajectories lead to their

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involvement in different forms of participation. Morena Cuconato, Silvia Demozzi and Valérie Becquet start from the assumption that by participating in ongoing interactions, individuals are formed by society (structure) while through their action they contribute to shape it (agency). Therefore, the concepts of life course and biography represent a joint framework for analysing and understanding youth participation as individual agency in relation to structural phenomena. The chapter reconstructs processes of involvement from a ­biographical perspective and presents four emerging clusters of young people’s careers of participation. The analysis shows how narrated structural ­elements contribute to shape young people’s careers of participation and, in turn, how these careers influence the individual biographies. Chapter 11 also takes a biographical perspective on youth participation. However, rather than focusing on trajectories and careers, the analysis by ­ arissa von Grainne McMahon, Susanne Liljeholm Hansson, Jessica Lütgens, L Schwanenflügel and Marta Ilardo is concerned with reconstructing the subjective meaning young people ascribe to participation in telling their life stories. This chapter explores a sample of biographies in detail in order to understand young people’s meaning-making and identity work in their ­participation biographies. In analytical terms, it implies considering the ways in which young people present themselves and frame their narratives, ­contextually and discursively, as well as their telling of their interaction with the community, the public and other participative spaces. It elaborates ­d imensions of identity work over the life time. Thus, participation biographies can be conceptualised as a series of key moments of identity in relation to activities in public spaces from a young person’s perspective. The aim of re-thinking what counts as youth participation and how this can be supported by policy and practice are addressed in Part III. The key finding of PARTISPACE that youth participation evolves out of the practices of young people as everyday acts of citizenship poses challenges for policy and practice and problematises the notion of citizenship education. Chapter 12 by Barry Percy-Smith, Nigel Patrick Thomas, Janet Batsleer and ­Torbjörn Forkby draws on data from ethnographic inquiries and action research projects undertaken as part of the project to contribute new perspectives on everyday pedagogies of youth participation. The chapter discusses the importance of self-determination; the way in which young people d­ evelop agency and ­capacity for action through experience in everyday contexts; the ­significance of spaces for experimentation, creativity and emergent learning as young people continually seek to make sense of and express their own meanings and values; reflexive learning and negotiation of boundaries; and critically reflects on the role of adults in the context of participation as a relational practice of participatory social learning. In so doing this chapter articulates a new framework of participatory ‘learning’ for citizenship. Finally, in Chapter 13 by Janet Batsleer, Andreas Walther and Demet Lüküslü, the different methodological approaches, findings and thematic

Contested practices, power and pedagogies  11

perspectives are drawn together to re-think the meaning of youth participation. The chapter aims at reconstructing the meanings involved in the practices and relationships and to elaborate a grounded theory of youth participation from there. The chapter first summarises the findings by presenting a clustering of different ideal type forms of participation. Cross-­cutting with this overview of different participatory practices the findings are interpreted with regard to the six thematic and theoretical perspectives introduced in Chapter 2 – discourse, institutions and policies, spaces, styles, biographies and learning. Finally, these reflections are theorised in dialogue with existing concepts of participation, democracy, conflict and political action. The chapter concludes with a proposal for re-thinking youth participation from a relational perspective and the research needs resulting from this approach.

References Andersson, B., Cuconato, M., De Luigi, N., Demozzi, S., Forkby, T., Ilardo, M., Martelli, A., Pitti, I., Tuorto, D., and Zannoni, F. (2016). National Contexts of Youth Participation. Comparative Report. PARTISPACE Deliverable 2.2. Zenodo. doi:10.5281/zenodo.48113. Batsleer, J., Ehrensperger, K., Lüküslü, F., Osmanoğlu, B., Pais, A., Reutlinger, C., Roth, P., Wigger, A., and Zimmermann, D. (2017). Claiming Spaces and Struggling for Recognition. Comparative Case Study Report. PARTISPACE Deliverable 4.3. Zenodo. doi:10.5281/zenodo.1064119. Becquet, V., Kovacheva, S., Popivanov, B., and Kabaivanov, S. (2016). European Discourses on Youth Participation and their National Interpretation in the Countries-­Members of the PARTISPACE project. Working paper. PARTISPACE Deliverable 3.1. Unpublished. Charmaz, K. (2014). Constructing Grounded Theory. Introducing Qualitative Methods. 2nd edition. London: Thousand Oaks Sage. Corbin, J. M., and Strauss, A. L. (1990). Grounded theory research: Procedures, ­canons, and evaluative criteria. Qualitative Sociology, 13(1), pp. 3–21. Cuconato, M., McMahon, G., Becquet, V., Demozzi, S., Ilardo, M., Liljeholm ­Hansson, S., Lütgens, J., and Schwanenflügel, L. (2018). Young People’s Participation Biographies. Thematic Report Biographies of Participation. Working Paper. ­PARTISPACE deliverable 6.4. doi:10.5281/zenodo.1240170. Esping-Andersen, G. (1990). The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. Cambridge: ­Polity Press. European Commission (2001). A New Impetus for European Youth. A White Paper by the European Commission. COM/2001/0681 final/. Brussels: European Commission. European Commission (2009). An EU Strategy for Youth – Investing and Empowering. A Renewed Open Method of Coordination to Address Youth Challenges and Opportunities. Brussels: European Commission. Kovacheva, S., Kabaivanov, S., Arıkan Akdağ, G., and Lüküslü, D. (2016). Commonalities and Differences in the Forms of Youth Participation in Europe. Working paper. PARTISPACE Deliverable 3.2. Unpublished. Laine, S., and Gretschel, A. (2011). Whose arena is the EU youth policy? Young participant’s involvement and influence in the EU youth policy from their own points

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of view. In: Chisholm, L., Kovacheva, S., and Merico, M. (eds.) European Youth Studies. Innsbruck: University of Innsbruck. Loncle, P., Cuconato, M., Muniglia, V., and Walther, A. (eds.) (2012). Youth Participation in Europe, beyond Discourses, Practices and Realities. Bristol: The Policy Press. Lüküslü, D., Pais, A., Tuorto, D., Walther, A., and Loncle, P. (2018): Local Constellations of Youth Policy and Youth Participation. Comparative Report 2. PARTISPACE Deliverable 6.1. doi:10.5281/zenodo.1240191. McMahon, G., Percy-Smith, B., Thomas, N., Andersson, B., Becevic, Z., Liljehom Hansson, S., and Forkby, T. (2018). Youth-led Action Research: Participatory Learning in Action. Evaluation of Action Research. Working Paper. PARTISPACE Deliverable 5.3. doi:10.5281/zenodo.1240227. Pilkington, H., Pollock, G., and Franc, R. (2017). Understanding Youth Participation across Europe from Survey to Ethnography. Manchester: Palgrave Macmillan. Rosenthal, G. (2004). Biographical research. In: Seale, C., Gobo, G., Gubrium, J.F., and Silverman, D. (eds.) Qualitative Research Practice. London: Sage, pp. 48–64. Rowley, H., Pitti, I., Mengilli, Y., Becevic, Z., Martelli, A., Martin, C., ­Osmanoglu,  B., Percy-Smith, B., and Popivanov, B. (2018). Young People’s Participation as Lived Practice. Thematic Report Styles of Participation. Working Paper. PARTISPACE ­Deliverable 6.3. doi:10.5281/zenodo.1240198. United Nations (1989). Convention on the Rights of the Child. Treaty Series 1577 (November). Walther, A. (2006). Regimes of youth transition, choice, flexibility and security in young people’s experiences across different European contexts. Young, 14(2), pp. 119–139. Walther, A. (2012). Participation or non-participation? Getting beyond dichotomies by applying an ideology-critical, a comparative and a biographical perspective. In: Loncle, P., Cuconato, M., Muniglia, V., and Walther, A. (eds.) Youth Participation in Europe. Beyond Discourses, Practices and Realities. Bristol: Policy Press, pp. 227–245. Zimmermann, D., Andersson, B., De Luigi, N., Piro, V., and Reutlinger, C. (2018). Appropriating the City. Spatial Dynamics of Youth Participation. Thematic Report on Spaces of Youth Participation. Working Paper. PARTISPACE Deliverable 6.2. doi:10.5281/zenodo.1240165.

Part I

Conceptual and contextual frameworks of youth participation

Chapter 2

Researching youth participation – theoretical and methodological limitations of existing research and innovative perspectives Andreas Walther, Axel Pohl, Patricia Loncle and Nigel Patrick Thomas Introduction Participation is a widely, but variably, used concept in the social sciences. In sociology, it tends to be concerned with the rules and practices of membership in groups and societies, while in political science, it refers to active influence of citizens in decision-making (see Carpentier, 2011). In youth research, these perspectives seem to overlap; young people’s political, social and civic participation is seen as an indicator of their integration into society. There is also a pedagogical strand of research interested in understanding how the democracy learning of young people can be supported. In both youth research and pedagogical literature, and especially in related policy arenas, these perspectives often combine normative and analytical aspects, and the concept of participation is sometimes used uncritically, legitimised by a powerful discourse in which young people are addressed as the future of society. This chapter seeks to provide theoretical and methodological perspectives that help to deconstruct the ideological lenses through which participation is continually reproduced in ways defined by powerful institutional actors, and from there reconstruct the meaning of participation starting from the perspective of the participants, especially young people. The aim is to create the basis for a critical grounded theory (Charmaz, 2014) of youth participation emerging from the analysis of young people’s views and practices. In broad terms, our perspective may be described as constructivist: participation is seen as constructed by interactions between individual, collective and institutional actors situated in unequal power relationships, produced and reproduced by discursive practices and embedded in discursive orders. An exploratory approach is required, in which several heuristic perspectives are applied and combined. This chapter will introduce these perspectives. We first give a brief overview of research on youth participation, taking account of the definitions and the methodologies underlying this research and their epistemological and theoretical implications, especially in political theory on democracy and in childhood and youth research. Against this backdrop, we develop our approach in six components: discourse analysis (how

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participation is embedded in orders of power and knowledge); policy analysis (how participation is institutionalised in policy contexts); social space analysis (how practices of participation are situated in social space); style ­analysis (how young people are active in public space); biographical analysis (how ­participation relates to subjective identity); finally, analysis of learning processes. While the first five components formed part of our original design, the final ­perspective emerged during the course of the research. It focuses on how participation can be limited by pedagogisation (see below), and at learning processes ­understood as social and situated activities.

Existing research and theorising The concept of participation is a slippery one. It can mean simply taking part in an activity, such as attending school or joining in sporting activities, and is often used in this way in policy sectors related to youth. It also has a stronger meaning, connoting participation with power in decision-making at an individual or a collective level, in personal or public settings. In the following sections, we first review how participation is conceptualised in theories of democracy and then consider literature from both childhood studies and youth studies looking at the political, social and civic participation of young people and how it can be facilitated. Par ticipation in theories of democracy

The concept of participation is closely connected to the idea of democracy and citizenship, especially in the context of modern societies. ­According to Gerhardt (2007), participation refers to the dialectic between self-­determination and co-determination and reflects the relation between the modern promise of individual autonomy and the dependency of individuals from others. Habermas (1984) or Benhabib (1996), therefore, stress the need of combining representation with deliberation. Against this backdrop concepts of participatory democracy have been developed (Pateman, 1970; Barber, 1984; Carpentier, 2016) concerned with how democracy can be deepened and widened, by enabling citizens to participate more directly in decisions than merely by electing representatives, and by extending the areas of social and economic life which are subject to democratic processes. Young (2000) similarly argues that ­inclusion of wider groups in decision-making promotes social justice, both because everyone’s interests are recognised and because everyone’s knowledge is made available. These arguments and concepts are clearly relevant to the position of young people and have been used to argue for their greater inclusion in democratic processes of various kinds, more or less formally and effectively. However, their focus tends to be mainly or entirely on discussion and decision-­ making (cf. Carpentier, 2016); see below. Also, they rest on liberal views of

Researching youth participation   17

democracy, where relations of power and their constitutive role in society are obliterated and the conflicts that they entail reduced to a simple competition of interests that can be harmonised through dialogue. According to Laclau and Mouffe (2001), such concepts and approaches neglect the constitutive status of social antagonism and imply a hegemonic act excluding dissident voices. ­Similarly, Rancière (1998) defines democracy and the political by the claims of those who are excluded from a societal and political order and therefore by disagreement or conflict. He refers to all institutional a­ rrangements meant to maintain social order – including arrangements of representative ­democracy – as ‘police’. Such an understanding of democracy is important in studying ways of youth participation that might not be recognised as such by conventional understandings of participation. It calls our attention to the importance for young people to create spaces of discord where antagonisms can be explored, particularly in their relation with adults or adult-led settings. Apparently, many young people perceive today’s democracy as a staged democracy, where an official discourse is displayed with all the virtues and democratic goals that society stands for, but when put in practice will almost securely fail. As mentioned by Prout and Tisdall (2006: 243), ‘any rejection by the young of liberal democracy is not just a rejection of adults’ politics, but an insistence that political participation can take different forms’. This implies not to limit the understanding of participation wholly to decision-making and debate but to consider also action and what young people do together – which they may not define as political. As Dewey (1916) pointed out, democracy is learned and performed at least as much in shared action as it is in discussion. Par ticipation in childhood and youth studies

Compared to political theory, childhood and youth studies start from ­apparently clear and narrow definitions of participation in terms of ‘involvement in …’ predefined political activities, decision-making in institution or ­voluntary work. At the same time, the hybrid category of ‘children and young people’s participation’ tends to cause confusion. A key difference b­ etween childhood and youth is that, at 18, young people are generally entitled to participate fully in formal politics, while also being responsible as adults for their life decisions, which creates a different context for considering their participation in public life. Youth research in this field has tended to concentrate on the extent to which young people get involved in a rather narrow range of conventional and formalised forms of participation, such as elections, membership in parties, trade unions and other associations. Although there is a growing view that a broader concept is needed to reflect the relationship between citizenship as a status and as ‘lived practice’ (Smith et al., 2005; Hoikkala, 2009; Loncle et al., 2012a; Tsekoura, 2016), especially under conditions of individualisation and

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de-standardised transitions to adulthood, survey designs aimed at measuring youth participation still dominate. While there is no clear evidence of a general decline in voting among young people across different studies, data reveal that participation in elections at ­European level largely reflects national voting patterns (Spannring et al., 2008; Fernandes et  al., 2015). Research by Marsh et  al. (2007) shows that young people generally do have an understanding and interest in politics but feel that their interests and concerns are not addressed by politicians. Young people also tend to engage more in concrete on-off actions than in formal mechanisms and collective expressions requiring membership (Benedicto, 2013). Other forms of participation examined by researchers include youth ­parliaments and youth councils (Walther, 2012a) and youth involvement in evaluation of public services (Ray and Pohl, 2006). This has led to consideration of the extent to which young people feel able to influence institutions regulating their lives: schools, youth welfare, health and housing services, vocational training, employment and leisure. It has been argued that apart from  – or sometimes rather than – activating rights, such participation has legitimising functions. In fact, in the activating welfare state, individuals are more and more expected to engage and demonstrate self-responsibility in producing human and social capital for their ‘employability’ (Walther, 2012b). At the same time, there has been growing attention to non-formal and informal participation. Nolas (2013) emphasises the emergence of cultures of youth participation in youth work in a time where the latter is under increasing pressure. Youth organisations throughout Europe represent ways to express individual and collective voices in different ways depending on political contexts (Mirazchiyski et al., 2014; Pilkington and Pollock, 2015; Pilkington et al., 2017; Pickard and Bessant, 2018). Collective forms such as squatters or ‘reclaim the street’ (Waechter, 2011) and protest movements like Occupy or Indignados reflect distrust towards traditional political institutions (Mizen, 2015). A consensus that youth cultural leisure activities do not count as participation is beginning to be challenged since research findings on youth ­cultural practice have contradicted the idea of young people’s growing apathy and individualisation (Harris et al., 2010; Pickard and Bessant, 2018). Pfaff (2009) has reconstructed processes of political socialisation of young ­people ­connected to specific music styles and scenes. By listening to music and b­ elonging to a certain scene in the youth cultural spectrum, young people both express and get involved in social and political positioning. Pais (2008) shows how interpreting youth cultural expressions as new forms of participation allows the opening of a perspective towards new emerging aspects of citizenship. An important change has been the emergence of the internet, mobile phones and social media as dominant modes of communication with a notable impact on political relationships, especially visible in rebellions and protests (Banaji and Buckingham, 2012; Lüküslü, 2014; Sipos et al., 2017).

Researching youth participation   19

In childhood studies, a major influence has come from the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) adopted by the United Nations in 1989 and the ‘ladder of children’s participation’ (Hart, 1992). The CRC established children’s right to participate in decisions affecting their lives and also to freedom of expression, association and so on. The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (2009) has clarified that the right to participate in decisions applied to children collectively as well as individually – much practice, and some policy, having already been built on that understanding. Much of this practice has been criticised as tokenistic, paternalistic and not inclusive of all children and young people (Thomas, 2007; Percy-Smith and Thomas, 2010). Some have even argued that participation can be seen as a neoliberal tool for achieving compliance (Raby, 2014). Also, the dominance in discourse of ‘voice’ and ‘listening to children’ has been increasingly questioned. Lundy (2007) proposed a four-part framing of participation as ‘space’, ‘voice’, ‘audience’ and ‘influence’ which still implies that children and young people express their views and adults make the decisions. That limitation has begun to be addressed by a focus on dialogue – where all voices come together in a process that can end in some shared agreement (Fitzgerald et al., 2010; Mannion, 2010). This means attending to the spaces in which dialogue takes place – how they are chosen, constructed and managed, the relations which they express and permit, and the identifications that actors bring to the space (cf. Tsekoura, 2016). However, that still leaves us within a discourse of conversation, debate and discussion, and it still assumes that children and young people’s participation necessarily involves adults. An alternative view proposes to move away from what people say to each other and look at what they do together. Percy-Smith (2015) has pointed out that children and young people do not always want to sit in a room and talk, with each other or with adults, but that does not mean that they do not want to take part in what is going on in a community. When we look at children and young people’s participation in political campaigns, social movements as well as in school or community, we see that this is at least as much about shared action as it is about discussion. How much support young people need in order to participate in this way is seen to depend not only on their capacities but also on specific barriers that they face. Barriers and capacities vary with age and other demographic variables, and barriers may sometimes appear in the guise of facilitation. An example is in the school sector, where the main vehicle for student participation has been student councils, more or less managed and convened by teachers and frequently regarded as irrelevant by many students (Rudduck and Fielding, 2006; Robinson and Taylor, 2013). At the opposite end of the continuum, there are many examples of students taking direct action to express their concerns, walking out or going on strike, in the face of strong opposition from teachers and other adults (Cunningham and ­L avalette, 2016).

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Shier (2001) has argued that participation by children depends on adults being prepared to give up some of their power, in a structured, consistent and committed way. Organisations working with children and young people in Latin America and South Asia, where actions and approaches are sometimes more radical than in the affluent West, use a concept of children’s protagonism, which emphasises young people’s agency and their capacity to lead action for change (Liebel and Saadi, 2010; Nuggehalli, 2014). In this way, it is argued, participation can become transformative rather than merely instrumental (Tisdall et al., 2014). This brief review of the research literature from childhood and youth studies shows that there is still much uncertainty as to what is meant by youth participation, on how it is to be conceptualised and understood. While youth research tends to conceptualise youth participation as political, social and civic participation, reflecting an understanding of ‘participation in …’ (­something predefined), the emphasis in childhood studies is more on involvement in decision-making concerning one’s own life. In contrast, debates in political theory are more profound in questioning and reconceptualising concepts of democracy and participation. There is much to be learned from bringing those perspectives together but also a need to move on to a more open question about participation grounded in observation of what children and young people actually do in more or less public spaces.

New theoretical and methodological perspectives Much existing research conceptualises youth participation as ‘involvement in …’ (decision-making, elections, parties, non-conventional political activities, associations or civic initiatives). This means that the ways of ‘taking part’, and the parts of society which are at stake, are predefined, and that analytical and normative aspects of participation are interwoven and seldom reflected on. As a consequence, a large share of everyday life practices in which individuals take part in society are not recognised as participation. This volume, therefore, develops a critical understanding of youth participation by reconstructing meanings of participation from what young people do in public spaces, what it means to them and what claims are inherent to these practices. We start from a minimal working definition of participation as ‘practice in public spaces’ (including spaces often described as semi-­public or local, but where some amount of collectivity and openness is present) to avoid problems involved in classical approaches of conceptualising participation as intentional action and measuring young people’s orientations and activities in relation to normative and ideological indicators. First, we assume that in activities marked by individuals as participation, more drivers are involved than those intended and declared. Second, we assume that acts undertaken in public space, even without consciousness of public space or of a wider community, include claims of being a part of this wider community

Researching youth participation   21

and are invested with meaning and knowledge shared with others. We, therefore, seek traces of these claims on public, shared or common good, even when they are not explicitly declared. We, therefore, apply several theoretical and methodological perspectives as heuristic lenses, all connected to the constructivist epistemological paradigm of reconstruction. We aim to analyse how participation is constructed by ­d iscourses, is contextualised by local policies, situated in social space, evolves in different styles of practice, emerges in individual biographies and relates to processes of social learning. The following sections explain the methodological approaches that underpin the research design presented in the introduction to this volume (see Chapter 1). Discourse analysis: the power of knowledge

The following passage from the European Commission (2009: 8) is typical of many policy statements on participation: Full participation of young people in civic and political life is an increasing challenge, in light of the gap between youth and the institutions … increasing youth participation in the civic life of local communities and in representative democracy, by supporting youth organisations as well as various forms of ‘learning to participate’, by encouraging participation of non-organised young people and by providing quality information services. The words ‘full participation’ illustrate the normativity of participation: the more the better. Further, the statement includes a supposedly objective ­d iagnosis: participation is decreasing or becoming more difficult. In addition, the passage emphasises desirable forms and contexts of youth participation: civic and political life (assumed to be expressed in ‘institutions’), local communities, representative democracy and youth organisations. All the settings not listed are implicitly marked as not being cases of participation. This leads to a second diagnosis: young people are not capable, not well informed or are afraid to participate. From this deficit perspective, it is clear how the gap between youth and institutions is to be closed: young people have to change and adapt, but they need support, encouragement and education (see also Chapters 3 and 12 in this volume). The objective is for them to participate in something that is already happening without them. In a post-structuralist reading, discourses are constellations of power and knowledge that create an order of what can be seen and what can be said, what is seen as normal, or deviant, in a given context. While the idea of discourses as orders of knowledge stresses the powerful persistence of discourses, the concept of discursive practices refers to the emergence of orders of knowledge from processes of (re)production and interpretation (Wrana, 2015).

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The ­power of discourses has been also analysed with regard to processes of subjectivation. Butler (2015) refers to the fact that individuals are at the same time recognised and addressed as actors of their lives and thereby subjected to a specific normative order. This means that the ways in which young people are addressed and link themselves with the community, by engaging voluntarily for the ‘common good’ and by subjecting themselves to the knowledge order of individualised societies, depend on the dominant discourse and images of youth in a given situation. A discourse perspective also brings into view the amalgam of emancipatory traditions and neoliberal ­demands of self-­ responsibility of the activating welfare state (Walther, 2012b). In terms of methodology, a discourse perspective implies analysing how specific knowledge is being mobilised to produce situations and address individuals in particular ways. Discourse analysis often is limited to analysing policy documents that are likely to be taken up by many policy actors, as in the example above, and thus influence a wider discursive arena (see Chapters 3 and 4). However, discourses are being constantly produced and reproduced not only by institutional but also by individual actors. While analysing the repertoire of key concepts structuring a discursive arena provides insights into the respective discursive order, analysing practices constructing objects, making distinctions, reasoning and justifying, addressing and positioning subjects enables us to reconstruct its emergence, often in complex and contradictory forms (Wrana, 2015). Such complex practices can be found in interview transcripts or ethnographic field notes (e.g. Chapters 5, 8 or 12), revealing how participation emerges from young people being addressed as ‘citizens in the making’ (Hall et al., 1999) and re-signifying this discourse in different ways. Institutionalisation of par ticipation through youth policies

Institutions are an important element of discursive orders, providing continuity across time and space. Most processes of institutionalisation of youth participation are related to youth policies. Youth policies can be briefly conceptualised as ‘the overarching framework of governmental (and sometimes non-governmental) activity directed towards young people: at, for and with them’ (Williamson, 2007: 57). Youth policies reflect how a society addresses young people and what is seen as necessary and normal for growing up successfully according to dominant norms. Youth policies can address young people as a resource for society that needs to be ‘nourished’ (European Commission, 2009: 2) or as a problem for others and for themselves that needs control and correction. These trends tend to change according to time and context; at present, values of employability and self-responsibility are central in youth policies across Europe (cf. ­L oncle et al., 2012a).

Researching youth participation   23

Youth policies, and so the institutionalisation of youth participation, are multilevel. At the European level, we see programmatic documents giving overall direction and providing underpinning funding. ‘Hard’ youth policies relating to employment, training and social security are mainly formulated at national level and can be clustered by comparative analysis in terms of welfare regimes or youth transition regimes (Walther, 2006). While hard policies are assumed to lay the structural prerequisites for young people’s participation, they are rarely organised in a participatory way. Participation tends to be more explicitly addressed by non-formal initiatives in the ‘soft’ policy areas, while informal activities predominantly emerge in the context of everyday life. There are of course interactions between scales and sectors of intervention, which are more or less coordinated and which makes the reconstruction and assessment of youth policies more difficult (Loncle et al., 2012b; Pilkington et al., 2017). Methodologically, analysing the institutionalisation of youth participation through youth policies with a focus on the local level requires a comparative approach that allows focusing on the single (local) case contextualising with regard to welfare regimes at national level and wider policy discourses at European level, that distinguishes programmes from provision and use, that studies actors and their power relationships as well as the interdependence of different institutions (Andreotti et al., 2012). This means that examination of local policy constellations must be multi-perspective and aimed at reconstructing interactions rather than reproducing institutional top-down perspectives (see Chapter 4). Par ticipation as situated in social space

Our focus is on participation in public space. This can be physical or virtual but has to be understood as social: ‘… an ensemble of relations that makes them ­appear as juxtaposed, set off against one another, implicated by each other – that makes them appear, in short, as a sort of configuration’ (Foucault, 1986: 22). ‘Social space describes […] the space of human actions in society. This means the space constituted by the actors (subjects) and therefore [designates] not only the reified places (objects)’ (Kessl and Reutlinger, 2009: 199–200). Social space structures social life while in turn allowing for a ­multiplicity of meanings and being constantly under construction. The ­concept ‘social space’ also opens the possibility of new constructions of ‘the public’ as private troubles turn to public issues and the personal becomes political. A key term for understanding the interrelationship of structure and agency in and through social space is appropriation, as a concept for young people’s ­socialisation and identity development through their relationship with ­material and symbolic objects. When grasping, using and trying to understand objects – or spaces – in their natural and social environment, young people incorporate the abilities and skills demanded by that environment

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(Zimmermann et al., 2018). However, in the process of appropriating space, they also (re)create space by trying to turn it into meaningful places. Cities are configurations of social space characterised by increased density of social relationships and visible diversity, carrying promises of inclusiveness which are undermined by segregation and selectivity. Appropriation is thereby structured by inequality and sanctions for transgressing institutional and socio-economic boundaries. In many cities, commercialisation, privatisation and exclusion are designed into the physical space in order to exclude unwanted groups such as young people who are not acting as individual consumers in the sanctioned fashion (Kallio and Häkli, 2011). At the same time, urban space is closely associated with the public sphere, especially due to the high visibility of different actors, interests and perspectives it provides and its promises of general accessibility and inclusiveness. This shows how public space is not just a neutral arena; it is also a site for interest-based claims and power relations (cf. Skelton, 2000). A spatial perspective towards youth participation focuses analysis on social relations, particularly relations with the public sphere. It requires bringing specific relational spatial orderings or configurations, and their permanent reproduction by different actors, to the forefront (cf. Tsekoura, 2016). A space-sensitive methodology of researching youth participation, therefore, implies a multilevel and multisite approach concerned with visibilities and invisibilities as well as with boundaries and surfaces, asking who maintains these and what lies beneath and beyond (Reutlinger, 2013). This does not necessarily imply conducting an ethnographic study in a strict sense, but rather an approach inspired by ethnography aiming at exploring and mapping actors and relationships; interrogating official meanings and purposes of spaces for youth, and for comparison asking young people about their ­favoured places and the activities and experiences associated with them (rather than asking them directly what they think of youth participation); following the ­movements of young people, their interaction partners in and through the city, and the diversity of movements also with regard to gender, class or ethnicity (see Chapters 6 and 7). Styles of par ticipation

Starting from the assumption that young people feel alienated from both the form and content of formalised participation, a key concern in reconceptualising youth participation is analysing what young people do in public spaces and how they do it. This has been addressed by the concept of ‘style’ originally developed by the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS). ‘Style’ was understood as the specific appropriation of the products and symbols of mass culture by young people ‘as young people’ and everyday life became a particular focus of cultural studies (Hall and Jefferson, 1976; Willis, 1977; Hebdige, 1978). Culture was conceived as a map of meanings which could

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deviate from the dominant-hegemonic culture and become a sub-­culture with the potential of resistance. Consequently, youth subcultures were studied under the angle of how these groups appropriated cultural goods and how the processes of appropriation were influenced by the social positions of their members. The concept of subcultures has encountered criticism ­inasmuch as it implies marginal and subordinate status in relation to mainstream culture while neglecting its creative aspects beyond mere ‘imaginary solutions’ (Fornäs, 1995). Other authors refer to post-subcultures offering a reconstruction of young people’s cultural life styles and life worlds and thus providing access to informal ways of participation in society such as meeting among peers, hanging out and engaging in self-initiated social activities (Miles, 2000; Bennett, 2015). They are articulations of identities against the backdrop of different social positions and may be seen as the performance of ‘struggles over recognition’ (Honneth, 1995), frequently coupled with a need and will for distinction. In this sense, youth cultural styles can be understood as implicit articulations of the ‘political’ in its relationship with the personal (Batsleer, 2010). Thus, the relationships and boundaries between young people’s everyday life activities, identity work and resistance become more fluid (cf. Ferreira, 2016). In terms of methodology, entering the field with questions ‘what are they doing?’ and ‘why are they doing it?’ may obscure the search for meaning; ‘how?’ questions allow for more open and precise descriptions and thus provide more reliable access to the ‘what?’. In consequence, starting from reconstructing the how of practices opens a new perspective of ‘what for?’ inasmuch as consequences of actions may differ from declared intentions (see Chapters 8 and 9). Style is the way that meaning-making and experience/practice are linked. It both recognises and creates the possibility of emergence and thus needs to be reconstructed to understand the different forms of participation. Apart from participatory observation, group discussions can give access to practical knowledge of young people by reconstructing how they refer to each other and the shared meanings of their activities in public spaces. In contrast, individual interviews tend to force individuals to focus on their individual part in these activities – which of course is relevant for the reconstruction of biographies. Analysis of par ticipation biographies

Biographical analysis is interested in understanding how individuals reconstruct their process of becoming, their involvement in specific practices and positions and the making of subjective meaning of this in the context of their life story. Biography implies a time perspective of identity processes over time across past, present and future. Schwanenflügel (2015) has developed the concept of participation biographies, referring to the accumulation of subjective experience of self-determination and recognition

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in relation to the public sphere. This implies that from every individual’s life story, a participation biography may be reconstructed by referring to those biographical constellations in which involvement in specific practices in the public sphere became subjectively meaningful and ‘functional’ (cf. Wood, 2017). Locating biography at the individual level does not mean opposing it to social structure. It is conceptualised in terms of duality of structure (­Giddens, 1984) or ‘the sociality of biography and the biographicity of the social’ (­A lheit and Dausien, 2002: 15). It may be helpful to distinguish ­biography from the concepts life course, representing the normative, agebased and institutionalised phases, roles and positions, and life trajectory, the actual ­sequence of events and career of steps in an individual life. Thus, the three concepts are related in terms of a dialectic of structure and agency. The life course stimulates biographical construction as it confronts individuals with demands that need to be appropriated in the process of subjective meaning-making. At the same time, it depends on being used and reproduced by individuals in constructing their biographies, the result of which is then articulated in actual life trajectories. Biographical analysis is a reconstructive operation aimed at understanding ‘how’ individuals construct their life stories and how they make subjective meaning of social situations and life events in their narrative; it does not aim at discovering who and how an individual is ‘in reality’. Biographical analysis draws on narrative biographical interviews in which individuals are invited and encouraged to tell their whole life story without giving them too much further direction. Analysis reconstructs the subjective meaning-making and relates it to the social context in which the narrative has been produced (cf. Rosenthal, 2004). Analysing participation biographies implies reconstructing how individuals present themselves in general in the construction of their life story and relate it to specific experiences and positionings in relation to the public sphere. Analysis may either focus on reconstructing different kinds of participation careers from the sequences of events in young people’s lives (see Chapter 10) or on elaborating dimensions of subjective meaning-making related to involvement in practices in the public sphere (see Chapter 11). Reflexive analysis of learning processes

The final perspective is one that developed during the course of the research. The review of existing research literature has revealed how the challenge of youth participation is often seen as to ensure that young people learn how to participate. Much existing work in this area comes under the heading of citizenship education, defined by UNESCO (1998) as ‘educating children, from early childhood, to become clear-thinking and enlightened citizens

Researching youth participation   27

who participate in decisions concerning society’. Citizenship education is often discussed as an answer to the ‘problem’ of weak political engagement among the young while neglecting the relevance of learning in everyday life (Biesta et al., 2009; Wohnig, 2017). It may be argued that citizenship education in itself is inherently didactic and adult-dominated while Barber (2009: 38) questions the assumed link between forms of ‘participation’ and citizenship: ‘The proposition that youth participation is fundamentally democratic is perhaps flawed if we acknowledge that many examples of so-called youth empowerment are adult dominated and in many ways stage managed’. This aspect may also be interpreted in terms of ‘pedagogisation’: more and more areas of society and social life are being re-interpreted as individual capacities which need to be developed through education. The idea of learning to participate before actually participating disregards established social learning theory (Bandura, 1963). Lave and Wenger (1991) and Wenger (1998) argue that learning is necessarily situated by joining communities of practice via a process of ‘legitimate peripheral participation’. Percy-Smith (2015) emphasises that participation necessarily brings about processes of learning as both individuals and those involved in interactive processes with them re-position themselves with regard to society. Thus, learning and participation are interrelated and need to be seen as thoroughly social processes in a double sense: learning evolves from being involved in social practice, and it is not only the individual addressed as learner but also the other actors involved who learn. In terms of methodology, this means first that existing settings of participation, especially those institutionalised formally or non-formally with the aim of fostering young people’s participation, need to be analysed with regard to processes of pedagogisation: what are underlying intentions and do they leave scope for appropriating and interpreting them in different ways. This can be done by contrasting young people’s and adult practitioners’ views or by participatory observations of how adults and young people interact in formal and non-formal settings or how institutional representatives address young people who are informally active in public spaces. Second, learning processes can be elaborated by biographical analysis reconstructing turning points in the way individuals present and position themselves with regard to others. Third, ethnographic studies can be a fruitful approach to observing and reconstructing pedagogical interaction. This culminates where the tool of participatory observation is applied in the framework of action research projects of and with young people where the boundary between researchers, educators and young people is made permeable, shared action and experience is reflected on in a dialogic and diffractive way, and new habits of practice are enabled to be repeated (Percy-­Smith, 2011).

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Conclusions: reconstructive perspectives on power and practice in public spaces From the standpoint that much previous research has pursued a narrow understanding of youth participation that reproduces adult perspectives and interests, the aim of this chapter was to develop theoretical and methodological perspectives that allow a re-conceptualisation. This implies three things: a broad and open working definition according to which young people’s practices in public space need to be seen as potentially participatory, even if they are not recognised as ‘participation’ by others; a theoretical perspective and methodology that is able to identify and reflect the normative and interest-led aspects of dominant concepts of participation; a reconstructive approach aimed at the inherent meanings of young people’s practices in public space alongside the discursive, institutional and pedagogical practices addressing young people as citizens ‘in the making’. The elements of this perspective – discourses, institutionalisation, social space, cultural styles, biographies and learning – suggest three theoretical aspects as crucial in understanding (youth) participation: • •

•

Participation needs to be seen as social practice which means that participation is ‘done’ in complex interactions, negotiations and struggles. These social practices articulate, reproduce and transform power relationships inherent to processes of institutionalisation and domination but also of coping with everyday life which may involve latent or manifest contestation and resistance. Finally, participation implies that social practices and power relationships emerge in public spaces, that is spaces where what is done is seen and heard by (if not always addressed to) others. They are practices which in some sense make public claims.

The research process was, therefore, necessarily designed in terms of exploration and discovery, making young people’s activities its primary object, but contextualising them in the complex discursive and interactive networks from which they emerge. This means the methodological baseline of the design described in the introduction (see Chapter 1 in this volume) is constructivist, aiming at deconstructing and reconstructing the meanings different actors and discourses ascribe to participation; ethnographic, not in a strict sense, but in the sense of following and engaging with the field in constituting the research object; and multilevel or better, multisite, in order to avoid reifying hierarchies between different actors and perspectives. The aim is to develop a theoretical understanding of participation grounded in the analysis of the interactions between how young people are addressed by others – especially adults and institutional actors – and what young people do in, and with regard to, public spaces.

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Chapter 3

Discourses of youth participation in Europe Valérie Becquet, Siyka Kovacheva, Boris Popivanov and Torbjörn Forkby

Introduction Young people’s participation in politics and wider social life is attracting a growing attention in present-day democracies. Public interest in youth engagement has been fed by recurring outbursts of youth mobilisations, as well as by the seeming absence of civic involvement in the more peaceful periods between protests. Normative assumptions about the ‘good citizen’ and the ‘proper’ forms and claims of youth movements and policy concerns with the ‘civic deficit’ serve to legitimate policy decision-making in the youth field by demanding that young people’s voices are heard and represented in policy programmes and measures. Policy makers, however, tend to consider that young people are not ‘full citizens’, but ‘citizens in the making’ that need to be guided (Andersson et al., 2016). Further, youth participation is p­ redominantly understood as involvement in officially recognised and formalised channels (Kovacheva, 2000; Loncle et al, 2012; Becquet, 2018) and thereby overlook the informal everyday participatory practices of young ­people. Therefore, if we start from the assumption that people’s views and understandings of social realities are themselves part of these realities, discourses on youth participation within youth policy and their interplay with young people practices are not to be neglected (see also Chapter 4 in this volume). Youth policy contains a complex array of meanings, values and r­ epresentations of youth that not only concerns general problems and challenges that confront young people but also their societal responsibility to respond to lastly how and whom are supposed to act at different levels of society, that is, in supranational, ­national, regional and local contexts (Williamson, 2007). Analysing discourses on youth participation offers a way to identify how the social construction of meanings is made up, what ideas they draw on and what interest these might serve in order to deconstruct their seemingly ­neutrality and naturalness and to understand how language is shaping and influencing youth participation (Fairclough, 2012). Chapter 4 will show how local youth participation ­initiatives depend on local and national youth policies. To complete our understanding of youth policies dealing with participation, this chapter pays

Discourses of youth participation in Europe  35

attention to European agendas developed since the early 1980s and puts them in relation with the national level: how do they shape youth participation policy and how are they translated in national narratives? In fact, European Union (EU), Council of Europe (CoE) and European Youth Forum (EYF) recommendations stress the importance of youth p­ olicies and policies which support youth participation and have also launched several youth programmes and promoted cooperation in the youth field (for instance, within the Open Method of Cooperation). Early on, the CoE took a lead role in focusing on the rights of young people and the facilitation of their societal participation, while the EU primarily focused on education, mobility and employment, and, increasingly, the issue of active citizenship, starting with the first youth mobility opportunities in 1988. After its establishment in 1996, the EYF gradually became recognised as a European-level actor presenting the interests and concerns of young people themselves and involved in cooperation with the other two institutions through various forms of consultation, event-organising and policy proposals. On the wide European scene, the interest in youth participation shows a close link to concerns relating to European citizenship and European ­governance. Bee and Guerrina (2015) argue that these issues have been at the forefront of the European agenda through the development of a number of measures addressing the relationship within the European citizenry of young people, women, minorities and migrants. Since the publication of the Commission’s White Paper ‘A new Impetus for European Youth’ (2001), youth participation has been at the centre of European youth policy development. European policy is, however, mediated at national and local levels, where different welfare regimes have been important in defining policy towards youth transitions to adulthood (Walther, 2006). These regimes also influence heavily youth participation in terms of the perception of youth, how participation is articulated and realised, which priority is given to this issue and which institutional actors and instruments are located to promote young people’s participation (see Chapter 4 in this volume). The PARTISPACE comparison of youth policy in eight countries, therefore, highlights similarities and differences connected to different ideologies, structure and content of the welfare sector in particular welfare regimes and the nature of multilevel governance in different national contexts.

Understanding European discourses on youth participation As part of the discourse analysis of European governance and social policies, discursive perspectives are increasingly becoming an object of analysis ( Johanson, 2007; Bee and Guerrina, 2015; Parreira do Amaral and Rinne, 2015). The analytical focus here is concerned with the European context, which different policy articulations are operating within, and what kinds of

36  Valérie Becquet et al.

change they aim to foster. This venture requires a closer look at the changing metanarratives, the type of actors who impose them and the resulting implications for policy. For example, Bee and Guerrina (2015) link the emerging discourse on youth participation to the elitist nature of the European integration process. According to them, within this new participatory policy framework, young people are portrayed as active agents in the public sphere, as central for enhancing the democratisation process, and central in fostering the European social dimension. Our analysis of European discourses on youth participation and their ­national interpretation concentrates on the three above-mentioned exemplary actors (the EU institutions, the CoE and the EYF) and on the time period from 2001 to 2015. This period has been chosen because of the ­importance of the year 2001 for European discourses on youth. Even if ­several initiatives concerning young people were implemented at the European level ­before 2001, the European Commission’s ‘White Paper: A New Impetus for ­European Youth’ can be considered the first policy document to define common objectives in this field. Indeed, the very drafting of the White Paper is an example of a participatory approach to policy making; many organisations and individuals contributed to the framing of the entire policy on participation. These EU institutions have elaborated objectives, criteria and indicators within this policy field and have stimulated the development of national youth policies in Europe (Denstad, 2009). From the 1960s onwards, efforts at constructing a sustainable and distinct super-national youth policy at the European level have been undertaken by the CoE. Within various bodies (for instance, the Committee of Ministers, the Conference of Ministers Responsible for Youth, the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities), the CoE can be rightfully credited to be ‘the architect of a European youth policy’ (Eberhard Harribey, 2002: 5). And the EYF as a platform is integrated in an institutional dialogue with the EU and the CoE. An ‘institutional duality’ resulting from different actors working from (somewhat) different angles, perspectives and towards different ends, has to be taken into account in the analysis of the European discourse on youth participation (ibid., 2002). The selection of the documents for the analysis of European discourses was based on a detailed list of publications shortened to approximately 15 texts for each of the three actors (Becquet et al., 2016). The three shortlists contained relevant policy documents dealing with youth participation and including the policy-making process (mainly communications, recommendations and ­resolutions for the EU and the CoE and reports and position papers for EYF). The selected documents illustrate their internal dynamic in dealing with youth participation and the analysis of discourses highlights how policies and ideas on youth participation are formulated and circulated. For the analysis of national discourses on youth participation and the national interpretation of European discourses on youth participation, each country team in the project self-­selected five key policy documents, all texts concerned with aspects

Discourses of youth participation in Europe  37

of young people’s lives. National youth policy documents are mainly national law/s on youth, national youth strategies, national action plans of the strategies, national Youth Reports (the latest ones and those that directly refer to EU discourses on participation) or national reports on youth participation as parts of the Open Method of ­Coordination on Youth Policy. These documents reflect national differences in the problematisation and governance of youth issues. The analysis of European discourses on youth participation and their interpretation on a national level focuses upon the following issues: type and aims of the document, context of production, definition of participation, vocabulary, actors, spaces and styles of participation and implementation of ­European measures at national level. The national documents were analysed in their original languages by the country teams. The documents from the three European institutions were also subject to a cloud analysis of the main terms using NVivo software. The sample of documents reveals a heterogeneity that highlights limitations in the extent to which national discourses on youth participation can be compared and also in the analysis of the ­interpretation of European discourses. The analysis here focuses on discursive r­ eferences to European concepts, documents and measures, rather than on the way that ideas and measures from Europe are implemented in actual policies and practices or the ways in which national policies influence European policies.

A European agenda: building institutional relations and sharing discourses on youth The EU, CoE and EYF have significantly different origins, institutional structures, number of participating countries and possess different competences both in general and in the field of youth policy in particular. More ­importantly, as our analysis demonstrates, there are different levels of commitment to youth policy dependent on these organisations’ priorities. ­Therefore, a comparison among them is necessary and at the same time ­subject to ­inevitable qualifications. Commonalities are overwhelming. In terms of institutional cooperation, the EU-CoE youth partnership, established in 1998, is an important entity moving European youth policy forward. Through this cooperation, several specific themes important to the formation of the youth policy have been launched: participation and citizenship, social inclusion, recognition and quality of youth work. The programmes and initiatives based on them constitute a well-known, time-tested and working tool for synchronising policies, especially in the domain, which is of interest in this chapter. The chosen texts show strong intertextuality: different organs and texts are both directly and indirectly connected to each other, as working on a similar topic sharing to great part a common aim. For its part, the EYF provides numerous references to EU documents and a ‘mission’ enhancing this intersection has been promoted: ‘realisation of a

38  Valérie Becquet et al.

European Union for all, with all’ (EYF, 2012a: 3). Sometimes, the Forum directly builds on EU bodies’ decisions and recommendations, and there are cases of joint statements and involvement in common enterprises as well. An important example in this vein, which has been used to guide further objectives and activities of the EYF, were the Final Joint Recommendations on ­empowerment of young people accepted at the EU Youth Conference in 2015. A certain ‘dialogue’ between the two entities emerges as main ­documents of the EC in the youth area usually meet comments by the EYF in the form of ‘shadow reports’ (on ‘youth policy’, on Erasmus+, etc.). The EYF references to the CoE are also at hand, although on a smaller scale. On its behalf, the EU underlines cooperation and consultation procedures with EYF as part of its activities in the youth area. In terms of funding, these three institutions also exhibit patterns of mutual relations which deserve to be considered when comparing similarities and differences in their approaches. The EU provides the greatest amount of funding for pan-European initiatives in the youth field. The EU-CoE partnership has been contributing with relatively the same shares, and the EYF activities strongly depend on the EU for financial support as recently the share of the Forum’s budget provided by the Commission and the Parliament has varied between 80% and 88%. All three actors implement an approach to youth participation with a ­preponderance of formality. Of course, there are degrees in a­ ccomplishing this. CoE’s approach is by far the most institutionally hierarchised and ­structurally formalised. In its documents, terms such as ‘authorities’, ‘organisations’, ‘policies’, ‘management’, ‘decision’ and ‘structures’, and, arguably, patronising verbs such as ‘support’ and ‘promote’ are dominant. The same kind of approach is mostly elaborated in the EU documents despite recognition of the role of young people in formulating and implementing policies. This approach is in fact also present in the EYF documents, despite the ­explicit claim to reject top-down thinking. The Forum, for instance, is keen on framing the actors and ‘competences’ in the process of participation: Responsibility for youth participation lies with state authorities, who provide young people with the necessary legal framework and structures for their involvement. NGOs, together with parents and schools, should encourage youth participation and finally young people themselves, who are asked to take a grasp of the opportunities offered to them. (EYF, 2012b: 29) In recent texts, the EYF strives to reaffirm itself as agenda-setter in youth p­ olicies rather than a commentator of ongoing discussions. However, a ­detailed look on the Forum’s working materials nevertheless reveals how this body tends to follow ideas and measures initiated by other structures. In short, the examined organisations share the understanding that youth should be more active in participation but within a given (wider or narrower) framework.

Discourses of youth participation in Europe  39

Re-defining participation The EU, CoE and EYF share a common concern with declining youth participation and a common diagnosis that young people are not sufficiently ­involved in political and societal processes. The documents show great concern about an increased distance between youth and official institutions at different levels and define a democratic problem requiring consistent ­political efforts to be addressed. The EU, for example, states that young people are less committed to traditional forms of doing politics than in previous ­decades ­(although direct references to concrete periods in the past seem to be lacking); youth is said to have low confidence in existing decision-­m aking systems; they tend to become more indifferent and alienated, or could if at all getting engaged, find excessive and anti-democratic activities as attractive, and do not even find possible ways to representation in established youth organisations. The term used is ‘citizenship deficit’. The White ­Paper notes a ‘loss of confidence in the existing decision-making systems and a ­degree of disaffection in terms of the traditional forms of participation in public life and in youth organizations’ (European Commission, 2001: 4). The CoE takes up this theme and defines a ‘general democratic deficit’ which is expressed by a process of citizens moving away from representative institutions. CoE’s Revised Charter is explicit: ‘The legitimacy of democratic institutions can be called into question because of the distance between the places where decisions are taken and the people affected by them’ (CoE, 2003: 6). This diagnosis is also largely shared by EYF emphasising growing political disaffection among young people, distrust in institutions, alienation from society and lack of information. In one of its key documents, the Position Paper on Life-wide Learning, the Forum … is concerned with the decline in the participation of young people in traditional political structures. Growing political disaffection is evident from the low turnout of people aged 18–30 in elections. The problem of the democratic deficit is acknowledged by the European and national parliaments alike. It is clear that there is a growing distrust in traditional democratic institutions. (EYF, 2002: 4) Despite inter-linked themes and understandings, there are differences b­ etween the actors, with the CoE as the least radical in outlining issues and prospects, and the EYF at the other end, presenting the most negative picture of the conditions for youth participation. When articulating perceived problems for youth in contemporary societies, it is not just the citizenship or democratic deficit that is of concern, but rather a more ­g eneral ‘political’ deficit that is stressed: low awareness of institutions of the importance and urgency of ongoing trends, neglect of the role of

40  Valérie Becquet et al.

youth organisations when addressing the problems and most of all the low budgeting of initiatives taken as examples for a general low prioritisation of the youth policy. Participation is a slippery concept that could refer to a lot of different things, and in the chosen texts only the CoE found it necessary to provide a straightforward definition of the term: The active participation of young people in decisions and actions at local and regional level is essential if we are to build more democratic, inclusive and prosperous societies. Participation in the democratic life of any community is about more than voting or standing for election, although these are important elements. Participation and active citizenship is about having the right, the means, the space and the opportunity and where necessary the support to participate in and influence decisions and engage in actions and activities so as to contribute to building a better society. (CoE, 2003: 10) The necessity to ‘extract’ elements of the notion of youth participation as advocated by the EU and the EYF from different places complicates the picture and muddles the correct comparisons. The EU generally views ­participation in two ways: (1) as a specific activity in itself related to involvement in institutional life and (2) as a broader term encompassing spreading out and obtaining of information expected to be important for youth (not at least about democracy in/and Europe), voluntary activities and greater understanding of youth which all come to be equalised to the concept of active citizenship. In CoE’s treatment, youth participation is simultaneously part of citizens’ participation, should be integrated in local sectoral policies and demonstrated in activities free from discrimination – all of which aiming to influence the life of youth people with the goal of making a better society for all. CoE tends to be closer to the broader EU conception by specifying that participation extends to (1) policies; (2) education, information and culture; and (3) economic life and employment. EYF also favours a larger notion through the insistence of surpassing traditional (i.e. institutional) forms and making sense of participation in terms of social capital, culture of responsibility, actual – not simply available as an option – realisation of rights and proactive stance in life in general. It is, however, to be noted that in different documents, all the three organisations exhibit certain hesitations and sometimes even inconsistency in treating the link between the term youth participation and sometimes closely related terms such as education, voluntary service and citizenship. There is an ambiguity whether they are to be treated under one and the same political umbrella and approaches or whether there exist great divergencies that imply for methodological differences.

Discourses of youth participation in Europe  41

Supporting youth participation In terms of responsible actors and logic of action for youth participation ­policies, the EU, CoE and EYF seem to be standing on different paths. This would also be an expected outcome, since this issue touches on the specific institutional identity and capacity, making them a legitimate candidate in the youth policy sphere. The EU promotes the Open Method of Coordination as its key instrument in realising youth policy. The accent falls on more or less formal mechanisms of involvement of young people: first of all, the process should be going on within the partnership of EU institutions themselves, and secondly, through encouraging partnerships at national and local levels. In this complex construction, the coordination of policies and measures at different levels also stands out as an important goal. At the same time, the EU accepts that participation might occur outside institutional structures. Young people as actors in a societal sphere are depictured as almost independent from institutional relations; they are given the status of ‘stakeholders’ of youth policy. A special attention is paid to ‘unorganized’ young people and the invention of more innovative forms to promote their inclusion. The CoE puts the focus on local and regional authorities. Youth policy should be exerted through the instruments of nation-states and public bodies, with the help of youth organisations. The institutional role definitely comes first: creating the institutional, organisational and living environment infrastructure necessary for youth inclusion. The implementation could be seen as an as embedding of young people’s information and consultative bodies within authorities that are supposed to serve as pre-conditions for genuine participation, together with an idea of self-realisation of youth in society through schools, non-­governmental ­organisations (NGOs), parties and so on. The EYF tries to present itself as a guarantee for youth rights, including the right to participate. Rights assume higher status than in the EU’s and CoE’s treatment. To foster this, the Forum focuses on pre-conditions for participation but defines them differently than the CoE, in terms of encouraging and developing various forms of education and learning. In the same vein, they underline the social problem of necessitating an improved status of youth in society to anticipate stronger involvement. The EYF promotes the idea of young people as actors in their own right to a higher degree than the EU and even more than the CoE. Still the EYF predominantly holds youth as members of youth organisations rather than ­individuals – which may come as no surprise having in mind the very character of the EYF as an umbrella organisation of youth associations.

Political concerns and conceptual dynamics within discourses The analysis shows that the discourses on youth participation vary not just from  organisation to organisation but also inside documents of one and the

42  Valérie Becquet et al.

same organisation. In the aftermath of the economic crisis, the EU begins to warn much more extensively in its documents against the increase in the number of early school-leavers, the rising youth unemployment and poverty, the deepening problems with young people with fewer opportunities and the consequences for gender inequality since women prove to be more exposed to poverty and unemployment than men. The risk of exclusion saturating all these trends is not something related just to the economic sphere but an issue reducing conditions for societal and political inclusion as well. In the CoE documents, the crisis enjoys a more limited and secondary role. However, it should not be underestimated. A close reading of their texts reveals a growing emphasis on the problems of youth violence, discrimination and exclusion, especially when speaking of minorities and migrants. These challenges for youth are treated as barriers to participation because, as in the EU discourse, precariousness and insecurity are considered to bring about social exclusion which on its turn ­reduces the stimuli and opportunities for participation. The EYF puts by far the strongest stress on the crisis and its consequences on young people’s lives. In its more recent documents, regular appeals are made to the responsible institutions to not let young people carry the cost of the restructuring of the current system. The EYF denounces austerity in terms of privatisation of the public sector and the ensuing discrimination and falling funding of youth ­initiatives. It even warns of European-wide policies turning into ‘empty words’, although not engaging in concrete rejection of any of them in particular. The EU travels the path from interpreting youth participation as a form or essence of active citizenship to the notion of youth empowerment and full participation. Keeping the focus on formal institutional participation, the ­recognition of initiatives ‘from below’ concerns a wide area of topics including family policy, formal education, non-formal and informal learning, out-of-school activities, employment and e-democracy. Also starting from concentrating on issues of democratic citizenship, the CoE goes on to discuss specific demands of youth inclusion. We have at hand an expansion of concepts and measures in order to take account of the newest developments of public ­engagement of young people (including the spheres of health and environment, violence and sexuality, protests and internet-groups) and a conceptual priority of contention over consensus. The EYF exhibits perhaps the smallest transformation of all three institutions. However, this could be explained by that this organisation was more of a frontline runner, putting notions and ideas on the agenda that later on were accepted and introduced in the EU and CoE discourses. This is most obvious when making a distinction between ‘old’ and ‘new’ modes of participation, the former linked to institutional ­activities within recognised political institutions and the latter understood as more i­ndividualised forms of involvement origination outside the institutional framework. The evolution in the EYF documents shows a growing insistence of more participation and more cooperation in order to overcome the generally deteriorating situation of young people today. It is

Discourses of youth participation in Europe  43

all the more interesting that the crisis discourse is much about changing the perspective of assessing youth participation, since this confirms a trend that could be observed already in the documents of all three institutions prior to 2008: in a close ­interlinking of participation with education and employment. The 2005 European Youth Pact officially merges these dimensions. Social pre-conditions for full participation (and the view of young people as resource for themselves) have acquired a central meaning. Young people should be encouraged to participate not just as a direct realisation of their rights but also as promoting their self-responsibility for adequate integration into the labour market. The gradual reduction of the issues of active citizenship comes to illustrate this move. The initial ­documents produced by all three institutions contain efforts to present ­European youth as a distinct group requiring ­political treatment as a group. By the end of the period, a tendency is to more recognise young people as individuals and having diverse interests, needs, and demands. The general way of offering solutions to individualised demands includes elaboration and extension of programmes that young people can use for funding as well as measures to enlarge education access and employability. Therefore, in terms of the structure of politics, youth issues are addressed more often than not in a similar way within the period and what is at stake is not a structural political change but rather a widening of funding opportunities. The EU, CoE and EYF have managed to affirm themselves as the leading actors on the European youth policy scene. While cooperating and competing with each other at one and the same time, they organise and orient the hegemonic discourse on youth policy in Europe so that ideas and activities in the field should conform to their ‘corporate’ vision of youth participation. The nuances vary from ‘moderateness’ to ‘radicalism’ in accordance with the accepted ‘division of roles’. For the three of them, the involvement of young people in their activities is an institutional priority, and they develop interpretations of problems and representations of policy solutions with the aim to promote youth participation in the forms and mechanisms relevant to their institutional objectives.

From European discourses to national appropriation Introducing a new or reconsidered policy has traditionally been a case of top-down policy implementation, meaning broadly that decisions and agreements taken on a higher level of a policy field should affect policies and practices at lower levels (Pressman and Wildavsky, 1983). However, in this case of European versus national discourses, it would be very hard to trace the actual origin or source for a certain idea or measure. A policy field in a particular nation-state could be described as a mesh between institutional (and sometimes individual) actors, networks and ideologies working at multiple levels where the flow of ideas cannot easily be traced to an original source or actor

44  Valérie Becquet et al.

(Piattoni, 2009). It is seldom a one-way pass in which something is invented at the ‘higher’ European level and then trickles down to the national, regional and local levels (Hooghe and Marks, 2003). Neither is it a bottom-up process in which the local policy level gradually becomes accepted and formulated into policy at the other levels. In fact, there is a complex process of translations and interplay where various sorts of documents, actors, contextual factors and others all will play a part (Czarniawska, 2004). The comparison of the youth policy field with a focus on youth participation policy in the eight countries underlines various models of governance in terms of priorities, actors, partnership, definition of young people and youth participation (Glendinning, Powell, and Rummery, 2002; Chapter 4 in this volume). In this context, the link between European and national discourses on youth has been analysed in terms of intertextuality (Fairclough, 1995). Four modes of appropriation strategies for describing the implementation processes were defined in the analysis: rejected, recognised, adjusted and confirmed. These refer to different degrees of agreements between the texts, where the rejected refers to cases where the European discourse has been counteracted and confirmed a more or less total agreement. The result must be understood with some caution. No more than five documents were included, the countries have all changed during the period in significant ways, most often there are more ambiguities than a classification scheme indicates, and this classification was done as a second-level analysis from national reports. A country could be defined as having a major and a minor mode of appropriation in order to address variance between different documents (see Table 3.1). Table 3.1  R elation between national and European discourses References to EU documents

References to EU vocabulary

References to EU measures

Relations Classif ication

Bulgaria

++

++

++

++

France Germany

− ++

− ++

+− +

+− ++

Italy

+−

+−

+−

+−

Sweden

++

++

++

++

Switzerland

+

+

+

+

Turkey United Kingdom

++ −

+ +−

++ +−

++ −

++: very strong connection; +: strong; + −: medium: −: weak.

Adjusted confirmed Recognised Adjusted confirmed Adjusted recognised Confirmed adjusted Adjusted recognised Adjusted Recognised

Discourses of youth participation in Europe  45

The first potential mode – rejected – was not filled with any country. Even if certain areas or issues in which the European policy was rejected were present, these could not be taken as ground for the general characterisation. Second, in most of the countries, European policies are ‘confirmed’ or ‘adjusted’. Recognised policy refers to country policy that generally ‘check boxes’ in relation the European, while they show awareness of this they do not do more than this. There are not key suggestions for partnership between this national policy and the European discourses or measures. This mode seems to be the dominant mode of the ‘policy connection’ in both the French and the UK document. In the Adjusted policy mode, we found those that both have recognised the European policy but also spell out more directly how this is supposed to affect their respective country. Most of the national discourses analysed are adjusted to the European ones, even if the level of correspondence with European framework varies from one document to another. For example, in the German policy, the European discourses mainly serve to fuel into the pre-existing national political agenda and boost underdeveloped topics. Initiatives draw on European discourse to further ideas like youth mainstreaming and other concepts neglected in the national discourse. Then, Confirmed policy illustrates national policy making that claimed to work un-problematically in the same direction. This mode is most present in the Swedish and Bulgarian cases. The overall strongest connection between the EU and national policies are to be found in the Bulgarian and the Swedish cases. Sweden comes up as one of the crucial partners in defining youth participation, for example, hosting a meeting during the White paper process under the Swedish Presidency of the EU commission in 2001 where priorities from young people, youth organisations, researchers and public institutions were agreed upon. Bulgaria has put strong emphasis on the connection to the EU policy as a strategy to strengthen their application to be given the status of a member of the EU. France, Switzerland and the UK show a weaker connection, to some extent explained by their desire to protect and continue their traditional policies in the area and in the UK case, an ambivalence in the recognition of the youth policy field as a given whole. Switzerland, as not being a member of the EU, seems nevertheless recognise some of the central issues, for example, addressing support for vulnerable groups. The Italian policy documents rather un-evenly make a clear connection, absent in some cases but close in others (such as the principle of holding youth as resources). Germany is placed somewhere in the middle, while having a general ‘strong’ youth policy in some area, it is divided into sectors and adhere to the EU policy with some reservations. Turkish policy also picks up on the EU discourse but does this from a perspective that in every part does not go easily hand in hand with the policy, not least in the issue of human rights.

46  Valérie Becquet et al.

Conclusions The European policy documents of the three institutions analysed in this chapter all share the diagnosis of a youth participation deficit in terms of information, knowledge and skills. Over a period of 15 years, the approaches of the institutions do not remain constant and changes occur in the way the EU, CoE and EYF view youth participation. Two trends common for the three institutions should be underlined: (1) formation of a ‘crisis discourse’ following and reflecting the processes in the European and the global economy since 2008 and (2) widening and enrichment of the concept of youth participation. In the aftermath of the economic crisis, EU documents began to emphasise the increase in the number of early school-leavers, rising youth unemployment and poverty, deepening problems with young people with fewer opportunities and the consequences of gender inequality since women prove to be more exposed to poverty and unemployment than men. The risk of exclusion saturating all these trends is not related just to the economic sphere but an issue reducing conditions for societal and political inclusion as well. In the CoE documents, the crisis is given a more limited and secondary role. A  reading of their texts reveals a growing emphasis on the problems of youth violence, discrimination and exclusion, especially when discussing ­m inorities and migrants. They are treated as barriers to participation ­because, as in the EU discourse, precariousness and insecurity are considered to bring about social exclusion, which in turn reduces the stimuli and opportunities for participation. The EYF places most emphasis on the crisis and its consequences on young people’s lives. Regular appeals are made to responsible institutions to not let young people carry the cost of the restructuring of the current system. The analysis showed a shift over the years in the European discourses from ‘active’ to ‘full’ participation associated with education and employment. This is strongly in line with the activation shift in social policies and withdrawal from a rights base discourse and approach. The remedy perceived as most ­effective by the three institutions is educating young people how to participate in public institutions. The focus is clearly placed on institutional ­participation – in elections of political representatives and volunteering in formal associations while neglecting informal styles of public involvement and public but seemingly a-political spaces of youth practices outside schools and the offices of official organisations. Finally, European discourses are oblivious to the individual motivations and biographical meanings of youth participation for the young participants themselves, despite some recognition of the growing individualisation among present-day youth. The European discourses filter down to the national and local youth policy documents with significant modifications. While the European discourses tend to treat young people as a rather homogeneous age group in a common

Discourses of youth participation in Europe  47

condition of vulnerability and in need of common policies, the national policy makers have different agendas and focus their policies much more on specific target groups in different conditions of vulnerability. There are cross-­country variations in the ‘translation’ of EU documents with the national documents tending to serve specific national youth policy agendas rather than the framework of the European institutions. European integration p­ rocess seems the most important factor for sticking to European youth policy framework and national interpretations remain unaware of the diversity of young people’s practices, trying to legitimise more formal and institutionally channelled styles while neglecting the more innovative, informal and conflictual youth participatory styles.

References Andersson, B., Cuconato, M., De Luigi, N., Demozzi, S., Forkby, T., Ilardo, M., Martelli, A., Pitti, I., Tuorto, D., and Zannoni, F. (2016). National Contexts of Youth Participation. Comparative Report. PARTISPACE Deliverable D2.2. Zenodo. doi:10.5281/zenodo.48113. Becquet, V. (2018). Comprendre l’instrumentation des questions de citoyenneté dans les politiques d’éducation et de jeunesse: une typologie des dispositifs d’action publique. Lien social et Politiques, 80, pp. 15–33. Becquet, V., Kovacheva, S., Popivanov, B., and Kabaivanov, S. (2016). European Discourses on Youth Participation and their National Interpretation in the Countries-­members of the PARTISPACE project. Working paper. PARTISPACE Deliverable 3.1. Unpublished. Bee, C., and Guerrina, R. (2015). Europeanization of policy discourses on participation and active citizenship. In: Barret, M., and Zani, B. (eds.) Political and Civic Engagement Multidisciplinary Perspectives. London: Routledge, pp. 648–692. CoE (2003). Revised Charter on the Participation of Young People in Local and Regional Life. Strasbourg: Council of Europe. Czarniawska, B. (2004). On time, space, and action nets. Organization, 11(6), pp. 777–795. Denstad, F. (2009). Youth Policy Manual. Strasbourg: CoE. Eberhard Harribey, L. (2002). L’Europe et la jeunesse: comprendre une politique européenne au regard de la dualité institutionnelle Conseil de l’Europe-Union européenne. Paris: L’Harmattan. European Commission (2001). White Paper. A New Impetus for European Youth. ­Brussels: Commission of the European Communities, Directorate General for Education and Culture. EYF (2002). Life-wide Learning for Active Citizenship. Position Paper. Brussels: ­European Youth Forum. ­ aper. EYF (2012a). LoveYouthFuture: A New European Deal for and with Youth. Position P Maribor: European Youth Forum. EYF (2012b). Policy Paper on Youth Rights. Maribor: European Youth Forum. Fairclough, N. (1995). Critical Discourse Analysis. The Critical Study of Language. ­L ondon: Longman.

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Fairclough, N. (2012). Critical discourse analysis. In: Gee, J., and Handford, M. (eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Discourse Analysis. London: Routledge, pp. 9–21. Glendinning, C., Powell, M., and Rummery, K. (2002). Partnerships, New Labour and the Governance of Welfare. Bristol: The Policy Press. Hooghe, L., and Marks, G. (2003). Unraveling the central state, but how? Types of multi-level governance. American Political Science Review, 97(2), pp. 233–243. Johanson, J. (2007). Learning to Be(come) a Good European. A Critical Analysis of the ­O fficial European Union Discourse on European Identity and Higher Education. Linköping Studies in Arts and Science, 417. Kovacheva, S. (2000). Keys to Youth Participation in Eastern Europe. Strasbourg: C ­ ouncil of Europe. Loncle, P., Cuconato, M., Muniglia, V., and Walther, A. (eds.) (2012). Youth Participation in Europe beyond Discourses, Practices and Realities. Bristol: The Policy Press. Parreira do Amaral, M., and Rinne, R. (2015). Reading discourses in the governance of educational trajectories ories of youth in Europe. In: Parreira do Amaral, M., Dale, R., and Loncle, P. (eds.) Shaping the Futures of Young Europeans. Education govenrance in Eight European Countries. Oxford: Symposium Books, pp. 67–86. Piattoni, S. (2009). Multi-level governance: A historical and conceptual analysis. Journal of European Integration, 31(2), pp. 163–180. Pressman, J., and Wildavsky, A. (1983). Implementation. Berkley: University of California. Walther, A. (2006). Regimes of youth transitions: Choice, flexibility and security in young people’s experiences across different European contexts. Young, 14(2), pp. 119–139. Williamson, H. (2007). A complex but increasingly coherent journey? The emergence of ‘Youth Policy’ in Europe. Youth and Policy, 95, pp. 57–72.

Chapter 4

Do youth policies matter? National and local youth policies as contexts of youth participation Patricia Loncle, Morena Cuconato, Dario Tuorto and Björn Andersson Introduction The results of the PARTISPACE project shed light on a large variety of youth participation initiatives across the studied countries. This diversity could be characterised along several breaking lines: conformist versus deviant, addressing a general public (or the world) versus concerned with themselves, regular versus episodic, closed versus accessible, requiring commitment and skills or not (see Chapters 1 and 13; cf. Batsleer et al., 2017). The present chapter aims to contribute to explaining this variety, trying to answer the following question: To what extent and how does the diversity of local youth participation initiatives depend on the local and national youth policies in which they are embedded? Throughout European countries, youth policies present much diversity and numerous weaknesses (see Chapter 1 in this volume, see also Holtom et al., 2016; Perovic, 2017; Șerban and Barber, 2018); they are rarely well founded; they appear most often to be dependent on more legitimate sectors (such as education or employment); they do not target the same public and vary strongly in terms of implementation. Nevertheless, they have also tended to be more developed during the past two decades (Nico and Taru, 2017: 35). This trend is partly the result of the European institutions’ mobilisation and discourses in favour of this issue (see Chapter 3). Both the European Commission and the Council of Europe have set in motion policy tools to foster public intervention in the field of youth policies (Lascoumes and Le Galès, 2004; Boetzelen, 2017). In the youth field, the main policy instrument (the Open Method of Coordination) has had concrete effects in the agenda settings of numerous European countries (Dehousse, 2004). This is all the more true when the values and orientations promoted by the European institutions (in particular the Commission) are convergent with other much more powerful fields (such as employment and the education) and endorse centrally young people’s employability.

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Moreover, the trend towards youth policies development can also be observed at national and local levels. Despite a still kaleidoscopic reality according to countries and territories, youth policies, or better, public action addressed to young people (i.e. any forms or fields of action in which young people are exclusively or partially targeted – Loncle, 2014; Barrault-Stella and Weill, 2018) appears currently quite high on the agenda of public authorities. Of course, one can still observe differentiated phenomena: between the still generous youth welfare of the wealthy Northern countries and the familistic approach of the Southern ones; between the clear autonomy of the youth sector in some parts and its embeddedness in or even subordination to other social challenges in other parts; between the favourable situation of young people in certain countries and their multilayered exclusion in others. Having these realities in mind, the main aim of the current chapter is to reflect upon the relationship between the diversity of local youth participation initiatives and the institutional framework designed in local contexts and by local and national youth policies. The present analysis is grounded on two sub-studies conducted in the PARTISPACE project. The first one is a top-down and secondary analysis consisting in the gathering and comparison of political policies addressed to young people in the eight countries (overall structures, main sectors and systems of power) as well as a discourse analysis on the term participation in national and European policy documents. The second sub-study consists in fieldwork conducted in the eight cities through experts’, policy makers’ and young people’s interviews. The aim of this open process was to understand and decipher their perceptions of youth policies and youth participation at local level.1 The chapter is divided into three parts: the first one analyses the diversity of practices enacted in the different contexts of local youth participation in the framework of local contexts and local youth policies. The second one develops the general framework of youth participation set by national youth policies (showing their global logic of organisation and their main shaping c­ haracteristics). In the last concluding part, a typology of participation under the influence of youth policy models is presented in order to highlight the way different mechanisms and settings of youth participation can be ascribed to different youth policy choices at local levels, which in turn reflect different local youth policy contexts in terms of coordination, infrastructure and responsiveness.

The diversity of youth participation initiatives in local contexts With the aim of analysing the links existing between the forms of youth participation and the shaping influence of local youth policies, in the following sections, we present first the local youth participation initiatives in the eight cities and then the characteristics of the local youth policies in which they are embedded.

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Local youth par ticipation initiatives

This section offers a general overview on the elements of diversity that characterise youth engagement in the local urban contexts, considering mainly formal settings of participation in order to detect whether institutional infrastructures are present and how they channel and regulate youth careers, i­nterests, ­opportunities. The research also takes into account the variegated galaxy of less structured and autonomous initiatives arising from the bottom-up up, in some cases with the specific aim of filling the gaps (where formal settings are absent) or, in other cases, challenging the leading ideas on participation. The first three cities taken into account (Gothenburg, Frankfurt and ­Manchester) are distinguished from the others in that they have a well-­ structured institutionalised context representing the interests of young people. These formal spaces of participation are different in terms of size and type of organisation, but all of them give young people the opportunity to debate their issues at municipal and/or national level, run for election and represent the wider urban youth population. Gothenburg is a city where local institutions promote engagement. These institutions are run by youth workers who have the formal responsibility for the organisation but are supposed to support young people’s initiatives and to carry through activities together with them. The Youth Representation Forum is a municipal structure of elected delegates, aimed at young people’s ­co-decision-making, consultation and initiatives. At the Open Cultural Centre, youth workers help young people to realise their projects and the centre also employs young people as ambassadors. The LGBTQ Youth Group and the Asian music fans’ group are highly engaged in their activities but are provided with meeting facilities and support by local youth centres. Aside from this, there are examples of youth-led groups like the non-profit Parkour group that run their own organisation and only cooperate with professional structures when they are in need of it. The city of Frankfurt has a broad youth work infrastructure, even if youth policy has lost importance compared to childhood and educational policies. Representation at the city level is limited to school-related issues and finds a visible expression in the Youth and Student Representation Forum, a structure with a relatively powerful position within the city governance. With the exception of board members, entitled to take part in the political negotiation, the majority of young people suffer from school pressure, display high levels of distrust towards formal institutions and insist on ‘chilling’ as their main practice in public spaces. Here again, various other more or less non-formal practices are developed: from a political cultural centre in the city centre and a Youth centre for marginalised young people lends support, in some sense, to the Hoodboys graffiti crew and an informal group of girls. Manchester too can count on a Youth Representation Forum, a municipal structure with elected members, yet without systematic links with youth work in the city. This setting of participation is perceived as a space to involve

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young people in the functioning of the city, but its modus operandi follows a typical top-down approach. Formal youth participation mainly consists in organising campaigns within a highly pedagogised adult-led frame. Against this backdrop, other initiatives of youth participation are developed from traditional youth centres to more innovative forms which focus on diverse topics (a music group, the Box, a group that supports marginalised young men, arts and social care agencies or young feminist movement/groups). Besides these first cases of youth involvement in formal settings, the other city contexts offer narrower and limited spaces of institutional participation. Significant examples are those of Zurich and Bologna, where institutionalised rights to youth representation of interests are included in school’s socialisation activities. Youth participation in Zurich finds a clear expression in the Student committee of a private grammar school. The committee introduces proposals into the school management and has a right to be heard at teachers’ meetings, in which important decisions pertaining to the teaching mode are made. Students are encouraged to take responsibility for themselves and the school community. The promise of assuming responsibility entails a promise of influence, but this remains very limited as they are not entitled to vote. Thus, it is not surprising that young people look for places, in which they can implement their ideas and jointly create other types of spaces; either through traditional forms like a Scouts group or more alternative forms like the Movefree training group or a youth food association. Although sharing the lack of a formal youth representation, the case of ­Bologna appears quite different. Although famous for dialogue with l­eft-wing protest initiatives, no infrastructure for young people has been e­ stablished. One of the few examples of institutionalised young engagement is ­represented by the High School Anti-Corruption Group, an out-of-school ­activity at a grammar school. This experience of compulsory extracurricular citizenship education activity promotes students’ awareness of issues of corruption and c­ itizenship. The significance of participation in the High School ­A nti-Corruption Group is the same as the youth parliaments described above: a core team of young people actively leads the group and is also in contact with a national ­anti-corruption association. Against this backdrop, there is a wide range of informal initiatives of young people in social centres, even if such initiatives have been confronted with increased repression. A weak investment in formal representation also characterises the case of Rennes, an urban context in which disadvantaged youth are being excluded from the city centre. Young people find one of the few spaces in the ­decision-making process through the Regional Youth Information Centre, which is a mixture of a youth centre and a regional youth policy agency. Many members of the centre are involved in the management Board; however, some leaders and volunteers express feelings of not being completely heard by adults. Beyond this centre, initiatives of youth participation are led by adults (i.e. the Cooperative for Youth in the field of social economy) or by young

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people (for instance, through an Educational centre for artistic development or a Non-profit association supporting refugees). In the case of Plovdiv, a significant experience of youth institutional participation has to do with representation of students’ interests at the university. The University Student Council represents the official body for protection of the common rights and interests (intellectual, social, cultural, sport, creative) of all undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate university students. An unlimited number of them may become members of the Council, the Governing Body represents the students at the highest levels of university management, but the hierarchical structure and the chairman’s dominant role create a gap between the representatives and the represented. The lack of available institutional channels and spaces offered by the city is the trigger for most young people to create network-like grouping, in which they jointly work on alternative individual forms of expression or living, in the fields of arts, cultures, music (through an informal network for arts and debate) or the mobilisation in favour of societal issues (for instance, through an ecological organisation, eco-activists or youth sections of charity organisations). Eskis¸ehir is another example of city, in which formal youth representation is not highly developed. The youth sector is organised according to political criteria. In fact, the two Youth Centres newly opened by the local authority and the national ministry mirror the two main different political orientations (conservative and social democratic). For the new generations of citizens, the development of participatory settings seems to be torn between a liberalisation process towards Western consumer culture and a re-traditionalisation process following the rise of an authoritarian policy regime (Yilmaz, 2017). As a consequence, various open initiatives have been observed through, for instance, a street musicians group, the youth section of a humanitarian NGO or a left-wing student initiative. This analysis shows that if, in all contexts, young people are offered forms of participation (although in some places, formal forms of participation do not exist, quite structured initiatives devoted to young people are developed), the importance given to their voices varies significantly. Thus, to explain this diversity, the potential shaping impact of local and national youth policies needs to be examined. Local contexts and local youth policies

This section is devoted to the description of local structures of youth policies. The focus is on how youth policies are institutionalised and coordinated, whether and to what extent they answer to young people’s needs, whether there is a youth work infrastructure providing spaces that young people can use according to their interests. In other words, how youth policies interact with, in some cases strongly influencing, the different configuration of youth participation.

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In Gothenburg, local youth policy is characterised by a well-institutionalised and proactive public sector allowing for a large and developed infrastructure of centres. Youth and community services are implemented in the ten city districts and coordinated by a central administrative department (Batsleer et al., 2017). The extensive national regulations do not conflict with a long tradition of local government on the municipal level, involving a wide range of actors (especially those engaged in youth associations) in charge of a lot of decision-making processes. Frankfurt is another example of a city in which the governance structure permits to regional and municipal actors an extensive self-governing power. Youth policy is well organised, with a central department, the youth welfare office and the widespread infrastructure of youth centres across the city. Despite this, in recent years, the focus of local intervention has shifted to early childhood and to strengthening school-related services, a trend that affects youth work, also decreasing its participatory potential. The relationships between public and private organisations are regulated by the ‘subsidiarity’ principle, producing a mix of public and private sector actors. Because of this multifaceted asset, the dominant concept is not youth policy but youth welfare including compensatory measures like residential care and social inclusion of so-called ‘disadvantaged youth’ as well as youth work for all young people. Authorities limit youth participation to school-related issues, while youth and welfare associations seek to educate young people ‘assigning them a role’ in terms of ‘right’ participation. Even if Zurich has a comprehensive youth policy (May and Wiesli, 2009), the organisation of activities and programmes involves many city departments and is implemented in close collaboration with cantonal and private organisations. The activities in the field of youth services provided by the city of Zurich are mainly carried out by the Department of Social Affairs and the Department of School and Sport. With regard to youth work, the city aims at providing free spaces and youth centres enabling for young people’s ­self-initiative and self-organisation. At cantonal level, a Youth Representation Forum has been recently established. Such organisation reflects at the city level the heavily ‘decentralised model’ of governance, based on the s­ubsidiarity principle: municipalities take precedence over cantons, which take precedence over the national level. The division in cantons influences the youth policy, with a multitude of actors involved and a situation for youth/youth policies that might differ quite a lot between the cantons. In Manchester, the institutional presence is visible and concrete but, differently from Gothenburg and Frankfurt, the efforts to create a formal structure are not rooted in a robust youth policy and infrastructure. Several issues are recognised separately, and the coordination of youth services has been ­outsourced to the voluntary sector, whereas youth work has been turned into measures of social inclusion for marginalised youth. In this model, formal youth participation mainly consists in organising campaigns within a highly

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pedagogised adult-led frame. More generally, under the impact of austerity policies, precarious living conditions, segregation and discrimination have significantly increased. As a consequence, the shift from youth work towards measures targeting social problems has had an impact on the opportunities of participation and policy orientations at the institutional level. The model of youth policy in Rennes shares with the other cases discussed above a vertical split between central state, regional level and local actors as well as the idea of youth policy as a result of ‘partnership’ of various stakeholders. The main difference is in the lower investment and the scarce institutional specialisation. Over many decades, there was just a local administrative body in charge of Youth and Sports, whose mission was to distribute funding to youth organisations. Although the city has invested in organising spaces and activities, youth participation has not significantly improved also because youth policy has remained weak at the city level. As regards Bologna, the city is characterised by a responsive approach towards (and with) young people, especially in terms of policies for citizenship and participation, education and culture which is embedded in a traditional left-wing local political culture. The last attempt of building a Youth Council dated back to 1998, but after the elections, the youth representatives held four or five meetings then disbanded as they did not succeed in generating interest among young people (Cuconato et al., 2012). Youth-led or youth-oriented initiatives, implemented by private actors receive public support. However, in the city, there is not a stable infrastructure for youth work, with the exception of extracurricular school activities. As in the Rennes case, a struggle persists with old structures and low budgets. Youth policies and youth work have been developed only recently in Eskis¸ehir. Due to the centralised government system, the main actors are the national ministries and their local implementation units who also control municipalities, civil society organisations and university clubs. The national institutions implement policies mostly through the appointed local ­governors at the provincial or district level, whereas the municipalities have very ­limited areas of jurisdiction. The sector of youth policies is under-financed and ­suffers from a lack of interest, which is reflected in the limited experience with youth councils or other forms of formal participation. Thanks to the EU candidacy process, youth work has become a relevant new actor, but also an object of political competition between conservative and secularist political actors, and this dynamic inhibits a comprehensive intervention in the youth field (Lüküslü and Osmanoglu, 2018). The general authoritarian political ­climate is only partially mitigated by the fact that the city is a student city and that it has a social-democratic city government. A centralised system of youth policies also characterises the situation in Plovdiv. The development of structures and programmes has only recently begun. Since 2015, the city has a Youth Plan elaborated in accordance with the national youth policy and the EU Strategy ‘Europe 2020’. However, the

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elaboration of youth policy remains superficial, since the plan does not set concrete objectives to be implemented and does not present concrete policy measures. Moreover, there is evident a lack of coordination between public services and civil society. The existing organisations suffer the lack of institutional infrastructure, long-term support and a stable funding system (they are financed only in the form of short-term projects). All these limitations make policies and participation unstable and foster a considerable distrust regarding the fairness of distribution: most resources are allocated to place young people in jobs, involvement with and commitment to and by individuals is missing, and a small share of the budget is for youth volunteering, with NGOs as main providers. In sum, our brief descriptions account for a wide range of local configurations of youth policies acting in the eight cities (from well-institutionalised local youth policies in Gothenburg, Frankfurt and Zurich, more fragmented or weak local policies in Manchester, Rennes and Bologna, to recent policies widely influenced by European expectations in Plovdiv and Eskis¸ehir). Despite this variety, in all the city contexts, youth issues have generally a low priority, they are submitted to employment and welfare-activation logic and are not (completely) conceived to genuinely empower young people, trusting them to make correct decisions for themselves and their communities and promoting the quality and efficacy of participation.

National youth policies as framing tools of youth participation In order to understand the second framing element of local youth participation initiatives, the analysis widens the focus from local to national youth policies. The eight countries’ approaches to youth policy, welfare and education vary significantly, depending on their prevailing discourses on youth, their transition regimes, their socio-economic realities and the different historical and political realities they face. According to these contexts, youth policies and participation assume different meanings, connotations and contents. The shaping influence of transition regimes

In order to attempt a comparison, respecting the diversity of youth policy landscapes, it is necessary to cluster similar countries according to the model of transition regime (Walther, 2006, also see Van de Velde, 2008 and ­Chevalier, 2016) that applies to youth-specific dimensions the model of welfare regimes of Esping-Andersen (1990), modified by Gallie and Paugam (2000) and Ferrera et al. (2000). Walther (2006) has emphasised how youth transitions depend on many policy areas that are not traditionally included in welfare regimes, such as education and training, employment and gender. Nevertheless, the use of welfare and transition regimes as a heuristic model permits the

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understanding and interpretation of comparative data by providing analytical dimensions that can relate concrete findings to overall societal structures. For the time being, four regime types have been modelled (Walther, 2006). The liberal transition regime in Anglo-Saxon countries (the UK in our sample) is grounded on the notion of individual responsibility. Youth is regarded as a transitory life phase during which individuals should gain economic independence as soon as possible. The labour market is structured by a high degree of flexibility, providing both multiple entry options and at the same time high level of insecurity. The universalistic transition regime found in Nordic countries (Sweden in our sample) is based on comprehensive education systems. Youth is primarily associated with individual personal development, supported through education allowances for all over 18 years of age who are still in education. This contributes to young people’s partial independence. In Southern countries, transition regimes are sub-protective (Italy). Due to the lack of reliable training pathways into the labour market, transitions often involve a waiting phase until the young people are in their mid-30s and outcomes are unequal. Families support young people as they are not entitled to social benefits of any kind. The employment-centred transition regimes in mid-continental countries (France, Germany and Switzerland) are characterised by differentiated and highly selective school systems, which are connected to a rigidly standardised system of vocational training. Young people are expected to become socialised in a set occupational and social position through training. In our sample, Bulgaria is a case of a post-socialist state in transformation that show similarity with the sub-protective regime of the Southern country, while Turkey stands for a developing country with a relatively small welfare state, focused on family structure and characterised by traditional gender roles. In one way or another, these different transition regimes have an influence on youth participation policies and youth initiative. All policies differ according to their discourse perspective (see Chapters 3 and 4) and their basic perception of youth either as a resource or as a problem, or in terms either of threat or of victim in its updated interpretation (Andersson et al., 2016). In the universalistic transition regime in which young people are held as possible resources (Sweden in our sample), the system is more likely to be proactive in taking into account young people’s issues, discussing with them and giving access to institutional arenas of decision-making. The focus is set on empowerment and comprehensive individual development through broad and individualised access to resources and services. In the liberal transition regime (the UK in our sample), in which youth is mainly understood as a problem that needs to be normalised, the protection approach towards young people results in surveillance and control measures in the framework of targeted welfare state provisions. Within such a framework, exacerbated by the recent austerity policies increasing precarious youth living conditions, the responsibility relies on citizens and their community rather

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than on the state, which intervenes as little as possible in a sort of ‘call to action’ according to which citizens, communities and civil society providers are required to play their part in reducing the limitations and deficits of youth. In the sub-protective welfare regime (Italy, and in the same familistic way also in Bulgaria and Turkey), in which young people are seen as a victim of unresponsive systems (ibid.) youth transition are more or less a family affair, young people’s participation would likely first have to be put on the societal agenda if there will be any public actions and responses in this area. In sub-protective but also liberal systems, there could possibly be this kind of problem; it is not just about to find ways to promote youth participation but also to construct arenas in which this issue should be seen as a legitimate object of action. The employment-centred model (France, Germany and Switzerland) deals with selective groups of young people’s participation, those who are invited to the labour market. It can risk of being blindfolded to the multiplicity of young people partaking in social life, especially those left out of organised employment. Beyond these differences, one has to underline the common trend that concerns all transition regimes in favour of activation policies (which is true for youth policies but also, more generally, for all social policies; Cinalli et al., 2013; Lahusen et al., 2013; Marrone, 2015; Danic and Loncle, 2017; ­Chevalier, 2018). In fact, this common trend appears also very important in the understanding of national youth policies. National youth policy: the driving force in the field of youth issues?

Beyond their similarities, all the studied countries present youth policies which are different in character and cohesiveness. Most common is that there is a multidimensional conglomerate of laws, regulations and statements that together form the basis for national efforts concerning youth issues and interests. Moreover, the tradition of working with youth issues, based on recognition of young people as an important collective in society, varies from country to country. Here again, the discursive dimension of youth policies appears as a central element that explains the common discrepancy between the crucial importance given to youth and the modesty of the implementations. To understand the various characters of national youth policies, we can consider in turn the respective importance of national and local levels, the discursive dimension and the focus of policies. When considering youth policies across the eight countries, the chief impression is that the importance of the national level has, to a large ­degree, to do with creating structures, regulations and other prerequisites for young people to participate, become full citizens and live a good life. The implementation of policies is then mostly the responsibility of the local level. Funding is often

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supplied by the national level, and in most countries, lack of resources is a recurrent problem. Nevertheless, from country to country, national level and local level do not play the same roles. The national level appears to have a clear leading role in Sweden, Germany and Bulgaria. The Swedish national youth policy is developed with a mainstream approach. Thus, all Swedish state authorities and organisations are urged to consider ‘a youth perspective’ in their decisions and activities. Local municipalities, where most youth activities are organised, are encouraged to follow the national policy but, due to local self-regulation, are not obliged to do so. In Germany, the welfare system contains a number of support structures intended for young people in a youth policy perspective. The Child and Youth Act of 1991 regulates youth policies at national level even if youth ­policies are mainly carried out by youth organisations. In Bulgaria, a N ­ ational Youth Strategy has been developed in 2010 and takes place in a country in the framework of a tradition of bureaucracy and of top-down approach. In France, in the UK and in Switzerland, national and local authorities share the leadership in youth policies. In France, from 2012 to 2017, youth was presented as one of the main government’s priorities but, since the election of M. Macron, youth is no longer as important on the national agenda, and regional levels have been allocated an official role of leader in this field. In the UK, whereas the national level used to have a central role, recent withdrawals have had the effect that local communities and actors can no longer rely on the state when it comes to the implementation of youth initiatives. In Switzerland, both education and health care mainly lie within the responsibility of the cantons. At the same time, there is a federal youth policy emphasising three important tasks: the protection, promotion and participation of children and young people. It is in Italy and Turkey that the local level has the most important role. In Italy, the municipalities play by tradition a decisive role in youth policy. There is a National Plan for the Youth and a newly created Ministry of Youth, but the national level is weak when it comes to organise and implement a structured youth policy. According to the Berlin-based NGO ‘Youth Policy Labs’, which maps the existence of youth policies around the world, Italy is the only studied country where no national youth policy is in place (http://www.youthpolicy.org). In Turkey, youth policy measures have customarily not been part of national policies. The key responsible body on the national level, the Directorate of Youth and Sports, mainly concentrated on the latter task. However, public institutions and NGOs have recently advocated for the implementation of youth policies and a ministry and a national policy has been established. From the discursive point of view, national policies are always built around ambitious keywords and ‘participation’ is one of these. For instance, in France, four specific issues are developed: universal benefits, empowerment and autonomy, social justice and youth participation in public affairs. In Bulgaria,

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the priority is given to access to information and quality services, a healthy lifestyle and social inclusion. In Sweden, three priorities are followed: all young people between the 13 and 25 years of age should have decent living conditions, the power to shape their lives and influence over developments in society. The main question with these positive objectives is the extent to which they are effectively developed in the national youth policy. From this point of view, Sweden appears as an exception in so far as the national agenda seems to really lead to concrete implementations. Actually, throughout the countries, national youth politics focus clearly on activation processes and on a rather problem-oriented structural integration of young people: interventions are directed towards fighting unemployment and other unwanted social circumstances from a perspective of individual responsibility and the need for society to engage with ‘troubled youth’. This tendency can be observed in almost all the countries, with perhaps the exception of Sweden. Regarding participation, not surprisingly, it appears that it is not the self-governed young citizen that seems to be the wished outcome here, but rather the protection of society from disturbing elements. So, the participatory qualities of these efforts must be viewed critically. Nevertheless, a few interesting measures can be underlined, like the Civic Service in Italy and in France. This enables young people to engage in collective action in associations, administrations and establishments. In Germany, it is mainly through youth work that young people are supposed to learn democracy and participation. In Bulgaria, a strong distrust of young people regarding politics and authorities has been underlined which, of course, has for consequence the difficulty in engaging young people even though opportunities are provided. Here again, Sweden appears as the exception, as long as all Swedish state authorities and organisations are urged to consider ‘a youth perspective’ in their decisions and activities.

Conclusion: patterns of participation under the influence of youth policy models From the analysis of the settings of formal participation, and more specifically looking at mandates, target groups, organisation structures and the relationships between adults and youth, patterns of participation have been elaborated highlighting ideal typical traits of ways of institutionalising youth participation, which are taken as a basis for analysis. Developing a typology of youth participation regimes cannot simply mean clustering different countries but needs to be sensitive to the relationships between national welfare states, national and local youth policies with regard to the ways in which young people are represented and addressed – as a resource or a problem and as ‘citizens in the making’ from the discursive perspective. One also has to consider the general trend in favour of activation processes, as already mentioned.

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The five patterns, arising from the analysis and more extensively discussed in the Chapter 5, are the following: recognising and addressing, referring to well-established mechanisms of representation empowering but also expecting from young people to become ‘good’ citizens; assigning a role referring to forms of youth representation limited to specific aspects of young people’s lives (e.g. education or care); providing without promoting where young people are apparently free in their representation activities but with a limited mandate and scope of action (e.g. student councils); leading the process from above stands for a paternalistic and pedagogical approach where participation is not only initiated but led by adults; leaving them alone without power characterises situations where young people are neither supported nor controlled by adults. In the case of Gothenburg, analogies can be found between the constellation ‘addressing and recognising’ young people as co-citizens, a local youth policy balancing infrastructure and responsiveness and a universal welfare regime supporting young people’s personal development as a part of their citizenship status are most obvious. The mechanisms of co-determination rooted in a diverse and responsive youth work infrastructure make support and recognition conditional to playing the game of representative democracy. In fact, sustainable recognition of a great diversity of needs and initiatives of young people makes youth policies effective in designing and displaying ‘good’ citizens ‘in the making’. Instead, the pattern leading the process from above can be referred especially to the Frankfurt and Zurich cases. In these contexts, young people are subjected to institutional hierarchy and control. Youth associations seek to educate young people ‘assigning them a role’ in terms of ‘right’ participation. As this adaptive socialisation depends on the internalisation by the young people, control and hierarchy need to be concealed – or better: legitimised – through more or less democratic procedures of transparency and c­ o-determination. Instead, the concrete risk of this corporative model is the reduction of young people to their role as students and clients of youth welfare. The label ‘leading from above’ can also be applied to Manchester case but with some differences due to the context of the liberal welfare regime, more unstable, where the growing precariousness and the emphasis on activation make distrust of young people towards institutions more problematic. The central role of associations in Rennes and the characteristic of corporative relationship between state, economy and civil society are typical of employment-centred welfare regime and suggest some similarities with Frankfurt. What is different is the local youth policy structures, the relationships with the national policy level and also the meaning attributed to participation. The pattern of ‘leading the process from above’ is suitable to Rennes but, more than in Frankfurt, brings to a refusal of recognising political protest as participation. In Bologna and Plovdiv, the pattern ‘leaving them alone’ characterises the situation of young people who are active without public support,

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underlining that one does not have to expect help from the state but ‘can do’ things by oneself. The combination of a lack of infrastructure and a victimisation of youth in Bologna is typical for the ­u nder-institutionalised regime type, even if it is partly framed by recognising young people’s political activism and their attempts to create spaces for themselves in the local context. For Plovdiv, since legitimation is an important role of youth and student councils, also the pattern ‘providing without promoting’ seems appropriate to express the contradictory situation of the student council that legitimate but does not give real power. The case of Eskis¸ehir reflects ideal-typical traits of transformation societies between influence of international organisations, transnational discourses and national policy actors positioned between tradition and modernity. At the same time, it is worth noting that national welfare states and youth policies – not only in the UK – are in the process of shifting towards activation ascribing self-responsibility an increasing role for social integration. Since youth policy and youth work were only recently introduced under the EU’s influence, young people are still widely ‘left alone without power’. In sum, these five ideal typical patterns of relationships, while crossing the city cases, permit to understand how different mechanisms and settings of youth participation can be ascribed to different youth policy choices at local level which in turn reflect different local youth policy contexts in terms of coordination, infrastructure and responsiveness. This explanation of the diversity according to the city cases permits contextualisation and recognition of the influence of national and local contexts on the forms of youth participation initiatives. In doing so, it offers structural explanations not only to the varieties of mobilisation but also to the commonalities that can be observed throughout the countries and which are examined in the further chapters of this volume.

Note 1 To write the chapter, we used partly the contents of reports delivered in the framework of the PARTISPACE project, reports in the contribution of which we were all involved. Two of these reports were more systematically referred to: Andersson et al., 2016 and Lüküslü et al., 2018.

References Andersson, B., Cuconato, M., De Luigi, N., Demozzi, S., Forkby, T., Ilardo, M., and Zannoni, F. (2016). Partispace – Deliverable 2.2 Comparative report. Retrieved from: https://zenodo.org/record/48113#.XGq2LC7wbIU. Barrault-Stella, L., and Weill, P. E. (2018). Creating Target Publics for Welfare Policies: A Comparative and Multi-Level Approach. New York, NY: Springer Berlin Heidelberg. Batsleer, J., Ehrensperger, K., Lüküslü, D., Osmanoğlu, B., Pais, A., Reutlinger, C., and Roth, P. (2017). Claiming Spaces and Struggling for Recognition: Youth Participation

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through Local Case Studies. Retrieved from: https://zenodo.org/record/1064119#. WjD1NnlryUk. Boetzelen, P. (2017). Les institutions européennes et la jeunesse: rôles, objectifs et instruments. In: Loncle P. (dir.) L’Europe de la jeunesse. Rennes: Presses de l’EHESP, pp. 8–20. Chevalier, T. (2016). Varieties of youth welfare citizenship. Towards a ­t wo-dimension typology. Journal of European Social Policy, 26, pp. 3–19. Chevalier, T. (2018). La jeunesse dans tous ses États (1re éd). Paris: PUF. Cinalli, P. R. and Giuni, M. (2013). New challenges for the welfare state: The emergence of youth unemployment regimes in Europe? International Journal of Social Welfare, 22(3), pp.290–299. Cuconato, M., De Luigi, N., and Martelli, A. (2012). Youth participation in the framework of the reformulation of local youth policy in Italy. In: Loncle, P., ­Cuconato, M., Muniglia, V., and Walther, A. (eds.) Youth Participation in Europe, beyond Discourses, Practices and Realities. Bristol: The Policy Press, pp. 93–108. Danic, I., and Loncle, P. (eds.) (2017). Les labyrinthes de verre; les trajectoires éducatives en France dans un contexte européen. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes. Dehousse, R. (2004). La méthode ouverte de coordination: quand l’instrument tient lieu de politique. In: Lascoumes, P., and Le Galès, P. (eds.) Gouverner par les instruments. Paris: Presses de Sciences Po, pp. 331–356. Esping-Andersen, G. (1990). The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. Cambridge: ­Polity Press. Ferrera, M., Hemerijck, A., and Rhodes, M. (2000). Recasting European welfare states for the 21st century. European Review, 8(03), pp. 427–446. Gallie, D., and Paugam, S. (eds.) (2000). Welfare Regimes and the Experience of ­Unemployment in Europe. Oxford [England] and New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Holtom, D., Watkins, J., and Siladi, S. (2016). Study on the Social Value of Youth Organisations. Brussels: European Youth Forum. Lahusen, C., Schulz, N., and Graziano, P. R. (2013). Promoting social Europe? The development of European youth unemployment policies. International Journal of Social Welfare, 22(3), pp. 300–309. Lascoumes, P., and Le Galès, P. (2004). Gouverner par les instruments. Paris: Presses de Sciences Po. Loncle, P. (2014). Youth policies in France: Old trends and new tendencies. Autonomie Locali e Servizi Sociali, 37(3), pp. 423–442. Lüküslü, D., and Osmanoğlu, B. (2018). Youth work in Turkey: A sector newly emerging and marked by political competition. Social Science, 7(2), p. 31. Lüküslü, D., Pais, A., Tuorto, D., and Loncle, P. (2018). Local Constellations of Youth Participation in Comparative Perspective. PARTISPACE Working Paper Comparative Report 2: Retrieved from: https://zenodo.org/record/1240191#. XGq1Xi7wbIU. Marrone, M. (2015). Giovani, lavoro e cittadinanza sociale. Uno studio comparato sulle trasformazioni del Welfare in Europa. Sociologia del lavoro, 138, pp. 173–189. May, A., and Wiesli, R. (2009). Kinder- und Jugendförderung in der Schweiz. Begleitbericht zuhanden der kantonalen Fachstelle für Kinder- und Jugendförderung Freiburg. Bern: Fachstelle für Gesundheitspolitik polsan GmbH.

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Nico, M., and Taru, M. (eds.) (2017). Needles in Haystacks Finding a Way Forward for Cross-Sectoral Youth Policy. Strasbourg: Council of Europe Publishing. Perovic, B. (2017). Defining Youth in Contemporary National Legal and Policy Frameworks across Europe. Strasbourg: Council of Europe Publishing. Șerban, A. M., and Barber, T. (2018). Insights into Youth Policygovernance. Strasbourg: Council of Europe Publishing. Van de Velde, C. (2008). Devenir adulte sociologie comparée de la jeunesse en Europe. Paris: Presses universitaires de France. Walther, A. (2006). Regimes of youth transition, choice, flexibility and security in young people’s experiences across different European contexts. Young, 14(2), pp. 119–139. Yılmaz, V. (2017). Youth welfare policy in Turkey in comparative perspective a case of ‘denied’ youth citizenship. Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, 1(17), pp. 41–55. Youth Policy Labs (eds.) (2014). Factsheet: Italy. Retrieved from: https://www. youthpolicy.org/pdfs/factsheets/italy.pdf.

Part II

Empirical insights into forms and meanings of youth participation

Chapter 5

‘This is a compressed political system’. Ambivalences of formal youth participation Demet Lüküslü, Alexandre Pais, Dario Tuorto and Andreas Walther

Introduction ‘Full participation of young people in civic and political life is an increasing challenge, in light of the gap between youth and the institutions’ (EC, 2009: 2). This quote from the EU’s youth strategy ‘Investing and Empowering’ expresses the views of many policy makers interested in ‘increasing youth participation in the civic life of local communities and in representative democracy, by supporting youth organisations as well as various forms of “learning to participate”, by encouraging participation of non-organised young people and by providing quality information services’ (ibid.). According to this view, participation is about organised political activities, social and civic engagement and involvement in institutional decision-making. Young ­people, especially those outside organisations, need to be encouraged, ­supported, educated towards these practices whereby facilitation of youth participation is something that adults (in their roles of policy makers, ­educators, youth or social workers) do to young people while neglecting and excluding other more informal ways of youth participation. This view relies on observations according to which a majority of young people are not interested and do not get involved in ‘organised’ forms of participation (see also Chapter 3). They seem sceptical regarding their effectiveness and the relevance for their lives. In spite or because of this, in youth policies, such understandings and mechanisms of youth participation tend to persist and prevail (see also ­Chapters 2 and 4 in this volume). Typical forms like youth parliaments or youth or student councils are referred to as mechanisms of youth representation and as ‘hubs’ of democracy where young people learn skills for democratic citizenship (cf. Matthews, 2001). In fact, these approaches imply a ‘pedagogisation’ of participation: the emphasis on young people’s need to learn tends to de-thematise aspects of power and rights giving way to criticising them as tokenistic ‘dinnerware’ of democracy (Loncle and Rouyer, 2004). They are means of showing openness and concern for young people’s views and lives, of recruiting the next generation of policy makers and of legitimising present policies. However, despite the dominance of this view,

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little is known about processes and relationships within formal settings of youth participation – settings that are explicitly concerned with and based on a clear understanding of youth participation, structured by predefined roles, rules and routines of access and use, and that are initiated and often led or at least accompanied and supported by adults (cf. Smith et al., 2005; Gordon and Taft, 2011). In this chapter, we start from the assumption that the strong presence of and guidance by adults is a major reason why many young people do not engage in formal youth participation. Against this backdrop, we analyse the relationships between young people and adults in these settings: how the settings are positioned between the world of adults and the life worlds of young people, what power relations are reflected by this positioning and what their function is in the respective local contexts. This chapter is based on data on formal settings of youth participation collected in the framework of project ‘Spaces and Styles of Participation’ (PARTISPACE) in eight European cities: Bologna (IT), Eskis¸ehir (TR), Frankfurt (DE), Gothenburg (SE), Manchester (UK), Plovdiv (BG), Rennes (FR) and Zurich (CH) (see the Introduction in this volume). We start with a brief review of existing research on adult-led youth participation. Then we outline the methodology underlying the analysis of data before introducing the analysed settings and contextualising them in the respective city contexts and local constellations of youth policy. The core of this chapter consists of analysing empirical data from ethnographic case studies. This analysis concerns the positioning of these settings between youth and adulthood and how this is reflected in processes of negotiating the agenda. The discussion focuses on the power relationships between young people and adults and the functions they fulfil in the respective local contexts.

Implications and limitations of (research on) adult-led youth participation In modern industrial societies, ‘youth’ has been constructed in relation to spheres dominated by adults such as education and work (Bourdieu, 1993). It is thus not surprising that activities institutionalised to promote youth participation follow an adult model. But what does participation mean in these contexts; to what extent do young people have rights and choice in using these services; and to what extent are young people involved in their steering? A research review confirms that policy makers, representatives from youth or civil society organisations and also researchers tend to reserve the concept of participation for a narrow range of officially recognised actions and issues which seem to be rarely relevant for young people (cf. Smith et al., 2005). Despite an increasing variety of practices, formal participation is often criticised for its incapacity to address all young people (Loncle et al., 2012). Raby (2014) highlights that participation programmes mostly resonate with middle-class values, Western individualism and the neoliberal demand of self-governance.

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Such forms of participation are referred to as ‘adult-led’ because they ‘­focus on how adult-run institutions such as schools, community organisations, governments, and even the private sector can ‘promote’ civic engagement in youth’ (Gordon and Taft, 2011: 1500). These programmes focus on information and knowledge of pro-democracy concepts, skills and attitudes and apply tailored training, personalised feedback or collective actions (Kirshner, 2008; Martinez et al., 2017). They often occur in institutionalised spaces under the control of adults creating a moratorium where young people are trained ‘for future participation while estranging them from real political power in the present’ (Gordon and Taft, 2011: 1512). The few studies on adult-led participation that include young people’s views reveal a contradiction between what they are being taught on democratic participation and institutions which do not encourage them to exert these skills – ‘the failed practices and promises of democratic systems’ (­Bermudez, 2012: 540). Martinez et al. (2017: 971) analysed projects and activities in different institutional frameworks and found that young people rarely have a voice in the ‘determination of organisational goals and purposes and roles of leadership and responsibility’. Andersson (2017: 1352) confirms that relations between adults and young people in such settings are based on ‘professionalism’ implying that young people are taken care of by adults. Findings of a multinational study (Zeldin et al., 2017: 870) suggest that youth are more likely to feel empowered when they consider themselves to be partners with adults in community organisations. In fact, there is a lack of knowledge of concrete practices in different participatory settings as well as of the meaning and effectiveness young people ascribe to them (Wong et al., 2010; Tsekoura, 2016). Even critical models like ‘ladders’ of participation (Arnstein, 1969) tend to reproduce an essentialist dichotomy inasmuch as they conceptualise a linear scale from ‘false’ (tokenistic) to ‘real’ (‘full’) participation suggesting a quantitative measurement of ‘more’ or ‘less’. In seeking to address this lack in research, we intend to problematise the binary of youth/adult-led participation, by underpinning the nuances at stake in the way adults and youngsters experience and organise their activity within formal spaces.

Methodology The analysis presented in this chapter draws on findings from several studies conducted within the PARTISPACE project (see also Introduction and Chapter 2 in this volume) permitting the analysis of the relationships between adults and youth in formal settings. We have used information on national youth policy contexts and discourses on youth and youth participation and their relation to European policy discourses (see Chapters 3 and 4 in this ­volume). Second, qualitative local studies in the eight cities have been conducted (cf. Batsleer et al., 2017) using expert interviews as well as group discussions and city walks with young people to ‘map’ local youth policies and

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discourses on youth and youth participation as well as young people’s practices in public space. Sampling ensured a diversity of perspectives on youth by involving experts from different institutions and youth from different age groups and social and ethnic backgrounds. Third, ethnographic case studies of different settings of youth participation consisting of participant observation, group discussions, biographical interviews with young people and action research projects were carried out. In this chapter, we focus on information from the national reports and the mapping as well as on the nine case studies on formal settings of participation. These can be roughly grouped into youth councils, student councils, councils in residential care institutions, formal youth centres and extracurricular activities of citizenship education in school. Analysis followed a grounded theory approach, yet structured by a few joined analytical dimensions to ensure comparative analysis. As a result, five patterns of participation were elaborated to highlight ideal typical traits of formal youth participation in the cities (see also Chapter 4 in this volume): Recognising and addressing refers to well-established mechanisms of representation, empowering young people but also expecting them to become ‘good’ citizens; assigning a role characterises forms of youth representation limited to specific aspects of young people’s lives (e.g. education or care); providing without promoting stands for forms of representation in which young people are apparently free in their activities but have a limited mandate and scope of action (e.g. student councils); leading the process from above stands for paternalistic and pedagogical approaches where participation is not only initiated but led by adults; leaving them alone without power refers to situations where young people are neither supported nor controlled by adults.

Formal youth participation in context The variety of settings of formal participation studied in PARTISPACE shows that there is no single model of youth participation. Instead, what is formally defined and institutionalised as participation differs from country to country and from city to city. Yet, these settings have in common that they are initiated and led by adults with regard to their rules and activities and have a strong proximity to adult institutions. In the following, we briefly present the cases and contextualise them with regard to the respective city context, local youth policy and national welfare regime (see especially Chapter 4 of this volume; cf. Batsleer et al., 2017). The Youth Representation Forum in Gothenburg, Sweden, is a municipal structure aimed at representing young people, consulting them and involving them in co-decision-making. It is rooted in district youth councils and members are elected by all young people aged 12–17 years. Although the organisation disposes of a budget to which young people can apply for their own projects and activities, its power in decision-making is limited. Members of the leading group are assisted by youth workers. They feel that they learn

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about politics within the institution but also see and criticise the tokenism behind it. This setting operates in a context of a local youth policy which is responsive to emerging needs and practices of young people and a reliable youth work infrastructure. However, socio-spatial and socio-economic segregation is ‘cutting off’ especially migrant youth. It is embedded in the wider context of the universalistic welfare and transition regime addressing youth as a resource of society. This constellation of formal representation characterised by the simultaneity of empowerment and the expectation to become ‘good’ citizens has been labelled ‘recognising and addressing’. In Manchester, UK, the Youth Representation Forum has been implemented at municipal level in 2011 after the country-wide street riots. Most of the activities are structured around campaigns (e.g. ‘Don’t hate, educate’) predefined from outside by the city council or by regional or national representation bodies. Field notes reflect signs of tokenism and paternalism as the discussion agenda tends to be structured ahead by a youth worker whereby it has been interpreted as a case of the pattern ‘leading the process from above’. Different from Gothenburg, this setting is not rooted in a robust youth policy and youth work infrastructure. In fact, it seems as a façade hiding increasingly precarious living conditions of young people (e.g. homelessness) while youth services and youth work in particular have been outsourced to the voluntary sector in the course of austerity policies. This reflects the liberal regime in the UK with a prevailing image of youth-as-problem while the promotion of youth participation marks a further shift of responsibility from the state to the citizens. In Frankfurt, Germany, two cases have been studied. Although participation ­ tudent is legally expected in all measures of the youth sector, the Youth and S Representation Forum is the only city-wide body of youth representation with a mandate limited to school-related matters (campaigns but also consultation regarding school policy and management). The general assembly is composed of two delegates per school and meets 2–3 times a year. An elected board, a president and thematic committees are assisted by a voluntary youth worker in preparing the activities and representing school youth in various committees of the city council. It corresponds to the pattern ‘assigning a role’ which applies also to the Residential care home council, the participation mechanism of a residential care organisation for males between 14 and 18 years, which is prescribed by the Child and Youth Welfare Act for such kind of organisations. The council consists of two young residents, an educator and the director who plays a central role in steering and limiting the process to social activities while main rules of everyday life such as internet access cannot be discussed. That is why participation in the care home is also a case of ‘leading the process from above’. Frankfurt is one of the richest cities in Europe. Youth policy is well-organised with a consistent youth work infrastructure. However, the dominance of the term ‘youth welfare’ (instead of ‘youth policy’) reflects the corporatist tradition and deficit-oriented youth-as-problem approach of

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the conservative or employment-centred welfare and transition regime. The trend towards activating welfare has shifted the focus towards early childhood and school-­related services and has undermined youth work significantly. Not all studied cities have youth councils. In Zurich, Switzerland, the School Student Committee of a private grammar school has been studied. It consists of class representatives who elect a president. Its competencies are limited to social and cultural activities and to representing the students in the school conference, yet without a vote. This case combines the pattern ‘assigning a role’ and ‘leading the process from above’ since young people’s influence is marginal and a teacher is present in all sessions. Zurich too is a rich city; young people are described as under pressure of education but also as competent users of the city. Youth policy is well organised and has a responsive approach. In Switzerland, the conservative or employment-centred welfare and transition regime is organised in a strongly decentralised way. Municipalities and ­cantons ­taking precedence over the state which leads to great territorial diversity. Rennes, France, is another case of the conservative or employment-centred welfare regime without a municipal youth representation body. The Regional Youth Information Centre is a mixture between a rather formalised youth centre and a regional agency for youth policy. Young people can use the premises for their own activities while youth workers provide support to external groups. Recently, young people have been included in the managerial board, yet on an individual basis once they have internalised the rules and routines. ­Nevertheless, volunteers feel they are not heard and blame the municipality for failing to involve them in decision-making. Therefore, the centre is ­characterised as ‘leading the process from above’. Local youth policy is characterised by a corporatist structure quite difficult to decipher. Most activities are delegated to associations that receive public funding from the city, the metropolitan area, the region or the state. At national level, youth policies focus on unemployment and suffer from the effect of austerity policies. Recent processes of decentralisation have increased responsibilities of local authorities but leave them without sufficient resources. In Bologna, Italy, there is no youth representation and school is apparently the only universal institutional actor addressing youth. The High School Anti-­ Corruption Group is an activity of citizenship education in a high school that students can choose to complete their extracurricular programme. The group aims at raising awareness of issues of corruption, (il)legality and citizenship. Activities are coordinated by older students who share a middle-class habitus and common political attitudes. Adult guidance is not visible, but the group is supervised by the school principal and the group is a member of an umbrella association at national level. Having a space but no power to use it freely has been interpreted as ‘providing without promoting’. However, considering the lack of a youth work infrastructure at local level, this mixes with the pattern ‘leaving them alone without power’. At the same time, Bologna is the only city in which political protest of young people is recognised as a form

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of participation which is interpreted as compensation for the lack of youth representation and youth work infrastructure. This structural deficit applies also to the national level which is a case of the under-institutionalised welfare and transition regime where young people depend on their families who act as ‘social buffer’. In Plovdiv, Bulgaria, the University Student Council is the official student representation body of the biggest higher education institution in the city. The council provides student services and represents their views in the institution. Members are elected and delegated at faculty level. The council assembly is organised by a board with a president and an administrative office. However, members complain about disinterest among students. This case has been selected due to the lack of youth participation mechanisms at local level where youth policy has only been introduced with the EU integration process. Whereas the student council is an example of ‘providing without promoting’, the youth policy constellation in Plovdiv which is characterised by little coordination between public and civil society actors corresponds to the pattern ‘leaving them alone without power’. This reflects the situation of youth policies at national level characterised by centralised governance, NGOs as main providers, under-financing, low public status and strong EU influence. In Turkey too, youth policies and youth work have developed only recently in the European integration process. The Youth Centre in Eskis¸ehir, Turkey, has been sampled as a formal setting because it is funded by the national Ministry for Youth and Sports which strictly controls the staff and the activities. The latter include also formal education like language classes. Young people are considered not capable of engaging in activities on their own, so their engagement is not facilitated. Some young people make careers from visitors to youth workers but even as professionals they have limited power. With its centralised structure, this centre is a case of ‘leading the process from above’. However, there are also traits of ‘leaving them alone without power’ since a youth work infrastructure is only in the making. Youth policy and youth work suffer from the tension between traditional authoritarianism and liberal values. In Eskis¸ehir, this is reflected by the existence of another youth centre run by the municipality governed by the oppositional social-­ democratic party. Both address students but neglect young people from disadvantaged social contexts. Like other transformation countries, Turkey shows analogies to the under-institutionalised regime type: youth citizenship is largely denied. This overview reveals significant differences between the cases of formal participation settings but also with regard to local youth policies, especially concerning youth work infrastructure and responsiveness. In fact, these local constellations stand for different patterns of youth participation, while it needs being taken into consideration that youth policies both at local and national levels are currently challenged by transnational trends towards activation.

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Positioning, negotiating, struggling: how adult-led is formal youth participation? Despite the diversity of urban contexts, local youth policies and the institutionalisation of formal youth participation across the eight cities, the studied formal settings share the fact that they have been initiated by adults. The question is to what extent they are also led by adults or better: how they are positioned and position themselves between youth and adulthood, how relationships between adults and young people evolve and how power dynamics affect decision-making processes in these settings. In the studied cases, adult dominance seems evident as their institutionalisation occurred according to adults’ expectations and intentions. ­Physically, the spaces of these settings are situated close to adults’ institutions, securing them a certain status and visibility but also subjecting them to surveillance. For example, offices of formal youth representations are located in town halls or city council buildings; the office of the Plovdiv University student council is next to the rector’s office; the building of ­ skis¸ehir, is owned by the Ministry of Youth and Sport; the Youth Centre E whereas the Regional Youth Information Centre Rennes has been assigned a modern building funded by local and regional authorities. These settings reflect institutional efforts of providing possibilities and spaces of involvement. Yet, they do not necessarily provide spaces in which young people are autonomous in addressing their own needs and interests. Zurich student committee, Bologna High School Anti-Corruption Group and Frankfurt Residential care home council meet in their respective institutions. Young people are invited into an adult space, positioned in the world of adults and thus are subjected to an adult habitus (Bourdieu, 1990). In most cases, these spaces imply the co-presence of adults which can take the form of pedagogical support of youth workers in youth councils or adult institutional representatives like in residential care and school. In Rennes, the board of the Regional youth information centre has been traditionally an adult-only body which is still the case of the Eskis¸ehir youth centre. Two cases, the High School Anti-­Corruption Group in Bologna and Plovdiv University Student Council, are run in a peers-only context but are also under adult supervision and regulated by strict guidelines. Nevertheless, formal settings of participation also offer young people something that exceeds socialisation and reproduction of adult roles, habits and power structures. In fact, the engaged young people appear to find or create a community, a sense of belonging and possibilities of spending time with likeminded people. Peter (Gothenburg Youth Representation Forum) states: ‘It is great fun … because there are people in my own age who care about politics … It gives many rewarding conversations’. As in informal or non-formal settings, they feel like a ‘family’ and form an attachment to these settings (cf. Batsleer et al., 2017: 168–170). It should be noticed that the formation of

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a specific peer culture in formal settings may go along with distancing from other ‘ordinary’ young people. The adult habitus implied by formal settings is connected with practices of distinction (Bourdieu, 1984) within the groups of young people as well as towards youth outside the settings. For example, the students forming the ‘inner core’ of the High School Anti-Corruption Group Bologna play the role of adults and have a close relationship with the headmaster. This produces a distance between ‘them’ and the ‘other’ group members. In Eskis¸ehir and Rennes, legitimate forms of participation are limited to professional roles of youth workers or to institutionalised roles in the governance bodies. In both cases, the young adults concerned distinguish themselves from ‘ordinary’ young people in terms of dress, language and life style. Others, like in Plovdiv, actively distance themselves from other ‘passive’ students. Or they regret that ‘70, 80% [of young people] do not even know the YSR’ (Frankfurt youth and student representation). Participation in formal settings is a challenge for young people. They are situated in a difficult ‘in-between position’ forcing them to choose either the side of their peers or of adults, either losing the recognition of adults and the status and power coming with it or being alienated and de-legitimised from their peers. They try to find their place and respond to the requests from both adults and their peers, while at the same time feeling the need of acting as autonomous subjects of change. Young people in student and youth councils are expected to play an intermediary role but, apparently, often choose to situate themselves closer to the adults’ world and enjoy the more advantageous position regarding recognition and resources. Only in the Residential care home in Frankfurt, group representatives situated themselves more closely to their peers rather than keeping a mediatory role. They distinguished between limited formal participation on a ‘frontstage’ and informal participation taking place ‘backstage’ where young people neglect rules and negotiate exceptions with the staff. Young people in formal contexts interpret, evaluate and cope with their position between adults and youth in different ways adopting and adapting to – or, more exceptionally, rejecting – adult rules and expectations. Thereby they incorporate and/or modify the adult habitus inbuilt in the spaces in which they move and act. An interesting case is the 25-year-old president of the Regional Youth Information Centre in Rennes who justifies not prioritising young people when it comes to staff recruitment: ‘I don’t care if there are young people … a youth expertise … does not mean anything’. He positions himself beyond age and attributes himself characteristics such as being ‘reassuring’ unlike many of his peers: ‘It depends on how we define youth, least I am not old, but I am reassuring … I am right in the middle of the institutional huts of the associative world’. Thus, he reproduces ‘leading the process from above’ towards his peers. The negotiation of positioning in these settings is most visible in the processes of agenda setting. Analysing negotiation and decision-making of activities

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helps to understand processes and relationships of leadership between adults and young people in formal participation contexts, if and to what extent the young people actively contribute or if they perceive a discrepancy between their own goals and official objectives and priorities. To a certain extent, in almost all the formal settings we studied, the agenda tends to be filled ‘automatically’ because they are predefined by regulations, rules and routines with a high share of bureaucracy that inhibits young people from coming up with their own initiatives. One member of the Youth and Student Representation Forum in Frankfurt criticises in retrospect, ‘my experience was that YSR was mainly busy with administrative stuff’ which reflects that youth are ‘assigned’ a specific ‘role’ of representation. In many studied cases, young people have a budget, can pose questions, offer suggestions and express opinions but without any decision-making power. For instance, in the Manchester Youth ­Representation Forum, young people follow a discussion agenda that is defined by regional or national representation bodies and structured ahead by the youth worker: The session is about planning to allocate money to youth groups around the city so they can undertake activities to promote the ‘Don’t Hate ­Educate’ campaign … Members are told that it is very important as this is public money which they are spending that a procedure for transparency fairness and accountability is in place … A young man has arrived … noone is listening to him, although he makes pretty sensible remarks that you can’t really do anything serious for £50. There is a lot of banter in the groups and the line ‘Don’t Hate, Educate’ is being used as a wind-up when it gets too spiteful. (Field note extract) This case of ‘leading the process from above’ where everything is framed externally and where pedagogical methods are applied so that young people learn how to participate in the ‘right’ way is an example of pedagogisation of youth participation. Explicit and implicit control emerges especially in school student councils. In Zurich, students are confronted with a parent-­ headmaster-teacher triad, which regulates all the concerns of school life. The student committee can make proposals to school management and has the right to be heard at the teacher’s meeting even if they are not entitled to vote. In committee sessions, the teacher has the facility to interfere when the discussions do not seem to correspond to the tasks and topics of the school committee. The ‘role’ that students are ‘assigned’ implies that they are not allowed to discuss problems related to single students or teachers to prevent ‘negative dynamics’ as the headmaster justifies. However, there are also situations in which young people do not accept but resist being ‘assigned a role’ as in a board session of the Frankfurt Youth and Student Representation Forum:

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The president has been invited to a meeting of a city district committee concerning the annual ritual of ‘school is out-drinking’ … He reports, strange ideas had been raised in this discussion like obliging students from the lower year to clean up the park the next day or even making them pay … The youth worker intervenes. According to him, it was a mistake going there and even organizing another meeting. He wants to prevent YSR from doing a political mistake like being made responsible … The president moans, he will do it anyway, the other members agree and say, in the end they are the YSR … The consultant tries to intervene once more but he does not succeed, the meeting will take place. (Field note extract) The situation clearly shows how board members are torn between their limited institutional mandate and credibility among their peers. Young people obviously are involved in redefining their role and balancing autonomy while fulfilling their tasks. Simon from the Residential care home in Frankfurt describes the difficult positioning of young people in these settings: ‘Here are rules who limit the young people and there are always discussions about the rules, how to change them and to find compromises, one can say this is a compressed political system’. Even in the Gothenburg Youth Representation Forum interpreted as case of the pattern ‘recognising and addressing’, the president admits that participation is a ‘lapdog of politics’. The findings demonstrate that adult-initiated participation requires young people to position themselves somewhere between adults and their peers whom they are expected to represent. However, it is not only the case that these settings are adult-initiated or that the agenda is set by adults but also the fact that young people are addressed as ‘citizens in the making’ (Hall et al., 1999) who are educated for participating in the ‘right’ way. Across the different patterns, young people are subjected to an adult citizenship habitus by which these settings are impregnated, yet in different ways. Batsleer et al. (2017: 133) distinguish hegemonic, in decline/residual and newly emerging settings of youth participation. Due to their organisational structures, procedures and budgets, as well as due to the recognition they provide, formal participation takes place in hegemonic settings, where young people are simultaneously invested with and subjected to power. The experiences of recognition which young people have determine if they stay involved despite their critique of tokenism.

Power relations in formal youth participation and what they are good for in local contexts The relationships between young people and adults in formal youth participation reveal as configurations of power struggles which are channelled or tamed by the institutional framework and the adult citizenship habitus it implies.

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It is, therefore, plausible to ascribe such settings the function of reproducing social inequalities and intergenerational power relationships (cf. Mannheim, 1952; Bourdieu, 1990). However, it is worthwhile differentiating between different cases and local and national regime contexts. In fact, habitus as a concept does not only relate the different settings to the overall effect of subjecting young people to a specific form of adult citizenship but also allows for the identification of different functions of formal youth participation. Here, the term ‘function’ is not applied in a structural functionalist way implying a top-down approach; rather in the sense that, in the process of ‘doing’, certain practices prove to be successful in solving problems of governance and coordination in the context of a given social and cultural order (Schatzki, 1996). In fact, participation appears as a form of individualised governmentality (Foucault, 1991) in which individuals are expected to take responsibility for governance. •

•

•

The most expected effect of formal youth participation is the function of legitimising institutional control and normalisation of youth. Since legitimation is an important role of youth and student councils, this function is especially visible in patterns like assigning a role (Frankfurt Youth and Student Representation Forum) ‘providing without promoting’ (Plovdiv University Student Council) and ‘leading the process from above’ referring especially to the Frankfurt Residential care home, Zurich School Student Committee and Rennes Regional Youth Information Centre. In these contexts, young people are subjected to institutionalised hierarchy and control and the aim of these institutions is enforcing adaptation. Such processes of socialisation, which are found across all contexts but prevalent in the employment-centred, corporatist regime type, depends on internalisation by the young people. Therefore, control and hierarchy need to be concealed – or better: legitimised – through more or less democratic procedures of transparency and co-determination. Legitimation and normalisation is closely linked to the function of crisis management. In the aftermath of the recent economic crisis, youth and formal settings of youth participation function as disavowal mechanisms, whereby adults allocate to young people the solution for societal problems. To some extent, this is also endemic in contexts with a structural deficit of youth policy. Crisis management is inherent in the under-­ institutionalised regime type and to transformation societies and becomes visible especially in the patterns ‘leaving them alone’ (­Bologna High School Anti-Corruption Group and Eskis¸ehir Youth Centre). However, it is also implicit to the pattern ‘leading the process from above’. For example, Manchester Youth Representation Forum has been implemented as a symbolic means of legitimation after the street riots. Creating a world of politics without the political means that formal participation plays an important role in the enculturation of young people into a world

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•

of ‘sanitised’ politics (Žižek, 2008), in which non-consensual topics are not foreseen (especially in the case of Manchester Youth R ­ epresentation Forum) and the emphasis is rather placed on solving contingent problems and providing useful services (as in Plovdiv ­University Student ­Council). It also depends on young people ‘enjoying’ their ­engagement and on possibilities to create a specific peer culture. Even, in Gothenburg, young people enjoy their debates while criticising their lack of power. In fact, this function applies to all patterns except for ‘leaving them without power’. Finally, formal youth participation serves to design and display ‘empowered young people’ and ‘good citizens’. It provides a stage on which engaged young people exercise and perform participation. In Bologna or in Plovdiv (‘leaving them alone’) recognising young people who are active without public support by dialogue or visibility is a ‘cheap’ way of displaying concern and, at the same time, that one ‘can do’ by oneself without help from the state. Yet, youth representation rooted in a diverse and responsive youth work infrastructure as in Gothenburg (‘recognising and addressing’) also makes support and recognition conditional on accepting a particular model of (representative) democracy. While most young people in Plovdiv and Bologna do not trust the fragile façade, young people in Gothenburg have positive experiences of recognition of a great diversity of needs and initiatives which makes youth policies more effective in designing and displaying ‘good’ citizens ‘in the making’.

Conclusions Formal settings of youth participation require that young adults position them(selves) between adults – especially the institutionalised adult world – and their peers. This positioning involves dealing with and to some extent internalising an adult citizenship habitus yet not without negotiating and transforming it. Being interested in and feeling self-confident in entering a process of negotiation or struggle about how to incorporate and fulfil an adult citizenship role requires certain habitus while contradicting the identity processes of many young people who have made negative or ambivalent experiences in formal institutions like school or youth welfare (see Chapter 11 in this volume). Our analysis shows how different settings of formal youth participation with different mandates and organisational structures reflect power relationships between young people and adults and how these power struggles are interwoven with different constellations of local youth and ­national welfare states. In fact, they may contribute to modelling ‘regimes of youth participation’ in terms of ideal typical configurations of youth participation that do not necessarily coincide with regime types at nation state level but cross-cut different scales of social reproduction (see also Chapter 4 in this volume). Understanding such regimes of youth participation as forms of

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subjecting young people to dominant intergenerational power relationships and mechanisms of reproduction of social inequalities is especially relevant in the context of the shift towards activation in welfare and youth policies in which participation serves to raise the acceptance of self-responsibility.

References Andersson, E. (2017). The pedagogical political participation model (the 3P-M) for exploring, explaining and affecting young people’s political participation. Journal of Youth Studies, 20(10), pp. 1346–1361. Arnstein, S. R. (1969). A ladder of citizen participation. Journal of the American Institute of planners, 35(4), pp. 216–224. Batsleer, J., Ehrensperger, K., Lüküslü, D., Osmanoğlu, B., Pais, A., Reutlinger, C., Roth, P., Wigger, A., and Zimmermann, D. (2017). Claiming Spaces and Struggling for Recognition. Youth Participation through Local Case Studies. Comparative Case Study Report. PARTISPACE Deliverable 4.3. Zenodo. doi:10.5281/zenodo.1064119. Bermudez, A. (2012). Youth civic engagement: Decline or transformation? A critical review. Journal of Moral Education, 41(4), pp. 529–542. Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bourdieu, P. (1990). Logic of Practice. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Bourdieu, P. (1993). ‘Youth’ is Just a Word. Sociology in Question. London: Sage. European Commission (2009). An EU Strategy for Youth – Investing and Empowering. A renewed open method of coordination to address youth challenges and opportunities. Brussels: European Commission. Foucault, M. (1991). Governmentality. In: Gordon, C., and Miller, P. (eds.) The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, pp. 87–104. Gordon, H., and Taft, K. (2011). Rethinking youth political socialization: Teenage activists talk back. Youth and Society, 43(4), pp. 1499–1527. Hall, T., Coffey, A., and Williamson, H. (1999). Self, space and place: Youth identities and citizenship. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 20(4), pp. 501–513. Kirshner, B. (2008). Guided participation in three youth activism organizations: ­Facilitation, apprenticeship, and joint work. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 17(1), pp. 60–101. Loncle, P., and Rouyer, A. (2004). La participation des usagers, un enjeu de l’action publique locale. Revue française des affaires sociales, 4, pp. 133–154. Loncle, P., Leahy, P., Muniglia, V., and Walther, A. (2012). Youth participation: Strong discourses, weak policies, a general perspective. In Loncle, P., Cuconato, M., Muniglia, V., and Walther, A. (eds.) Youth Participation in Europe. Beyond ­Discourses, Practices and Realities. Bristol: Policy Press, pp. 21–39. Mannheim, K. (1952). The problem of generations. In: Kecskemeti, P. (ed.) Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge: Collected Works, Volume 5. New York, NY: Routledge. pp. 276–322. Martinez, M., Loyola, L., and Cumsille, P. (2017). Quality of participation in youth organizations: Relationships with identity and sense of political control. Youth and Society, 49(7), pp. 968–993.

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Matthews, H. (2001). Citizenship, youth councils and young people’s participation. Journal of Youth Studies, 4(3), pp. 299–318. Raby, R. (2014). Children’s participation as neo-liberal governance. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 35(1), pp. 77–89. Schatzki, T. (1996). Social Practices: A Wittgensteinian Approach to Human Activity and the Social. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Smith, N., Lister, R., Middleton, S., and Cox, L. (2005). Young people as real ­citizens: Towards an inclusionary understanding of citizenship. Journal of Youth Studies, 8(4), pp. 425–443. Tsekoura, M. (2016). Spaces for youth participation and youth empowerment: Case studies from the UK and Greece. Young, 24(4), pp. 326–341. Wong, N. T., Zimmerman, M. A., and Parker, E. A. (2010). A typology of youth ­participation and empowerment for child and adolescent health promotion. ­American Journal of Community Psychology, 46(1–2), pp. 100–114. Zeldin, S., Gauley, J., Krauss, S., Kornbluh, M., and Collura, J. (2017). Youth–adult partnership and youth civic development: Cross-national analyses for scholars and field professionals. Youth and Society, 49(7), pp. 851–878. Žižek, S. (2008). The Sublime Object of Ideology. [First edition 1989]. London: Verso.

Chapter 6

Young people’s appropriation of public space Participation through voice, sociability and activity Björn Andersson, Christian Reutlinger, Patricia Roth and Dominic Zimmermann Introduction Young people are often visible actors in the streets and squares of cities. The appropriation of urban public space is one way for youth to take part in city life, and this chapter discusses such participatory processes from a spatial perspective. Just as PARTISPACE opened up the narrow discourse on (political) youth participation by looking at the various practices groups of young people engage in, this chapter aims to elaborate the concept of public space by focusing on appropriation practices of public space by young people. At the same time, the discussion deepens the concept of participation. This chapter first discusses the notions of public space and public sphere. We then develop further spatial concepts in order to go beyond the public-private dichotomy that is inherent in these conceptions. This is grounded in young people’s practices taken from empirical case studies. We particularly focus on the concepts of front and backstage as well as invited and popular spaces. We then turn our attention to young people’s appropriation practices in order to consider public space from an action-based perspective. To do so, this chapter focuses on three distinct but not necessarily exclusive modes of appropriation that were identified in various case studies and that are at the heart of social construction processes of public space: voice, sociability and activity. As discussed in earlier chapters (c.f. Chapter 2), public space is of crucial importance with regard to how PARTISPACE has understood and investigated the issue of youth participation. Our starting point in the context of cities should also be underlined. We think of participation as a focal quality of a ‘lived citizenship’ (Lister, 2007: 55) and being considered as a full member of one’s own urban community is another facet of this. These aspects are well described in this small conversation between two girls from Gothenburg: Anna:   Participation

… I think it is about the possibility to be in certain spaces, to have access to certain spaces. But above all, I’m thinking that when you are in these spaces, what you say is taken into consideration or leads to processes and decisions where you can take part all the way.

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agree fully. But I think that you could add the word ‘belonging’. That you feel you have a social context where you feel as if you are taken into account. (Group discussion, the Youth Centre, Gothenburg)

Access to city spaces, being taken seriously and social relationships are some key elements in what these girls think of when they reflect upon the word ‘participation’. We recognise this from many conversations and interactions with young people during the PARTISPACE project, and we will elaborate these findings in the following. First however, we will discuss some general perspectives and theoretical concepts in relation to urban public space.

Participation, public space and public sphere We understand space as ‘relational space’ (Fuller and Löw, 2017). This means that space is constituted through human interaction, that space always allows for a multiplicity of meanings and that it is constantly under construction. Consequently, participatory spaces that young people manage to create in their urban environments are never fixed or stable but always must be sustained and renewed through action. Yet, it is possible to identify connections between spatial formations and social interaction: certain forms of social interaction are enabled in specific spatial settings and vice versa spatial settings are constructed through social interaction (Massey, 2005). Thus, participatory practice is not only socio-spatial action in a process of making and re-making, but it is also inherently linked to public space. Public space represents a specific and important quality in urban life. Public has to do with spaces that are open and freely accessible, typically streets and squares in central parts of cities, and hence, it is very much connected to a normative idea of inclusiveness (Lieberg, 1992; Weintraub, 1997). This can be thought of as both political and social. Public space has for a long time been the setting for political gatherings and demonstrations. Similarly, there are traditions of celebration, festivals and cultural events being carried out in public spaces, and a great part of everyday interactions take place in public space. Public spaces constitute ­meeting-places between strangers. Through this, public space has a capacity to bridge gaps between different groups and layers of society. Social relations in public places encourage reflections about identity and how a collective life in cities can be organised through mutual recognition and respect. Ideally, this can be part of a learning process that teaches citizenship, democracy and cosmopolitanism ( Jacobs, 1961; Lofland, 1998). The opposite dimension to public is private, typically represented by the home. In reality, many spaces do not belong to either of the categories public or private but rather represent a combination of these (c.f. Piekut and ­Valentine, 2017 and Chapter 7 in this book). Moreover, although the normative order of respect and inclusiveness in public space is often sanctioned in the

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regulations of cities, it is under pressure to adapt to the interests of influential groups. In many cities, commercialisation, privatisation, gated zones and exclusion by design is practised in order to prevent unwanted groups from using certain spaces and in order to send messages concerning who belongs where (Madanipour, 2010). Not infrequently, the goal is to restrict young people’s access to certain spaces (Rogers, 2006; Kallio and Häkli, 2011). Thus public space is not just a neutral arena; it is also a site for interest-based claims and power relations (Mitchell, 2003). As Weintraub (1997: 27) has pointed at, the division between public and private has important gender implications. The private is understood as connected to the home and the family, and this domestic sphere is in turn coded as female. In contrast, the public is in many ways a male-dominated arena; both in numbers and in the sense that men tend to be found taking leading active roles, while women often are restricted by more supportive and passive scripts for action. Public space plays a fundamental role in the social life of young people (­A ndersson, 2002). Young people gather in the neighbourhood, as well as in the city centre. This must be understood in the context of socialisation in which a development towards strengthened self-confidence and relative independence of the family are central themes. It is often vital, therefore, to find spaces characterised by a high degree of autonomy where both individual and collective social control can be experienced. This process is complicated by the subordinated position of youth (Jones, 2009), which means having a minimum of resources and often, therefore, needing to settle for the spaces left over. Together with public space, the idea of a public sphere is often proposed, and often the two concepts are used rather synonymously. Public sphere has to do with social communication, reasoning and the formation of general views and opinions, both in face-to-face encounters and through different media. The development and changes in the conditions of public communication have been dramatic during the last decades. For youth, the public sphere is of huge importance. Smart phones and computers are natural components of everyday life forming new patterns of communication. These assets ease the local interaction with peers, as well as open up to global connections and networks. With Valentine, Holloway and Bingham, we can talk of a ‘new public sphere’ (2000: 156–157), which allows for the expression of experiences and an exchange of ideas that would not be possible in a space where bodily presence is required (Daneback and Löf berg, 2011: 193). On an everyday basis, young people use modern media to facilitate and enhance networks, create group identities and organise meetings – organisation and meetings often taking place in public space.

Selection of cases With these theoretical concepts in mind, we want to take a differentiated look at the various ways young people appropriate and, through that,

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transform and contribute to public space. We will do so by referring to groups of young people studied ethnographically in the PARTISPACE project. Among all the 48 PARTISPACE ethnographic case studies, the following sections are based on cases where spatial aspects were broadly documented during the ethnographic enquiries. Moreover, due to P ­ ARTISPACE’s explorative ­approach, cases were chosen that contrasted not only in degrees of ­formality (from informal to formal) but also in different scales of public spaces (both geographically and socially), in different ways (e.g. conflictuous vs. ­harmonious) and different purposes (c.f. Zimmermann et al., 2018: 42–44). The ways in which the individual cases apply to these dimensions will become clear later in this chapter, as they are described more comprehensively when referred to. The cases used to exemplify our arguments on public space in this and the next chapter mirror the aforementioned point that the division between ­public and private must be understood rather in terms of a scale, where there are a number of spatial positions in which public and private qualities are mixed and interlinked.

Frontstage and backstage This latter point is demonstrated by the case of the self-managed Social ­Centre in Bologna, which hosts activities and corresponding places all along the scale of public and private. Though they function independently, they are integrated parts of the whole action effort of the organisation behind the centre (c.f. Chapter 7). Other cases like a youth group in Gothenburg, working with LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer) issues, emphasise regular private meetings in a small group in order to prepare actions destined for a wider public. This youth group consists of young people who identify themselves as LGBTQ. The members of the group have shared experiences of being exposed to hatred and condescending treatment from others because of their gender identification and/or sexual orientation. The young people in the group engage in public appearances and feel a responsibility to communicate their experiences and knowledge to others. For instance, they arranged an exhibition in the city museum, they took part in events like the local Pride parade and they participated in an international exchange project meeting similar groups in other countries (Batsleer et al., 2017: 200–201). Public space for them represents both the space where the exclusionary actions take place and where inclusionary demands can be articulated and visualised. Another case, where rather ‘private’, small and safe spaces are used among other purposes for public appearance, is action research project ‘Hidden’ from Manchester (c.f. Chapter 12). Hidden developed a film project with young refugees in their safe environment to eventually voice their concerns to a broader public. In their film project ‘Faceless’, they explored the invisibility of asylum seekers in Manchester and featured two ‘faceless’ people and their

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interaction with a ‘stranger’. The film illustrates the experience of not being seen and recognised in public settings (McMahon et al., 2018). In a similar way, a group of homeless young men in Manchester made their experiences of living as a homeless person in public space visible by creating a public art work. This action research project, called ‘The Box’, was done through the construction of five viewing boxes in which photos and artefacts illustrated aspects and troubles of being forced to live in the streets: such as how to handle privacy, personal hygiene and safety issues. Once developed among the men in safe project spaces, the viewing boxes were then displayed in the city and walking tours were organised. During the latter, the men spoke about their life experiences and at the same time the participants of the tours could look into the boxes (McMahon et al., 2018). This dialectic between public and private spaces has been well captured by Erving Goffman in his famous division between a frontstage and a backstage in the presentation of self in everyday life (1959). The frontstage is where the performance actually takes place and where the actor is observable by an audience. The backstage is behind the scenes, where visibility is limited and the pressure to act in a certain way is much less enunciated. We could designate the meetings in small groups as a backstage where the protected self can reside and relax, while not being on a frontstage where a certain performance needs to be articulated. In these small group settings, the participants can feel free from the examining eyes of others and can speak freely from the heart, supporting each other. This is described as a relief from the sometimes burdensome encounters with people in public. It is in this small group they get the strength to engage in making their experiences public and open to others, since the public engagement is often connected with strong emotions and tough memories. And it is by turning to the communicative possibilities of the frontstage that these groups counter their neglected position and tell another story.

Invited and popular spaces Both the concept of frontstage and backstage, as well as the empirical data from various cases, suggest that the different degrees of control (or freedom) experienced by young people when participating plays an important role. Interestingly, the present discourse on participation of young people in public space concerns the extent to which, if at all, young people participate in spaces intended for this purpose – and usually designed and ‘given’ by adults (c.f. Chapter 5). On the one hand, the discourse is connected to the question of how much freedom to act and appropriate a space young people have in relation to what is regulated and blocked by the spatial dynamics that are already occurring. On the other hand, the focus must be widened to practices of young people in spaces not explicitly made available for youth participation but rather ‘taken over’.

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This issue is often discussed as a tension between conceived and lived space (Lefebvre, 1991). Conceived space is about how a space is planned and to what purpose. Lived space concerns what spatial actors actually do, how they move and use the space. Specifically, in relation to participation, a similar distinction between invited and popular spaces has been made (Cornwall, 2002). Invited spaces are purposefully organised to allow and encourage participation, but the possibilities for participation are guided by the interests of the inviting organisation or institution. Popular spaces for participation are spaces that are appropriated by the actors themselves and are thus lived regardless of their intentional purposes. The basic question here is: To what extent do the spaces where young people participate allow them to govern and form their own practice and to which degree are the spaces managed by the controlling activities of other’s interests? The most characteristic example of invited spaces are formal participation settings such as youth parliaments and youth councils. The spatial organisation and the symbolic qualities of these spaces lend, on the one hand, seriousness and legitimacy to the effort but direct, on the other hand, the participation procedure along a predefined track (c.f. Chapter 5). Other invited spaces are youth centres such as the one in Frankfurt that an informal girls group uses to get together (see below). In spite of the invited character of these spaces, they allow the young people to utilise them in a quite informal way and access to these spaces is fundamental for the processes and sustainability of the groups. So, to what extent an invited space restricts the participatory activities of young people is highly dependent on the context. However, it should be remembered that in all of these spaces, the possibilities of independent action and decision by young people are restricted by rules and regulations imposed by the organising bodies. This is a basic condition for the invitation. There are also a number of popular spaces among the cases we studied. The active shaping of popular spaces is often tied to adaptations, if not transgressions, of the ways spaces have been conceived from the beginning. This becomes especially obvious in the markings of parkour ‘traceurs’ (parkour runners, see below) as well as graffiti writers and the social centre in Bologna, discussed in the next chapter. These are examples of how young people manage to transform spaces and add new social and spatial potentials, not foreseen in an earlier planning process. This transformation of space is sometimes controversial; it causes conflicts and must occasionally be negotiated with other users and/or local administration. Although the efforts to make use of invited spaces are often in focus in discussions of participation, it is important to see that many young people engage in participatory processes that transgress the assigned meanings of space and that this is done in a self-directed way. With this in mind, it is interesting to see that the participatory practices investigated by the PARTISPACE project to a high degree employ popular spaces.

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Three modes of appropriating public spaces From these leading observations, we want to apply an even more thorough look at the various practices young people engage in by analysing the main purpose behind a certain appropriation of public space studied in the PARTISPACE project and thus turn to an action-based conceptualisation of public space. The discussion will be structured using three different categories that relate to the main purposes of young people’s practices in public space. The first one is ‘voice’, which has to do with the tradition of holding political demonstrations in public. The second one is ‘sociability’ and this relates to the use of public space for social encounters and get-togethers. The third one is ‘activity’, and this is centred around practical action: young people gather to ‘do’ something, and it is this very practical engagement that composes the basic meaning of being there. Undeniably, appropriation of public space often contains all these three elements. There are always social relations, things to do and concerns when young people meet in public spaces. However, the point here is to identify what is the basic reason and rationality of the appropriation. In what follows, the three main purposes are presented together with some important aspects on how a certain purpose is linked to specific ways of appropriating public space.

Voice – a space for messages Since March 36 (April 5), in Rennes, citizens opposed to the Labour Law are assembling Place du Peuple (formerly [or officially] Place Charles de Gaulle) to re-appropriate politics, invent another relationship with the public space and deepen democracy. Night Standing Rennes pursues two goals: in the short term, to defeat the Labour Bill. In the long term, we want to organise to regain control over politics. (Field notes, NDE, Rennes) The NDE-movement is an example of a ‘classic’ connection between political engagement and public space (Weintraub, 1997: 10–16). It is a movement that started in 2016 in Paris with protests against proposed labour reforms and was then spread nationally. Different types of collective mobilisation and demonstrations have been applied; among them nightly gatherings in public places. The first campaigns in Rennes were organised by mainly young people (students, high school students, precarious people, etc.), but also older people joined the movement (Batsleer et al., 2017: 209–210). The quotation shows that the participants of the movement explicitly use the association between political engagement and public space to frame the meaning of their practices. In this context, using a public arena is a way to spatialise democracy in the sense of civil opinion formation. And then it is important not to draw boundaries, to create a ‘territory’ to defend, but rather

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invite everybody who wishes to co-elaborate the perspective of the action. This emphasis on the collective is also combined with an identification between the movement and other similar actions. So, though the event is situated in a certain local space in the city of Rennes, it shares its ideology and way of organising with other movements around the world: The initiative is not entirely original. The current movement in the ‘Place de la Republique’ in Paris, ‘Place du Peuple’ in Rennes, presents similarities with other movements of occupation of places: the ‘Arab Spring’, ‘Indignants’, ‘Occupy Wall Street’. With a notable difference in that here there was no permanent occupation of the place, but a temporary and light occupation, reforming day after day. As if it were not a question of holding a territory, but rather of inventing another way of using it collectively. (Field notes, NDE, Rennes) A high degree of fluidity is crucial to the way the movement’s use of public space is re-organised nightly. An important means to achieve this while at the same time creating enough stable conditions to endure every night is the internet. Many organisational tasks are done online. Moreover, the NDE extensively employs the internet to communicate and make their ­message public to people who do not have the possibility to participate in the demonstrations. In this way, face-to-face meetings of public space are combined with the communicative possibilities of the public sphere (Valentine, ­Holloway and Bingham, 2000; Daneback and Löf berg, 2011). Among the PARTISPACE cases, this organisation and enlargement of public spaces through online spaces in order to voice is also present in a number of other cases, for instance, in a case study on young feminists in ­Manchester denouncing sexual discrimination and harassment on diverse social media platforms or a case study from Plovdiv, where the young members of an ecological movement articulate an apparent political voice in its engagement with local environmental and urban preservation issues. Not only online spaces are used to prepare or sustain the public spaces. In the case of the NDE-movement, the open gatherings during the nights, sometimes groups of militants ‘retreat’ to other more closed locations such as cafés or to premises in the outskirts. Thus preparing or creating public spaces often involves semi-private or private spaces, where one can work with more tranquillity or efficiency, as necessary infrastructure that may not be present in the streets or where one is not bothered and safe. The latter aspect was already shown above in the cases that make space for voices that otherwise are disadvantaged and seldom heard, namely the LGBTQ Youth Group, The Box and the action research project Hidden. In these cases, safe spaces become particularly important and public spaces the locus and means to voice demands for inclusion.

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A further aspect of voicing is its reference to democracy and specific arenas for political debates. In the case of the NDE-movement, this aspect takes on a form of a rather informal ‘democracy from the street’. A quite different way of voicing political matters – and at least at first sight closer to traditional forms of representative democracies – is represented by the Youth Representation Forum (YRG) an institutionalised group in Gothenburg. This organisation is modelled after the City Council and functions as part of the city’s representative democratic structure with elections and a close connection to the municipality council. The spatial organisation of this hall, with seats in rows and a speaker’s tribune, directs the communication and proceedings to take on a quite formal character. This is another way to spatialise democracy, this time in its representative configuration. From a perspective of youth participation and learning, the YRG in many ways is spatialised as a training site for further engagement in the political system.

Sociability – a space for meetings An analytically different purpose of public space appropriation can be designated as sociability: Young people gathering in smaller or larger groups are familiar sights in public places (Skelton and Gough, 2013). The following quotation is from a central square in Plovdiv, but the same scene, however, with different actors, could have been registered in all eight cities. There were several kinds of young people set on use this space for the sake of their intentions. The first one could conditionally be called ‘­bikers’: Boys with their bicycles choosing it as a meeting point before heading to a nearby sports track. The second group consisted of about ten people, all of them with identical look: long hair, big beards and wide clothing. They were drinking beer while one of them was sitting on the ground with his face to all the rest and playing the guitar. The next group was also comprised of young people – there were love couples scattered around at three or four places and enjoying themselves. (Field notes, Plovdiv) The notation shows a shared, and, at the same time, divided, meeting place. The young people use the square collectively, but belong to different groups characterised by looks and doings. From the documentation we cannot know to what extent cross-contacts are made, but it may well be that small territories are created in the square where the embodiment of different styles functions as signals of border-lines. Often the important thing is to have a meeting place, somewhere to go where you know that the important others will turn up. Some groups use certain places – public or semi-public – as their regular meeting place, like

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this informal group of girls in Frankfurt. They use a Youth Centre as their meeting place where further activities can be planned: Here, mainly, here. We also go to the, [park] sometimes to downtown [Barbara: but even then (incomprehensible) we meet up here [in the youth centre] first anyway and then [Sabrina: This is always like our meeting point and then we decide, where to go. (Group discussion, Informal girl group, Frankfurt) The quotation moreover shows another aspect of the nestling of private and public spaces, more concretely, how a semi-public space, the youth centre, can be the preparatory ground to move into more public realms such as the city centre, private spaces such as the home of one of the girls or other semi-private spaces such as shopping centres. Also in the case of sociability, online spaces, such as instant messaging services, blend in. A specific type of public space that appeared as an important space for sociability in a number of case studies is public arenas for sports. Young people who are fans of, for example, football clubs often put a lot of time in support efforts for the club. Sometimes fan groups become important peer groups and the club house a second home (c.f. Chapter 7). Moreover, the case of the football supporters allows to inquire further into the connection between sociability, visibility and the will to display oneself and one’s own values and beliefs. So, we can identify a connection point with voicing in this respect. When it is match day in Eskis¸ehir, a lot of fans gather all over the city to show their support of the club and to inspire others. A new football stadium has been built, but some of the fans are not happy with the fact that it has been located on the outskirts of the city. The old one was more central, and this allowed mingling of a different and better kind, since it provided a more effective display of club symbols to emerging new young supporters: I always think that the stadiums should be inside of the cities. It shouldn’t be far away. Why? For example, I wear my scarf and go to the game. It is usually on the weekends and a family goes to the market with their child. The child sees me with my scarf and maybe he or she wants to go to the game, too. S/he sees a kid as the same age as them going to the game with his/her father. The goal is to show yourselves in the places like a market and gain the new generation. That’s why I think the stadium should be inside the cities. (Expert interview, Eskişehir)

Activity – a space for makings Some of the cases can be related to a purpose for public space appropriation that is activity-oriented in the sense that the reason why young people gather in public space goes beyond meeting other people, socialising with them

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and being visible. In these cases, it is rather about performing a certain kind of action that is a goal in itself. The link to participation lies in the activity; the ‘voice’ is in the doing. These are spatial activities that are based on practical skills; the young people put an effort into attaining skills in order to perform the activity. And often a division between actors and audience is created. ­Examples of such are the uses of public space made by graffiti writers ­(c.f. Chapter 7) and Parkour practitioners. Parkour consists of rather athletic exercises and demands training and being bodily fit. Some of these practices involve considerable training periods – ­periods of skill acquisition and socialisation that in some cases can involve even very young users. The traceurs in Gothenburg organise training sessions for children: The group is encouraged to put their bags in one of the corners. Then the leader starts the warm up. All participants follow him on a run around the playground which includes small jumps, walking on all fours and push-ups. Then he announces that it is now free training. A couple of the coaches put up an old bench against the border of the sandbox, and then perform some initial flips with this as a springboard. Instantly some guys join in, forming a queue and doing the same. All the while participants discuss the jumps between themselves, and give each other little advice on how they can refine their technique. (Field notes, Parkour group, Gothenburg) The challenges that traceurs have to take on must be built upon knowledge and experience of changes in material structure and surface. There is almost a fusion between body and the matter of the urban infrastructure: Yes, I think that’s really an important point. That’s a big part of it. Because it’s just really important, that’s exactly what you have to learn, to deal with these different conditions, so that first of all you get to know your own limits, for example with the hits, and that you know, if it’s like ice cold outside, how it is with your hands. Or if it’s wet, when it gets slippery, that you like know all these different situations and that you don’t get scared all of a sudden if you ever – even if it sounds stupid – in an emergency really need it. That’s really what it’s all about, that you are prepared in whatever way and know exactly, ‘How does a surface react? What’s this like, what’s that like?’ […] Well, parkour was made for the city, which is why it’s just, you can do it in the woods and also, um, yeah, train in the woods, but it’s like there’re two kinds of parkour. It’s feels different if I do it in the city or if I do it in the woods. (Group discussion, Movefree, Zürich) Parkour is in its execution instantaneous and usually does not leave any traces behind. However, documentation of tricks, jumps and runs by pictures and videos is common and the footage is displayed in social media. So, also for

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activity-related purposes of public space appropriation, visibility can be key. Again, this illustrates how city public space is enlarged by online equivalents. Parkour and graffiti along numerous other activities such as skating, street soccer or inline hockey represent spatial activities tied to the urban landscape. These activities revive and renew the city but are also controversial and sometimes cause conflicts in relation to other urban dwellers. Therefore, one skill developed by these groups is knowing where and when to perform their activities and what risks to take in different locations. When we look at these activities that take place in the public, we can see that a majority of the practitioners are young men. These action-oriented endeavours are seemingly more attractive to, and easier to fit in with, a hegemonic masculine script of gender preferences and doings in public space. This, therefore, reflects our earlier discussion of the ways that the public/ private divide historically has been formed through gendered relations with masculinity associated with the public domain and femininity with the private and domestic (Weintraub, 1997). The gendered character of the activity is also acknowledged by the group members and is sometimes actively joined with special arrangements to attract young women.

Conclusion Looking at the variety of practices in which young people engage, it becomes clear that there are various purposes when it comes to the use of public space. Efforts in public can be used to express political views and gather around collective action. But public spaces are also important to build social relations and strengthen ties between peers. We also see a lot of activities; some of which create new spaces and encounters. It is important to underline how different aspects, like voicing, sociability and activity, actually merge together. Often one dimension strengthens the other. However, while young people participate in many ways, not all practices in or addressing the public are met with the same recognition let alone acknowledgement and support. Quite the contrary, the current participation discourse mostly focuses on if and how well young people (productively) make use of spaces granted to them. Usually, as discussed in Chapter 5, these are practices intelligibly voicing and clearly making visible political aspirations in ‘invited’ spaces. By taking a differentiated look at the practices of young people in public space, we tried to illustrate that there remain groups that express claims, yet in an unsupported and even sometimes hidden manner. Thus, it is important to see that ‘(P)politics’ can be written both large and small’ (Kallio and Häkli, 2011: 64). That is, there are political implications in spatial movements and gatherings also when no explicit ideology or opinion is guiding the e­ ffort. Kallio and Häkli have used the phrase ‘voiceless politics’ to describe the political impact of young people’s gatherings in a city park. The gatherings have

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political consequences and not recognising the young people as political actors risks further marginalising them (2001: 63). The discussion of three different purposes of public space appropriation made clear that they do not exclude each other. Aspects of sociability were also important for cases that we presented as examples of voicing and in leisure activities that to a certain extent can be seen as having no purpose beyond the activity. And in these latter cases, the voice often is connected to what they do. So the appropriation of public space to voice needs a specific nestling of different spaces with different degrees of publicness. Several examples show groups working with issues concerning identity and belonging. Here displaced and seldom heard voices and experiences are given a space. This strongly confirms the importance of young people being able to articulate and create visual expressions of neglected life experiences and positions in a range of different ways. By doing so, many groups of young people also make at least temporarily use of semi-public space and access to such spaces plays a crucial role in preparing to make their experiences public. Thus, it is important to view the public dimension along a scale on which young people slide forward and back. The public is associated with places to meet and become visible through social gatherings and activities. It is about inhabiting and enlivening the city; finding places that can be appropriated as their own. Often this is connected to style and collective belonging. This illustrates what Fraser has underlined that public places ‘are arenas for the formation and enactment of social identities’ (1990: 125). In a very fundamental way, this is about young people’s right to their city. Specific activities such as the ones discussed above are thereby often crucial. On the one hand, they can serve as performative resources, on the other, they are pivotal for how the urban space is used and perceived by the respective young people. It is vital that municipality resources and policies support young people’s appropriation of public spaces and respond to and acknowledge the whole spectrum of youth practices. This can be done both by professional interventions and by supporting with different facilities. However, we also see a number of self-regulated efforts by young people which show a high level of social responsibility and ambition. It is critical that also this kind of organisational efforts get the support they need. Public space opens up possibilities when it comes to young people’s sense of spatial belonging and opportunities to move around in their city. Obviously, many young people are in a process of understanding and negotiating their rights and responsibilities, their belonging and participation. As mentioned at the start of this chapter, these are assets which are defined as characteristics of a ‘lived citizenship’ (Lister, 2007: 55). The results of the PARTISPACE study suggest that young people challenge existing and shape new ideas of public life in various ways. While the spaces of participation may not always be explicitly ‘political’ as understood in representative democracies, young people’s activities are usually concerned with more than personal interests and in the same vein mapping out possible directions of future societies.

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Finally, young people are participating in a ‘politics of the social’ (Batsleer et al., 2017: 6), and it is, therefore, necessary to recognise them as (co-)creators of – and thus as a valuable source for – the living together in our cities. As Skelton and Gough (2013: 457) put it: However, these young people are not only in the city, but they are of the city; their lives are shaped by urban dynamics and they themselves are significant actors in, and creators of, the city. Being able to inhabit public space and fill it with voice, sociability and activity is an important part of this participatory citizenship.

References Andersson, B. (2002). Öppna rum – ungdomarna, staden och det offentliga livet [Open space – youth, the city and public life]. Gothenburg: Gothenburg University, D ­ epartment of Social Work, p. 1. Batsleer, J., Ehrensperger, K., Lüküslü, D., Osmanoğlu, B., Pais, A., Reutlinger, C., Roth, P., Wigger, A., and Zimmermann, D. (2017). Claiming Spaces and S ­ truggling for Recognition: Youth Participation through Local Case Studies. Retrieved from: https:// zenodo.org/record/1064119#.WjD1NnlryUk. Cornwall, A. (2002). Making Spaces, Changing Places; Situating Participation in Development. Institute of Development Studies, Working paper 170. Brighton: Institute of Development Studies. Daneback, K., and Löf berg, C. (2011). Youth, sexuality and the internet: Young people’s use of the internet to learn about sexuality. In: Dunkels, E., Frånberg, G.-M., and Hällgren, C. (eds.) Youth Culture and Net Culture: Online Social Practices. Hershey, PA: IGI Global. Fraser, N. (1990). Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy. Social text 25/26, pp. 56–80. Fuller, M. G., and Löw, M. (2017). Introduction: An invitation to spatial sociology. Current Sociology Monograph, 65(4), pp. 469–491. Goffman, E. (1959). The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York, NY: ­Doubleday & Company. Jacobs, J. (1961). The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York, NY: Random House. Jones, G. (2009). Youth. Cambridge: Polity Press. Kallio, K. P., and Häkli, J. (2011). Young people’s voiceless politics in the struggle over urban space. GeoJournal, 76(1), pp. 63–75. Lefebvre, H. (1991). The Production of Space, Vol. 142. Oxford: Blackwell. Lieberg, M. (1992). Att ta staden i besittning, (To Take Possession of the City). Lund: Lund University. Lister, R. (2007). Inclusive citizenship: Realizing the potential. Citizenship Studies, 11(1), pp. 49–61. Lofland, L. (1998). The Public Realm. Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter. Madanipour, A. (2010). Whose Public Space? International Case Studies in Urban Design and Development. London: Routledge. Massey, D. (2005). For Space. London: Sage.

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McMahon, G., Percy-Smith, B., Thomas, N., Becevic, Z., Liljeholm Hansson, S., and Forkby, T. (2018). Young People’s Participation: Learning from Action R ­ esearch in Eight European Cities. Working Paper. PARTISPACE Deliverable D 5.3. doi:10.5281/zenodo.1240227. Mitchell, D. (2003). The Right to the City. New York, NY: Guilford Press. Piekut, A., and Valentine, G. (2017). Spaces of encounter and attitudes towards difference: A comparative study of two European cities. Social Science Research, 62, pp. 175–188. Rogers, P. (2006). Young people’s participation in the renaissance of public space – A case study in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. Children, Youth and Environments, 16(2), pp. 105–126. Skelton, T., and Gough, K. V. (2013). Introduction: Young people’s im/mobile urban geographies. Urban Studies, 50(3), pp. 455–466. Valentine, G., Holloway, S. L., and Bingham, N. (2000). Transforming cyberspace: Children’s interventions in the new public sphere. In: Holloway, S. L., and ­Valentine, G. (eds.) Children’s Geographies. London: Routledge, pp. 135–149. Weintraub, J. (1997). The theory and politics of the public/private distinction. In: Weintraub, J., and Kumar, K. (eds.) Public and Private in Thought and Practice. ­Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Zimmermann, D., Andersson, B., De Luigi, N., Piro, V., and Reutlinger, C. (2018). A Place in Public: Spatial Dynamics of Youth Participation in Eight European Cities. Working Paper. PARTISPACE Deliverable, D 6.2. doi:10.5281/zenodo.1240164.

Chapter 7

Making a home in the city How young people take part in the urban space Valeria Piro, Nicola de Luigi, Christian Reutlinger and Dominic Zimmermann

Introduction In Bologna, a collective of students squat an abandoned barrack in the city centre. The group worked hard to refurbish it, paint its walls, adapt it for living purpose for activists and homeless people and transform its courtyard into a pleasant meeting place open to everyone. In Frankfurt, a crew of young people meet to paint graffiti on the city walls, drinking, smoking and listening to music while spending time together. In Zurich, a group of young volunteers, animated by political and humanitarian purpose, open up a school where everyone can learn languages for free or chill out in its welcoming café. What do these practices, enacted by young people, have in common? All of them, obviously, imply the appropriation of buildings or spots that become young people’s own place in the city. Throughout these practices they ‘take part in the social and political contexts in which their lives are situated and by which they are structured’ (Percy-Smith et al., 2015: 28) establishing specific spatial relationships in urban spaces. The aim of this chapter is to discuss spatial aspects of young people’s partici­ pation through a closer look at spatial appropriation practices. Specifically, we look at public or semi-public places in the city (Chapter 6) that young people appropriate as their homes. This means that we focus on processes that, within the home and urban studies debates, are commonly defined as domestication of public space as a specific way by which young people turn spaces into meaningful and familiar places. This contribution deepens the reflections on the appropriation of public space made in the previous chapter of this book by specifically discussing an aspect, home-making, which was found to be relevant in various PARTISPACE cases. Looking at how young people make their ‘home’ in the urban space is also a way to look, from a micro perspective, at the transformations occurring in the whole city, transformations oriented or ‘pushed’ by political and economic actors but also produced and reproduced everyday by citizens – in our case young people – through their daily routines and experiences of participation. In short, in this chapter,

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we inquire into what it means for young people to feel at home – or not at home – in the city and how they take part in city life by making ‘homes’ in public places. This chapter is based on empirical data collected through participant observation, biographical interviews and group discussions in eight European cities (Chapter 1). In particular, we rely on examples taken from 5 among the 48 ethnographic case studies that were conducted during the PARTISPACE project. The five cases were chosen as they made home-making practices clearly visible and enabled a contrast between different activities, organisational settings and relationships to the public space in the groups in question. Throughout this chapter, we will illustrate the processes of domestication enacted by the young members of a Social Centre who occupied and refurbished an abandoned military barracks in Bologna; in so doing, they do not only construct buildings but simultaneously create a homely place that is also a laboratory for alternative social relations, political activism and contentious actions. Moreover, this chapter discusses the practices of home-making carried on, in the city of Zurich, by the members of the Alternative ­Education ­Centre, an alternative education project that fosters free education, especially for undocumented migrants and asylum seekers. Finally, this chapter spotlights groups of young people whose processes of domestication are not ­focused on one single location. Instead, they move between various places in the city, creating ‘homes’ that might not be readily visible to adults or other young people. Such is the case of a group of friends, that we named the ‘informal girls’ group’, that meets outside of a youth centre to spend time ­together in Frankfurt. It is also the case for a crew of writers in the city Frankfurt and for a group of parkour practitioners in Gothenburg, experiencing and appropriating the city through art and sport. Before the analysis of the empirical data, the next section reconstructs the debate on the domestication of public space and focuses on the research concerning young peoples’ spatial appropriation practices.

The domestication of public space According to Mandich and Rampazi (2009: 15) the concept of ‘domestication’ has emerged, since the beginning of the 1990s, in the field of media and communication studies and in the sociology of technics. Within this frame, it was initially employed to describe the processes of adaptation or rejection towards new technologies, analysing them as they entered into the complex web of the everyday life. In this context, therefore, the concept of domestication entails the production of meanings through everyday practices. If we move the focus towards space, domestication implies the transformation of a space that, through the everyday practices of care and through reproductive labour, assumes the characteristics of a refuge, a safe zone for the self, a ­familiar nest: characteristics believed to be proper to the domestic experience.

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Within the debate, scholars provide different definitions of the domestication of public places according to the ‘direction’ of the process. For some of them, for instance, the focus is on bringing the public into the private. On the one hand, this means that there has been an increase in the number of activities (such as working, having a social life) that is possible to conduct in the private house, making these activities and therefore the ‘public’ more and more ‘domestic’. On the other hand, to ‘bring public into the private’ means to become familiar with a given space such as a specific bar, square, corner and so on: ‘When space is crossed, delimited, used in the everyday practices it crosses the borders of the private in order to be included into the private sphere of the everyday life’ (Mandich and Rampazi, 2009: 16–17). In the other direction, scholars discuss ‘how the private life of the home has been carried into the public sphere’ (Kumar and Makarova, 2008; Koch and Lathman, 2013). According to Kumar and Makarova (2008: 325), for instance: The argument is that many of the things once done privately, in the confined domestic space of the home – eating, talking intimately, expressing emotions, entertaining oneself – are now increasingly being done outside the home, in what were formerly thought of as a public space. Nevertheless, they still remain intensely private, even intimate activities. […] They represent the incipient, and still ongoing, ‘domestication of the public space’. More recently, however, scholars have tried to demonstrate that these two ‘directions’ of the processes of domestication are actually highly connected, shedding light on the mutually constitutive nature of the urban environment and the domestic space: this implies that ‘the interior and the ‘language of domesticity’’ can be more and more observed in many different public and semi-public places, but it also implies ‘the infiltration of ‘non-domestic’ practices and objects into the domestic interior itself ’ (Blunt and Sheringham, 2018: 4). However, what these definitions have in common – and this represent ­actually the core of this debate – is that they all aim at undermining a c­ lear-cut distinction between private and public spaces. This distinction, they argue, is in fact a fictitious one, based on the idea that there exists a home meant to be a ‘haven’ or a ‘refuge’ that is completely detached from the turbulent public space, meant to be the exclusive space of social, political and economic life (Mallett, 2004). According to Kumar and Makarova (2008: 331), this ‘conception of the home is of course largely a 19th-century invention, a product of rapid urbanization and industrialization. […] It was a defensive fortress against the hard, competitive, often brutal life in the marketplace and the public sphere generally’. However, as many – especially among feminist scholars – argued, this conception of home reflects the ideas and interests of men rather

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than women, bourgeois rather than working class, and adults rather than children and the young, disguising the fact that the home can also be experienced as a place of oppression and domination (Douglas, 1991; Mallett, 2004; Mandich and Rampazi, 2009). The separation between the (female) realm of house and (male) public space of participation is also aimed at confining, while apparently merely defining, the appropriate place for each activity and for each individual. Similarly, this fictitious separation affects young people (often conceived as becoming or incipient adults; Chapter 5), who are considered not mature enough to take part in public space or even as a threat to ‘the adults’ definition of the appropriate behaviours’ (Valentine, 1996). Thus, if is true that home is not understood anymore as a ‘safe haven’, it is also true that it is not anymore considered as the only space of domesticity. So, various scholars suggest an ‘extended view of home’, including in the definition of the ‘home’ also streets, neighbourhoods, urban gardens (Boccagni and Brighenti, 2017), that is, all that places where people do actually feel at home. In a nutshell, when speaking about the domestication of the urban spaces, we aim to shedding light on the creative processes by which people ‘go about making a home in the city’ (Koch and Lathman, 2013), thus rendering public spaces into their places. To bring private into public implies the individuals’ transformative power and the possibilities of space production and reproduction through home-making practices. This is why domestication can be thought of as a process of spatial appropriation. As Rioux and colleagues (2017) highlight, spatial appropriation can be understood as an action that transforms the relationship between a subject and its material and symbolic environment, through engagement with the constituting objects. It emerges as ‘one of the mechanisms by which people change space to place, whether space refers to natural areas, city neighbourhoods, a dwelling, or a myriad of other settings’ (ibidem: 61).1 Through spatial appropriation, in other words, a locale in a specific location is vested with meaning and a sense of place can be experienced (Cresswell, 2009). For instance, as regards young people, this happens when they claim abandoned buildings or engage in construction work and accommodate them to their needs; or when they attribute new meanings to the urban infrastructure, spraying on old factory walls that in turn become attractive products of vivid emotional histories. Moreover, appropriation can be understood as a mutual mediation processes (Hüllemann et al., 2018), during which both the subject and the object, respectively, its meaning, material make-up and function, can change. Thus, in the aforementioned example, when young people renovate the abandoned barracks, not only are the buildings changed but also the youngsters, by developing feelings of belonging to that place, as well as new competences, roles and personal and social identities. Thinking of appropriation as a process of ongoing mediation also questions any substantialist notion of space

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(and place). Along with Hüllemann et al., it can be assumed that, as spaces are no pre-given fixed entities, new spatialities emerge and change during the appropriation process itself.2 Obviously, this does not happen in a void as appropriation is guided by ‘certain [spatial] structures, patterns and rules that are inscribed in objects of appropriation or mediated through interaction with other people’ (ibidem: 386). Consequently, the analysis of domestication as a form of appropriation implies investigating processes related to changes in the meanings and materiality of different sites as well as practices of position, sense and identity-making. Such an analysis must also imply the challenging of already existing patterns, and for the purpose of this chapter in particular, the fictional classification of spaces as public or private. When young people explore and experience sites in public and semi-­ public spaces through using, occupying, travelling around, building on a site and engaging with its objects, they attach meaning to them, turning them into places, taking part in neighbourhood or city life. However, as scholars have argued, youth’s relationship to public and semi-public space is often interpreted as problematic because, in many cases, ‘places were used in ways not anticipated by adults and this led to frequent clashes’ (Matthews et al., 2000: 195). According to Cele (2013: 74), ‘the rhetoric that the youth ‘take over’, ‘­occupy’ and ‘claim’ spaces is common, [revealing] a view that youth ­behaviour, ­regardless of what this behaviour is, in public spaces is in itself challenging to the adult community and hence not wanted’. For these reasons, young people’s meanings and uses of these spaces have been not only explicitly contested but also regulated through surveillance or intervention by the police (Rogers, 2006; Kallio and Häkli, 2013). Public space is not just a neutral arena in which young people ‘are freely able to participate in street life or define their own ways of interacting and using space but is a highly regulated – or closed – space where young people are expected to show deference to adults and adults’ definitions of appropriate behaviour’ (Valentine, 1996: 214). However, several studies on young people and public spaces have highlighted the increasing importance that neighbourhoods and public environments, such as urban centres or shopping malls, sport or entertainment centres, can acquire during youth. Hanging around in groups on street ­corners, talking or simply observing others, skating, spraying or playing ‘­represents for many young people a place to express themselves without close parental or ‘adult’ control, at little or no cost in commercial or financial terms’ (White and Alder, 1994: 109). Essentially, unlike adults, ‘the young have few other places to socialise and are very frequent users of public spaces’ (Cele, 2013: 74). In particular, according to Lieberg (1995), young people use public spaces not only as places of interaction, to meet each other and confront the adult world and the city on their own (c.f. Chapter 6), but also as a place of ­retreat, to be together without adult supervision, their rules and expectations. ­Despite the presence of rules in public spaces, it is possible, to

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a certain extent, to make one’s own rules and to try new things. Therefore, public space offers a kind of privacy to young people that they cannot get at home (Van Lieshout and Aarts, 2008), becoming an important part of their individual or group life, ‘their’ place, although not necessarily exclusively. During home-making, they learn how to make use of the locale and possibly shape it to their own needs. Such processes are exemplified and discussed in the next sections based on five PARTISPACE case studies.

Feeling at home in public spaces Paul: In the first place, and it is the same for the guys, I have to paint or tag something where I feel at home, where I pass by often, where I know more about the place, where I feel more at home. (Field notes Hoodboys, Frankfurt) An interesting aspect emerging from the empirical material is that when young people talk about ‘their’ places, they often refer to these places as home. The process of home-making encompasses, on the one hand, the re-shaping of the locale in order to make it domestic, warm and familiar through using or changing its objects. On the other hand, it implies the creation of deep relationships with people sharing the same (localised) experience and ­practice – people who are often referred to as a family. In the young people’s narrations, the material, social and emotional aspects of home are intertwined, and ‘being at home’ is the epitome of feeling a strong tie towards the locale and t­owards other people performing the same activity, with deep implications for the creation of a group and individual identity. Reworking a physical locale (i.e. renovating, rebuilding or decorating the premises of an association, an abandoned building, a wall, etc.) represents the most ‘visible’ facet of home-making. In the empirical material, we can find several cases that exemplify home-making in terms of ‘visible’ changings. Among the cases where young people are engaged in ‘opening up a new place’ (Batsleer et al., 2017), those concerned with the re-use and remake of abandoned buildings, such as the Self-managed Social Centre (SC) ­ ologna, appear particularly interesting. in B The SC was a place that, in November 2012, was ‘opened’ by a group of activists, mainly university students aged between 20 and 28, who occupied abandoned barracks located in a central and rich district, transforming it into a community centre open to the public. After the squat, the activists and their supporters renewed a large part of the barracks: while the greatest share of the building was devoted to different types of leisure, cultural, social and political activities, certain rooms were allocated also for dwelling purposes. Several projects were carried on in the SC, such as a social dormitory, hosting homeless people and migrants excluded from the institutional reception system; a self-organised kindergarten; a micro-brewery and an organic pizzeria;

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an urban garden. During its almost five years of activity,3 the SC turned into a popular and lively space, attended by numerous people, engaged in ‘doing politics’ or simply attracted by its wide courtyard to drink a beer and enjoy some music. This was possible thanks to the great effort that the activists, ­engaged in the political activities, and the volunteers, running the projects, put into transforming abandoned barracks into an accessible place with different ‘private’ and ‘public’ uses. It represented a proper home for activists living in the squat, a temporary arrangement for homeless people hosted in the dormitory, as well as a meeting please for many others, participating daily or occasionally in the activities. The practice of re-making the locale, adapting it for the purpose of the political and social activities, was attractive in itself for many young people, as Tonino, a 23-year-old volunteer participating in the dormitory project inside the SC, describes: Tonino: I answered the call for volunteers because one of my university mates told me about it… I didn’t have any other political experience except in students’ movements. I arrived with the idea that here they [the activists] waste a lot of time (how do we imagine the project… how it will be) and I had the idea of wanting to do just manual work. The first thing I do is work this space. (Field notes, Self-managed Social Centre, Bologna) Interestingly, Tonino uses the notion of ‘working the space’ and not ‘working in the space’. After this first approach, he started to engage more and more actively with the project and with the group, attributing increasingly relevance in his life to the SC and progressively embracing its political view. Tonino: I came with the idea to do manual work and then I realized I wanted to go beyond it. I realized that being a volunteer here is a lot more. That it’s immediately political: it’s criticism of the reception system, of the welfare system, of the system – more in general. (Field notes, Self-managed Social Centre, Bologna) Tonino’s personal experience of growth of political awareness well exemplifies that domestication, like any form of spatial appropriation, is a process of mutual transformation (Hüllemann et al., 2018). Home-making is thus highly connected with self-making: while the very spaces of engagement are not predefined and constantly under construction, young people’s skills and identities are also shaped hand in hand with the production of the place. On some occasions, the feeling of domesticity could also be perceived by a stranger entering for the first time into a locale arranged to be ‘domestic’. To provide an example, we refer to a field note taken after an observation inside the locale of the Alternative Education Centre (AEC) in Zurich. The AEC

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is a provider of open and free-of-charge courses. The project started initially with the occupation of a church in claim of migrants’ rights in Zurich. An important aspect of AEC’s history is the struggle to find a location where people could meet, and where education could take place for free. AEC has relocated numerous times, ­either because it was only granted short-term usage rights or because the city ordered the initiative of occupation of unused public structures be put to an end. AEC has currently, for the first time, a rental agreement with the municipality. At present, approximately 500 people regularly attend classes or meet when the centre is open and approximately 100 people work in various projects on a voluntary basis. In order to guarantee a higher level of accessibility to the place, the AEC members devote a lot of attention to keeping the place open and homely. The following field notes, for instance, describes the comfort experienced in the Café of the AEC. The walls of the Café are painted in a friendly light yellow, the windows in a light grey-blue and white and the ceiling is kept white as well. Tables, chairs and sofas are a compilation of different second-hand furniture of most different styles […]. At the walls, diverse notes, posters, and information sheets in different sizes, colours and languages hang. Some give the impression of hanging there for quite a while; some seem to be newer. Four big windows on the right, black pendants above the bar counter as well as fashionable-appearing white wall lamps illuminate the room. I experience the room as rather dusky, a fact that may contribute to the living room atmosphere. Somehow it feels like sitting in a big kitchen, in which people go in and go out, sit down, retrieve information, work with the computer, talk with each other, eat, look after children, etc. – a multifunctional room so to say. Even though the room is called Café, it is rather a common room than a café because one does not have to consume here, one is not waited and there are no menu cards on the tables. On the contrary, many who sit at the tables bring their own drinks or food. Yet, it has something natural to be here as a stranger as well. (Field notes, Alternative Education Centre, Zurich) The researcher’s concern (i.e. how much of a ‘kitchen’ and how much of a ‘café’ is it?) shows how the boundary between what is private (the kitchen) and what is not (the café) is quite often porous and nuanced (Mallett, 2004; Kumar and Makarova, 2008). All the example provided in this section, moreover, highlight the mutually constitutive nature of space production in everyday life (Blunt and Sheringham, 2018). This has a twofold meaning: the process of domestication is a mutually constitutive relationship between the ‘space’ and the ‘subject’, that is, it is s­ imultaneously a process of place-making and identity-making (as illustrated by the example of Tonino, who volunteers in the SC, and by

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Hüllemann et al., 2018). Second, private and public spaces, interiors and exteriors, are mutually constructed and mingled spheres, as suggested by the example of the AEC common room and by other authors (Mallett, 2004; Kumar and Makarova, 2008).

Age and gender in home-making processes In order to feel at home somewhere, it is not always necessary to open up a new place, as it was the case for the SC and AEC. In many other situations, young people can feel at ease in already existing places they do not create anew but that they nevertheless appropriate through their routines, turning them into domestic environments. This is the case, for instance, of the Informal Girls Group that is a group of six close friends, aged between 14 and 15 years. Two of the girls started together prevocational education schemes in textiles after failing to complete lower secondary school. Four girls are at a comprehensive secondary school. All of them except one have a migration background, but none of them is able to speak their mother tongue fluently. Almost all of them have single mothers or stepfathers with whom they have conflicts. Two girls, moreover, are involved in measures of the youth welfare office. The girls have become close friends through their frequent visit to a youth centre. They regularly meet in public, semi-public (the youth centre or shopping malls) as well as in private places and have developed a kind of family-like affinity with each other. For them, hanging out, cooking, eating, smoking weed and listening to music together is an important sphere of experience and a strategy to cope with the various difficulties of their everyday family and school life. The girls have ‘occupied’ the open space of a youth centre where they have temporarily achieved a certain dominance over other users and youth workers. In their ‘own’ spaces (inside and outside the youth centre), they break existing norms and shape their own rules and thus separate themselves above and apart from the institutionalised space they are surrounded by and confronted with. When speaking about the youth centre, the girls describe it as their home, a comfortable place where they can perform certain activities usually deemed to be private (Kumar and Makarova, 2008; Koch and Lathman, 2013). The fact that the girls use the centre as a ‘place of retreat’ (Lieberg, 1995) where preparing what they need for their social life or practising activities generally limited to private space offers a picture of this place as homely, as clearly emerges in the excerpt from the group discussion provided below: Anna:   Yo, we do what we want here and we’re our own supervisors. Vanessa:   Here, we totally do everything we want, but the thing is also… Anna [interrupting]:   we’d go behind the bar and toast bread, we’d just go there

from behind we’re not allowed to do any of that! it’s like a home what you have here, you are actually at home, you behave like you’re at home…

Vanessa: …

106  Valeria Piro et al. Barbara:   She’s walking around with no shoes on! R amona:   Yeah, I was recently without shoes! Anna:   I do my hair here… You would do that at home [laughing]! Gina:   I’d put on make-up. Sabrina:   I have pink make up stuff here… Gina:   I’ve already done my make up here plenty of times. Anna:   I’ve passed out in the Juz [slang word for youth centre] before,

plenty of

times. Vanessa:   Here

it’s already like, it’s like a second home! (transcription from a Group Discussion, Informal Girls Group, Frankfurt)

When describing ‘their’ places, young people often convey feelings of domesticity, as it is evident in the quotation above. In this specific case, the quotation illustrates also a gendered production of a homely space. The young girls, in fact, feel at home in the youth centre also because there they can construct collectively their gendered identities through a simple everyday activity, doing make-up, that represents a relevant moment in the production of a gendered self and a sexed body. Another relevant characteristic that allows the girls to speak about that place as home is the fact that, in their words, ‘the professionals do not control’. This idea of feeling at ease in places free from adult and institutional control emerges also in the conversation with another group in Frankfurt, a crew of graffiti writers that we named the Hoodboys. For them to make their home does not necessarily mean to occupy or appropriate a specific building; in their understanding, to make a ‘home’, that is necessary mobile and temporary, means to delimit a space for their own within the whole city. To spray or tag, for them, is a way to ‘make their home’ on specific sites. As they explain, they do not merely spray on random spots in the city; they spray just where they ‘know more about the place’, where they can ‘chill’ and ‘feel comfortable’. Moreover, once someone belonging to the crew has left his or her mark somewhere, the spot assumes a specific (identitarian) meaning, evoking ‘home’ also for the other group members, as is shown in the next field notes extract. Paul: When I am sitting on the train and I see pictures that one of the guys or I’ve painted, then I think: ‘Yeah, ok, here is my home’. It is exactly the same, take the train to *** [city next to Frankfurt] and go to a field and sit somewhere on a random fucking bench and see something on this park bench that my guys have painted, I think, ‘yeah, ok, I’m home. I have never been here but my guys were here, so I feel like I am at home’. I don’t want to be famous, in the sense of graffiti fame, but I just want to have pictures […] I just want to have pictures there where I chill, where I feel comfortable, just to see things that tell me that I was here, here I am home’. (Field notes, Hoodboys, Frankfurt)

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Through their paintings, the Hoodboys make themselves part of the city: ­doing graffiti means to change the immage of the city, to shape the city in their own way. However, since painting on the walls could be also an illegal activity, many of the guys already have criminal records for this activity, and this explains why, when they spray, they sometimes prefer rather secluded sites. Richard: I like to chill where graffiti is painted, but you can’t always chill where you’ve painted graffiti. So, if I am moving around the city like now, I will see graffiti but I am not necessarily chilling. Then there are also sort of ghetto spots throughout the city, places where you could chill so to speak and no one cares, no one bothers you when you are painting. Like, for example, under a bridge or on the noise barriers on the highway, or where there’s an old factory, a huge factory, you can just chill there hardcore, on the roof or whatnot. I find it awesome. (Field notes, Hoodboys, Frankfurt) This excerpt provides a further example of how young people experience and designate meaningful places in the city while developing their identities – in this case closely tied to public (in)visibility. In Richard’s account, the comfortable place ‘where you could chill, so to speak, and no one cares, no one bothers you when you are painting’ is represented by the ‘ghetto’. He employs the word ‘ghetto’ – generally meant to be a dangerous and marginal area out of full public supervision – with a highly positive connotation. His account suggests that an element of a ‘chill spot’ is often the lack of control exerted over it, especially by law enforcement and by other actors trying to prevent those which are considered illegal acts of vandalism. Thus, being at home in the ghetto spots means not only being visible in one’s own graffiti and tags but also being invisible for many others. This spatial setting may reaffirm a self-related to transgression and audacious masculinity. As the examples above illustrate, age and gender interplay in everyday practices of domestication of public space. While gender has often been taken into consideration in the analyses of domestication (Mallett, 2004; Mandich and Rampazi, 2009) the relevance of age has been quite underestimated by urban scholars. However, by taking into consideration the works of youth scholars (Valentine, 1996; Rogers, 2006; Kallio and Häkli, 2013), as we did, it is possible to understand domestication as a process that is shaped according also to the different ages of the subjects.

Home-making as changing taken-for-granted meanings By occupying and refurbishing abandoned building, as the Social Centre in Italy; by spraying on walls, as the graffiti crew in Frankfurt; by accurately

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choosing second-hand furniture to decorate a common room, as in the ­A lternative Education Centre in Zurich; by hanging banners up on the walls with the symbols of the group and so on, young people are making home in the public and at the same time changing themselves and shaping their gendered selves and group identities. Taking into consideration that the city is used by a multiplicity of people acting out distinct spatial practices and (re) producing their homes, it becomes clear that home-making is not a smooth and conflict free process. Bearing in mind that power to define or shape spaces is unevenly distributed, we can still expect that some practices are stable enough to function as hegemonic interpretative patterns, defining who can use the space and how it can be used (Cresswell, 2009). These patterns thus influence the possibilities of its appropriation. Frequently, while making a home in public space, young people challenge these dominant spatial ­patterns and commonly taken-for-granted meanings. The case studies analysed so far could provide several examples concerning this conflicting dimension of spatial appropriation. The Bologna’s ­Social ­Centre strategy to occupy and changing the use value of an abandoned building is a clear example of this conflictual form of home-making. The experience of the Hoodboys in Frankfurt could be framed as a sort of ‘rebellion’ towards the city.4 Also, the conflicts of the Informal Girl Group with the youth workers on appropriate behaviour in the youth centre goes in this direction. However, to exemplify the conflicting dimension of home-­ making, in this paragraph we rely on examples about a group of ‘traceurs’ and ‘­traceuses’ (practitioners of parkour) in Gothenburg. Parkour is a training discipline that has roots in military obstacle course training. Practitioners aim to get from one point to another in the fastest and most efficient way possible. Their training, according to them, facilitates self-development particularly by working at one’s own limits. In Gothenburg, the observed group train inside a sport centre, founded by autonomous youth movements and dedicated adults. It is a place for spontaneous and adventurous sports where parkour co-habits with other activities (such as skateboarding, cross fit, BMX-riding, etc.). From time to time, the group also trains outdoor. In these occasions, they make their home in the public place, although in a different way compared with the other groups we dealt with so far. Parkour trainers do not create a home which is stable and fixed. Their attitude, instead, is to use fluidly the whole city as a home, by transforming, for limited periods of time, specific walls, buildings or corners into their own ‘playground’. These forms of appropriation are thus fluid and ­temporary. Nevertheless, they can be considered as home-making processes since guys and girls, through the practice of parkour, became more and more familiar with the city spots, bringing them into their private life (Mandich and Rampazi, 2009). While training, the parkour practitioners use objects and surfaces of the city in such a way that unhinges taken-for-granted meanings of the urban space: a bench that is generally used to rest can be employed

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as a support for a so-called King-Kong vault or a bin commonly used to throw the rubbish can be transformed into a training tool. A discussion started from the presence of a cultural artefact and how to interpret it. I was proposing: ‘Some will understand it as a cultural piece from our history, and other …’ But I was interrupted with ‘Parkour is everything’. It is about training your mind to think like a child and find out how to make use of things in another way than what is suggested. What would it be like if you try to connect from one place to another, while just using a big jump? (Field notes, Non-profit Parkour Group, Gothenburg) Parkour evidences that appropriation of the urban space is an embodied appropriation, that means learning through and on your own body how a certain surface reacts to your action, acquiring a sort of embodied spatial knowledge that at the same time is connected to another perception of the urban infrastructure. In the case of parkour, appropriating a place means to improve oneself, develop personally and extend one’s limits. Becoming competent not only means acquiring new jump and movement techniques but also learning to be creative and able to think about other possible uses of the surrounding objects. The fact that many objects of the city acquire additional ­meanings while young people acquire new skills and enlarge their scope of action ­exemplifies that appropriation is a mutual mediation process (­Hüllemann et al., 2018). However, the accommodation of the public space into one’s playground and training ground does not always encounter appreciation. From time to time people react negatively to the ‘hooligans in sweatpants’ (Field note, Non-profit Parkour group, Got), as exemplified in the field note below: the lady says ‘What are you doing? You can’t be up there!’ [While the group is training outdoor] A very angry lady comes out the gate. ‘We are playing’, answers one of the younger guys. ‘Look, this is no playground’ answers the lady with the angry voice, ‘you are on our fucking roof! Jump down! […] What the hell is wrong with you, are you hung up or something?’ One of the younger guys says: ‘Have you never been a child?’ The lady, who now seems extremely angry, replies: ‘Yes, I have, and I have children and grandchildren. But they are normal, unlike you’. (Field notes, Non-profit Parkour group, Gothenburg) The anger of the lady is maybe due to worries about damages to private property. However, by accusing the traceurs of mistaking the premises for a playground she tries to delegitimise them, by implicitly framing their practice

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as childish. Moreover, her argumentation takes up perceived normalities of urban space use. She conceives the traceurs’ use as abnormal. What is deemed to be ‘normal’ relies on a pre-existing classification system and ‘[t]he stronger the spatial classification – the greater the desire to expel and exclude – the easier it is to upset those of who invest in an existing order’ (Cresswell, 2009: 103). In a similar vein, stigmatised as producers of ‘disorder’, young people are often marginalised and delegitimised from using public space for their own purpose. It is easy to imagine that many home-making practices can be delegitimised as disorder because they disrupt the division between private and public.

Conclusion This chapter has discussed how young people appropriate urban spaces turning them into homely places. Appropriation process involves transforming the material environment in a way that better suits their purpose; it implies developing new meanings attached to objects and thus entails the creation of new spatialities. Moreover, appropriation also means re-shaping and ‘building’ one’s own identity, and acquiring new skills, worldviews and so on. The analysis of the empirical material has shown how young people engage in processes of domestication of public spaces. For young people, home is not always in private spaces (where they may be under parental control), home can also be in public or semi-­public spaces. A home has strong emotional components and goes along with the attribution of great symbolic values to objects, practices and social ties. Home-making goes along with self-making and belonging. Home is also where one can relax, concentrate on (often strongly embodied) homely activities (such as cooking, doing one’s hair, sleeping, etc.) in one’s own rhythm and know that s/he will not be disturbed that easily. In a home, one can behave ‘naturally’. Home is connected to non-disturbance and self-determination. In certain circumstances (as the cases of the Hoodboys and the I­ nformal Girls Group demonstrated), being at ease in a place also coincides with the possibility of being outside the institutional sphere of control (for an analysis of the control addressed to young people, see Chapter 5). In situations in which young people carry on socially non-legitimated behaviours, such as smoking weed or painting walls, ‘ghettos’ and marginal areas in the city are (re)appropriated by them, producing places where these behaviours are legitimated by the group of peers. Homes can thus stand in opposition to control of state authorities in public space or youth workers in a youth centre when their control is experienced as coercive. This means that the search for a home outside of the private home (where parents may be conceived as controlling and disturbing) can – but must not necessarily – include the search for spaces out of control of institutions or adult supervisors. In this case, invisibility can become key for the experience of a home and hence source of identity.

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Finally, turning spaces into homely places can also mean experiencing conflicts with other social groups who use the same urban spaces with different purposes and understandings. According to Cresswell (2009: 27), ‘place does not have meanings that are natural or obvious but ones that are created by some people with more power than others to define what is and is not appropriate’. Young people often use places and their conventional meanings in a transgressive way, challenging taken-for-granted meanings. We illustrate these conflicts relying on the example of parkour. In this case, the conflict concerns the power to define the use of the urban space and thus of a focal aspect of their participation in society. This conflict involves social groups endowed with different degrees of power and different possibilities to determine the use and use value of the city. Sometimes young people address these inequalities through their participatory activities, engaging in conflicts with social groups in charge of ‘designing’ the city in order to foster their alternative view on the use of the urban spaces. In sum, the possibility to feel at home in the city depends, on the one hand, on the way in which urban spaces are designed and organised; on the other hand, it depends also on the different abilities of all users, and among them of young people, to creatively modify the urban space, ‘bending’ it to their needs and desires.

Notes 1 For an overview on the broad debate that discusses the definition of space, place and territory, c.f. Zimmermann et al. (2018). 2 This relates to an understanding of spaces as produced by social processes. If the space constituting social relations, namely related power relations and interactions are ignored, because spaces are treated as pre-existing objects, the implicated power relations are obscured and possible conflicts that arise from diverging spatial constructions risk to not be fully understood. 3 The Self-managed Social Centre was evicted by police on 8 August 2017. 4 ‘The group uses graffiti to express a certain kind of rebellion against the city, the society and the norms they live in, but they do not want to call themselves political in a traditional way’ (Field notes, Hoodboys, Frankfurt).

References Batsleer, J., Ehrensperger, K., Lüküslü, D., Osmanoğlu, B., Pais, A., Reutlinger, C., and Zimmermann, D. (2017). Claiming Spaces and Struggling for Recognition: Youth Participation through Local Case Studies. Retrieved from: https://zenodo.org/ record/1064119. Blunt, A., and Sheringham, O. (2018). Home-city geographies. Urban dwelling and mobility. Progress in Human Geography, OnlineFirst, pp. 1–20. Boccagni, P., and Brighenti, A.M. (2017). Immigrants and home in the making. Thresholds of domesticity, commonality and publicness. Journal of Housing and the Built Environment, 32, pp. 1–11.

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Cele, S. (2013). Performing the political through public space: Teenage girls’ everyday use of a city park. Space and Polity, 17(1), pp. 74–87. Cresswell, T. (2009). Place. A Short Introduction (Short introductions to geography, [Repr.]. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Douglas, M. (1991). The idea of home. A kind of space. Social Research, 58(1), pp. 287–307. Hüllemann, U., Reutlinger, C., and Deinet, U. (2018). Aneignung. In: Kessl, F., and Reutlinger, C. (eds.) Handbuch Sozialraum. Wiesbaden: Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden, pp. 381–398. Kallio, K.P., and Häkli, J. (2013). Children and young people’s politics in everyday life. Space and Polity, 17(1), pp. 1–16. Koch, R., and Latham, A. (2013). On the hard work of domesticating a public space. Urban Studies, 50(1), pp. 6–21. Kumar, K., and Makarova, E. (2008). The portable home: The domestication of public space. Sociological Theory, 26(4), pp. 324–343. Lieberg, M. (1995). Teenagers and public space. Communication Research, 22(6), pp. 720–744. Mallett, S. (2004). Understanding home. The Sociological Review, 52(1), pp. 62–89. Mandich, G., and Rampazi, M. (2009). Domesticità e addomesticamento. La costruzione della sfera domestica nella vita quotidiana. Sociologia@DRES, 1, pp. 1–30. Matthews, H., Taylor, M., Percy-Smith, B., and Limb, M. (2000). The unacceptable flaneur: The shopping mall as a teenage hangout. Childhood, 7(3), pp. 279–294. Percy-Smith, B., Walther, A., Loncle, P., Larmagnac, M., Hinkle, L., Cuconato, M., and Thomas, N.P. (2015). Participation, PARTISPACE Glossary. Retrieved from: http://partispace.eu/glossary/. Rogers, P. (2006). Young people’s participation in the renaissance of public space. A case study in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. Children, Youth and Environments, 16(2), pp. 105–126. Rioux, L., Scrima, F., and Werner, C.M. (2017). Space appropriation and place attachment: University students create places. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 50(Supplement C), pp. 60–68. Valentine, G. (1996). Children should be seen and not heard: The production and transgression of adults’ public space. Urban Geography, 17(3), pp. 205–220. Van Lieshout, M., and Aarts, N. (2008). Youth and immigrants’ perspectives on ­public spaces. Space and Culture, 11(4), pp. 497–513. White, R., and Alder, C. (eds.) (1994). The Police and Young People in Australia. ­Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Zimmermann, D., Andersson, B., De Luigi, N., Piro, V., and Reutlinger, C. (2018). A Place in Public. Spatial Dynamics of Youth Participation in Eight European Cities, Working paper, May 2018.

Chapter 8

Examining styles of youth participation in institutionalised settings as accumulation of capital forms Zulmir Bečević, Berrin Osmanoglu, Boris Popivanov and Harriet Rowley Introduction In this chapter, we examine young people’s participation in institutionalised settings as accumulation of capital forms. This chapter seeks to decipher the enigmatic concept of ‘participation’ by turning the analytical lens towards young people’s practices and active involvement in participatory contexts which are all characterised by varying degrees of institutionalisation. In brief, we explore ‘styles’ as modes of participation developed by groups of young people, resulting from a continuous interplay between social structure and individual as well as collective processes of meaning-making. Styles of youth participation can be conceived as the result of young people’s attempts to carve out their own positions within a given sociopolitical context. Styles thus emerge in ‘processes of sense-making and of “doing participation” by young people in action’ (Percy-Smith and Martelli, 2018: 14). Young people deal with reproduction of institutionalised forms of partici­ pation and engage in processes of re-signification and innovation of these forms, elaborating their own alternative styles of involvement. It is this key relationship, the one between capital forms and re-signification, that will be examined. By discussing the need to look beyond simple analysis of normative forms of civic and political participation, this chapter aims at broadening existing understandings of youth participatory practice. In line with theoretical developments in the interdisciplinary field of childhood and youth studies (see, for example, James and Prout, 1990; James, Jenks and Prout, 1998; Mayall, 2002), our exploration starts from an ontological understanding of youth as active agents in the construction of their life-worlds, putting focus on production of meaning in relation to practice. We ask: how do young people in institutionalised forms of practice reproduce, appropriate or transform capital forms by re-signifying the habitus (by applying different styles of conversation and symbolic representation) inherent to the settings? The analysis is based on empirical data from four ethnographic case studies included in the PARTISPACE project: a youth representation forum in Gothenburg, a youth section of a political party in Plovdiv, an NGO with focus on volunteer work in Eskis¸ehir and a charity organisation for homeless men in Manchester. Given this range, there are obviously great variations

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between the groups of young people whose practices will be examined; in terms of age structure, inner dynamics and socio-economic backgrounds of the individuals, but also in relation to historical, social, political and cultural characteristics of national and city contexts which set the general framework within which practice is enacted. However, this geographical, formal and contextual diversity is utilised as an analytical asset with the aim of unpacking and displaying a wide range of participatory practices tied to settings characterised by very different degrees of institutionalisation. The Youth Representation Forum in Gothenburg is the setting characterised by the highest degree of institutionalisation, being a public consultation body designed after ‘adult’ structures of municipal politics. The youth section of a political party in Plovdiv is also about explicit political participation, however slightly less institutionalised, followed by the traditional, humanitarian NGO in Eskis¸ehir. The charity organisation for homeless young men in Manchester is located on the other side of the formal scale not even being an explicitly participatory project like the other three. Instead, it is framed as a pedagogical project aiming at empowerment of homeless young men through cultural activities. The specific re-signification of the pedagogical framework is what qualifies the Manchester case as a participatory project, ‘participation’ being rather a method and not – as in the other cases – the institutionalised purpose per se. Further, the cases in Gothenburg, Plovdiv and Eskis¸ehir are about activities done by young people within contexts of institutionalised practice. The Manchester case is a pedagogical project done for young people; the use of a participatory method is what turns the young people into actors. The structure of this chapter is as follows. A theoretical section on the relationship between capital forms and the process of re-signification of practices will be presented next. After the conceptual discussion follows a presentation of the four cases where processes of capital reproduction, appropriation and re-signification in the context of institutional settings are analysed. The case-analyses examine different aspects of the relationship between capital forms and re-signification. This chapter ends with a conclusion where the main lines of analysis are brought together and discussed.

Styles of participation, capital forms and re-signification of practices: the theoretical framework In the social theory of Pierre Bourdieu (1995; 2008; 2010), ‘capital’ is understood as resources that are distributed in different ‘volume’ across different segments of the population in a hierarchically structured society. This means that social relationships are to an extent determined by access to, and possession of, the overall volume of capital. ‘Styles of participation’ are thus shaped in relation to specificities of sociocultural context in which young people’s practices take place. In particular, we are concerned with how access to different forms of capital structures the expression of youth practice, whereby capital forms are traded (or not) to provide opportunities which are potentially meaningful

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for young people’s biographies. The empirical material we will be presenting and discussing in this chapter can be positioned in relation to Bourdieu’s four main types of capital. Economic capital describes an individual’s financial assets; it refers to money, income and wealth, ownership of property and investment assets. Cultural capital exists in three forms. Bourdieu refers to competencies, capabilities and knowledge that an individual embodies, through a process of family socialisation, formal education and training (knowledge, language skills, manners, taste). Cultural capital also exists in an objectified state, referring to possession of culturally valued objects such as art works, books and instruments. Finally, cultural capital comes in an institutionalised state, through formal legitimation (for example, professional titles and degrees), a process that gives cultural capital an objective value which is recognised in the society (Bourdieu, 1986). Social capital refers to social contacts and social networks, which can be used in order to attain more resources, advantage in different respects and achieve certain goals (career goals for example). And finally, symbolic capital can be understood as possession of reputation, prestige and status, which is derived from the interplay between the other capital forms, economic, cultural and social. Put together, these capital forms, which are intertwined and socially transferable – the family and the school being key institutions for distribution and reproduction of capital (see Bourdieu and Passeron, 2008) – influence an individual’s position in the societal matrix of power relations and set the framework for obstacles and possibilities in relation to which choices can be made and trajectories created. However, emphasising the importance of relations between individual and structure, Bourdieu (1995: 8) at the same time viewed individuals as ‘highly active and acting’, thus avoiding crude, structural determinism, a reduction of the individual to a ‘merely simple epiphenomena in the structure’. The individual habitus (which can be understood as a mental matrix of lasting perceptions and appreciations that individuals internalise and embody through a process of socialisation shaped by class position, and that guides ways in which they understand, think and act in the world) is thus shaped in the intersection between lived experience and frames of participation of institutionalised forms of practice. By deploying the concept of ‘style’, we want to capture the embedded nature of practice in social structure as well as analyse how young people, through their active involvement, create moments of interruption and eventually re-signification of the existing forms. The concepts of reproduction and re-signification are thus linked together in order to explore practice as resulting from the interplay between the individual and the habitus imposed by the specific settings. More specifically, by re-signification of practices we mean a process in which new sign elements are removed from their original contexts and placed into different structures of meaning. Re-signification therefore relates to both agency of the above process and structural conditions contextualising it. Judith Butler (1990) states that agency is not fully determined by culture and discourse. One’s identity is not just established and finalised before the activity. It is constituted but not determined by the discourse. Agency works through processes of signification and re-­signification. Identity

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is asserted through signification and developed through re-­signification. Thus, personal identity appears to be not just rule-governed (Ricoeur, 1983: 68) but also rule-transforming. The established rules enforce a regulated process of repetition which however exhibits multiple dimensions and thus allows for possibilities of subversions. Agency is exercised in these subversions. The change appears within the rules through re-signification of the practices. Agency of possible participation is located there. In the public sphere, it means that engaging in conventional forms of participation, while certainly not an attempt at ruling out hegemonic norms, is not a strict compliance to them either. It could be regarded as internal change and reassertion as practices are re-signified in a way different from that ­initially embedded. Performativity theory (as developed from Butler’s work) supposes that re-signification is based on a never complete process in which subjectivities are contingent and everything is ‘in the making’ ( ­Jackson, 2004). As young people themselves may be considered as ‘citizens in the making’ (Marshall, 1950: 25), their participation may emerge in activities and settings defined by others – but without being reproduced. The young people rather challenge them by the ways they (the young people) modify their prior significance, and their identities and perceptions are, on their turn, modified during this process. The young people engage in the established activities since they give the opportunity for appropriation of social capital. And the various forms of social capital in turn may be used by the young people for reasserting their identity and getting recognition. The emerging participatory styles in this sense are a product of re-signification.

The youth representation forum as a laboratory of competence: accumulation of cultural and social capital The Youth Representation Forum in Gothenburg typifies a formal space occupied by predominantly middle-class youth with high volumes of cultural and social capital. The forum is the main formal and political forum of youth participation in Gothenburg. Its overall purpose is to enhance youth participation in the city. The representatives are between 12 and 17 years old; they come from all the ten city-districts and are elected by vote. General meetings take place five times during a year. They are highly formalised and agenda driven. Members address issues they identify as important, such as young people’s access to public transportation, quality of school food and leisure activities for the young. As a formal setting of youth participation, the Youth Representation Forum has a remarkably low attendance rate. Even though the working sessions of the forum (which are held twice a week) are open to all, only a small number attend. The core group, consisting of five to eight most engaged and active individuals, is generally made up by youth from ­socio-economically privileged backgrounds. They set the agenda of the forum and steer the work forward. Assisted by an adult coordinator

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they discuss, plan and handle a variety of issues. What does the process of capital accumulation look like in the institutional setting of the Youth Representation Forum?1 The relation between accumulation of capital and the formation of a participatory ‘style’ characteristic of the Youth Representation Forum is what will be examined in this section. Starting with the concept of cultural capital, a theme strongly emerging from the ethnographic material has to do with observed competencies, capabilities and skills that the members embody and display in their interactions with each other. Generally, every member of the core group thinks that performing well in the system of formal education is important. They are high achieving students, working hard for good grades, with big ambitions and future plans. Here, in an excerpt from a group discussion, the conversation revolves around the importance of achieving in school: Interviewer:   Do you feel pressure to perform? Are you the ones who put the

pressure on your selves or is the pressure coming from the environment? would say it’s a combination. I partly have personal ambitions, and then I guess there is some pressure coming from, I mean it more feels like support really, from the parents. They want you to perform well, that is obvious. […] Osman:   I agree about having really high demands on myself, I really want to perform well. I feel that I have had really good grades before and so, and if I don’t continue to perform then it’s like no good. I want to keep my grades. […] (Group discussion, Youth Representation Forum, Gothenburg) John:  I

Other important skills relating not only to possession but also acquisition of cultural capital that were continuously observed during the fieldwork have to do with social competence, communication and verbal abilities and personality traits characterised by confidence, engagement and curiosity. Here is a longer observation from the ethnographic field notes, capturing the dynamics of cultural capital in practice: Marcus is having a lecture about Rhetoric’s, in an open (question-­answerreflection) dialogic style, and the seven members listening to him are quite interested and engaged in the interaction. This is a learning process characterised by voluntariness, curiosity, competence, inspiration, engagement. A good example of peer learning and democratic practice. What I am observing, with regards to the lecturer, the content of the lecture, and the interaction between the members, is competence. In a way, the scenario is a stark contrast to the contemporary, predominant narrative about the Swedish school in downfall. I am observing a group of young people who on their after-school time have come together voluntarily to participate in internal learning activities, educating each other through communicative dialogue, in (like in this particular case) classic,

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Greek philosophy. The scene is a strong contrast to the discourse about youth disengaged with intellectual history and contemporary society. (Field notes, Youth Representation Forum, Gothenburg) After the lecture, the members practised debating. Issues such as drinking age, taxes and the relationship between the state and the individual were discussed. The general interest in taking part in the different workings and tasks of the forum (from purely administrative issues to political philosophy and normative issues relating to how society should be ordered), to communicate, discuss, debate and learn, is what brings the small group together. What the analysis thus illuminates is a ‘style’ of participation that builds on voluntari­ ness, on possession and accumulation of – for the context being – ‘right’ forms of capital, which in turn pre-structures the involvement in a forum where these skills are valued and recognised. Taking a closer look at social capital in the practices of the forum, the importance of social relations and networks in the acquisition of resources, advantages and the pursuit of career goals comes through in number of ways. The forum functions as a door opener towards future careers and is highly appreciated by its members for the contacts and networks towards both politics and business it generates: Amanda:   […]

I mean, I could really just skip education completely, because I have like built up my ground. I know, because I have been working for [a municipal company] since I was [age]. I know the board, I know those in charge, and like I know that I will be getting a job there regardless if I apply, I will get a job straight away, do you understand what I mean? It’s logical, I have like already talked with them in that way. […] it benefits me as a person a lot and I know that everyone who has been involved in the forum that I know thinks the same. So, this is not just a good foundation for the future, it’s like a good now, a very good now, it is incredibly developing. You learn a lot about administration […] I have developed even more, I have become more punctual, pedagogical and … Yeah, everything, it’s like really good. (Biographical Interview, Amanda, Youth Representation Forum, Gothenburg)

For the small number of members who are being most active, the forum also serves the function of a laboratory of democratic processes and practices, as a setting where members – through collaboration, responsibility, dialogue and interactions with like-minded individuals – gain and continu­ously develop a diversity of skills. Some describe their time in the forum as extremely rewarding, developing and educational in terms of interactions with peers, various encounters with politicians, the business sector and the wider public: Peter:   It is […] fun because there are people that care about politics, in my own

age, that are fun discussing with. It gives many rewarding conversations

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[…], we have that pretty often. Then I have, or others as well, done different interviews. I was in Almedalen [Sweden’s biggest political meeting place] last summer talking, and I was on TV this spring. […] There we can express our opinions in different matters. But it is mainly through dialogues and our political reference group meetings that most is done. (Biographical Interview, Peter, Youth Representation Forum, Gothenburg) The analysis shows how interactions and practices give rise to a formation of a participatory ‘style’ conditioned by a (background related) possession and further accumulation of cultural and social capital. Given their socio-­economic backgrounds, the young members of the core group enter the forum with relatively high volumes of capital (cultural capital in particular) which they transform. Through activities and practices enabled by the forum, the members develop their capital forms into a more comprehensive social and cultural capital, which has the potential of facilitating self-realisation in terms of how skills, knowledge, formal education and credentials can be traded on the market in order to gain power and advantage. In most cases, high volumes of capital open up routes towards conventional participatory careers offered by society. The practices of the youth forum are therefore better understood in terms of reproduction rather then re-signification. Except for investing it with ‘fun’, there seems to be no need for the young people to transform the institutional setting since it provides a solid ground for capital accumulation and personal development.

Being young in a political party of ‘the elders’ The case of the Plovdiv branch of the youth section of a Bulgarian political party offers an example of a highly institutionalised conventional style of participation. Belonging to a political party which establishes the rules for its youth section, provides the settings and resources, formulates the ideological priorities and the tactical goals and often initiates activities and campaigns in which the young people are obliged to get involved. It is moreover a party which is unpopular among youth which poses further challenges to self-­realisation through it. However, party involvement in this case implies generating capital in terms of social contacts, organisational knowledge and economic independence. Most members of the group have a higher education in fields related to their public activities – sociology, economics, political science. Their competences are widened by multiple engagements in trainings and seminars. Besides, being in regular contact and cooperation with the ‘­senior’ political party, they are able to acquire additional knowledge of ‘how things actually happen’ in the city and what the past was like. It is one of the channels of accumulating social capital. As one of them recalls his involvement in an election campaign which happened to be his first ‘clash’ with real politics: Mihail:   I

got acquainted with people who had lived under the socialist regime, who had built it, who were ‘guilty’ of having, how can I say it,

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so many factories in Bulgaria, such an industry. They were telling me stories about the calm life, the demographic growth of the population, the elimination of illiteracy, and I was by then already much convinced in my own views. Interviewer:   It was not only you who were convincing the voters but also it was the voters convincing you. Mihail:   Yes. There was … They had been party figures, older comrades, those who were stopping by, and they were explaining to us things which we had nowhere to know from, and they were preparing us to speak to the other people. (Biographical interview, Mihail, Youth section of a political party, Plovdiv) Over time the participants have established strong ties of personal friendships and practices of mutual assistance which bind them much more closely together. In the interviews, such an effect was often underlined. The most important thing for me in [the organisation] is the camaraderie, the relations among people, that they feel themselves a community, help each other and are ready to respond when someone has a problem. If the whole nation had such a relation to the fellow creatures, I think we cannot degrade; we shall only go on ahead. (Biographical interview, Mihail, Youth section of a political party, Plovdiv) In a sense, this outcome has been much helped by the fact that their involvement in an organisation does not depend on accidental factors of someone’s enthusiasm or availability of financial resources. The youth section is formally oriented towards non-profit activities. It benefits from (rather freely) making use of the material assets and deliberate funds provided by the ‘senior’ political party. The participants do not take payment for what they do. The leader, a 24-year-old woman, says: Here we don’t speak of something related to financial revenues. To be leader of the young is rather related to many more responsibilities and obligations than to… There are even no incomes. On the contrary. It is related to a personal satisfaction that you are valued enough. (Biographical interview, Antonia, Youth section of a political party, Plovdiv) At the same time, some of the young people manage to convert their social capital (knowledge about the public sphere and the economy of the city, personal connections, experience from campaigns and elections) into possibilities to find good jobs, hold electable positions or join the civil service. They

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are well aware that in many cases the impetus for joining the organisation is rather career driven. During a group discussion, it was mentioned as a fact undermining nobler considerations: When we talk about motivation, more specifically young people […] talk about that – we are discussing lists for municipal councillors. If we talk about this type of motivation, this is not what I think should … if one party wants to be a party, not a trading company which is solely aimed at developing its personnel, it must have a different type of motivation. It must create another type of commitment. (Group discussion, Youth section of a political party, Plovdiv) Conventionality of engagement and subservience to pre-determined rules go in hand with ascribing additional meanings to the conducted activities. These meanings do not contradict the general framework but actually complement it. Additionally to (but not in conflict with) the political party’s plans and visions, the young people have developed feelings of themselves as (not recognised) representatives of their generation and its concerns, and not just of an ideological approach to the society in general. We observed during the fieldwork and in the conducted talks relatively deep perception of youth as a generation and (much less) the youth section’s own activities. The participants painted a complex picture of the contemporary Bulgarian youth as a group with many problems, uncertainties and advantages and disadvantages in comparison with the parental generation. Helping, for them, in a wide spectrum of ways (from charity to educational advices) appears to be a form of their ‘generational’ self-affirmation. Charity emerges as an activity of more personal humane character which is motivationally different from realising political messages and expanding the influence of the political party. In many cases, participants emotionally report on their own experiences with charity in orphanages or homes for elderly people, and the satisfaction they feel when being able to help the vulnerable and receive their smiles and gratitude: During one charity initiative we collected 2,500 Leva […] in the city centre. It was twice as much as the annual pension of one ill child. We called the child, it was here, it was together with us. We gave the money, they [the parents] were very happy. We are still in contact with them. But then I saw that united in a cause which is worth following all forget their partisanship, about who is the chair, about whom they don’t like. On the contrary, everyone was pleased. This is spoken in a way that reaffirms their self-fulfilment and the pleasant consciousness of being useful as human beings to other human beings in trouble.

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To sum up, the young people do not have independence of decisions – these decisions should correspond to the decisions of the general party bodies. At the same time: they try to struggle with ‘bad’ practices inherited from the ‘elders’ – intrigues and careerist actions. The participants acknowledge the party orientations and targets but in practice speak less of them than of their peers’ issues and concerns. There is much larger interest focused on the youth as such as an unprivileged group than just on the poor or left-oriented youth. The unpopularity of the party among the youth is addressed through a­ ttempts at getting to others personally (not simply as representatives of a political actor although the latter is done as well) and through campaigns which are not just party propaganda oriented but try to achieve more universalistic and ­humane claims and aims. Insisting on ‘pure’ party values – compared to political strategies – is perhaps quite a classical adolescent form of re-­signification. It both reflects and casts an enquiring light on the lessons from organisational knowledge and political practice. The accumulated forms of capital, in the broad range from education and labour market possibilities to friendship ties and mutual recognition, nevertheless lead to a slightly more universalistic and generational perception of the reasons behind one’s own participation.

Volunteering in a humanitarian NGO as a pathway to the corporate world Compared to the two previous forms of participation, volunteering has been recognised more recently as such, notably with the decline in more formal ways of participation. It is now widely accepted that volunteering reinforces, through civic engagement, collective action and common good (Putnam, 2000). However, as in the present case, that of the youth section of a humanitarian NGO in Turkey, volunteers also perceive from their participatory experience, benefits which do not relate either with such collectivist purposes nor with altruism, as a more conventional attribute of volunteering; benefits such as acquiring skills for professional purposes, doing network/meeting influential people, building CV or experiencing international mobility. In fact, many recent studies claim that volunteering is more and more driven by individualistic motives, due to bigger structural changes, either at institutional or cultural level (Hustinx and Lammertyn, 2003; Hustinx et al., 2010). In this chapter, we focus on how young people re-signify volunteering and its established habitus of participation according to the different forms and levels of capital they possess and accumulate during their experience. The young people, mostly university students from lower middle-class origins, choose to engage in volunteering within a highly institutionalised setting to compensate their lack of capital. The case in question is the youth unit of a nationwide humanitarian NGO’s local branch in Eskis¸ehir, Turkey. While the NGO is a well-known institution with a long history, enjoying considerable material resources and international connections, this youth unit created in 2010 became particularly successful in quickly attracting high numbers of young volunteers. Fluid over time, in its

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heyday, the number reached around 100 relatively frequent participants as well as other occasional ones, almost exclusively all students. Among them, a group of very active ten university students, constituting the core group, is now in charge of the administrative stuff and is very influential in shaping the youth unit’s activities. While in terms of content, activities correspond to the very realm of humanitarian work, such as promoting blood donation, helping disadvantaged people, providing relief in natural disaster or protecting environment, young volunteers are particularly interested in the organisational dimension. According to participants, altruism is an evident factor for their engagement in the activities of the NGO. However, they specifically underline that it is not a sufficient reason for their involvement on a regular basis. The NGO is also attractive to them for providing opportunities for international mobility, through EU-funded projects, European Voluntary Service or other international networks. Once they are more engaged, they have other reasons to stay, such as improving their self-esteem and self-expression or acquiring skills corresponding to some job market requirements such as leadership, entrepreneurial capacity, time management or budget management; what volunteers commonly identify as ‘personal development’ and which correspond here to some form of cultural capital. One of the…, male young volunteers put it into perspective in the following way: Sinan: If your parents are not rich, if you don’t have important acquaintances, the only option left is to develop yourself in order to find a job. (Group Discussion, Youth Branch of Humanitarian NGO, Eskis¸ehir). Almost all activities organised by the youth unit are framed in a managerial project logic. Young volunteers believe that a project logic can be applied to any kind of issue, including humanitarian and charitable activities. A project is perceived as an approach or a tool, through which almost all of the valorised skills useful for the job market can be acquired. One of the specific contributions of the youth unit was even to organise ‘project writing’ seminars for new volunteers. A female volunteer expresses the benefits of project writing and coordination as follows: Narin: Now, before starting a task, I can analyse the risks. When I decide to take a step, or not, I do it more confidently […] we will all graduate from university, and when we will apply for a job, I will probably be the one to be hired. Because, I have already written a project, I coordinated it, I did the division of labour, I had a schedule, I organised its budget. You did nothing, you just focused on your grades. (Expert Interview, Narin, Volunteer, Eskis¸ehir). In highly competitive job market conditions, they believe that volunteer work and civil society experience will be an asset in their job application.

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This perception is promoted by a more general managerial discourse. One of the young male participants compared his volunteering experience with an internship Sinan: This is something that the head of Coca Cola’s human resource department has said […] civil society experience will be a major asset for recruitment […] being graduated with good grades from a prestigious university used to be the most important thing […] but the private sector doesn’t have time to loose, they prefer to hire experienced people, that is why I believe that people with civil society experience will be hired. (Group Discussion, Youth Branch of Humanitarian NGO, Eskis¸ehir). Beside acquiring skills, or in other words cultural capital, their volunteering experience also allows them to accumulate social capital. Doing network has been a recurrent theme throughout the fieldwork; a benefit which they also perceive as personal development. Young volunteers of the NGO value doing network and learn how to do it throughout their experience. As a part of the activities they organise, young volunteers create themselves opportunities to meet influential people. While some of them perceive more symbolic benefit from it, others pursue more immediate retributions. Hale: I have the opportunity to meet good and important people. I don’t mean to benefit from them as contact. Two weeks earlier, we realised a project. I would never had met the mayor, or even taken picture with him. I’ve met him, we listen to him, the governor was there too, there were a lot of professors, we listened to them, it was a great opportunity for us. That is why I am here. (Group Discussion, Youth Branch of Humanitarian NGO, Eskis¸ehir). Mert: The things we do here become a reference for us. Since the last project ended, I couldn’t even go to class. Because they keep calling me for other projects. If people don’t know you from the civil society, how could they know you at the university. (Group Discussion, Youth Branch of Humanitarian NGO, Eskis¸ehir). Through their discourse, symbolic representations and their practice of volunteering, we see how young people in this particular case develop a particular style according to the forms and levels of capital they already possess and the capital they accumulate during their experience. In competitive job market conditions and in an institutional context with limited opportunity for expressing their claims, these young people, appropriate existing tools of engagement and re-signify them in a way they perceive more useful for themselves, as much as the participatory setting allows them to do.

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‘The Box – arts and social care agency’ In contrast to the former three cases, ‘The Box–arts and social care agency’ for homeless young men is not a space institutionalised for participation but rather a pedagogical project where participation is used as a method. Through creative activities supplemented by different modes of support, young men undergo a process designed to encourage them to exercise a greater degree of agency. Put another way, the pedagogical framework is done for young people so that practices of participation can be re-signified or rules that govern processes can be altered, enabling them to interrupt, redirect or even demonstrate degrees of resistance. In this section, empirical material is used to describe how structures which impact accumulation of capital are reproduced, but also how processes of re-signification demonstrated in the styles of participation performed by the men attempt to interrupt these. Compared to the other cases, the homeless young people have the lowest levels of capital. They enter the space with little economic capital experiencing high levels of material poverty – homeless groups can be viewed as the casualties of capitalism and are literally outsiders to the habits and structures enjoyed by mainstream society. Unlike the young people in the other cases, they are not motivated to participate by the prospect of possibilities for capital accumulation to enhance their participatory careers, but rather they engage more out of necessity. ‘The Box’ is run by a charity and is relatively small. The project consisted of a core group of men accessing support and creative activities. The majority of sessions observed during the fieldwork period were facilitated by the Creative Lead, George and were attended by five to ten men who had a history of three to five years involvement with the charity. The weekly sessions consisted of creative and relationship-based work, which aimed to provide opportunities for accompaniment and progression for the men through project work, engagement in cultural activities in the city and referral to formal mechanisms of support such as counselling and welfare support. When applying Bourdieu’s analytical categories of capital, it is possible to discern how structures which shape the accumulation of social capital are reproduced through the styles of participation in formation at the charity for homeless men. Many of the participant’s lives were marked by social exclusion, loneliness and mental health illnesses. On the one hand, the social interaction provided by their engagement with group sessions ran by the charity presented an opportunity to mix with those living similar lives, share stories of survival, have a hot drink and share food. However, on the other hand, unlike the young people in the other three institutionalised settings, the access to such social networks did not afford them opportunities to capitalise on other possible sites for accumulation but rather often entrenched them further in these communities. For example, the men repeatedly affirmed that the group was ‘like a family’ while the social bonds that existed between members, akin to a sibling-like relationships were transferred outside the realms of the organisation to support participants to survive on the streets. It was not unusual for participants

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to confide in workers, about a member they were concerned about, or to tell them a story of how they had helped someone in the homeless community out of a precarious situation. Yet, some of the men who were starting to lead more stable lives and had found accommodation were by associating with some group members tempted, or even forced to display problematic behaviours in order to maintain their membership. This may have involved substance dependency or petty criminal activity associated with the survival community. In a cruel twist of irony, such patterns meant that as some of the men struggled and resisted performing a ‘style of participation’ which was, in many ways, ingrained and familiar territory, they were forced out of social relations to become outsiders again. As one member who was about to have a baby with his partner explained: Kyle: I know I will have to leave this family in order to give mine a chance, I don’t want my son or daughter growing up with these labels and associations. (Biographical interview, Kyle, The Box - arts and social care organisation, Manchester) In turning attention to another form of capital, the pedagogical approach pertained opportunities for cultural capital accumulation as social activities were combined with creative sessions and visits to cultural offers available in the city. Through these processes, the men acquired a vocabulary and set of creative skills which enabled them to navigate, consume and benefit from culture and the arts. The combination of relational and creative practice was designed to facilitate participation while aiming to support the men to make changes in other parts of their lives through acquiring skills and positive relationships. Despite the participants clearly enjoying and benefiting from engaging in cultural opportunities, they were not so naïve as to think that such opportunities to acquire such skills would be exchanged for economic capital as the following joke by one of the men demonstrates: Knock, knock! (Bangs the table) Who’s there? Electrician – I’ve come to sort out your meter. Ah good, I can’t pay you but I can paint you a picture. (Group discussion, Luke, The Box - arts and social care organisation, Manchester) Such instances show how the pedagogical approach encouraged moments of subversion where through processes of re-signification, the men were able to express cynicism without withdrawing their participation. This was largely because relational and identity formation aspects of their participation provided meaning to their practices despite the obvious structural barriers,

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which still punctuated their lives. As demonstrated by the following reflection from one of the men: Steven: It’s a chance to make sense of my life, past, present and future through expressing myself in a creative way. To be listened too, not just by the workers and my mates here but by people who would usually just ignore and walk past me on the streets. It’s a chance to change their opinion of people like me. Group discussion, Steven, The Box - arts and social care organisation, Manchester) Thus, despite obvious reproductions of capital formation, processes of re-­ signification meant that the styles of participation involved practices of subversion to enable the men to find meaning through practices enacted in their relationships with one another and through making sense of their own changing identities.

Concluding remarks: reproduction and re-signification of practices The analysis in this chapter focused on processes of participation in institutional settings, accumulation of capital forms and re-signification (as well as reproduction) of practices. Practices of young people were analysed as styles of participation, putting focus on the embeddedness of participatory activities within a wider frame of social structure. The analysis has shown how capital forms (understood as resources) are accumulated and distributed both differently and unequally depending on the characteristics of the participatory context and the socio-economic background of young people involved in it. We have seen how young people use institutionalised settings as sites to enhance their cultural and social capital, as well as sites where they attempt to carve out alternative positions by re-signifying existing practices in novel ways. Regardless if young people reproduce or re-signify practices in the analysed settings, a Bourdieusian perspective shows that actions and future trajectories are being shaped by positioning in a wider matrix of class relations. For example, the Youth Representation Forum typifies a conventional, formal space occupied by young people with high amounts of capital, where engaged practice enables continuous accumulation of cultural, social and political capital. Coming from relatively privileged and homogeneous socio-economic backgrounds, the members are already in possession of capital forms prior to entering the Youth Representation Forum. Through active engagement, they are able to acquire further competencies and expand their social networks which most likely will have positive outcomes for future employment and their participation in society as adults. However, understanding participation as a relational act, the analysis has simultaneously cast light upon subtle ways in

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which styles of participation derive their characteristics through young people’s re-signification of existent forms of practice. The analysis has attempted to illuminate the complexities of practice arising from the interplay between individual habitus with which young people enter participatory settings, capital forms that the settings encourage in order to participate in the ‘right’ way and capital forms young people gain from their involvement. Reproduction is thus never ‘only’ reproduction, participatory frameworks are open for modification and transformation, particularly if the capital forms young people bring do not match the expectations of the settings. The youth political party section provides an insight in how an entirely conventional participatory style may offer additional meanings for young people. An established party structure with its traditions, contacts and ­opportunities allows for accumulation of social capital and its transfer to forms ultimately cherished by the activists, in the whole range from acquisition of competences and career orientation to mobilisation of friendship ties and strive for recognition among their peers. The young people re-signify, although in small and unprovocative steps, what they do in the public from the narrower perception of party propaganda into something they are happy to do as a network of friends willing to help themselves and the others and establish ways of living better for the generation and the city. The humanitarian NGO case shows how young people re-signify volunteering in an institutionalised setting according to the forms and amount of capital they possess and those they accumulate during their experience, as well as the pre-existing sociocultural and economic context. These young people practice volunteering with a less conventional style in order to acquire skills and network, which they believe will increase their chance to find a job. In other words, young volunteers of the NGO appropriate existing tools of participation and re-signify them in a way they perceive more useful to them. In contrast to the three institutionalised cases, ‘The Box – arts and social care agency’ represents a pedagogical project where young people experience what it means to participate but the possible benefits for their future is not what motivates them. Although they accumulate some capital forms, processes at play structure the reproduction of styles of participation which inhibit possibilities for appropriation or transformation. Thus, their participation does not afford them opportunities to enhance their lives in substantial ways. Yet their lives and how they practice participation is not determined by social structure or casts these acts as meaningless. The pedagogical approach adopted at the charity ­enables the men to undergo a process, which involves degrees of re-­signification and the opportunity for them to express agency. Counter to their experiences of the majority of their everyday life, some repetitions enable subversions, supporting them to generate and entertain other possibilities for themselves. This in turn alters their perceptions of their evolving identities despite the lack of obvious tangible benefits or capital accumulation. It is through engaging in these processes of re-signification, that such acts gain meaning

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and significance, contributing to emerging styles of participation, challenging established practices and become sites which can be re-affirming for identity formation.

Note 1 The Youth Representation Forum (81 members in total) is in the analysis exemplified through the participatory practices of the core group consisting of individuals being most active.

References Bourdieu, P. (1986). ‘The forms of capital’. In Richardson, J. (ed.) Handbook of ­T heory and Research for the Sociology of Education. New York, NY: Greenwood Press, pp. 241–258. Bourdieu, P. (1995). Praktiskt förnuft. Bidrag till en handlingsteori. [Practical reason. On the theory of action.] Göteborg: Daidalos. Bourdieu, P. (2010). Distinction. A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. London: Routledge. Bourdieu, P., and Passeron, J.-C. (2008). Reproduktionen. Bidrag till en teori om ­utbildningssystemet. [Reproduction in education, society and culture.] Lund: Arkiv förlag. Butler, J. (1990). Gender Trouble. Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. London and New York, NY: Routledge. Hustinx, L., Cnaan, R., and Handy, F. (2010). Navigating theories of volunteering: A hybrid map for a complex phenomenon. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 40(4), pp. 0021–8308. Hustinx, L., and Lammertyn, F. (2003). Collective and reflexive styles of volunteering: A sociological modernization perspective. Voluntas, 14, pp. 167–187. Jackson, A.-Y. (2004). Performativity identified. Qualitative Inquiry, 10(5), pp. 673–690. James, A., and Prout, A. (eds.) (1990). Constructing and Re-constructing Childhood. ­Basingstoke: Falmer Press. James, A., Jenks, C., and Prout, A. (1998). Theorising Childhood. Cambridge: Polity Press. Marshall, T. H. (1950). Citizenship and Social Class and Other Essays. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mayall, B. (2002). Towards a Sociology of Childhood: Thinking from Children’s Lives. Buckingham: Open University Press. Percy-Smith, B., and Martelli, A. (2018). Styles of youth participation: A conceptual overview. In Rowley, H., Pitti, I., Mengilli, Y., Bečević, Z., Martelli, A., Martin,  C., Osmanoglu, B., Percy-Smith, B., and Popivanov, B. (eds.) Styles: Young People’s Participation as Lived Practice. PARTISPACE Deliverable D 6.3. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.1240197 Putnam, R. (2000). Bowling Alone. The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York, NY: Touchstone. Ricoeur, P. (1983). Time and Narrative. Vol. I. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Chapter 9

Participation and everyday life Emerging meanings in youth cultural practices Ilaria Pitti, Yağmur Mengilli, Alessandro Martelli and Patricia Loncle

Youth cultural practices between everyday life and participation As a sphere of social relations, everyday life has gained increasing attention since the 1960s, when several scholars (Goffman, 1959; Schutz, 1967; ­Lefebvre, 1968; Foucault, 1982; De Certeau, 1984) started to analyse the shaping and intertwined power that individuals’ agency and structural forces have on social existence through the lenses of the ‘ordinary’. Since then, the realm of everyday life – understood as the world within an individual’s reach (Schutz, 1967) – has been considered as a privileged point of view from which one can analyse the invisible constraints of structure and agency expressed in routines and innovative behaviours. When it comes to the analysis of young people’s practices in the public sphere, the dimension of everyday life has entered the debate in two main moments: first through those studies interested in the dialectic between youth cultures and youth conditions and, lately, through the emerging interest in ‘everyday youth participation’ (Harris and Wyn, 2009; Vromen and Collin, 2010). Studies of youth cultures have frequently interpreted youth cultural practices as tactics that young individuals put in place to define their space in the existing social order and forms of agency through which young people deal with the power of structural forces they experience in their daily life. Scholars have debated how young people’s tastes, interests and behaviours could be interpreted as forms of ‘resistance through rituals’ to the constraints derived from their subaltern position in the cultural order (Hall and Jefferson, 1976), micro-strategies through which they try to cope with the structure for lived experience emerging from existing power dynamics (Hebdige, 1976), forms of escapism from everyday life (Pilkington, 2004; Augé, 2014), attempts of finding one’s ‘own place’ balancing between individualisation and collective membership (McRobbie, 1980; Redhead, 1997; Bennett, 1999). Recently, the interest developed around forms of youth participation has led scholars to highlight a shift towards the everyday in the spaces and the

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contents of contemporary young generations’ engagement. According to these analyses, while during the 1960s and the 1970s young people’s civic and political interests found expression mainly through demonstrations and other collective forms of action, contemporary young people’s political and civic thinking and acting take more often place within their ‘everyday spaces’, that is, their homes, their schools, their neighbourhoods and peer groups (Harris and Wyn, 2009). Moreover, contemporary youth’s participation would more frequently concern ‘everyday issues rather than complex policy processes’ (Vromen and Collin, 2010: 1) as their civic and political activation would be related to challenges they face in their daily lives in a more direct way (­Luhtakallio, 2012; Eliasoph, 2013). Looking at the dynamic relation between everyday life and public sphere, studies on youth cultures and on everyday youth participation have enriched existing understandings on youth participation. Researches on youth cultures have shed light on the civic and political meanings and potential for change entailed in a series of practices that were often interpreted as ‘just’ hedonistic, consumeristic or deviant behaviours. Analyses of everyday youth participation have highlighted how resources, opportunities and reasons for participation found in daily environments and activities can lead to the emergence of new models and arenas of citizenship (Dalton, 2008). Considering this debate, several scholars (Chaney, 2004; Woodman and Bennet, 2015) have discussed the need to analyse the ‘new civic identities’ that young people are constructing through their ‘participation in creative and leisure activities [and in] taste-based communities’ (Harris, 2015: 85), as well as the relationship between these new everyday civic practices and ‘enduring models of good and efficacious citizenship routines’ (Ibidem). Seeking to contribute to this perspective, this chapter looks at youth ­cultural practices as activities through which young people claim to act as citizens in their daily environments. Taking in consideration three ethnographic case studies where young people’s interest in football, graffiti and art becomes the mean for civic and political action, this chapter seeks to answer the following research questions: how do youth cultural practices develop into recognised forms of youth participation? How do youth cultural practices change in the encounter with the ‘external world’? The case studies look at processes of civic and political engagement developing out of three youth cultural practices – such as cheering, graffiti and art – that would not fall under the radar of standard typologies of forms of youth participation because of their ‘everydayness’ (Lefebvre, 1968). This chapter analyses how these youth cultural practices are used by young people to participate in the public sphere and how they are later turned into more formalised forms of civic and political engagement. Youth cultural practices, in fact, can be understood as bridges between the young people’s everyday environments (i.e. the school, the family, their peers) and the public sphere since, for many young people, these practices are the

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first channel through which they express themselves in the public. However, in comparison to, for example, voting or participating in a demonstration, these practices remain highly embedded in the young individuals’ daily life as they emerge from the daily environments they live and are often experienced as common, ordinary activities by the young people themselves. This everydayness hides the participative potential of cultural practices, whose complete recognition occurs – as the three stories show – only after processes of partial institutionalisation that involve a risk of normalisation. After presenting the methodological framework and the case studies, this chapter looks at how the participative potential of a series of youth cultural practices is cultivated through the development of participative projects and the implications that this evolution has for the groups and their relationships with institutions.

The research: case studies and methodology This chapter focuses on three case studies1 that depict similar processes of development of manifest forms of participation out of different youth cultural practices. Conducted within the framework of the PARTISPACE project, the case studies have been selected because they provide three different examples of groups that are organised around a common cultural practice (cheering, graffiti and art) which is used as a tool to express voice and take action in the public sphere of the city. The first case study focuses on an Italian ultras2 group based in Bologna (Italy) and composed of the supporters of a football team participating to the highest national football league. This analysis focuses on 40 supporters (mostly aged between 18 and 25) who are engaged in the group on a daily basis, especially through the activities of the Ultras Centre. The Ultras Centre is a community centre created in 2015 by the group within a former abandoned bowls club located in front of the football arena. Within the Ultras Centre, the group organises a series of leisure, social and cultural activities aiming at fostering a relationship between the ‘ultras world’ and the ‘non-ultras’ and at sharing their culture, ideals and values with the surrounding community. After one year of occupation, the Municipality has decided to grant the space to the group for four years through a formal agreement that has fostered a process of ‘partial institutionalisation’ of the group which is challenging its traditional identity. The second case study focuses on a graffiti crew in the city of Frankfurt (Germany). The ‘Hoodboys’ are an informal group of about ten young men aged between 20 and 26, who got to know each other during school time by the shared interest in graffiti, that is, writings or drawings which are scribbled, scratched or painted illegally or legally on a wall or other surface. The group has developed a double identity as the young people run both a ‘legal’

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crew as a kind of business brand which accepts commissions, earns money and engages in a dialogue with the institutions, and an ‘illegal’ crew, which for them is a way to get visibility in public space and convey messages that promote a different understanding of private property and urban decorum. The last case study is the ‘Educational centre for artistic development’, an initiative focused on inter-cultural relations and non-formal education ­created in Rennes (France) by a group of five young people. Aiming at developing a facilitating framework for hearing the voices of young people, young members of the Educational centre for artistic development have decided to use art to engage young people from diverse social and cultural backgrounds and to foster their awareness on citizenship issues. At the beginning of the fieldwork, the group was seen with certain distrust by the Municipality, ­receiving recognition in the form of a space and funds later on. The fieldwork in Bologna, Frankfurt and Rennes has been conducted combining different qualitative methods. Ethnographic observations have been conducted between May 2015 and September 2017 and 28 biographical interviews have been realised with the members of the groups during the same period. Furthermore, four focus groups and two action research projects were conducted with the Hoodboys and the Educational centre for artistic development. In the following paragraphs, the collected materials will be analysed to shed light on the dynamic relationships that emerge between youth cultural practices, young people’s everyday life and the surrounding social and institutional contexts. In so doing, the chapter highlights the transformative and participative potential of a series of actions which are not commonly ­recognised as participatory behaviours and the challenges that certain forms of participation encounter in the dialogue with the external world.

Entering the public sphere through cultural practices Looking at the boundary between everyday life and participation through youth cultural practices allows to shed light on the very blurred nature of this line. Although with some differences, the three case studies show how youth cultural practices stem from the everyday life of the young people and, at the same time, represent the first means through which they express their presence in the public sphere. In this perspective, these practices bridge the gap between young people’s everyday life and the public sphere emerging as the first step in a process that will lead the observed young people to become (and be recognised as) legitimate political actors in their cities. For most of the young people involved in the Ultras Centre, for example, football and cheering has been part of their life since childhood. Often being introduced to the football arena by a relative or a friend, young ultras have usually approached the Ultras Centre as another occasion to meet with their peers.

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The Ultras Centre is perceived as a familiar space organically integrated with their other daily environments such as the school, the family and the work environment. Being an ultras is not considered as an ‘extraordinary’ role one assumes on the weekend, but something that one is, so it’s part of one’s identity. According to Luca, one cannot really ‘become’ an ultras. There is something innate in you and you just understand that and refine what you already are. The proof, according to him, lies in the amount of commitment one needs to have to be ultras: ‘you cannot fake to be something each day of the year and you accept certain risks only if you feel this is what you are’. (Ultras Centre, Bologna, Field notes, March 2016) In a similar way, also the Hoodboys in Frankfurt stress the ‘everydayness’ of the practice of graffiti that was at the beginning a shared cultural interest, which they deepen together by hanging out and practising. As in the ultras case study, the Hoodboys did not start to get engaged in graffiti because of its participative potential, but because of their shared interest in this youth cultural practice. Out of this curiosity, the group organised themselves in a graffiti crew. In the beginning, I didn’t think too much about [graffiti], it was just fun to have my name tagged on a bus. […] At some point in time, I got more excited by graffiti and looked at the things in the streets and on the internet. With a couple of friends I invented a crew name and bought some cans to spread the name of our crew. (Hoodboys, Frankfurt, Field notes, December 2017) The case of the Educational centre for artistic development is different in as much as, from the very beginning, the young people who started the p­ roject claimed their will to challenge the content of local youth policies which they considered as ill-adapted to young people’s needs. Nevertheless, they also ­emphasised their friendship and their common interests as a key element in the d­ evelopment of their cultural practices: three of them met when they were kids in an athletic club and art has been part of their everyday life since childhood (one of them is a dancer, another a musician). This shared experience explains why they chose to organise this initiative as a lever to intervene in the youth field. For me, two motivations are combined [to be part of this art project]: a critical point of view on politics and on culture and a frustration about the labour market and the weak rooms of manoeuvres accorded to young people. (Educational centre for artistic development, Rennes, Group discussion, October 2015) Although with different nuances, the three case studies show how the involved young people interpret their cultural practices as activities which already

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contain elements for participative expression and change in their everyday life, sometimes attributing to them explicit civic and political meanings. The young ultras, for example, do not see the football arena just as a context of leisure but also as a political space where people can express their interest and ideas on their city. In their perspective, cheering is not only a way of being with friends and having fun, but it can be also a practice through which people placed in a subordinate social position (the workers/the dominated) can win back a voice and express discontent about their conditions to those who are in power. Lastly, ultras communities – commonly perceived as contexts associated with hooliganism, drugs and violence – are for them social environments where values of solidarity, belonging and coherence are promoted. Fabio tells me that ‘for many people we are just the dirty and ugly ones. The ones you should avoid [but] we don’t spend our whole time being high, drinking, punching people around’ […]. ‘Saying no to the supporter’s card 3 was not a caprice as people think. We were defending also their freedom of spending their Sundays where they want without being controlled and registered’ continues Michele. ‘However, it is easier to say that we are just vandals’ concludes Fabio. (Ultras Centre, Bologna, Field notes, September 2016) In the Hoodboys case study, the potential participative nature of their ­cultural activities emerges especially in young people’s discourses on the political ­nature of graffiti. For some of the members of the crew, graffiti is clearly a political action because it promotes a different understanding concerning public property and urban aesthetic and because it can be used as a means to express political messages. Graffiti is basically political, it’s in its nature, because it questions the right of private property, every graffiti is political, even if it’s not intentionally political […] it expresses a resistance with colour against the state authority. (Maximilian, Hoodboys, Frankfurt, Biographical Interview, November 2016) Other members of the group prefer to distance themselves from ‘politics’, a term to which they attach negative feelings. However, their words show awareness about the fact that their cultural practices, being enacted in the public, carry with them a potential political message that they can choose to unlock or not. Politics is a thing, but we are separating this. Graffiti is just graffiti and the rest is general knowledge for us. Graffiti is just for us. (Hoodboys, Frankfurt, Group Discussion, May 2016)

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[Graffiti is] about bringing people to identify themselves with it although it is against the norm, it is about to get a different understanding of public spaces and of property without being convicted for that. Therefore, one needs to create a different understanding of graffiti and property, so that it can be used as a medium to transfer political messages. (Hoodboys, Frankfurt, Group Discussion, May 2016) In the case of the Educational centre for artistic development, art is seen, from the beginning, as the central lever to create solidarity among the participants, as underlined during the first meeting with the group of participants. Mathieu presents the challenges of the Educational centre for artistic development and mentions the pleasure found in the engagement in the project. He mentions his hope that the participants will be able to escape from the difficulties they face and that they will be able to use the Educational centre for artistic development experience for their future professional integration. Through art, the Educational centre for artistic development will provide moments of sharing and conviviality and will also allow the group to benefit from each other’s experience. It will also offer new ways to collaborate. (Educational centre for artistic development, Rennes, Field notes, December 2015) This is probably thanks to this emphasis that the role dedicated to art is also strongly recognised by the participants. Even if they have various definitions of art and of the ways they can help each other, they share the certitude of its importance and of its political meanings as well as of its potential impact on the territory. Arnaud :

‘All of us can bring something, some more than others because of their experience; their age … what links us is the will to be part of this [art] project’. Pauline : ‘For the moment, it is the only thing that relates us to each other […]’. Arnaud : ‘[…] there is a message, there are people who help each other and who express themselves thanks to the Educational centre for artistic development. We work on the complementarity, on the network, on the collective environment’. (Educational centre for artistic development, Rennes, Field notes, January 2016) Despite their differences, the three case studies underline how young people ‘discover’ participation through and into cultural practices that become means of expression of their presence in the public. Developing between everyday life and the public sphere, youth cultural practices emerge as ‘potentially’ participative actions. In fact, their civic and political meanings – being

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neither manifest nor self-evident – can be emphasised or dismissed by the same young people and by the world around them.

The dialogue with the external world: pressures for normalisation and authenticity Using their cultural practices as a means of expressing their presence in the public sphere, young people engage in a relationship with the external world and encounter the necessity to come to terms with what the ‘Others’ think that participation should look like. This entails the necessity to deal with a series of pressures for normalisation that challenge the ‘authenticity’ of the groups. In the case of ultras, the engagement in a dialogue with the external world has occurred mainly through the creation of the Ultras Centre. The occupation of an abandoned building, its renovation and the creation of a community centre where a series of social projects targeting the citizens of Bologna have been promoted can be interpreted as a choice to act in the public in ways that are ‘more understandable’ for the ‘non-ultras’ and the institutions. Marco shows me a banner with the sentence against police violence and tells me that nobody cared when they had shown it at the football arena. ‘When we have put the same banner outside the Ultras Centre and ­organised a public discussion, everybody has seen us’. (Ultras Centre, Bologna, Field notes, December 2017) In order to obtain recognition for their cultural practices, the Hoodboys have had to present graffiti as a form of aesthetic expression by constituting a ‘legal’ crew next to the original ‘illegal’ one. The legal and the illegal crew exist in parallel, but are kept symbolically and practically separated through the spaces where they perform their drawings. The area of the youth centre is used as space for undisturbed spraying-­ activities, consume and ‘having a BBQ when the weather is nice, some cold beer, a few cans, painting a pretty wall white, a bit dizzy by the sun, painting a picture, yes, simply relaxed. […] legal is this relaxing thing, you can let off steam, you can try things, that you can’t do in the short time and high effort and pressure during illegal actions, but this here is mostly the relaxed style of painting. (Hoodboys, Frankfurt, Group Discussion, May 2016) In the case of the Educational Centre for Artistic Development, the common representation of art as a political tool was reinforced through the implementation of the project in the Hôtel Pasteur: a building that the Municipality of Rennes has entrusted to a local association for it to be transformed in a space of urban experimentation through grass-root artistic and social projects. The Hôtel Pasteur provides groups and associations with

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a space to launch their activities on condition that they are directed to the general local population or to excluded people.4 In this perspective, this place can be considered in itself as an asset for a shared perception of art as a means of political action. During a meeting of the steering committee, Jerôme – who is there as a representative of the participants of the Educational centre for artistic development – asserts: ‘It’s clear that the place and the director of the Hôtel Pasteur played a role in the adventure; the fact to have the right to repaint the rooms, to organise them …’ (Educational centre for artistic development, Rennes, Field notes, May 2016) These attempts to make what they are doing more understandable to the external world mean, for all the three groups, dealing with pressures for normalisation arising from the institutions. Each of the groups deals with these pressures differently, attempting to find a balance between being recognised and remaining authentic to themselves. Concerning the ultras, the creation of the Ultras Centre represents a turning point since it implies the beginning of a process of institutionalisation of young ultras’ practices. During the first year, ultras have not just used the Ultras Centre as a space where to meet, but also as a space where to start a series of social projects – a popular gym, a kid’s corner – that target the neighbourhood’s needs. (Ultras Centre, Bologna, Field notes, December 2016) Talking with the external world meant, first of all, finding ways through which communicate the good side of their practices. The beginning of a series of projects aimed at providing services to the surrounding community can be understood as an attempt to tell the values of the ultras world in a language that is understandable by the non-ultras. In this process, young ultras act as ‘bricoleurs’ (Hebdige, 1976) constantly mixing ultras symbols with elements that pertain to activism and volunteering, that is to recognised forms of engagement. The kid’s corner has been planned as a project that could help families with children to get in touch with the ultras world and the football arena. Organised during every match, it is run by the ultras women. Children are involved in drawing their own banners and in wiring their own choirs. (Ultras Centre, Bologna, Field notes, May 2016)

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Bricolage has proven to be much more challenging when young ultras have made the Ultras Centre a formally recognised association and engaged in a legal bargain with the Municipality over the space. On this occasion, it became clear how key aspects of ultras’ cultural practices conflict with the institutional ‘rules of the game’. After almost one year of occupation, the group has started to bargain with the Municipality for the ownership of the occupied building. The Munici­ pality has agreed to grant them the space for four years, but they had to become a formal association […] Following the decision of turning the Centre in an association, many members have left the group. To be an association involves keeping a list of the members’ names, having a yearly profit of about 6000 euros, being organised under an umbrella organisation with other associations. For many members this change is not coherent with the ‘ultras culture’ which stresses the values of freedom and independence. (Ultras Centre, Bologna, Field notes, December 2016 and March 2017) Although the creation of the association has been interpreted by many members as a surrendering to institutional processes of normalisation, in this decision can also be seen a strategic attempt to ‘capitalise the obtained advantages’ that could allow the group to ‘prepare future expansions and acquire an independence in relation to the variability of circumstances’ (De Certeau, 1984: 69). Luca has changed his WhatsApp status with Che Guevara’s sentence ‘one must endure without losing tenderness’. I ask him why those words and he says that it is about the Ultras Centre and the transformations that the project has undergone in the last years, the criticisms of some members and of some other ultras groups. ‘It would be naive to think that we can win and remain the outcasts’ he says. (Ultras Centre, Bologna, Field notes, May 2018) The encounter with the external world brings challenges for the Hoodboys too. Within a context that does not guarantee any possibility of full recognition for graffiti on private and public properties, dialoguing with the external world implies for the Hoodboys to ‘sell’ their graffiti as a form of art. While some members describe this as a possibility to professionalise their graffiti skills, many strictly distinguish art from graffiti considering the latter as something more personal and less commercial. Graffiti is not art, people describe graffiti as art because of the figurative elements and trees in the background, but the style in it, the letters, nobody sees the letters. But letters are graffiti and if you say ‘this is art’ it doesn’t make any sense. (Hoodboys, Frankfurt, Field notes, September 2016)

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In their perspective, real graffiti implies a certain degree of codes and ­decipherability for writers that would distinguish it from art. Hence, making art out of graffiti means accepting a normalisation in order to please the external world. You have to decide for yourself if you are willing to give up your own style and to make you socially acceptable with what you are painting. If you like to capitulate under the dogmas of the society and say ‘ok’ to commercialise or to earn money. (Dominik, Hoodboys, Frankfurt, Biographical Interview, March 2017) The decision to create a legal crew and to accept commissions from institutions has generated identity-tensions in the Hoodboys similar to those experienced by the young ultras. However, differently from the football supporters in Bologna, they have not engaged in a form of bricolage, but rather developed a ‘double identity’. In this case, one’s cultural practices are partially bended to correspond to mainstream ideas, norms and values, while a separate space where one can continue to do illicit graffiti to represent oneself in the city is created. By continuously swinging between performing graffiti as a form of art to be recognised by the external world and doing graffiti as form of vandalism through which they express their presence in the city, the group develops its existence in the interstices of what society recognises and don’t recognise as an acceptable way of being in the public scene. In the case of the Educational centre for artistic development the question of the links with local public authorities is also a quite difficult one. The points of view regarding what should be done with public authorities were quite different within the group. While some of the members were in favour of a constructive dialogue with local authorities, others were frankly opposed and would like to enter into direct opposition with them. During a meeting at the Educational centre for artistic development, the following conversation occurs between the members. nadège: ‘What happens if we do something against the municipal policy? Can we tell the Municipality to fuck off?’ jerôme: ‘We face important risks that the association comes to an end… but we still have means to find money …’ (Educational centre for artistic development, Rennes, Field notes, May 16) In particular, divisions appear on the actions’ aims: while some members insist on stressing the potential for employability that the project offers as way to obtain institutional recognition, others reject the very need to be recognised.

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Steering committees with local stakeholders are regularly organised at the Educational centre for artistic development. During one of these meeting a member asks the stakeholders whether the Educational centre for artistic development could be considered ‘an association of non-­formal education’ and ‘which form of institutional recognition’ they could get. He is interrupted by another participant who says that ‘we are here for the collective dimension of the project, for our own development, not everything has to be done to satisfy the question of employability, we are still in transition!’ (Educational centre for artistic development, Rennes, Field notes, May 16) The struggle to find the ‘right distance’ between the Educational centre for artistic development and the institutional actors is complicated by the incoherence of institutions themselves. Despite participating in the association’s steering committee, representatives of local authorities have not participated in the meetings organised by the Educational centre for artistic development during the whole first year, suddenly changing their behaviour only when the relationship with the association became necessary to reaffirm their legitimacy in a moment of crisis. Only when young people in Rennes started to protest about youth conditions during the Nuit Debout5 events and to confront local authorities on the shortcomings of their youth policies, the municipality began to value the experience of the Educational centre for artistic development, using it as a ‘badge’ and granting it a recognition which in the eyes of the young people seems to be largely strategic for the politicians. [At the beginning of the project], local elected people and technicians almost laughed at us, now, they associate us to many projects, they run after us … (Educational centre for artistic development, Rennes, Group Discussion, May 2016) During the last year, local institutions have, in fact, shown their interest in the Educational centre for artistic development by, for example, allocating a new place in the very centre of the city to the project and by participating in public events organised by the association. However, the funding arrangement of the association is still precarious and leads to a constant questioning on the durability of the project. Concerning the relationships between the three case studies and the ­institutions, research data shows how young people in all the three case studies share similar difficulties in finding a balance between ‘being ­recognised’ and maintain themselves free and true to their initial intents. The problematic and tricky relationship with institutions implies the groups to develop specific strategies of resistance to safeguard their authenticity.

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Conclusions As extensively debated in literature, the last decades have shown significant changes in ways of participation throughout contemporary societies. According to Martuccelli (2007), individuals develop more and more a ‘conditional participation’, where active participation goes hand in hand with an active distrust. If we specifically refer to youth participation, relevant transformations affected tools and spaces of civic and political involvement (Pitti, 2018). In particular, key features of youth engagement are everyday spaces and activities and everyday issues rather than complex policy processes (Vromen and Collin, 2010). Contemporary youth engagement is increasingly expressed through non-­explicitly participative practices, spaces and activities, such as the cultural ones. The three case studies reveal not only dynamics of ‘resistance through rituals’ (Hall and Jefferson, 1976) but concrete attempts to create new social relations and identities. Using cultural practices as tool of civic and political involvement young people combine the research of recognition with claims of a redistribution of power on their lives and in their communities (Fraser and Honneth, 2003), resulting in both a cultivation of an Appaduraian ‘capacity to aspire’ (Appadurai, 2004) and in an attempt to transform the contexts of their everydayness. Behaviours and activities ascribable to daily environments and daily routines in the fields of cheering, graffiti and art convey meanings and practices that gradually transform them into explicit and (differently) recognised forms of participation. The analysis of the fieldwork allows us to pick up some issues having to do with the extent and the heterogeneity of the observed processes and of their possible developments. A key aspect of the participative ‘game’ pertains to relation between youth unconventional ways of participation and institutional actors. In particular: how, to what degree and with what kind of implications youth cultural practices turn into officially recognised practices of youth engagement. The observed cases show different orientations of youth actions towards the local community/the institutions and variable attitudes of institutional actors at local level. In all the three cases, young people invest on their everyday and street activities and show an explicit interest in gaining visibility in the local community, even if it is only in the case of the Educational centre for artistic development that we see from the start the objective of challenging local youth policies. As they move forward, each group develops formal interactions with local actors, managing this interplay in ways which are never plain and free from doubts and conflicts for the young people themselves. The management can take the form of a bricolage (combining ultras contents with institutional forms as in the Ultras Centre), of a functional differentiation (decoupling the graffiti crew into a legal and an illegal organisation) or of a negotiated collaboration (as in the cases of the Educational centre for artistic development and the Ultras Centre). The attitude of local institutional actors

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shows some degrees of openness to these unconventional ways of youth participation, even if this openness fundamentally varies according to political convenience. These issues entail more general questions regarding the results of the tensions between the potential of political and civic distinctiveness of youth initiatives and the institutional process of normalisation, and also the duration in time of youth initiatives as well as of their achievements. A further aspect has to do with the relationship between everyday life and the public sphere. The three cases clearly show that daily practices become political – and, so, mobilise collective identities referring them to shared meanings and implications – through the adoption of a social perspective, that is a way of acting directed to the attention of the neighbourhood and the local community: a sort of ‘active embedding’. These practices are rather contradictory and conflicting, both on the internal level and on the dimension of the interaction with the surrounding community, but they testify the awareness of a social issue and the consistency of a social purpose. Moreover, data emerging from the fieldwork raises a more general question about what participative action is today. Is the inclination towards everyday participation to be interpreted as an innovative behaviour that young people experience and that will extend to the whole society, or is it rather just as a way for young people to be and feel protagonists of their trajectories in contemporary societies which appear so unfriendly to them? The aforementioned aspects need of course further empirical and theoretical investigation, hopefully, to be developed in the next years through solid ethnographical fieldwork. Our research had the aim of understanding how young people move in the interstices of their social environments, against conditions and representations they perceive as constraining. Following our analysis of what we glimpsed in the case studies, there is evidence for arguing that daily behaviours representing symbolic forms of resistance in everyday environments can also become concrete tools of voice and action. This occurs thanks to the adoption by young people of a social perspective that brings them to manage everyday issues in a way which combines self-expression, collective goals and community life. In youth cultural practices solidarity, complementarity, expressivity, and collective identity fuel not only private and symbolic activities, but also new forms of collectivities and active citizenship (Cuzzocrea and Collins, 2015; De Luigi et al., 2018).

Notes 1 The names of all groups and of young people are anonymised to safeguard their privacy. 2 In Italian, the term ‘ultras’ describes professional sport fans who consistently follow their favourite team during championships and tournaments performing cheer during the matches (see: Pitti, 2018, for more). The word ‘ultras’ is both singular and plural.

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3 The supporter’s card (tessera del tifoso) was a policy of control of football arenas introduced in 2009 and dismissed in 2018. 4 For instance, during this first year, a group proposed sports activities to people with mental illnesses, another organised awareness campaigns in favour of the environment protection. 5 Nuit Debout is a French social movement. It developed in March 2016 from the protests against a reform of the labour legislation that, among other changes, makes easier for companies to lay off workers. Despite protests, the law has been adopted in August 2016.

References Appadurai, A. (2004). The capacity to aspire: Culture and the terms of recognition. In: Rao, V., and Walton, M. (eds.) Culture and Public Action. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Augé, M. (2014). Le Sens des autres: Actualité de l’anthropologie. Paris: Fayard. Bennett, A. (1999). Subcultures or neo-tribes? Rethinking the relationship between youth, style and musical taste. Sociology, 33(3), pp. 599–617. Chaney, D. (2004). Fragmented culture and subcultures. In: Bennet, A., and Kahn-Harris, K. (eds.) After Subculture: Critical Studies in Contemporary Youth ­Culture. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Cuzzocrea, V., and Collins, R. (2015). Collaborative individualization? Peer-to-peer action in youth transitions. Young, 23(2), pp. 132–153. Dalton, R. J. (2008). The Good Citizen. How a Younger Generation is Reshaping ­American Politics. New York, NY: CQpress. De Certeau, M. (1984). The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkley: University of California Press. De Luigi, N., Martelli, A., and Pitti, I. (2018). New forms of solidarity and young people: An ethnography of youth participation in Italy. In: Pickard, S., and ­Bessant, J. (eds.) Young People Regenerating Politics in Times of Crisis. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Eliasoph, N. (2013). The Politics of Volunteering. Cambridge: Polity Press. Foucault, M. (1982). The subject and the power. Critical Inquiry, 8(4), pp. 777–795. Fraser, N., and Honneth, A. (2003). Redistribution Or Recognition?: A Political-­philosophical Exchange. London: Verso. Goffman, E. (1959). The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York, NY: Doubleday. Hall, S., and Jefferson, T. (1976). Resistance through Rituals. Youth Subcultures in Postwar Britain. Birmingham: University of Birmingham Press. Harris, A., and Wyn, J. (2009). Young people’s politics and the micro-territories of the local. Australian Journal of Political Science, 44(2), pp. 327–344. Harris, A. (2015). Transitions, cultures, and citizenship: Interrogating and integrating youth studies in new times. In: Woodman, D., and Bennet, A. (eds.) Youth Cultures, Transitions and Generations. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Hebdige, D. (1976). Reggae, Rastas and Rudies: Style and the Subversion of Form. University of Birmingham, Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies. Retrieved from: https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/Documents/college-artslaw/history/cccs/ stencilled-occasional-papers/1to8and11to24and38to48/SOP24.pdf (Accessed on 17.12.2018).

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Lefebvre, H. (1968). Everyday Life in the Modern World. New Bruckwick: Transaction Publishers. Luhtakallio, E. (2012). Practicing Democracy. Local Activism and Politics in France and Finland. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Martuccelli, D. (2007). Forgé par l’épreuve. L’individu dans la France contemporaine. Paris: Armand Colin. McRobbie, A. (1980). Settling accounts with subcultures: A feminist critique. In: Frith, S., and Goodwon, A. (eds.) On Record: Rock, Pop and the Written Word. ­L ondon: Routledge. Pilkington, H. (2004). Youth strategies for glocal living: Space, power and communication in everyday cultural practice. In: Bennet, A., and Kahn-Harris, K. (eds.) After Subculture: Critical Studies in Contemporary Youth Culture. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Pitti, I. (2018). Youth and Unconventional Political Engagement. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Redhead, S. (1997). Subculture to Clubcultures: An Introduction to Popular Cultural Studies. Hoboken, NJ: Blackwell Publishers. Schutz, A. (1967). The Phenomenology of the Social World. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Vromen, A., and Collin, P. (2010). Everyday youth participation? Contrasting views from Australian policymakers and young people. Young, 18(1), pp. 97–122. Woodman, D., and Bennet, A. (2015). Youth Cultures, Transitions and Generations. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.

Chapter 10

The interplay between life trajectories and participation careers Morena Cuconato, Silvia Demozzi and Valérie Becquet

Introduction A long-established discourse on young people engagement portrays them as apathetic and disengaged with political processes. Some scholars state that they are less interested in political matters and less likely to vote, become members of formal organisations such as political parties, and in general ­describe them as having limited knowledge regarding public issues across the different national and regional contexts (Park et al., 2004). Other scholars, however, remark that such approaches adopt a narrow concept of youth participation (Marsh et al., 2007; Manning, 2010) and a deficit approach to youth (France, 2007), neglecting furthermore the structural barriers young people face in their effort to participate in democratic processes. This analytic approach does not focus on the voices and perspectives of young people ‘leaving us with a perspective of “causes” that are defined by the researcher’s interpretation and moral judgements’ (France, 2007: 37). As a consequence of this narrow concept of participation, only few young people are actually referred to as participating, while a majority of them are reckoned not being involved in forms of public decision-making and/or engagement. In order to question and differentiate this view, the PARTISPACE research has analysed and elaborated that different practices of young people in public spaces may be referred to as participation (see especially ­Chapters 6, 7 and 9 in this volume). Complementary to the analysis of collective youth cultural styles, this chapter aims at understanding better how young people’s individual careers of participation evolve from getting involved to staying or changing involvement. In order to reconstruct these processes, this chapter adopts a biographical perspective, trying to shed light on the close relationship between participation and social background and thus elaborating the links between social inequalities and political and civil engagement. ­Consistent with existing literature, access to participatory activities, and particularly to responsibilities in participation programmes, projects or groups, is background-dependent. Therefore, we do not conceive of young people as a ­homogeneous group with common needs and aspirations. Otherwise, it

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would be impossible to understand what makes some young people getting involved in formal settings of participation, which are meaningless for others, who are instead inclined towards informal ones. By reconstructing biographical narratives of young people engaged in different forms and issues of participation, we will try to detect how participation trajectories (careers) emerge and develop differently, why young people decide to engage, who (significant others) or what (turning points) contribute/support this decision and in what way. The next section illustrates the theoretical rationale for the analysis and sets out the methodology and methods used. After that, we present four clusters elaborated according to the main (f  )actors emerging from this analysis of the biographical interviews. We use an exemplary biography in order to illustrate each cluster which we will discuss in the last concluding section.

The biographical approach in analysing youth participation careers Among many youth studies exploring the topic, Henn and Foard (2014) reveal that youth orientation to politics is complex and nuanced according to social determinants influencing young people’s participatory life experiences. According to them, both social class and educational history have a major impact on youth political engagement (see also Holmes and Manning, 2013) that differs also according to ethnicity and – to a lesser extent – gender. However reviewing the literature, we note that biographical investigations on youth participation have not yet been conducted. This would be very useful in order to understand both at personal and social levels, how young people’s biography influences their participation career and how this in turn shapes their biographical narrative reconstruction. The evidence (often based in quantitative measurements) of a declining trend in formal and collectivist forms of participation (Norris, 2002) could be interpreted as a new way of adapting to the increased pace of socio-economic change and the ever-increasing complexity in the relationship between citizens and power structures. According to Bennet (2013: 21), this gives rise to individualised politics, and young people consider ‘political activities and commitments in highly personal terms that contribute to enhancing the quality of personal life […] rather than to understanding, support, and involvement in government’. Therefore, the perspective that depicts the life course as the institutional expectations regarding the individual’s social integration and as an element in social reproduction needs to be complemented by a biographical perspective that incorporates the subjective life stories individuals construct in the process of dealing with their identity while progressing through the institutionalised life course. This implies an interactionist understanding of the relationship between structure and agency (cf. Giddens, 1984; Emirbayer and Mische, 1998): the

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life course provides individuals with expectations they (have to) handle with in their biographical construction – coping with or opposing these issues or life events in explicit or implicit ways – while at the same time life course institutions depend on individuals using them for their biographical development. The main interest of biography-theoretical research concerns how people construct a biography in different cultural contexts and social situations, and which conditions, rules and patterns of building can be highlighted in this process. Biographical studies have played a significant role in sociology since the 1920s and 1930s and were further developed by sociologists and educationalists during the 1970s in different research fields and according to different methodological and theoretical traditions and epistemological interests. Bertaux (1976: 206) was one of the first to recognise that as some life-lines do not have a linear course and do not obey some inner logic but, rather, are determined by ‘the historical movements of socio-structural relationships’, lives were worth studying in their very forms. So, according to Bourdieu, the analysed practice represents more a consequence of the socially derived and implicit logics of the embodied habitus than the result of rational deliberation and ‘choice’. That is why Bourdieu refers to biography as ‘illusion,’ preferring the concept of habitus. Habitus constitutes a system of durable, transposable, cognitive ‘schemata or structures of perception, conception and action’ (Bourdieu, 2017: 27) that is rooted in socialisation processes within the family and influenced by one’s position in the social structure of a stratified society. It frames the parameters of people’s sense of agency and power of decision-making. Studies following such a more structuralist approach set the focus on the relationship between biography and life trajectory, while studies more oriented towards the paradigm of symbolic interactionism focus more on the internal logics of biographical construction and meaning-­making. This chapter follows the first strand of analysis (see Chapter 11 following rather the second perspective). Young people between 15 and 30 years such as those whose accounts are analysed in PARTISPACE share the distinction of their life stage from both childhood and adulthood while their life situations and conditions with regard to education, training, employment, welfare, housing and health may differ significantly according to age and phase in the transition to adulthood. We argue that in their life course trajectories they develop ‘participation careers’, that is, particular ways of relating to and involvement in practices in public space. Such participation careers include transitions into and between specific practices, turning points and learning processes which in turn may be related to experiences with significant others. At the same time, these careers need to be seen as embedded in, structured by and contributing to the reproduction and/or transformation of social structures, especially categories like social background, gender, ethnicity and formal educations.

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Sample and methodology The biographical interviews analysed in this chapter have been conducted in the course of the six in-depth case studies of formal, non-formal and informal setting of youth participation carried out in each of the eight cities involved in the PARTISPACE project. Two young people per case were asked to explore their whole life stories in order to reveal those biographical issues influencing their participation during their lives so far contributing to an overall sample of 96 biographies. The data were collected through narrative interviews,1 which have been audio-recorded and fully transcribed. Analysis consisted in combining the hermeneutic sensitivity of biographical case recontruction (Rosenthal, 1993), and the comparative coding process based on the principles of grounded theory (Glaser and Strauss, 1967). This means that first the thematic structure was identified and objectifiable biographical data were extracted. Based on these, hypotheses on the relationship and especially discrepancies between ‘lived lives’ and ‘told lives’ were formulated. The hypotheses confirmed in the further process of analysis were subsequently fixed in codes and memos. In a first step, summaries of the 96 biographies were produced and analysed (Batsleer et al., 2017). The second step of biographical analysis, presented in this chapter, aimed at reconstructing the life course trajectories the young people presented in their narratives: their general narrative self-presentation but also the aspects that were important for our analysis: moments of entry into and change of participatory activities, turning points, learning processes and significant others. Based on the wider sample, 16 biographies were selected, according to the different ways in which young people ascribed the participatory activities biographical relevance and how their trajectories were influenced by social factors such as social background, gender, ethnicity and formal education. These interviews were translated into English to allow for comparative in-depth analysis. Writing a portrait of every interview has permitted an insight into the relationships between the different levels involved, to understand the role of a participatory activity within a young person’s biography and to elaborate different clusters of factors, in terms of constellations of structure and agency, that occur in the interplay between biographies and participation.

Clusters of participation careers With the aim of understanding and explaining the ways in which participation unfolds in young people’s lives, and how their participation careers and biographies interact in their life trajectories, we explored whether and to what extent young people’ sociocultural and economic conditions, family’s values, young people’s educational attainments, experiences in formal institutions, influences and type of significant others (peer vs. adults), key perceived life experiences (turning points) support or constrain their engagement.

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After  that, we analysed the learning processes (and achievements) they attribute to participatory experiences both in terms of personal/individual development and a contribution to community/societal change. Following these categories, emerging from young people’s narratives – of course with different meanings, different introspective level and words selection – we have elaborated four key clusters of participation careers. Each cluster is, first, introduced through an exemplary case and then discussed according to the categories mentioned above. The discussion section proposes a ‘cross-cluster’ reflection on the biographical interplay of sociocultural and economic conditions (structure) and learning processes (agency). Fighting for justice from inside the system

This first cluster is concerned with participation careers of young people who – compared to many of their peers – get involved in formalised setting (youth council, student representation) which are not limited to particular interests but aimed at justice either with a focus on specific groups or in general. In their narratives, these young people, who share familial cultural capital and a migrant background refer to experiences of injustice, thus, engagement can be interpreted in terms of coping with injustice. This, however, does not explain why and how they have translated their personal experience into a wider political issue. Here, first, the search for experiences of self-efficacy plays a central role: in many respects, the larger the issue, the more power and control is needed to make a difference. This means, second, that these young people, seem to have had experiences of being recognised by others (supportive family and teachers) who referred to them as competent and able to make a difference. Third, these young people have had positive experiences in formal institutions, which require abstracting from the personal present to a universal future and the ability to postpone fulfilment of subjective needs. Finally, these young people manage to find a balance between the world of adults and youth culture – or are even willing to engage with an adult habitus if it is purposeful to do so, which may imply an increased distance from the youth cultural practices of their peers (see also Lüküslü et al., 2018). Amos

Amos was born in 2000 in Nigeria. He is the middle child of a family of three. He attended primary school in his birth place and then at 11 years old moved with his family to the UK (Manchester). In his homeland, his father worked in a prominent banking institution and was engaged in his country’s politics. One day, he took Amos with him during a business trip in a nearby country. Meeting one of his father’s friends, who was politically active, and listening to him talking about politics, represented for Amos a key turning point in his life; the man ‘assigned’ him the task of changing the world and

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from that moment Amos started to think about political participation as an individual duty. I think one thing I did take away from him was a mission or epiphany and enlightenment shall I say. And it was my dreams, my ambitions point to one word … revolution. And not in a negative way but something positive, something victorious. He said I should change the world. He made me promise that one day I will change the world and become a revolutionary. (Amos, Manchester, FYR) In order to undertake this ‘mission’ of revolution, Amos started to develop himself as a political researcher and leader. Amos is 15 years old now, he attends secondary school and is engaged in the youth council of his city. He is also involved in a sport foundation where he met a famous local black Olympic athlete. Furthermore, he participated in many local projects in the city where he met many key influencers in a range of a youth leadership and social change organisation that support working-class young people. During one of these experiences, he met the former Chancellor of the Exchequer and took a key role as a member of the youth parliament. Amos’ participation seems to be strictly connected to his own sense of destiny guided by the influence of many others he has met, especially by Coloured people who succeed in being recognised in the wider community. Amos wants to promote a peaceful (educational) revolution to be achieved both through participation in formal political agencies and in alternative non-­formal settings. A revolution is a change as a whole. Not done as one person. I’m not seeking to be Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Castro … I seek a change in perspective; the reason these were revolutionary, they caused a united front against something; I’m not going against anything … Everyone has a key role in terms of change whether it’s locally or globally. (Amos, Manchester, FYR) Amos, and the others in this cluster, use formal settings which are explicitly devoted to participation and representation for their mission consisting in making people aware of their condition while taking back the power of acting towards a common goal. They identify a clear turning point in their biographies, a situation in which they felt seen, recognised and thus understood, and from which they developed their narratives and biographical constructions in term of learning and struggling for justice from the inside of the system. They do not feel disengaged from political processes or powerless to bring about change, because in different ways, the system has given them a chance to do so.

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Achieving responsibility step by step

The second cluster refers to participation careers of young people who share the same middle-class sociocultural background and have progressed smoothly through formal institutions, and especially education. While some have experienced critical life events, they have not interpreted them in terms of injustice. They are driven by normative perspectives, but they do not position themselves within societal conflicts. In fact, they encounter possibilities of engagement during their educational and professional careers or organised leisure time activities. Hence, these young people have also had positive experiences with and in formal institutions, and they know how to benefit from recognition within these contexts. They do not refrain from compromising their identities with an adult habitus. Their self-efficacy is an institutionalised one inasmuch as they rely on institutionalised roles and activities and the power they entail. Nevertheless, it also includes discovering the political dimension of one’s institutional and professional status, and the ethical value of contributing to society beyond the fulfilment of standard roles and obligations – enriching and/or diversifying their identities (­Honneth, 1996). Léna

Léna is a 23-year-old French woman, who was born in a small village in Brittany. She comes from a middle-class, socially moderate and apolitical family. After her high school diploma, she moved to Rennes, the closest university-city. At the age of 20, she entered the board of the youth centre in the youth municipality council in her town; her involvement in public institution allowed her to work on youth issues and to orientate professional practices and facilities for young people. We decided on the project. We participated in the actions over a period of almost a year. If we wanted it to happen, we had to get involved and take part in the actions […]. It was a commitment also to get to something too … and participate in the dynamics of the commune. (Léna, Rennes, FYR) On her mother’s advice when she was 17, Léna undertook the youth work certification to look for a summer job she liked. After obtaining her diploma, she enrolled on a university degree in education and youth work. Despite not having a clear career plan, she wanted to go on with her studies and, during her second year of studies, once again, following her mother’s advice, she did an internship in Brest where she was in charge of a career guidance project and advising young people about various possibilities. Gradually, Léna got more involved in local youth organisations until she was elected as a youth

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representative at regional level. Important actors – the youth worker in the recreation centre, her mother, the supervisor of her internship – punctuated Léna’s commitment path. Despite her parents having never been involved in a social or political organisation, they supported her, when she started participating in the youth centre, ‘because it was making people meet people, it was about something’ (Léna, Rennes, FYR). Nevertheless, all her e­ xperiences of participation allowed her progressively to define her own values and to determine her identity. For example, she considers her university study as a real turning point: My way of seeing the world, of seeing… really… society, of everything that was inequality, everything that was animated, Recreation … Really, it opened my mind. It was the best two years of my life. (Léna, Rennes, FYR) Léna’s commitment seems quite conventional and linear – formal participatory spaces, supported by meaningful actors. Even if she has not developed a proactive attitude or self-initiate, little by little she knows what she wants for herself, for youth and for society. Her convictions take shape and she succeeds in linking her involvement with her professional project. In this cluster, the striking commonality between young people is that formal education (and a sort of conformity within this institution) and then employment led them to these forms of engagement. In this way, participation is a professional choice that has the ethic and social benefit of allowing them to work towards societal changes. Personal and professional development by caring for others

This cluster refers to careers characterised by voluntary engagement in terms of care and responsibility. Doing something for others provides both experiences of self-efficacy and recognition in terms of a return for altruism. Some of these young people have to cope with insecure identities. Voluntary engagement is embedded in (non-governmental) organisations that provide a feeling of belonging and a ‘risk-free’ orientation to clear roles and tasks avoiding competition in an uncertain social constellation, such as a peer group. Different from the cluster ‘achieving responsibility stepby-step’, this mode of participation does not necessarily require engaging with adult-like roles or practices but allows being young, yet in a specific, partly pre-defined way that is open for negotiation and appropriation within a clear set of rules. Experiences with institutions tend to be ambivalent. Although the activities of volunteering tend to be rather organised and publicly recognised, these young people have not necessarily had positive experiences in formal institutions; indeed, organised volunteering  – ­including the adults involved – can be experienced as ‘doing something’

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with different ‘types’ of adults in an organisation that is alternative but accessible. These directions of development represent a personal improvement for the young people involved, enhancing their self-empowerment process and the achievement of transversal and proactive skills (also suitable for a future career). Mert

Mert is a 25-year-old Turkish young man. He grew up in the ‘modern’ ­Izmir, the third biggest Turkish city, and in a family, which comes from one of the most conservative Turkish regions. His conservative family has a low social and cultural background; however, it is supportive: actually, he is the first one in his family to attend university. Concerning his educational choice, Mert affirms that he specifically chose to study far from home in Eskis¸ehir in order to learn to be independent and live with a friend. Mert seems well aware of the importance of education for his personal (and, probably, professional) development. At the university, he found a significant other (a professor) who put him in touch with the youth section of an humanitarian NGO, an association that deals with blood donation. He believes that joining the NGO was the turning point of his life, because he perceives it as project-oriented activities motivated by innovation that gives young people’s ‘fresh brains’ the opportunity to produce additional value and therefore he ‘has devoted’ to the NGO. Participation is lived as a learning process. He remarks that before entering the association, he was very shy and could not even talk with foreigners or in front of a public audience. Through the NGO activities, he experienced the opportunity to develop leadership and coping skills, self-­ confidence in ‘caring for others’, a motivating project and his autonomy and personal construction of values. All the potentials he has always been aware of, realising what he calls his ‘dream’ by becoming the head of the local branch: I knew that I had a potential for leadership, people told me that. But I thought that being a leader meant to yell to other people, to be tough or dominate others … before… It didn’t happen in one day … but slowly, I’ve read books about it … I’ve learned that leadership wasn’t about yelling but … was about creating good relationship. (Mert, Eskis¸ehir, NGO) In this cluster, despite their different sociocultural contexts, resources and experiences, young people share the progressive development of specific, but also personal skills in terms of relationship building and self-esteem. Their participatory experience is connected to the act of caring for others, while receiving public recognition for their activity.

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Looking for alternative places for themselves

The young people in this cluster, due to their family backgrounds, developed a critical stance to social standards and practices and use participation to emancipate themselves and change minds and behaviours around them. Their desires to shift away from their families or school experiences have emerged during their adolescence through questioning themselves, and their dissatisfactions and passions. During this time, they understood, uncovered or experienced something that resulted in a turning point in the way they perceive themselves, their family or their environment. In their stories, ‘significant others’ appear and play different roles. They decided at some point to change things while being apart from or at the margin of the environment, they were criticising. All of their activities, as they question norms and standards, address a more general political or social question. They share values and ways of getting involved in activities. They are looking for meaning of their self-development and a possible collective change starting from their individual biographical experiences. Consequently, the careers of these young people are oriented towards more informal spaces, and youth cultural practices rather than adult habitus. This implies either creating something new or occupying and transforming existing spaces to make them both subjectively meaningful and valued by peers and with an added value for learning-by-doing and self-learning. They are acting at a micro-level, experimenting with alternative forms of themselves for some sort of self-change and, potentially, collective endeavours. Lisa

Lisa is 25 years old and works as a janitor in a public kindergarten. Born in Bologna, she comes from quite a patriarchal family and her education was clearly oriented by her father’s values. My father is a 100% Southern man, so obviously the son and the daughter are two different things, of course, the son is the one who deserves full trust and the daughter instead is the one who has to stay home up to 40 years. (Lisa, Bologna, UG) Lisa did not like studying; therefore, she needed more years than usual to get her high school diploma. She attended the last three years of upper secondary school in a southern region because her grandparents, who lived there, were ill and needed help. This mobility gave her the opportunity to flee from her father’s control. Once she completed school, at the age of 22, she came back to Bologna and started working. Through self-empowerment, she progressively coped with her patriarchal education relegating women in the backstage.

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At 12, her brother brought her with him to her first football match. Progressively, she entered an Ultra group, in which she was the ‘young sister of ’. At 16, she changed group in order to overcome her minority status and to be recognised as ‘just’ Lisa. As a junior supporter, she began helping senior members in the back-office activities before the matches, and of course singing at the stadium. Two years ago, she participated in the creation of the Ultra’s Centre: We wanted to create our place where people could meet face to face and being able to discuss, maybe even argue, because this happens between opposite ways of thinking, different ideas. It was something that I liked very much. (Lisa, Bologna, UG) She is currently in charge of the management of the kindergarten opened within the Ultra Centre. Although her biography follows a path of self-­ empowerment, Lisa was not alone in this process. Besides her brother, the two main significant others who influenced her development were women: first, her mother and second a 50-year-old woman, who was the only female official member of the Ultra in the north stand (the sector of the Stadium generally reserved to Ultra groups). This older woman became Lisa’s role model: She has always been my reference point, even because she was the only woman in the group. (…) She was the one who challenged everyone, the one of which being afraid of, all the men treated her equally. (Lisa, Bologna, UG) Entering the Ultras was also a way to develop herself and to become a stronger woman able to face others and especially men as equals (her father and the other male Ultras). She moved gradually from her personal will to rid herself of her father’s educational standards to a collective action in a group that became a ‘second family’, a combination of self-help and collective solidarity that gave her the opportunity to learn and to value her capacities. Even if she avoids political discussion and does not describe her participation in such terms, her action could be seen as feminist activism in sports arena. In this cluster, there are some differences between young people in terms of sociocultural backgrounds, opportunities and educational trajectories, but they resemble each other for an engagement aimed at empowering a youth cultural scene and/or an alternative lifestyle which they have been identified as relevant for their own identity. Young people have been socialised by traditional values, which they rejected in order to build their own identity. Significant others influenced the critical stance they constructed to conquer their freedom. Their self-liberation is a learning process that feeds their motivations and gives them new opportunities to participate and to extend their individual solutions to other people.

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Comparative discussion A ‘cross-cluster’ reflection along the categories elaborated for the analysis can highlight the interplay between sociocultural and economic conditions, forms of participation and learning processes. The differences between clusters mainly concern the degree of homogeneity of young people’s socio-­ economic and cultural backgrounds as familial values and educational models that influence youth participation. The first two clusters ‘Fighting for justice from inside the system’ and ‘Achieving responsibility step by step’ appear quite homogeneous in the sense that the young people originate from middle-­class families, while the two others (‘Personal and professional development by caring for others’ and ‘Looking for alternative places for themselves’) bring together young people coming from various contexts. The four clusters can be positioned on a continuum going from appropriation of (‘Fighting for justice from inside the system’ and Achieving responsibility step by step) to emancipation from familial environment (‘Personal and professional development by caring for others’) with sometimes a clear opposition (‘Looking for alternative places for themselves’). While the level of education clearly orientates young people’s life trajectories, also the influence of different youth transition regimes needs to be taken into account inasmuch as young people’s trajectories are institutionalised in different ways (see Chapter 4). In the analysed biographies, some of them are still studying, while others have finished upper secondary school or university. Educational attainment influences young people’s resources, but their subjective experiences of school are more meaningful for understanding their participation careers as they contribute to building their relation to formal institutions and adults. These two elements distinguish them in term of forms of participation. The analysis reveals a continuum going from positive experiences of school due to a valorised and recognised role on personal development in ‘Fighting for justice from inside the system’ or to successful and smooth trajectories in ‘Achieving responsibility step by step’ to more ambivalent ones in ‘Personal and professional development by caring for others’ and negative ones in ‘Looking for alternative places for themselves’ linked to alienation or failure experiences. Part of their relations to adults derive from their school’s experiences, even if they refer also to other types of ‘significant others’. Young people frequently refer to teachers: in a positive way when they encouraged their initial engagement (‘Fighting for justice from inside the system’) and offer them access to opportunities of participation (the supervisor of internship in ‘Achieving responsibility step by step’) or in a more ambivalent one (‘Looking for alternative places for themselves’; see also Chapter 11). Of course their relations to adults regard also family’s members supporting them (mothers in ‘Achieving responsibility step by step’ and ‘Looking for alternative places for themselves’) and also family’s friends who recognised them as competent

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(‘Fighting for justice from inside the system’). In a larger scale, youth workers give access to some opportunities and members of organisation or leaders are examples of what they would like to be. Peers take part in the involvement process as resources to discover some initiatives or organisations and as new groups of friends when they are met during the activities. Participation is a way to broaden and open social circles and for some young people to create a ‘new family’ in which they feel more comfortable (for instance, in ‘Looking for alternative places for themselves’). The biographical analysis shows that a set of factors – socio-economic and cultural backgrounds, educational path and personal experiences of school, significant others – influence young people’s participation to a different extent. We notice how some good experiences of institutions and relations with adults tend to favour a more formal participation while more ambivalent and negative ones orientate towards informal spaces. Analysing turning points, motivations and personal needs and expectations, there appear to be a mixture of explanations stemming from various factors rather than or pushing one of them. ‘Fighting for justice from inside the system’ and ‘Looking for alternative places for themselves’ have some commonalities in terms of how personal experiences (injustice, failure, alienation) appear as turning points in the involvement process and orientate forms of participation. Significant others activate the involvement process: they recognise young people value or appear as models. From ‘Achieving responsibility step by step’ and ‘Personal and professional development by caring for others’, we learn that participation is embedded in a more general and deep process of self-building. It means that, even if some turning points and significant others can be spotted, they play a smooth and inconspicuous role in young people biographies. In the main, learning is concentrated in processes of building self-­ identity and self-efficacy, but specific orientations are derived from the previous life experiences and the social conditions of the young people involved. ‘Fighting for justice from inside the system’ and ‘Achieving responsibility step by step’ are for the most part concerned with skills and competences. However, in the first case, achieving competences and skills represents a way of coping with existing (lived) injustice and finding social reward for them; in the second case, achieving skills and competence involves a linear development along a formal educational path leading to professions that society can benefit from. Learning in ‘Personal and professional development by caring for others’ and ‘Looking for alternative places for themselves’ focuses on self-esteem and self-confidence. What differs is that in the first case the reward is the public recognition of the caring activity following institutional conformity which boosts self-­ esteem; in the second, the self-esteem and self-confidence develop from the need to reject traditional values and to find new ways of participating in order to start a self-liberation process.

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Conclusion From the biographical analysis, it emerges that not only biographies differ but – consequently – also careers and modes of participation do. For the understanding of participation, this implies that not one form of participation is to be learned but that engagement enfolds in different ways as it is rooted in biographical constellations and thus it is as multiple and diverse as biographies are. This means that getting engaged is not linear and predetermined by a particular set of factors: young people, by accident or by design, take up particular modes of participation interconnecting their biographical experiences and lived lives. Participatory settings are identified as natural settings that enable individuals to empower themselves. This is the case where the connection between the young people’s activity in a social space and the achievement of a sense of belonging that goes hand in hand with the process of learning to be a leader is strong. Participation is also subjectively meaningful for young people and, crucially, it is more often than not deliberate, intentional and a key part of a young person’s biography. This is the case for those who sought out particular spaces, created spaces or ‘fell into’ spaces and decided to stay there. Participation is, therefore, purposeful. It is also evident that getting involved with and thereby contributing to specific styles of participation is a process of seeking a subjectively meaningful and appropriate place and is dependent on a multifactorial interrelation. Finally, the analysis revealed that the fixed distinction between ‘participation’ and ‘non-participation’ and the reductive and causal ascription of participation to certain people in certain spaces at certain times for certain reasons do not reflect the complexity of participation in individual biographies. A biographical approach has illustrated that it is crucial to go beyond superficial dichotomies of motivated versus de-motivated, interested versus disinterested, political versus unpolitical and engaged versus disengaged, to acknowledge and understand the complexity of young people’s styles of participation in space and time.

Note 1 The same data are used in Chapter 11 following, however, a different research question and perspective inasmuch as ‘participation biographies’ (Schwanenflügel, 2015) are reconstructed, that is dimensions of identity- and meaning-making in relation to participation over time.

References Batsleer, J., Ehrensperger, K., Lüküslü, D., Osmanoğlu, B., Pais, A., Reutlinger, C., Roth, P., Wigger, A., and Zimmermann, D. (2017). Claiming Spaces and Struggling for Recognition. Youth Participation through Local Case Studies. Comparative Case Study Report. PARTISPACE Deliverable 4.3. Zenodo. doi:10.5281/zenodo.1064119.

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Bennet, W. (2013). Civic learning in changing democracies: Challenges for citizenship and civic education. In: Dahlgren, P. (ed.) Young Citizens and New Media. Learning for Democratic Participation. New York, NY: Routledge, pp. 59–78. Bertaux, D. (1976). Histoires de vies – ou récits de pratiques? Méthodologie de l’approche biographique en Sociologie. Paris: Convention C.O.R.D.E.S. (no. 23–1971). Bourdieu, P. (2017). Habitus. In: Rooksby, E. (ed.) Habitus: A Sense of Place. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 59–66. Emirbayer, M., and Mische, A. (1998). What is agency? American Journal of Sociology, 103(4), pp. 962–1023. France, A. (2007). Understanding Youth in Late Modernity. Maidenhead: Open ­University Press. Giddens, A. (1984). The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration. Cambridge: Polity Press. Glaser, B. G., and Strauss, A. L. (1967). The Discovery of Grounded Theory. Chicago: Aldine. Henn, M., and Foard, N. (2014). Social differentiation in young people’s political participation: The impact of social and educational factors on youth political ­engagement in Britain. Journal of Youth Studies, 17(3), pp. 360–380. Holmes, M., and Manning, N. (2013). He’s snooty ‘Im’: Exploring ‘White Working Class’ political disengagement. Citizenship Studies, 17(3–4), pp. 479–490. Honneth, A. (1996). The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts. Cambridge: Polity Press. Lüküslü, D., Pais, A., Tuorto, D., Walther, A., and Loncle, P. (2018). Local Constellations of Youth Participation in Comparative Perspective. PARTISPACE Deliverable D 6.1. Retrieved from: https://zenodo.org/record/1240191#.WusSwdRubcs. Manning, N. (2010). Tensions in young people’s conceptualisation and practice of politics. Sociological Research Online, 15(4), pp. 1–10. doi:10.5153/sro.2256. Marsh, D., O’Toole, T., and Jones, S. (2007). Young People and Politics in the United Kingdom: Apathy or Alienation? Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Norris, P. (2002). Democratic Phoenix: Reinventing Political Activism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Park, A., Phillips, M., and Johnson, M. (2004). Young People in Britain: The Attitudes and Experiences of 12 to 19 Year Olds. Nottingham: Department for Education and Skills. Rosenthal, G. (1993). Reconstruction of life stories: Principles of selection in generating stories for narrative biographical interviews. The Narrative Study of Lives, 1(1), pp. 59–91. Schwanenflügel, L. V. (2015). Partizipationsbiographien Jugendlicher. Zur subjektiven Bedeutung von Partizipation im Kontext sozialer Ungleichheit. Wiesbaden: Springer VS.

Chapter 11

Participation biographies Meaning-making, identity-work and the self Grainne McMahon, Susanne Liljeholm Hansson, Larissa von Schwanenf lügel, Jessica Lütgens, Marta Ilardo This chapter explores young people’s meaning-making, identity-work and finding of ‘the self ’ in narratives of participation. Drawing upon reconstructions of young people’s biographical interviews, the chapter considers the ways in which participation is an integral part of young people’s ‘process of becoming’ as they make sense of their past, their present and their imagined future, in participatory settings. In particular, the analysis explores the narratives of the young people’s identity-work which were expressed through, and related to, the young people’s engagement in participatory activities, and the ways in which these activities become subjectively meaningful in young people’s lives. In doing so, the analysis engages with the young people’s presentation, production and reproduction of identities through interactions, social relations, the acceptance or rejection of identity-offers and positions, and the interplay between structural conditions and young people’s agency in participatory activities. The analysis draws upon the same biographical data as the previous chapter on participation careers (Chapter 10) and reveals dimensions of ‘participation biographies’, which refer to the relationships between reconstructed biographies and participation (Schwanenflügel, 2015) in terms of the ways in which biographical experiences within young people’s stories lead to and bring about involvement with various participatory activities over time. These dimensions are narrative aspects of young people’s identity-work and of making sense of the self in terms of the past, present and desired future. They ‘cross-cut’ the clusters of participation careers discussed in the previous chapter. Whilst the clusters of participation discussed in Chapter 10 refer to the ways in which young people participate (or not) within various structural conditions, and the turning points that young people experience that influence their participation, the discussion of dimensions of participation in the current chapter focuses on the intricate meaning-making and ­identity-work with which young people engage in their participatory activities and their finding of the self.

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Identity-work and participation The narratives of the analysed biographical interviews with young people emphasise a reciprocal relationship between engagement in participatory settings and identity-work. In this way, young people’s participatory contexts are part of the identity-construction processes they undertake, while the identity-work that takes place within these and other contexts informs young people’s orientation to the different participatory settings that they find meaningful and rewarding. The analysis of this relationship is based on an understanding of identity that argues that identity is not permanent and static but, rather, evolving, changeable and ‘liquid’ (Bauman, 2004). Identity in this sense is a discursive phenomenon and an ongoing multi-dimensional process, which evolves within and interacts with structural conditions, and is constructed through narrative. A related understanding of identity-work is concerned with the ‘subject’ or individual coming into contact with ‘identity-offers’ (and ‘identity-­ impositions’) connected to different positions and roles, some of which are more institutionalised, traditional, static or rule-based and some of which are freer from constraints ( Jenkins, 2008: 17; Laclau and Mouffe, 1985/2008). When navigating different identity-offers, perhaps unconsciously, the subject strives to find ‘itself ’ by negotiating and re-negotiating who they are or are not, who they can be or cannot be and who they want to be or do not want to be (Deaux and Ethier, 1998). When one offer is given precedence over another (in terms of an individual’s choice emerging from specific circumstances and contexts), a conception of ‘self ’ starts to take shape. ­However, these positions and identity-offers are often temporary and linked to ­particular settings – in other contexts, new offers and other choices become possible, and so the identity-work continues (Laclau and Mouffe, 1985/2008). This process relates to Deaux and Ethier’s (1998) ideas about the construction of a social identity and a ‘self ’ as something that relates a person to a collective or a category. From this perspective, identity-work is connected to a sense of ‘belonging’ to certain spaces and groups. Yuval-Davis (2006) discusses the concept of ‘belonging’ and its similarities with conceptualisations of ‘citizenship’, rights and obligations. However, belonging also includes the feelings that membership of a group or space bring about in an individual. Yuval-Davis argues that people are caught in a desire both to ‘belong’ and to ‘become’ – a process driven by ‘longing’ rather than a wish to find an ­enduring identity. A further dimension in the ‘identity construction process’ is time – ‘then’, ‘now’ and ‘the future’. Memories from the past, other people’s stories about ‘who I was then’ and visions of an imagined future serve as important meaning-­bearing practices that contribute to a person’s self-image and self-­understanding of ‘today’ and as drivers for identity reconstruction ­processes – ‘who I want to be in the future’ (Oyserman et al., 2006). In this way, identity-work can be understood as a dialectic process of ‘being’ (focusing on the current state),

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‘becoming’ (focusing on a changing identity process) and ‘belonging’ (focusing on desires, dreams and longing), including being part of something and a longing for recognition and confirmation (Bell, 1999). Identity, therefore, is not something ‘within’ an individual but, rather, produced between persons and within social relations (Lawler, 2014). In addition, identity in this framework is about the ways in which people position themselves, and are positioned, and the different subjectivities and subject positions that they inhabit, or have ascribed to them, within particular social, historical and cultural contexts (Block, 2013). Using these ideas, the current chapter explores young people’s narratives in order to understand the ways in which young people make sense of their past, present and imagined futures, engage with identity-work in different participatory contexts, and search for the self through participation. Importantly, the chapter considers the interrelation between structure (the institutions, networks and social relations within which young people live and participate) and agency (the young people’s motivations, choices, needs and desires) in the past, present and desired future of identity-work in young people’s narratives. In this sense, identity is considered ‘profoundly social and continually interpreted and reinterpreted’ (Lawler, 2014: 30) and an integral part of young people’s participation.

Reconstructing young people’s biographies The PARTISPACE project collected 96 biographical interviews with young people across the 48 ethnographic case studies in the eight partner cities. The interviewees for the biographies were selected according to the young people’s form of participation, ethnicity, class, gender and city location. The analysis of the biographies took place in two stages. First, the analysis of summaries of the 96 interviews for the case studies identified ‘clusters of biographies’, which emerged from the five recurring themes in the interviewees’ self-­presentation in relation to participation and their ­participatory settings. The clusters ­referred to stories of (1) a self-made woman/man; (2) ­experimentation in different settings; (3) doing/changing/and taking responsibility; (4) rediscovering oneself and identity-work and (5) the centrality of role models and important figures (or their lack; see also Chapter 10). The second stage of the analysis utilised the selection criteria of form of participation, ethnicity, class, gender and location to identify 16 of the biographies, across the five clusters, to translate into English and then analyse. The current analysis is based upon these 16 translated biographies and focuses upon five biographies in particular in order to utilise the depth of individual biographies and stories in the biographical reconstructions. The analytical approach for the biographies combined the interactionist and comparative coding process of Grounded Theory (Glaser and Strauss, 1967) and the hermeneutic sensitivity of the Biographical Case Reconstruction (Rosenthal, 2004). This dual approach allowed for an examination of individual biographies from a micro-perspective,

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offering a way to contextualise told stories within a wider socio-historical and discursive context, and ensured a sensitivity to the emerging motives, subjective meaning-making and reflexive agency of the interviewee. Using Rosenthal’s (2004) principles of the ‘biographical case reconstruction’, the current analysis argues that the presentation of a biography and narration is part of the ‘overall context of [an individual’s] current life and his/ her resulting present and future perspective’ (ibid.: 50) in a dialectic interrelation of the experienced, remembered and narrated life-story. Rosenthal’s principles draw upon the narrative past and present and imagined (or desired) future in the ‘process of becoming’ (ibid.). The analysis of the participation biographies focused, therefore, on the ­ eaning-making and sense-making, self-presentation, biosubjective – the m graphical experiences and motivations related to participation – and the young people’s expressions of identity over time. The analysis identified dimensions of ‘participation biographies’, which are core categories that emerged from the coding of the data. The dimensions are ‘features’ of participation biographies and aspects of biographical constructions that illustrate the relationships between reconstructed biographies and participation, particularly in the context of identity-work and ‘the self ’. ­Crucially, the dimensions reflect the idea that an individual’s agency is embedded in social relationships and structures, and socially constructed meanings, in complex ways. In this way, young people, as social beings, are connected to others and they operate within social structures that shape ­experiences, on the one hand, and that are reshaped by individuals, on the other. The dimensions presented in the current analysis capture ‘moments’ in dynamic and evolving narratives which are embedded in experiences, expressed in participation biographies, and caught up in structuring relations (see ­Chapter  10 of the current volume), and which illustrate the ways in which young people ­engage with and in participatory settings as reflections of their past, motivations of their present and desires for their future. The young people’s narrative constructions indicate that they undertook identity-work in participatory spaces by searching for recognition and belonging, expressing a sense of empowerment and self-efficacy in spaces, and choosing spaces for participation that corresponded to their evolving and desired identities. Identity-work through recognition and belonging in spaces

The search for spaces where they could be recognised and experience belonging was central in many of the young people’s biographies. The young people constructed their involvement in participatory activities as a way to secure recognition in some form as part of their ongoing identity-work. This type of identity-work was apparent in nearly all of the reconstructed biographies and was often characterised by young people working to address experiences of being marginalised from, different to, and unrecognised by, peers in previous or current contexts. In this sense, the young people also found ways to

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repair damaged identities and cope with difficult life experiences in spaces of belonging. Young people therefore sought out participatory spaces in order to find places of recognition where they could develop a more stable, comfortable or desirable identity, and where they felt recognised for who they are and for what they could offer. Amanda was an example of a young person who found a stable identity through participatory activities. Amanda was 17 years old at the time of her interview and had a prominent position in the Youth Representation Forum in Gothenburg (YRG). Amanda grew up in Gothenburg. Her parents had migrated to Europe from Africa in the 1980s and, though they divorced when she was three, Amanda described her background as ‘privileged’ as her parents were both well-educated and had prominent jobs. However, Amanda experienced racist and sexist bullying from peers in school as a young woman of colour. Later, Amanda became engaged in fighting social bias against minority groups and was still a social justice activist at the time of her interview. At age 17, Amanda was an excellent school student, a successful blogger and freelance writer, and a lecturer on anti-racism, feminism and social inequality. Through her role in the YRG and her activism, Amanda was very engaged and interested in youth issues and politics. Amanda acknowledged early on in her interview that her participatory activities and her route to activism and participation in youth politics were embedded in her early personal experiences of bullying in school. Amanda’s biography also indicates that she found recognition, meaning and a stable identity as an anti-racist and social justice activist and as a young woman of colour, in the YRG, after experiencing bullying and marginalisation. Marcus, on the other hand, illustrates a form of identity-compensation. Marcus was interviewed as a regular visitor to a youth centre in Frankfurt. Twenty years old at the time of his interview, Marcus grew up as part of a large immigrant family in Frankfurt. He was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in elementary school and was assigned a series of ‘caretakers’ to support him there. After several incidents at school, Marcus spent time in a psychiatric unit where he was treated for ADHD. Marcus started to visit the youth centre at age 11, joined a Salafist group at age 16, and began a refugee support initiative on Facebook (donating old clothes to an asylum seekers’ accommodation centre) at about the same age. Marcus remained engaged with the youth centre and was interviewed as a member of that informal space. Marcus noted his trauma at being sent to a psychiatric hospital, and his frequent disengagement with school, several times during his interview. He mentioned also his feelings of marginalisation and alienation from peers, school and other structures because of his ADHD diagnosis and he connected these feelings with a sense of believing that his needs and ideas were disregarded. Marcus also noted his periods of homelessness (when his family threw him out of the family home) and drug-dealing. It was not until Marcus engaged with the youth centre, where he felt recognised, and

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began to help refugees, that he found meaningful activities where he felt valued, useful and successful. Indeed, Marcus’s biography is characterised by a constant search for a place of belonging and recognition. According to his narrative, the youth centre was central to Marcus’s identity-compensation; he remarked during the interview that in the youth centre he no longer felt like ‘a retarded spaz’. In this respect, the youth centre allowed him to compensate for an identity that was damaged through earlier experiences. Marcus also remarked that helping refugees allowed him in some way to prove that he was capable of helping others and that he was someone who could be a valuable member of a wider social context and society. This, too, Marcus said, compensated for his previous fractured identity. Narratives of young people who engaged in forms of identity-­transformation and identity-diversification are present in other biographies. A young woman from Bologna – Vanessa – was a member of an Islamic Youth Association. ­Vanessa was 24 at the time of her interview and narrated her conversion to Islam in her search for stability and a meaningful romantic relationship. ­Vanessa, who became Nassine after her conversion, thus described her ­identity-transformation. Vanessa came from a well-situated, though fraught, ­family. Her parents were often absent or unavailable to her and she became ­ anessa’s close to her Muslim-Moroccan nanny in her younger years. Later on, V singular quest was to find a meaningful relationship and to get married. She had a series of relationships with men from a similar background to hers and then engaged with Islam. Vanessa’s narrative suggests that her interest in ­Islam was driven by her desire to spend time with a group of young Muslim men, whom she liked and respected because of their morality, and to increase her eligibility for relationships and marriage. At the same time, Vanessa made contact with her former nanny and began to explore Islam in earnest. At age  22, when she started another relationship with a young Muslim man, Vanessa took the step of converting to Islam and Nassine. Nassine recounted her search for a new, replacement identity which she linked to her search for a stable, reliable and secure space and a relationship that she did not find in her family of origin. Her marriage to a Muslim man and her engagement with Islam and the Islamic Youth Association were the starting points for ‘Vanessa’ becoming ‘Nassine’. She said: ‘It is as if I was starting from scratch, okay, now I’m Nassine, I have a blank sheet of paper, what do we put on it? What do I do?’ This motivation for participation therefore involved young people leaving behind old identities completely before they assumed new, preferred identities where they could realise their ambitions and create new selves, which they perceived as more authentic. Forms of identity-diversification in turn involve experimentation with ­a lternative and new identities in different spaces and through different forms of participation, and can, for example, motivate young people to create their own spaces for participation. A young man, Mario, 24 at the time of his ­interview, was a founding member of an informal network of arts and politics

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in Plovdiv. Mario had also experienced family problems in his younger years. Though a good pupil, he did not pass the entrance exam to move from elementary to lower grade and went to a school some distance from his home where he says he did not fit with his peers. In his teens, Mario formed his first graffiti crew with other artists and a band project with other musicians, and then the alternative space for cultural, music and political activities. Mario explained that his various alternative participatory activities were living different parts of his identity and were a counter to his alienation from the more formal context of school and his peers there. He said: ‘I could not quickly fit into the mode of communication, I mean interests of people […] some of them were just plainly rejecting me’. In the alternative space that Mario co-founded, however, he found a space of free speech, political discussion and information and learning. Importantly, through this identity, Mario felt ‘complete as a human being […] more filled with emotion’. Identity-work through empowerment and self-efficacy

Young people also engaged with participatory activities as an expression of empowerment and self-efficacy experienced in the past and as part of becoming who they wanted to be in the present and future. As with the forms of identity-formation explored above, this aspect of the young people’s ­identity-work was more deliberate in some cases than others. Young people who were engaged with trying to ‘change’ or address a personal or social issue were, at least in part, dependent on a feeling of self-efficacy (Bandura, 1997) and a belief in their ability to make a difference. At the same time, the framing of one’s life-story within a ‘bigger picture’ of change – or not – was ­concerned with the ability to feel empowered in participatory spaces. Amanda and Betty are examples of young people with a sense of surety about their personal and political self-efficacy. Amanda’s political activities were predominately in formal settings where she felt that she could be successful. Amanda had experienced bullying in her first formal structure – school – but had also experienced that school (formal) systems are effective because they addressed the bullying at her request. These experiences in ­A manda’s past were pivotal in her present and the spaces in which she ­engaged. ­A manda’s narrative suggests that she maintained a belief in ­formal systems and her self-efficacy as a participant in those systems – she had learned, early on, that such systems could be supportive to her and empowering for her. Betty was 27 years old and working as a language teacher at the time of her interview. In comparison to Amanda, Betty grew up in a lower-middle class, socially moderate family in a small village in England. After school where she did well, Betty delayed university for two years and then studied languages in Scotland. During university, Betty campaigned for the Scottish National Referendum which she reported as her first political activity. After university, Betty became a language teacher in Switzerland and at a political

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event in Zurich that she attended with her then boyfriend, she learned about a self-organised education project in Zurich in the left-sphere (OEC). Betty had been involved in the OEC for two years at the time of her interview. Betty’s involvement in both the national referendum in Scotland and the OEC in Switzerland was based on her researching spaces, her evolving understanding of social issues and her ethical principles of fighting injustice and of wanting to work with ‘like-minded people’. Betty’s biography illustrates her sense of self-efficacy in being able to work towards change – her narrative was confident and she indicated a sense of empowerment in her participatory activities and, in particular, the belief that she could be effective in bringing about change. Similar to Amanda, Betty’s sense of empowerment had developed not just through positive participatory experiences but, also, through enabling and supportive relations with others. It is notable that both Amanda and Betty were confident in their ability to bring about change and actively engaged in such activities. Marcus, however, seemed to struggle with his sense of self-efficacy and the extent to which he believed he could bring about change. When he spent time helping refugees in his home city, he noted that his motivation then was concerned with proving to himself and to others that he could help people and be a valuable member of the community. His uncertainty about his value, however, was evident throughout his biography. He returned frequently to the professional interventions for ADHD that he experienced throughout his life. Marcus described these interventions as violating and disempowering rather than supportive, in the main, and he presented himself during his bio­ graphy as someone who had always struggled with the label of ‘problematic behaviours’. Importantly, Marcus noted how these interventions prevented him from making his own decisions and compromised his belief in himself that he could be instrumental in making change (personally or in a wider sense). Marcus also presented himself as someone who questioned the extent to which he could ‘be political’; as he did not feel that he was politically educated, he did not believe he had the ability to make claims to a political position. Indeed, his political beliefs and activities fluctuated from referring to conspiracy theories, being part of religious fundamentalism, establishing a Facebook group for refugees, and taking part in a football match against antisemitism. In all, his political activities reflected, as his self-presentation, an inconsistency and a search for self-efficacy without a particular political direction. Marcus’s biography compares again to Amanda’s and Betty’s confident engagement in spaces concerned with making change and in which they were empowered and where they believed that they could be effective. Marcus’s participation was characterised, more so, by his ongoing search for self-­efficacy and sense of self. In a similar sense, Mario’s sense of empowerment in less formal spaces – his preferred spaces – reflected his past experiences of school which were alienating and disempowering and his ongoing experiences of

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university where he seemed to feel limited, particularly in terms of peer relations. Like Marcus, Mario’s participation is more ambivalent – less c­ onfident – as he continues to seek out self-efficacy and self-empowerment. Seeking out spaces and places to pursue identity-work

Past experiences of institutions, caught up in the sense of belonging and empowerment explored above, and particularly of formal institutions, also influenced young people’s participatory activities over time. As such, young people sought out and engaged with participatory spaces where they could belong and feel recognised, empowered and successful, and because their choices were shaped by their previous interactions in formal settings. ­Formal institutions such as schools or youth councils which have a clear set of roles (teacher, student) and expectations (rules of membership and conduct) ­corresponded with some young people’s evolving self-­identity and needs, particularly if experiences in such institutions were positive. The ­reconstructed biographies indicate that those young people who experienced formal ­contexts in earlier life that met their needs believed that institutional structures offered them some sort of empowerment. These young people were more likely to engage in formal institutions later. Young people who had had fraught and conflicted experiences in formal settings – p­ articularly education – were more inclined towards less formal and freely chosen ­participatory settings later on. Amanda had had positive experiences in school at the time of her bullying. Though the bullying took place in school, she asked the formal structures of the school to intervene on her behalf, and they did so successfully and stopped the bullying. This was Amanda’s first positive institutional experience. Not only was Amanda part of the YRG (a formal setting), she had also engaged in student councils in school. Both participatory activities seemed to be related to Amanda’s construction of her past positive experiences in the context of formal structures and her chosen position in the present. Amanda recalled her engagement in the formal structure of the Student Council as a pivotal time in her life: ‘I got a completely new role, I would say, and that formed the basis for who I am now, in some way, more or less’. In addition to supportive experiences in formal contexts, Amanda’s sense of empowerment developed in this role: ‘I can do good things, I can push it forward and […] I have proven to myself, I can take this role, it is big’. School had in all been a space where her voice mattered and where she found a platform for making change. When she later on engaged in political change-making, she chose to do this in the formal setting of student councils and the YRG. Mario, on the other hand, had had largely negative experiences in formal institutions and particularly within peer contexts of school. Mario felt alienated from his peers; these experiences ran through his biography in terms of his level of ease within formal settings and in seeking out other settings.

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In creating an alternative and self-managed space, Mario found somewhere where he did not feel rejected. Importantly, as someone who believed himself to be politically engaged and educated, Mario created spaces outside of formal structures where, first, he felt comfortable with like-minded people, and later, where he felt able to participate in what he framed as ‘real politics’. Though Mario was studying law at university at the time of his interview because he wanted to understand society and politics through a legal lens, it was clear that he felt more engaged in less formal spaces. He said of his fellow law students: ‘their reality […] their desires […] they’re too pragmatic […] soulless’. Again in contrast, Marcus had a more ambivalent orientation towards participation and seemed no more inclined towards formal or informal settings. Rather, he participated in whichever spaces he needed at certain times. He presented a mistrust in formal institutions, particularly public and welfare-­ focused institutions, with only some exceptions. His biography was characterised by fluctuations and vacillations in his experiences with others (mainly youth work agents of social services) by whom he felt supported at times and violated at others. His participation, then, was arguably more haphazard than others and did not follow particular patterns of preference, though there was a sense that he felt that more comfortable in less formal spaces which were less rule-bound.

The ‘process of becoming’: identity-work and ‘the self ’ in young people’s participation biographies The analysis of the young people’s reconstructed narratives revealed that the young people who took part in the biographical interviews undertook ­identity-work in participatory settings in three ways. First, they sought recognition and belonging in groups and spaces particularly when they had lacked belonging and recognition in the past. The emphasis that the young people placed on recognition and belonging was related to their construction of their pasts and their presents as they opted for some identity-offers in participatory settings over others, and sought out desirable and recognised positions, through engagement in participatory activities. These ‘moments’ in the young people’s identity-work indicated that they accepted identity-­offers more (Mario and Nassine) or less (Amanda) deliberately within different contexts and spaces. In doing so, they sought out desirable identities that countered marginalised identities and repaired damaged identities in their past and enabled them to develop an identity and a vision of the self (as an activist, as a convener, as an authentic Muslim) that they wanted for the future. The young people also constructed their identity-work around their experiences of empowerment and efficacy in participatory spaces. These too led to an often-deliberate engagement in spaces and activities where the young people felt a sense of confidence and of being empowered (powerful) and a belief

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that that could succeed. Drawing again on past experiences, this is further identity-work where the young people are becoming the people they want to be in their evolving identities and imagined futures. Indeed, the young people’s told stories indicate that their motivations for engaging in participatory spaces – and for seeking out and taking-up or rejecting identity-offers in different spaces – seem to be driven by not only seeking out spaces of belonging and recognition but also by a belief in one’s sense of self-efficacy and feelings of empowerment. This was particularly the case where the participatory spaces were concerned with change-making of some sort. There are notable differences in the narratives of young people who were able to draw upon experiences of self-efficacy in their past (Amanda and Betty) and those who still struggled to find spaces and roles where they could be empowered and efficacious (Marcus and Mario) in the present. Relatedly, the young people’s narratives suggest that their preference for some spaces over others (particularly in terms of formality) was concerned with how they experienced formal structures in the past. Where young people constructed an ongoing struggle with finding a sense of empowerment in formal spaces, it was caught up again with damaged identities in the past where their agency was limited and constrained and where they were made to feel disempowered, particularly with and in formal spaces (school and other formal institutions). Where such experiences had been positive and empowering, young people sought out and engaged with similar spaces in the present and pursued them as part of their imagined future. The participatory spaces themselves, then, were part of the young people’s identity-work where they pursued identity-offers and positions which reflected their experiences in the past, their needs and motivations in the present, and their desires for their imagined futures. The young people’s narratives illustrate the ‘process of becoming’ (­Rosenthal, 2004: 50) as young people make-sense of their past and construct aspects of past experiences in order to understand and explore the present and envisage an imagined and desirable future. Participation plays a key role in this process because of the ways in which young people participatory activities enable them to undertake identity-work and to find a sense of recognition and empowerment. Crucially, a biographical analysis enables an understanding of this process by drawing upon young people’s sense-making of their life-stories as they form desirable identities. By explicitly drawing upon ­earlier experiences of exclusion, ridicule and a sense of ‘non-belonging’, the young people presented in their past, and particularly their present, ­resistance to undesirable identity-offers, and through this process, found other participatory contexts and positive identity-offers that were valuable to them in their identity-work and in establishing ‘the self ’. Amanda, for ­example, reported her early harassment in school for being a person of colour and marginalised. She resisted this identity-offer and position and, with support from the school, renegotiated to a position of which she is proud and which enabled her to begin to stabilise her identity. Marcus, too, recalled an earlier

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positioning and labelling that evoked feelings of shame and exclusion. Unlike Amanda, Marcus did not receive support from formal structures; nonetheless, he sought out a space where he could belong and start to compensate for his fractured identity through a new, preferred identity-offer (Deaux and Ethier, 1998; Laclau and Mouffe, 1985/2008). Betty had not had the same harmful experiences in her earlier life yet her biography illustrated a careful and deliberate engagement with desirable identity-offers, which aligned with her political and social values and which offered her a way to be who she wanted. In these terms, identity-offers are those roles in participatory spaces which are freely chosen. Some of the young people also explored ‘co-occuring’ or ‘multidimensional identities’ in their biographies (Arnett, 2002; Kramer, 2006; Sicakkan and Lithman, 2006). Mario, who presented himself as a musician, political ­activist, culture convenor and law student, engaged in a form of ­identity-work that fluctuated between identity-offers and was contingent upon his particular needs in a particular space. Nassine, on the other hand, rejected one identity completely in order to embrace an alternative identity-­ offer – that of a Muslim woman and wife. They both illustrate a desire to present a ‘new’ or more ‘diverse’ self, outside and away from their old contexts, by finding new spaces of belonging. Yuval-Davis (2006) stresses the importance of belonging to something beyond oneself – a collective that is part of identity-work but that may be fleeting and non-permanent. Identity-work in this respect reflects Bell’s (1999) dialectic process of ‘being’, ‘becoming’ and belonging’, where relationships of recognition in participatory settings play a crucial role. Identity-work in the young people’s narratives is also embedded in the structural opportunities (and constraints) which the young people experienced in their pasts and continued to experience in their present. Identity as an active social process is mediated by the way that young people position themselves, and are positioned, within social relations and within structural contexts. The search for recognition, belonging, empowerment and self-­ efficacy led to a more or less deliberate seeking out of participatory spaces in which the young people felt comfortable and valued, and often brought about a preference for identity-offers in formal or less formal spaces. The biographical constellations from which these activities emerged were complex and the motivations to engage with particular spaces and activities seemed to be driven by past experiences of contexts where they were marginalised: family of origin (e.g. Nassine and Marcus), school (e.g. Mario, Amanda and Marcus) and peer situations (e.g. Mario). Indeed, the young people reconstructed and centred identifiable situations, retrospectively, in which they were aware that they did not fit in. Rosenthal (2004) refers to such situations – or narrative constructions – as ‘biographical turning points’ (see also Chapter 10 of the current volume). These turning points refer to life events or structural conditions which the young people described as powerful constraints and

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current drivers. Mario, for example, felt excluded from peer contexts and school structures and was conflicted about education and formal spaces; later on, he created an alternative space where he felt more comfortable. Amanda was marginalised in her early life because of her ethnicity and gender and later engaged in social justice activism. The social relations which, then, informed the young people’s current engagement were also embedded in the structures with which they were previously and currently engaged, while young people utilised enabling and empowering structures to allow their identities to evolve. The extent to which the young people were able to be agentic within these structural conditions is also complex and varies between young people in terms of the identity-offers and positions available in participatory spaces, needs and desires for, and choices in, the present and an imagined future, and the young people’s feeling of self-efficacy and empowerment in their participation. Where young people had past experiences where they felt their agency was constrained or limited, they seemed to be less likely to construct an agentic narrative in the present around their identity-work and seemed to be more ambivalent than others in what they thought they could become. In narratives, participatory spaces that allowed for an identity reconstruction process, even within challenging structural constraints, offered a sense of empowerment to young people who had struggled in the past with agency and efficacy. In this sense, the young people ascribed meaning to spaces, and their roles within spaces, as they ‘became’ and belonged. The young people described their comfort in the roles that they had taken up and their capacity to ‘be themselves’ and ‘authentic’ within their participatory spaces. Using Risenfors’s (2014) ideas of becoming ‘the self ’ in a complex social world and being ‘the self ’ on one’s own terms by drawing on preferred identity-offers (and rejecting others), the biographies suggest that the young people here are engaged in a constant process of identity-work involving finding spaces of acceptance that reflect an agency developed from the past.

Meaning-making, identity-work and ‘the self ’ in participation biographies The data illustrate young people’s construction of participation in their narratives of identity-work and their purposeful engagement in participatory activities as part of their identity-work. By exploring their ­engagement with, or rejection of, identity-offers in their biographies, they secured, changed, renegotiated, repaired and/ or improved their identities as they ‘be’, ‘become’ and ‘belong’ and be ‘themselves’. The participation biographies as relationships between reconstructed biographies and participation (Schwanenflügel, 2015) were, therefore, key in young people’s identity-work, though the identities themselves were not fixed. Young people’s meaning-making in the context of participation biographies was concerned with how they

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made sense of and drew upon their past selves, considered their present and evolving selves, and set out their imagined and desired selves in the future. The function of participation in the young people’s identity-work depended on the experiences they had had in their lives, their sense of agency and ­efficacy now and their reflections on experiences so far and what they wanted for their future. Forming one’s identity was more radical identity-work for some young people than others and involved a ‘knifing off’ of previous identities (less stable as they often were) and adopting new, preferred identities. Other young people compensated for previous identities, experimented with identities in different spaces in the short or longer term, or found more stable identities. Making sense of the ‘the self ’ and their agency was key in the young people’s identity-work in the participatory spaces to which they were inclined. Meaning-making and identity-work manifest in different personal and social contexts (e.g. identity-stabilisation) in different spaces (e.g. formal to informal). Self-efficacy and a sense of ‘the self ’, both in its confident and struggling forms, emerge through purposeful and reciprocal interaction with institutions and structures, more or less freely chosen. In this sense, and unsurprisingly, no one young person’s biography is the same as another. Participation as a core element of narratives and i­dentitywork emerges from, and is informed by, a variety of constructions of ­experiences, motivations, needs, ambitions and desires, and a construction of the past, present and imagined future selves. The reconstructed dimensions of biographical meaning-making in the biographies do not suggest that participation is causally related to experiences or needs; rather, the analysis indicates that there are predominant ways that young people make sense of and attribute meaning to their participatory experiences that are relevant in their participation journeys. In other words, young people’s biographical experiences of participation manifest in ways that bring about an engagement that is itself always evolving and changing. In this way, ‘participation’ takes on a more profound impact on processes of becoming, belonging and recognition, illuminated by the analysis of reconstructed biographies.

References Arnett, J. (2002). The psychology of globalization. American Psychologist, 57, pp. 774–783. Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The Exercise of Control. New York, NY: W H ­Freeman/ Times Books/ Henry Holt & Co. Bauman, Z. (2004). Identity. Cambridge: Polity Press. Bell, V. (1999). Performativity and belonging: An introduction. Theory, Culture & Society, 16, pp. 1–10. Block, D. (2013). The structure and agency dilemma in identity and intercultural communication research AU – Block, David. Language and Intercultural Communication, 13(2), pp. 126–147.

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Deaux, K., and Ethier, K. A. (1998). Negotiating social identity. In: SwiM, J. K., and Stangor, C. (eds.) Prejudice: The Targets Perspective. San Diego, CA: Academic Press, pp. 302–321. Glaser, B. G., and Strauss, A. L. (1967). The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research. Chicago, IL: Aldine Publishing Company. Jenkins, R. (2008). Social Identity. London: Routledge. Kramer, R. M. (2006). Social capital and cooperative behavior in the workplace: A social identity perspective. In: Thye, S. R., and Lawer, E. J. (eds.) Social Psychology of the Workplace. Advances in Group Processes. Oxford: JAI Press, pp. 1–30. Laclau, E., and Mouffe, C. (1985/2008). Hegemony & Socialist Strategy. London: Verso. Lawler, S. (2014). Identity. Sociological Perspectives, (Second edition). Cambridge: Polity Press. Oyserman, D., Bybee, D., and Terry, K. (2006). Possible selves and academic outcomes: How and when possible selves impel action. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 59, pp. 112–125. Risenfors, S. (2014). Vara sig själv – identitetsformande bland ungdomar i gymnasiet. In: Sorbring, E., Andersson, Å., and Molin, M. (eds.) Att förstå ungdomars identitetsskapande. En inspirations- och metodbok. Stockholm: Liber, pp. 306–325. Rosenthal, G. (2004). Biographical research. In: Seale, C., Gobo, G., Gubrium, J., and Silverman, D. (eds.) Qualitative Research Practice. London: Sage, pp. 48–64. Schwanenflügel, L. V. (2015). Partizipationsbiographien Jugendlicher. Zur subjektiven ­B edeutung von Partiziaption im Kontext sozialer Ungleichheit. Wiesbaden: Springer VS. Sicakkan, H. G., and Lithman, Y. G. (2006). What Happens When a Society is Diverse: Exploring Multidimensional Identities. Lewiston, ME: Mellen. Yuval-Davis, N. (2006). Belonging and the politics of belonging. Patterns of Prejudice, 40(3), pp. 197–214.

Part III

Towards new ways of understanding and supporting youth participation

Chapter 12

Everyday pedagogies New perspectives on youth participation, social learning and citizenship Barry Percy-Smith, Nigel Patrick Thomas, Janet Batsleer and Torbjörn Forkby

Introduction A major contribution of the PARTISPACE research has been to broaden and deepen our understanding of what it means for young people to participate. The research shows us that, while young people may not be engaging in social, economic and political processes in ways that fit mainstream discourses, they are nonetheless actively participating by giving meaning to their lives and taking action together following their own visions and values. While their participation may sometimes engage with mainstream political processes and broader social issues (see Chapter 5), our research clearly shows the importance of everyday settings and issues rooted in their life worlds. This suggests that opportunities for democratic learning and participation are not solely dependent on formalised structures but also emerge from the actions and choices of young people themselves, as they reflexively engage with their social, political and environmental worlds through everyday acts of participation and citizenship (Moosa-Mitha, 2005; Isin, 2008; Percy-Smith, 2015). These insights into multiple, emerging and situationally specific forms of participation pose challenges for policy and practice in terms of inclusive citizenship and democratic participation, while also problematising the assumptions underlying traditional approaches to citizenship education (see Chapters 5 and 8). How can young people learn and develop the skills and capabilities of active citizenship within a context of often un-recognised forms of participation that emerge out of everyday life struggles and initiatives, especially when trust and belief in conventional mainstream political structures is in decline? While there is an expanding literature on the nature and scope of youth participation (Percy-Smith and Thomas, 2010; Ekman and Amnå, 2012; Loncle et al., 2012; Percy-Smith, 2015; Pilkington et al., 2017), less is understood of the ways in which participation evolves when it is led and shaped by young people. This chapter draws on learning from action research projects conducted with young people as part of the PARTISPACE research to explore the implications of young people’s changing forms of participation for innovating pedagogies of participation and citizenship. It aims to offer a new perspective

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on everyday pedagogies of youth participation understood as processes of situated social learning in action, as young people reflexively engage with and make sense of everyday contexts. This chapter begins by reviewing some critiques of citizenship education, introducing the ideas of Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR), and explaining how these were adopted (and adapted) in PARTISPACE. The main part of this chapter focuses on particular aspects of young people’s participation in the projects: the ways in which young people develop agency and capacity through experience; the significance of experimentation, creativity and ­emergence; reflexive learning and negotiation of boundaries; and relational practices of participatory social learning. This is followed by critical reflection on the role of adults in youth participation initiatives, and by the articulation of a new framework of situated participatory learning for citizenship.

Pedagogies of participation and the challenge of education for citizenship There has been an extended and significant discussion in the discipline of education which challenges the idea of citizenship education as a practice which attempts to transmit received notions of citizenship through a formal curriculum. Following the influential work of Biesta and colleagues (Biesta et  al., 2009; Wildemeersch, 2014), attention has focused on what contexts support citizenship learning, the relationships in which it is fostered and the dispositions towards enquiry and experimentation that need to be supported. It has been recognised that practices of democratic learning occur as much outside as inside school, and that networks which support it may be engaged in non- and informal ways in situated social learning and communities of practice which enable democracy. In the consequent exploration of the networks of everyday practice in which citizenship learning might be said to occur, there has been a further recognition that children and young people should not be seen as ‘not-yet-­ citizens’ but as fellow citizens, as they are a part of the same network (in which citizenship learning is occurring) as enfranchised others. Learning moves in more than one direction within a complex network and is not situated only in the child or young person. There are important links here with the development of claims for children as equal citizens which have developed in the literature on children’s participation (see Jans, 2004; Cockburn, 2013). More recently, thinkers in the field have problematised social learning, emphasising the importance of an orientation towards the public and asking why a consensus orientation so frequently develops when democratic learning is framed as social learning (Biesta, De Bie and Wildemeersch, 2014). Despite a traditional underpinning of professional youth work practice in terms of education and democracy based on experiential learning (cf. Dewey, 1938) in some national contexts (Batsleer, 2008), participation is often

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manifest as a structured process of socialisation into the status quo, with little space for autonomy and self-determination of young people (Percy-Smith and Thomas, 2010). As Bentley (1998: 6) argues: Young people are not empty vessels waiting to be filled with the wisdom of ages. From the earliest age they begin to convert their experiences into assumptions and theories about the world […] But […] instruction encourages them to place what they learn in a narrowly-bounded category, failing to give them the means to compare [with] other assumptions and experiences that make up their world view. The ability to reflect critically on their world, and their position in it, is central to the struggle for many young people as they seek to find their position as equal and active citizens. Reflecting critically on experience is also central to participatory action research processes and as such has been increasingly recognised as a valuable approach in youth research (see, for example, ­Cammarota and Fine, 2008).

Youth participatory action research Action research is commonly understood as a process of participatory learning in action, in which participants are involved as co-researchers in a process of critical inquiry with a view to bringing about change (Weil, 1998; ­McTaggart et  al., 2017). Carr and Kemmis (1986: 162) state that: ‘Action research is simply a form of self-reflective inquiry undertaken by participants in social situations in order to improve […] their own practices, their understanding of these practices and the situations in which the practices are carried out’. While action research tends to be facilitated by an external ­researcher, Participatory Action Research (PAR) is initiated by the participants (Reason and Bradbury, 2001; Cahill, 2007). Researchers and activists have increasingly recognised the value of PAR as an approach to participatory learning and change with young people, known as YPAR (McIntyre, 2000; Cammarota and Fine, 2008; Caraballo et al., 2017). Drawing on critical youth studies, Quijada Cerecer et al. (2013) interpret YPAR as providing a critical praxis for policy makers and educators to value knowledge created with young people in collaboration and action to challenge research, policy and educational reform. Cammarota and Fine (2008) similarly see YPAR as a pedagogy of transformational resistance in which ‘young people resist the normalization of systematic oppression by undertaking their own engaged praxis – critical and collective inquiry, reflection and action focused on ‘reading’ and speaking back to the reality of the world, their world’ (ibid.: 1–2). They argue that through critical learning, young people can contest and reconstruct pedagogical discourses and norms: ‘By attaining knowledge for resistance and transformation, young people c­ reate their own sense of efficacy in

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the world and address the social ­conditions that ­impede liberation and positive, healthy development’ (ibid.: 9–10). In this sense, YPAR is both an emancipatory discourse and an approach to r­ esearch. While there are an increasing number of empirical studies addressing the methodological challenges of YPAR (see, for example, Rodriguez and Brown, 2009; Kim, 2016; Burke et al., 2017), there is relatively little empirical evidence of the ways in which young people self-organise, engage and learn participation in these contexts.

The PARTISPACE action research projects The overall PARTISPACE project included a phase of action research, intended to provide a space for young people to explore and give meaning to their participation on their own terms. We were acutely aware of the constraints of undertaking an action research process within a time-limited EU project with prescribed deliverables, but we tried to honour the fundamental PAR principle of valuing the expert knowledge of the young people we were researching. Our intentions were to provide opportunities for young people to explore and articulate their own understanding of participation experientially through undertaking their own projects on issues and questions they identified as important to them. We hoped to observe how young people mobilise, organise and respond to issues that concern them, and so to understand more about how they develop and make sense of their own forms of participation and learning for citizenship, an objective we hoped would also be beneficial for young people. The overall research questions in this phase were: 1 How do young people construct meanings of participation from their own experience? 2 How can young people realise different forms of participation in action? 3 What affects whether and how young people participate in these ways? 4 How might young people develop understanding about how to enhance the way they participate in society? Eighteen participatory action research projects were undertaken across the eight cities; 13 emerged from earlier ethnographic local case studies and were founded on existing relationships with the research team, while five were with new groups (see Chapter 1). Projects developed differently, some being almost totally youth-led while others involved extensive discussion with ­PARTISPACE researchers. The relationship between adult researchers and young people varied according to the experience of the researchers and their personal styles, as well as the readiness of young people to take the initiative. While some projects progressed relatively easily, some faced obstacles, and a few came to a halt because of young people’s other commitments. The projects took different shapes according to young people’s interests. We identified the following types of purpose: struggles for inclusion and

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justice, finding solutions to social problems, articulating their own values and identities, encouraging others to participate. Some projects followed a classical action research model, characterised by cycles of reflection and action, while others were more about simply getting something done and learning from the experience. In reality, most projects could be seen as ‘quasi’ action research. Certainly, all the projects enabled learning both from the process and from the outcomes, together with some wider reflections on youth participation (Table 12.1). All the projects involved discussions between professional researchers and young people to reflect on their experience, the significance of what they had done and what they had learned about the different ways they had participated. In most cases, young people were supported with finance and logistics. Table 12.1  A ction research projects grouped by project aims Project Struggles for inclusion and justice Hidden (arts project by young refugees on their life situation) Islamic Youth Association (project by young Muslims in Italy) Solidarity with Refugees (organisation cum humanitarian aid for refugees) The Box (arts project by homeless young people on their life situation) Articulating values and identities Free Sport Association (charity project of young free sports activists) Political and Cultural Centre (documentation of selforganisation process) the Drama Group (process of self-organisation) Hoodboys (video project on meaning of graffiti) Hip Hop group (self-organisation as band and production of songs) Finding solutions to social problems Youth Entrepreneurship Foundation (urban regeneration of waste land) Youth Rights Association (workshop on youth participation) Manchester Young Researchers (research, campaign on homelessness) Girls Group (research, campaign on bullying) Youth workers (self-organisation of training) Peer activation and engagement Political Youth Association (research, campaign on self-organisation) Party Youth Section (research, video on political orientations of youth) Partirennes (research on meaning of youth participation) L’Eprouvette (video on young people’s views of participation)

City

Manchester Bologna Eskis¸ehir Manchester

Gothenburg Frankfurt Gothenburg Frankfurt Frankfurt

Plovdiv Eskis¸ehir Manchester Zurich Eskis¸ehir Zurich Plovdiv Rennes Rennes

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In contrast to the ethos in PAR of not imposing outcomes, as a result of prescribed deliverables in our EU project, each city team was expected to submit a video film from the action research, together with self-­documentation by the young people. National reports were produced drawing on learning from each project, including documentation and outputs produced by young people, as well as observations and reflections from the research teams. This paper draws on secondary analysis of the national reports (see McMahon et al., 2018). In what follows and in line with the ethics of PAR, we privilege the experiences and learning in these projects, rather than seek to fit a priori theories and frameworks. We acknowledge an element of selection and filtering that occurs in any writing from empirical data.

Changing contexts: youth participation and learning in action In the following sections, we discuss four key themes that emerged from the action research projects and that illuminate the ways in which young people learn to participate as citizens through their experience of action together, when they are able to define and control the practice. These are: developing agency and capability through experience; spaces for autonomy, experimentation and emergence; reflexive learning and negotiation of boundaries; and participation as relational practice. Developing agency and capability through experience

Previous chapters have demonstrated how young people may readily participate through their own styles and spaces and according to their own agenda. Participation in everyday contexts provides opportunities for young people to engage in ways that are relevant to their immediate lives and in alignment with individual and group interests, in terms of expressions of values and lifestyle choices as well as through contribution to decision-making and change processes. In everyday contexts, these different aims of participation play out through young people’s spontaneous action, making decisions about what they do as they do it. In this way, we can conceive of youth participation as situated learning and action. A common characteristic in many forms of youth participation is to embark on some form of participation without necessarily having a clear plan of action, only that there is an issue or problem to ­address. This involves learning through action: exploring issues, coming up with plans, perhaps trying them out, revisiting the problem, creating new plans, taking action, encountering difficulties and finding ways to resolve these. The following extract captures the dynamics of a project that a group of young ­people in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, embarked upon as they sought to mobilise ­students in turning urban derelict land into something useable.

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The students established that though the school was state owned and subjected to the Ministry of Education, the land on which it was built and which included the schoolyard was public municipal property so any action directed at renovation should involve two more stakeholders: the principal of the school and the Municipal Council. The next stage of the process supposed another wider meeting with school students, to determine which ideas for renovation could be gathered and which of them would really make young people interested and ready to join the whole activity. Establishing a skate park on the spot emerged as the most ­debated idea during the brainstorming session. While some of the participants argued that it would be unique for the schools in the city, especially against the backdrop of lacking so many such places at all in the city, and thus would attract serious attention, others warned about supposed too high costs of the whole enterprise. A more consensual idea was posed – creating a park area which would not cost so much because plenty of the work (cleaning, planting trees and flowers, etc.) could be done by the students themselves and could involve different place uses. In the end, a recreational park with various facilities dependent on the opportunities and the funding set up as the plan to be followed. (Action research report, Plovdiv) These types of participation offer opportunities for learning in real time about participation for change. Through taking responsibility for a project, young people can learn through the experience, both by confronting the real complexities of struggling for change and through realising their own abilities in practice. This means becoming aware of limits to their agency, but also learning sometimes that they can do more than they thought, by using their power and creativity in responding to problems. In the project with Manchester Young Researchers, most of the young people had experience participating as part of a formal youth representative forum and acknowledged that they derived many benefits from this. At the same time, they expressed frustration about how the representation operated and a sense that their participation was somewhat constrained by its agenda. They were highly motivated to make use of an opportunity to self-organise (in response to the issue of youth homelessness that they had voted was most important for them), but without the formal youth representation structure were also faced with the reality of what was entailed in participating in change processes. As one young person said, Participation is a process and is about learning, ever learning … finding out the best thing to do as we do it, about the challenges and not meeting deadlines and how that affects things, and solving problems as they come up. (Young person, Manchester Young Researchers)

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While facing dilemmas in seeking to participate, these opportunities for experiential learning were valued and embraced as part of the rich tapestry of participation driven by and for young people themselves. Part of the learning in these projects involved bridging the gap between their visions and ideas and what was realistic and achievable in practice as the ­Bulgarian research team reflected with regard to one of their action research projects with the youth section of a political party: The group wanted to deal with an all-encompassing problem of how to overcome political apathy of young people. This was a live issue that was often discussed. We tried to direct them towards a more concrete research problem which would be more manageable within the resources available. As a result of the action research the political party group reframed their general question as ‘Is it possible to turn efforts combatting political apathy into a genuinely mobilizing cause for more and more young people?’ (Action research report, Plovdiv) They learned that there is complexity in change projects involving the need to engage different stakeholders, and that such projects take time, for example, dealing with administrative processes. In the case above, the project leaders reflected on how implementing plans depends on the ‘eagerness and will for inclusion of the whole community, and the cooperation of the authorities’ (Young person, Youth Entrepreneurship Foundation, Plovdiv). This also involved understanding the practices, priorities and procedures of the authorities. Through these different forms of experiential learning, young people exercise, and derive a sense of, empowerment from practice. As one of the researchers involved in the action research project with the youth section of the political party in Plovdiv reflected: The practical conviction of possibility of change through one’s own efforts is among the best outcomes of action research projects. Thus, the young may move from the phase of being only critical of politics and ready to leave the country to organized group attempts at changing the way politics is done in the country and in the city. (Action research report, Plovdiv) Spaces for autonomy, experimentation and emergence

Earlier chapters provide evidence for how young people use and appropriate spaces with their own styles and agenda (see especially Chapters 6, 7 and 9). Similarly, learning from the participatory action research projects provides insights into the importance for young people having freedom to engage in

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different modes of participation. In the context of change projects, young people value having space to be independent, experimental and creative: I like how we have the freedom, we don’t get controlled by it … the council can be a bit tokenistic, like we have something on the agenda then someone high up puts something on the agenda. We just want the chance of being independent … it’s important to have independence – it’s a learning curve. (Young person, Manchester Young Researchers) This means having the power to decide both how they engage and what they engage in. Personal agency and empowerment are facilitated through young people having the opportunity for autonomous participation and self-­determination. Informal and non-formal contexts can often enable such autonomous participation to happen more easily for young people, as they provide spaces not controlled by adult agendas and more formalised processes, as in the case of a drama group by young people in Gothenburg. The Drama Group engaged in the action research project because it wanted to shift away from participating within the formal structure of the Culture school, towards participation characterized by self-initiation and self-management. In so doing, the action research project they devised involved a creative process (the play) and a process of learning how structures work (for becoming independent). (Action research report, Gothenburg) There was no pre-defined method for how young people participated. We saw pragmatism, spontaneity and emergence as they developed their projects. This was a journey without a ‘satnav’, where decisions and actions emerged organically from everyday conversation and engagement. Young people demonstrate a rich imagination in establishing various activities and connect them in a coherent way. (Action research report, Plovdiv) There is a fluidity to young people’s participation, seen here as an exploratory and experimental process. The case of a project of solidarity with refugees in Eskis¸ehir, Turkey, reveals that young people are constantly in a dynamic process of situated social learning and action, intertwined as an expression of Freire’s praxis (1970): The project wanted to offer health, rights and language workshops to refugees, but there were difficulties accessing refugee groups and gaining trust. The group members realised that speaking language of refugees

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contributed to building trust relationships. So they organised street food, music concert, language, health and rights workshops to make connections with refugees. In this case through the language courses the participants developed a level of language competence to enable them to shop, use amenities and talk to locals and thus helped them integrate and participate in the city. (Action research report, Eskis¸ehir) Central to many projects was a desire to raise awareness and communicate the realities of young people’s situations. There is something powerful for young people in just communicating who they are, rather than necessarily seeking to influence decision-making. This is participation as a struggle for recognition, a desire to communicate lived realities and values, be recognised and valued – in Honneth’s (1995) terms, as a unique individual, as a person with the right to respect and as someone with a contribution to make (see also Chapter 13). This is not so much about representing different interests or perspectives, but young people as active citizens, contributing to the social fabric of the city through their activities. For some groups, participation was not about change processes but about expressions of their values in the form of sub-cultural styles through appropriation of particular spaces. Expressing themselves through artistic and cultural forms seemed to allow more scope for self-learning and identity development. For example, graffiti groups offer both a symbol of belonging and a language for telling their story. In other cases, struggles for recognition emerged in the form of striving for citizenship rights, justice or care, for example, by refugees and asylum seekers, or young homeless people (see also Chapters 8 and 9). Reflexive learning and negotiation of boundaries

Participation is not a process of articulating fixed views and actions according to normative expectations, but one of action-oriented learning as young people position themselves between what may appear contradictory forces (insider and outsider positions; difference and acceptance; individual and collective meaning; self-determination and support; informal and formal processes; life worlds and systems; freedom and structure). These are the focal points for learning and change, expressed through dynamic interaction within and between groups. How young people reconcile these oppositions depends on the practices and choices they make to question, accept, transgress or confirm boundaries of groups, spaces, situations and identities. Changes within group dynamics are characterised by learning in terms of different modes of participation such as balancing, struggling, negotiating with society and within the group, working on boundaries and taking risks. (Action research report, Frankfurt)

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One of the more explicit ways in which young people experienced transformational learning was through sharing and reflecting on personal experiences as a group. For example, the project of the Islamic Youth Association in Bologna used a lantern activity and ‘narrative circle’ to share experiences of being both Muslim and Italian, so constructing a stronger sense of the role of the group in their life. As one participant reflected: I don’t know, maybe now I’m feeling I know a little better the people I meet every Saturday, people who before they let us enter in a private sphere of their life, maybe wouldn’t have normally told us; you feel more like in a family, isn’t it? Then, a moment of trust occurred. I mean, you need to trust to tell a part of yourself as we did. Maybe in another place I probably wouldn’t have told what I told. I felt comfortable at that time. Actually, I said [during the activity] I feel comfortable at the IYA. And that activity helped a lot. (Young person, Islamic Youth Association, Bologna) This highlights the value of having ‘safe and comfortable’ spaces to share and explore together; it also exemplifies the power of learning in what Kemmis (2001) refers to as ‘communicative action spaces’ that provide opportunities for participatory social learning for group members at the interfaces of systems and life worlds. Par ticipation as relational practice

A key aspect of participation concerns how groups function, how decisions are made, roles and responsibilities allocated, different contributions valued and leadership manifested. In the action research projects, a recurring theme was how young people organise and function as a group. In contrast to the assumption that adults or professionals are best placed to provide opportunities for democratic learning and participation, participant observation of how young people organise to solve problems together, lead and are led, offers evidence and insight that can inform the development of participation pedagogies. Many groups showed a democratic orientation towards consensus and avoidance of hierarchy, a commitment to share power, respect each other’s contributions and engage in collective processes. Such horizontal power relations were not always easy to sustain; in many projects, individuals emerged ‘naturally’ as leaders, often acting in ways that mirrored adult leadership of young people’s groups. This occurred when there was a need to encourage the group to keep momentum. Ascribed and claimed leadership roles sometimes emerged out of struggles within the group as individuals searched for identity and recognition. Leadership may change over time and according to tasks, or there may be a consistent leader. However, in several projects,

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once one young person stepped forward, they then became the initiator of all activities. Explicitly defined roles and incentives sometimes seemed important for young people. In one project, a young person took a parodic stance of pretend leadership – perhaps in reaction to feeling not in control of things. However, for the most part, young people evidenced a commitment to fairness, inclusion and democracy, ‘puzzling together’ by utilising the ideas and problem-solving potential of the whole group, as in an arts-based project in Rennes, France: Relationships were characterised by a climate of trust and conviviality; roles and decisions in some projects were organised on the basis of skills and responsibilities resulting in some members of the group being more invisible and less forthcoming than others. (Action research report, Rennes) While some groups were highly task-focused, others were more concerned with their own dynamics. Participation for the group of the Political Cultural Centre in Frankfurt, Germany, was summarised as follows: The work has been a lot about the degree and enthusiasm of individual involvement, group dynamics, the goal of group cohesion and personal development and identity work – sometimes in conflict, sometimes in harmony. (Action research report, Frankfurt) A common characteristic across many groups was the importance of fun and friendship, even when dealing with important issues, reflecting an inherent sociality in young people’s participation. One young person of the Islamic Youth Association in Bologna reflected: We dealt with serious issues, but, when you usually deal with serious issues you stay sitting, you are serious, you talk one at a time. Sometimes it could get boring. Here we did it in a very funny way, differently from what we usually do. We created the lanterns, with a story on each face. We felt more intimate. (Young person, Islamic Youth Association, Bologna) For the most part, projects were self-directing. In contrast to the expectations of some researchers, many young people identified the importance of having a professional to provide support, encouragement and sometimes suggestions and ideas. The extent to which participation is seen as a relational practice, therefore, is also influenced by the way in which adults engage with young people when they participate. This is explored further in the following section.

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Reflections on adult roles in youth participation The experience of working on these projects was itself an instructive one for the research team, coming from a wide range of professional backgrounds – some in youth work or social work, others solely in academic disciplines, and from a range of methodological traditions. In moving into the facilitator role, researchers experienced directly some of the tensions and dilemmas familiar to youth workers when striving to facilitate young people’s autonomy and self-expression. When does one lead, when step back? How does one decide whether to intervene with a suggestion or warning, or to let young people learn from experience? When is adult understanding of the wider world valuable to share, and when is young people’s knowledge of their own world more salient? The researchers also had objectives and deadlines for project deliverables, which did not necessarily fit with the natural flow of young people’s projects and availability; this is also a constraint experienced by youth workers, who may be answerable to funders or employers for delivering certain outputs. It was necessary to move beyond a dichotomy of ‘adult-led’ versus ‘youthled’ approaches, to explore a middle ground involving varying degrees of collaboration. There are examples of adults offering contributions which were taken up by young people, and others where they were not. In some cases, adults were expressly asked for their input. It is arguable that who initiates an idea becomes irrelevant as long as young people are able to re-animate it. Participatory practice, as a post-positivist form of knowledge production (Gibbons et al., 1994), is not hierarchical but involves all participants being free to challenge the thinking and practice of others. Notwithstanding the paradox of operating ‘youth-led’ processes in the context of a wider project whose boundaries and outputs had been determined by adults, within the space provided young people had a degree of freedom to use the opportunity as they wished and to call on adult support as they saw fit. Often, in processes that purport to be participatory, the researcher or professional actually determines the agenda. In these projects, we tried to create a situation where young people could exercise power in determining their own projects and learning together with researchers. This led researchers to question their own position, reflected in comments and reflections that showed ambivalence in different ways. In post-positivist participatory approaches (Gibbons et  al., 1994; Wildemeersch et  al., 1998; Reason and ­Bradbury, 2001), effective practice is understood by the extent to which those involved can exercise power in challenging others and influencing what happens. While this is not a problem for some young people, for others, power differentials between generations may be difficult to overcome. In such cases, the imperative is on adults, conscious of inequalities, to adopt a more facilitative approach. Ambivalence about when to intervene is especially sharp when adults perceive young people to be developing plans that present difficulties or promise

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little value in terms of the young people’s ambitions. While there may be good reasons for letting young people ‘try and fail’, this may lead to them feeling let down: young people in one project felt frustrated because they did not receive the feedback they needed from professionals on their plans for a handbook for youth workers, so that they inadvertently duplicated existing work. While young people do want more freedom to pursue their own ideas and have control and influence, this does not always mean they want to be just ‘left to get on with it’. On the contrary, these projects show that young people definitely seek appropriate support from adults and value the interaction with adults in collaborative processes. This invites a rethinking of professional practice in relation to young people’s participation (Percy-Smith and Weil, 2003; Mannion, 2007; Fitzgerald et al., 2010). Youth-adult relationships are fluid, changing with situations, objectives and capabilities. When young people have a clear vision and can see how to achieve it, there may be a limited role for adults. However, when young people have a general aim but need support with resources or difficulties, or simply want to learn from others’ ideas, adult roles are more present. Both young people and adults may seek to develop collaborative approaches, regardless of who initiated the project. Relationships and power issues work out in ways that are not inevitable or easily predictable, but involve more complex dynamics dependent on context and the capabilities and aims of both adults and young people. The involvement of adults is not something to be encouraged or discouraged as a general rule, but rather to be negotiated in particular acts of participation by those involved. Participation is about the negotiation of intersubjectivities in situated social contexts as critically reflexive practice, as reflected in critical accounts of youth work as a pedagogy of informal learning (Percy-Smith and Weil, 2003; Fielding, 2006; Batsleer, 2008; Fitzgerald et al., 2010). This speaks to the idea of participation as a learning process that has emerged from this project. It means that adult researchers are free to offer ideas from their perspective, and young people are free to respond as they feel appropriate. In this, reflection and learning are central and integrated parts of participatory practice, not just consequences of action. The experience of these projects shows that young people do not necessarily assume that adults will be oppressive and controlling. On the contrary, they value collaborative relationships with adults, but prefer to negotiate the quality of these relationships in respect to openness, equality and resourcefulness. We can identify four different stances of collaborative involvement of adults: •

Invited input – where young people invite contributions and input from adult-professionals: What you [researchers] can actually leave to us – and I think I am speaking on behalf of all – is a way for succeeding in involving people more during our meetings, because people are often bored, lose easily their attention … and you, for instance, being

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sociologist … If you had some suggestions to improve our meetings it would be a great contribution. (Young person, Islamic Youth Association, Bologna) •

•

Offered input – where adults make a contribution based on observing a need, with no influence on whether and how their input is used: ‘The young people rarely sought our advice but they accepted most of our suggestions. They are more used to working with adults in a more ­power-sharing relation’ (Action research report, Plovdiv). Co-inquiry-based practice – where adults and young people work together on joint endeavours involving mutual learning: Even though there was a question of hierarchy and power in the ARP it always seemed like both sides respected the wishes and needs of the other but also had a position on what is possible or not. The fact that some of our suggestions were easily dismissed by the young participants showed they see us not as authorities but as equals. (ibid.)

•

Facilitated action research – where adults facilitate a process of participatory learning for change, but without seeking to promote a particular agenda: ‘Support for participation emerged as being crucial, highlighting the importance of a “facilitating” role rather than orienting young people to our own conceptions’ (Action research report, Rennes).

However, changing conventional roles and identities is not always easy, as reflected here: We opted to ‘give the floor’ to the young people, attempting to reduce as much as possible our ‘adult’ and ‘expert’ power to define, to speak, to decide ‘on behalf of ’ the youngsters. Nevertheless, we are aware of the fact that is somehow impossible to give up completely with our position (and our power), as ‘adults’ and as ‘omniscient researchers’, even though keeping a constant attention in trying to build non-hierarchical relationships among us. (Action research report, Bologna)

Innovating pedagogies: new perspectives on learning in and for participation We have looked at examples of participatory activity where young people more or less take the lead and construct their own forms of participation as they participate. From the reflections of researchers taking a ‘youth worker’ role, we have also seen how the position of adults in these processes is complex and ambivalent. This suggests that it is adults as much as young people

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who need to ‘learn to participate’, and enables us to look in a more nuanced way at what may constitute pedagogy in relation to participatory practice. While there remains a place for more formal educational inputs, it is crucial to attend to what happens when people learn together through practice. Rather than being compartmentalised as ‘citizenship education’, pedagogy can then be embedded in an ontological process of becoming a citizen, which may include making claims through acts of citizenship (Isin, 2008). Rather than adults teaching young people as a preparation for citizenship, citizenship is learned and shaped through concrete experience and praxis. At its best this involves young people and adults/professionals engaging in a mutual process of learning together. We propose here a framework for constructing a new pedagogy of participatory citizenship education. The aim is to identify the different modes of citizenship action and suggest examples of the types of learning that are typically central in each mode. This, we contend, better reflects the multifaceted character of participation and citizenship in practice, and the different kinds of learning that this practice demands. It should be emphasised that these are not watertight compartments; the modes overlap, and different types of learning may be relevant in more than one mode (Table 12.2). Developing this kind of pedagogic approach requires a different kind of relationship between young people and adults/professionals. Giving more power to young people does not mean giving them all the power; our research shows that professionals still have an important role to play: providing support and encouragement, as a critical friend or guide, as a mediator between young people and institutions and as a helper when barriers and pitfalls appear. This signals the need for a new social contract that repositions young people in society as diverse but equal citizens with meaningful

Table 12.2  A framework for pedagogies of participation Mode of citizenship action

Learning type

Learning in and for participation in formal decision-making Contesting status and hierarchies through direct action and conflict Becoming a citizen

Curriculum-based citizenship education

Learning from being a citizen Struggles for citizenship, rights and justice Finding one’s own solutions

Dialogue and deliberation, situated social learning, critically reflexive learning, communicative action Developing critical consciousness, critical education and action, participatory social learning and identity work Experiential learning, critical reflection, ‘legitimate peripheral participation’ Personal and community learning Creative innovation and critical inquiry

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contributions to make. It is necessary to shift professional identities and ­practices away from the ‘­expert’ who directs to the interpretive, reflexive, social pedagogue who facilitates, supports and enables – ideally, one versed in collaborative approaches to co-inquiry that can enable youth participation as a joint enterprise. For, of course, there are no spaces free from power. All spaces are permeated with power relations, so that power is also needed to navigate in these, especially for groups who are struggling for recognition, trying to put new questions on the public agenda or to construct a space for their collective identities. Young people have much experience of adults trying to direct or educate them; a youth worker never enters an empty scene, but always an arena that is structured by rules, scripts and expectations. Workers who aim to develop a new role or way of working must start from understanding these existing structures, this habitus. In practice, this process, we suggest, demands three things: availability, connectedness and craftsmanship. Availability means that the worker is close at hand so that young people find it easy to ask for help, support and guidance when needed, without imposing. As has been seen throughout the PARTISPACE research, young people do not want to be (and do not flourish when they are) left completely to their own devices. ­Connectedness means a readiness to establish social bonds with the young people, while also being connected to other networks and sources of power that can potentially help young people to achieve their goals. By craftsmanship we mean a gradual refinement of the professional’s fine-tuned sense of how to respond to a particular group, how to adapt to and support in a ­certain phase of the work, when and how to intervene and so on. This may be experienced as intuition, or in Bourdieu’s (1998) term to have a ‘feel for the game’. In youth work literature, there is a concept of ‘accompaniment’: this too suggests a feel for a practice that is often unspoken, yet rehearsed, attentive and collaborative (Batsleer, 2008).

Conclusion There is a paradox in youth participation. While there is profound concern about the perceived marginalisation and alienation of young people, the response may be either a drive to involve them in highly structured settings which further alienate them, or a contrasting emphasis on youth-led processes which, while they may be more acceptable to many young people, tend to reinforce their separation from adult society. Although young people often choose to participate within their own groups, they also actively seek collaboration and engagement with adults and professionals, in a democratic space. In fostering inclusion and democratic involvement, we need to understand youth participation in conjunction with, rather than apart from, wider society. Cooperation and dialogue between young people and adult-­professionals are essential if young people are to achieve a sense of inclusion as equal citizens.

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This may mean introducing young people into adult-professional settings, or adults into young people’s worlds, or establishing co-constructed spaces. Mutual learning through doing together can be conceptualised as an alternative approach to participation emerging from this work. Some of this work is already under way as a direct outcome of the research discussed here, in the shape of a training module developed to share learning from the PARTISPACE research with practitioners (Percy-Smith et al., 2018). Key learning aims include ‘To reflect critically on issues of power, autonomy and control in participatory groups and activities involving young people’ and ‘To achieve a better understanding of the role of the worker in supporting young people’s participation and autonomous action’. The module encourages ‘participatory practice’ approaches, based on principles of democratic learning, co-inquiry, participatory social learning and reflexivity, shifting the role of the worker from ‘expert’ to facilitator. Participation is a learning process in which individuals gradually develop their capabilities to participate through practice. Learning for participation should not be interpreted simply as citizenship education in schools, but as a lived practice in all areas of the young person’s life. Many young people find that tightly structured settings such as schools restrict their ability to participate fully; in contrast, settings that give freedom to young people to exercise agency can offer more meaningful spaces for participation. There is a need to challenge ‘fixed outcome’ approaches to projects that can hamper creativity and even undermine the project intentions, and instead to focus on creating and supporting free spaces where young people can explore, experiment, exercise their creativity, articulate their ideas and express their values as autonomous and self-determining citizens.

References Batsleer, J. (2008). Informal Learning in Youth Work. London: Sage. Bentley, T. (1998). Learning beyond the Classroom: Education for a Changing World. ­L ondon: Routledge. Biesta, G., Lawy, R., and Kelly, N. (2009). Understanding young people’s citizenship learning in everyday life: The role of contexts, relationships and dispositions. ­Education, Citizenship and Social Justice, 4(1), pp. 5–24. Biesta, G., de Bie, M., and Wildemeersch, D. (eds.) (2014). Civic Learning, Democratic Citizenship and the Public Sphere. Netherlands: Springer. Bourdieu, P. (1998). On the Theory of Action. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Burke, K. J., Greene, S., and McKenna, M. K. (2017). Youth voice, Civic engagement and failure in participatory action research. Urban Review, 49, pp. 585–601. Cahill, C. (2007). Doing research with young people: Participatory research and the rituals of collective work. Children’s Geographies, 5(3), pp. 297–312. Cammarota, J., and Fine, M. (eds.) (2008). Revolutionizing Education: Youth Participatory Action Research in Motion. New York, NY: Routledge. Caraballo, L., Lozenski, B. D., Lyiscott, J. J., and Morrell, E. (2017). YPAR and critical epistemologies: Rethinking education research. Review of Research in Education, 41, pp. 311–336.

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Carr, W., and Kemmis, S. (1986). Becoming Critical: Education, Knowledge and Action Research. London: Routledge Falmer. Cockburn, T. (2013). Rethinking Children’s Citizenship. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Dewey, J. (1938). Experience and Education. Indianapolis, IN: Kappa Delta Pi. Ekman, J., and Amnå, E. (2012). Political participation and civic engagement: ­Towards a new typology. Human Affairs, 22, pp. 283–300. Fielding, M. (2006). Leadership, radical student engagement and the necessity of ­person-centre education. International Journal of Leadership in Education, 9(4), pp. 299–313. Fitzgerald, R., Graham, A., Smith, A., and Taylor, N. (2010). Children’s participation as a struggle over recognition: Exploring the promise of dialogue. In: Percy-Smith, B., and Thomas, N. (eds.) A Handbook of Children’s Participation: ­Perspectives from Theory and Practice. London: Routledge. Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Gibbons, M., Limoges, C., Nowotny, H., and Trow, M. (1994). The New Production of Knowledge: The Dynamics of Science and Research in Contemporary Societies. London: Sage. Honneth, A. (1995). The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts. Cambridge: Polity Press. Isin, E. (2008). Acts of Citizenship. London: Zed Books. Jans, M. (2004). Children as citizens: Towards a contemporary notion of child ­participation. Childhood, 11(1), pp. 27–44. Kemmis, S. (2001). Exploring the relevance of critical theory for action research, emancipatory action research in the footsteps of Jürgen Habermas. In: Reason, P., and Bradbury, H. (eds.) The Handbook of Action Research, Participative Inquiry and Practice. London: Sage, pp. 91–102. Kim, J. (2016). Youth involvement in Participatory Action Research (PAR): ­Challenges and barriers. Critical Social Work, 17(1), pp. 38–53. Loncle, P., Cuconato, M., Muniglia,V., and Walther, A. (eds.) (2012). Youth Participation in Europe Youth Participation in Europe: Beyond Discourses, Practices and Realities. Bristol: Policy Press. Mannion, G. (2007). Going spatial, going relational: Why listening to children and children’s participation needs reframing. Discourse, 28(3), pp. 405–420. McIntyre, A. (2000). Constructing meaning about violence, school and community, participatory action research with urban youth. The Urban review, 32(2), pp. 123–154. McMahon, G., Percy-Smith, B., Thomas, N., Bečević, Z., Liljeholm ­H ansson, S., and Forkby, T. (2018). Young People’s Participation: Learning from Action Research in Eight European Cities. PARTISPACE Project report, doi:10.5281/ zenodo.1240227. McTaggart, R., Nixon, R., and Kemmis, S. (2017). Critical participatory action research. In: Rowell, L., Shosh, J., Bruce, C., and Riel, M. (eds.) Palgrave International Handbook of Action Research. United States: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 21–36. Moosa-Mitha, M. (2005). A difference-centred alternative to theorization of children’s citizenship rights. Citizenship Studies, 9(4), pp. 369–388. doi:10.1080/ 13621020500211354. Percy-Smith, B. (2015). Negotiating active citizenship: Young people’s participation in everyday spaces. In: Kallio, K. P., and Mills, S. (eds.) ‘Geographies of Politics, Citizenship and Rights’. London: Springer.

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Percy-Smith, B., and Thomas, N. (eds.) (2010). Handbook of Children’s Participation: Perspectives from Theory and Practice. London: Routledge. Percy-Smith, B., Thomas, N., Becevic, Z., and Pitti, I. (2018). Youth Participation Training Module. PARTISPACE deliverable 7.2. Zenodo. doi:10.5281/zenodo.1240342. Percy-Smith, B., and Weil, S. (2003). Practice-based research as development: ­Innovation and empowerment in youth intervention initiatives using collaborative action inquiry. In: Bennett, A., Cieslik, M., and Miles, S. (eds.) Researching Youth. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 66–85. Pilkington, H., Pollock, G., and Franc, R. (eds.) (2017). Understanding Youth Participation Across Europe: From Survey to Ethnography. London: Springer. Quijada Cerecer, D. A., Cahill, C., and Bradley, M. (2013). Toward a critical youth policy praxis: Critical youth studies and participatory action research. Theory into Practice, 52(3), pp. 216–223. Reason, P., and Bradbury, H. (2001). The Handbook of Action Research: Participative Inquiry and Practice. London: Sage. Rodriguez, L. F., and Brown, T. M. (2009). From voice to agency: Guiding principles for participatory action research with youth. New Directions for Youth Development, 123, pp. 19–34. Weil, S. (1998). Rhetorics and realities in public service organisations: Systemic practice and organisational as Critically Reflexive Action Research (CRAR). ­Systemic Practice Action Research, 11, pp. 37–61. Wildemeersch, D., Jansen, T., Vandenbeele, J., and Jans, M. (1998). Social learning: A new perspective on learning in participatory systems. Studies in Continuing ­Education, 20(2), pp. 251–265. Wildemeersch, D. (2014). Displacing concepts of social learning and democratic ­citizenship. In: Biesta, G., de Bie, M., and Wildemeersch, D. (eds.) Civic Learning, Democratic Citizenship and the Public Sphere. Netherlands: Springer.

Chapter 13

Struggle over participation Towards a grounded theory of youth participation Janet Batsleer, Andreas Walther and Demet Lüküslü

This book and the underlying research have started with the aim of questioning the powerful normative assumptions underlying a prevailing narrow understanding of youth participation and seeking a more comprehensive and differentiated view of participatory practices. In fact, many practices by which young people aim at securing agency in everyday life and claim to be a part in society are excluded. The aim was therefore, to re-think youth participation by including young people’s perspectives – or: to develop a grounded theory of youth participation from analysing their practices in public spaces. In order to achieve this, a broad working definition was applied: ‘Participation is defined as “biographical self-determination” in the public and/or through the use of public institutions. This implies that participation refers potentially to all (and therefore different) styles and actions of individuals carried out in and/or addressing the public’ (Walther, 2012: 240). Therefore, a research design allowing for deconstruction, exploration and multi-perspectivity was developed. It aimed at observing what young people do in public spaces, how they do it, what it means to them and also how it is being addressed by other societal actors. In order to better understand the complex interrelations among different practices by young people as well as between young people and other societal actors, the study was conducted in cities rather than countries. Sampling followed the heuristic distinction of formal, non-formal and informal settings to include not only practices explicitly institutionalised for and referred to as participation (formal) but also those in which working with young people followed the principle of participation (non-formal) as well as everyday life practices of young people emerging beyond institutional frameworks and adult guidance. Although the PARTISPACE research has necessarily been limited, analysis has produced an impressively multifaceted picture of what young people do in public spaces and how this is linked to their needs, aspirations and claims, previously dis-articulated from what is commonly regarded as participation. This final chapter summarises the key findings and reflects on how the analysis permits re-thinking youth participation. Theorising implies relating the analysis to concepts from political theory to guide our interpretation of

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how youth participation may be understood differently. Although in many disciplines and especially in youth research political participation has been distinguished from other spheres and modes of participation (especially civic and social) – we argue first, that these distinctions are ideological and thus political and second, that the problem of a narrow concept of participation goes hand in hand with narrow interpretations of ‘the political’. We are conscious that neither single empirical forms that have been presented nor the theoretical conclusions we will draw are completely new. However, we think that the combination of theoretical and methodological perspectives and the reading of the resulting findings through lenses of political theory allows for a new view of what may be defined as youth participation. The chapter is structured as follows: we will first summarise the empirical findings, distinguishing different forms of activities and practices as we have analysed them, in order to reappraise the diversity of themes, activities, actors and contexts involved in what we, during our sampling ­process, tentatively addressed as youth participation. This overview also serves to introduce one of the main theoretical concepts which emerged in the ­analysis – ­recognition – insofar as this overview aids understanding of what is ­involved in certain practices being recognised as participation and others not. Next, we will introduce the main findings of the analysis according to the six sensitising perspectives: discourse, institutional contexts, social space, youth cultural styles, biographies and learning. Against this backdrop, we turn to the ­perspectives of a series of contemporary political theorists that share our scepticism ­towards reducing democracy and the political – and thus ­participation – to institutionalised politics and that we judge as helpful in interpreting our findings and in re-conceptualising youth participation.

The diversity of young people’s practices in public spaces In order to allow for elaborating a grounded theory of youth participation that goes beyond established forms of institutionalised political participation, representation and voluntary work, we start by providing an overview of variations of young people’s practices in the public spaces of the cities ­involved. This overview is based on the 48 in-depth case studies conducted in the PARTISPACE project which have been clustered according to formal ­versus informal organisation, different themes and activities as well as different ­social spaces (cf. Batsleer et al., 2017). 1 The cluster representation of interests as right and obligation includes formal youth representation forums such as in Gothenburg, Manchester or Frankfurt, Student Councils in schools and universities as in Zurich and Plovdiv, the Council in a residential care institution in Frankfurt or the Regional Youth Information Centre in Rennes. The commonality

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in these cases is an institutionally or legally secured setting in which young people can articulate their own interests and thus can or must assume ­responsibility within the framework of a particular institution. As ­a lready discussed in Chapter 5, this involves adopting an adult habitus of citizenship implying recognition and status but also distance and a certain alienation from youth cultural practices. 2 The cluster fighting with and within the political system refers to youth sections of political parties as well as to student political groups, associations and social movements. Practices in this cluster explicitly embrace conflict as part of participation through a variety of legitimate forms. Whilst political parties represent the classical means through which articulation and mediation of interest is organised in democracies such as in the youth section of a left-wing party in Plovdiv, the role of protest movements beyond political parties like the NDE movement in Rennes is also well acknowledged in political theory. Both these forms are present in the PARTISPACE research, but whereas the political party was experienced even by members as an apparently outdated form, sometimes with little direct engagement in conflict, the organisation of protest continued to attract participation as a ‘here and now’ form. 3 The cluster, entitled living social alternatives as political model, remains clearly within a discourse of politics and yet is characterised by the fact that the propagation of the ‘long march through the institutions’ or the ‘preparation for a change of system’ is not primary to their practice. Instead, a desired change in social reality in the here and now is being directly implemented. These models (for example the Self-managed Social Centre in Bologna, the Political Cultural Centre in Frankfurt or the Alternative Education Centre in Zurich) allow participants to make and live concrete counter experiences and demonstrate to a general public that a different social order is possible – at least in certain areas of life. This style is not only evident in a collectively organised alternative way of life, but also in individualised forms, through individual lifestyles seen explicitly as a means of political change. 4 The cluster producing and negotiating own spaces is also concerned with appropriating space in the here and now. In contrast to the above, the political character of these activities is rather implicit insofar as their claim of being part of society is articulated primarily with regard to the possibility of defining activities and regulations in one’s own places or spaces, even if they are contrary to or in conflict with the currently applicable regulations. Here are found well-acknowledged practices such as the Scouts as well as practices that may often be characterised as deviant. The graffiti crew Hoodboys use spaces to make themselves visible by leaving their ‘tags’, a group of girls aims at making a classically male-dominated Frankfurt Youth Centre ‘theirs’ and use it as a stage for experimenting with gendered and youth cultural practices, while the Ultras centre ‘Freccia’ have occupied space and now run a community centre in Bologna.

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5 As in the previous cluster, young people in settings clustered as between service of humanity and service enterprise explicitly distance themselves from politics. The voluntary commitment of care towards others (as in youth branches of humanitarian NGOs in Plovdiv or Eskis¸ehir) or towards the natural environment (as in the ecological network in Plovdiv). Young people offer services to others, or even to society as a whole, which the state does not provide, not only under the umbrella of traditional nonprofit organisations but also in small self-organised groups. In the interplay of professional and voluntary work, young people discover the potential to use their voluntary commitment as a stepping stone for their career planning and/or as a cornerstone of economic livelihood. 6 The cluster exploring interests and enthusiasms, developing and performing skills contains the possibility of a kind of self-entrepreneurship through direct participation in a range of sports (Parkour in Zurich and ­Gothenburg), cultural activities (street musicians in Eskis¸ehir, a theatre group in ­Gothenburg or the informal music group in Manchester) and also business activities (like the foundation promoting youth entrepreneurship in Plovdiv). These activities focus not only on subjective interests but also promote belonging. In most cases, specific skills are essential to enter and to stay in the respective group. At the same time, the activities depend on and are structured by accessible spaces in which they evolve and in which they perform with and in front of others. 7 Pedagogically supervised leisure-infrastructure for young people contains those cases which draw on the work of youth workers, social workers and other pedagogues including volunteers. On the one hand, there are cases aimed at providing non-formal learning outside school like Youth Centres or Youth Associations (such as the Scouts group or the Educational centre for artistic development ALAP project mobilising young people through arts in Rennes). On the other hand, there are cases of pedagogical work providing safe and protected spaces for groups whose precarious and/ or stigmatised conditions of life mean that they can stake little claim on other spaces. These are for example the youth centre for LGBTQ youth group in Gothenburg, the Islamic youth association in Bologna or the ‘Box’ for Homeless Young Men in Manchester. Only a small number of these activities were recognised as participation by youth policy experts in the eight cities. In fact, the analysis revealed that ­recognition or misrecognition of young people’s practices as participation occurred according to two lines of distinction. The first line of distinction refers to whether the forms of participation comply with the established rules (conformity) or not (deviance), the second distinguishes whether the activities and themes are ascribed a general relevance for a wider community in the city or rather particular interest of those involved. While the axis of conformity regulates belonging and inclusion, the axis of relevance reflects a normative hierarchy of concerns (Figure 13.1).

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General relevance Representation Services

Conformity

Explicit political activities Living social alternatives

Pedagogically supervised leisure

Deviance

Exploring interest, performing skills Own spaces

Particular interest

Figure 13.1  R  ecognition of different forms of practice in public spaces.

Those activities and scenes labelled as ‘representation’ and ‘services’ are apparently fully recognised as participation: they both refer to the public and general interest and do so in ways which are fully legitimated. ‘Pedagogically supervised leisure’ is certainly legitimated but is usually particularistic, existing to provide young people leisure opportunities and to support individual needs, often in disadvantaged neighbourhoods. In contrast, ‘explicit political activities’ and ‘living social alternatives’ are mostly ascribed general relevance but not always recognised as legitimate, especially where transgressing existing rules, as for example in squatting buildings. The cases included in the clusters ‘own spaces’ and ‘exploring interests and performing skills’ are sometimes stigmatised as deviant, for example in the practice of graffiti sprayers and ultras. They tend to be seen as following particular interests rather than having general relevance. However, even in the most apparently conformist cases of participation, young people articulate the gap between their complex experience and the performance of a normative ideal. For those who take part in formal representation, the responsibility of ‘representativeness’ becomes a burden: how is it possible to represent the various and conflicting interests of an entire generation in a city? For others, this claim is nothing more than a token gesture, which legitimates the pursuit of specific interests. Since from their point of view the real power relations do not change, youth representation forums present opportunities for individual personal development while serving institutional and political interests of legitimation. By means of distinction from ‘other’ apparently not involved youth, they both recognise and unsettle their own sense of legitimacy. At the other extreme, in cases which are far from being seen as democratic and pro-social are more likely to be addressed as deviant or criminal, there may nevertheless be found claims for the public

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good and for common ground with others. The mutual recognition among members of the graffiti crew, the members of the NDE movement or the ultras centre is the basis of a common bond created through a shared set of practices. These practices are sometimes claimed to contribute to democratic life and the common good, for example the graffiti sprayers’ claim of contributing to ‘beautifying the city’, the NDE movement emphasising the need of new democratic practices in public spaces or the ultras building up pride in belonging to the city. They have their own internal regulatory practices and normative ideals. The sense of space is therefore clearly delimited from the outside and this self-chosen demarcation requires both inner and outer acceptance; otherwise, participants react by retreating into invisibility or by offensively defending their own borders. Obviously, young people’s practices in public spaces reflect struggles for recognition which take the form of boundary marking/making. In fact, conditions of recognition or misrecognition need to be seen as the expression of power relations (cf. Foucault, 1982; Butler, 2015) inasmuch as agency and identity in terms of participation differ according to the power of those who recognise a specific practice as ­participation – or not (see below). However, it is where practices are difficult to classify that we might expect new possibilities of appearance to emerge. An example of such unsettling is the cluster of ‘lived social alternatives’ and the question of whether these practices are to be seen as primarily social or political in their relation to everyday life. In the start-up phase, struggling for spaces in the city plays an important role in the style of such initiatives, as these must be reclaimed from society. The Self-managed Social Centre in Bologna or the Alternative Education Centre in Zurich occupied vacant buildings in order to implement their ideas and projects. Rather than merely being inhabited, the work on the place comes to represent an alternative way of being. Another ‘border case’ which opens into new possibilities of democratic appearance is the case of extreme sports activities which seem to be built on hyper-­ individualism and self-entrepreneurship. Here, the struggle for recognition can be seen in the mimicry of societally induced neo-liberal competition – a do-it-your-self-culture that is open to dreams and emanates from one’s own body. These reflections show that every demarcation of ‘participation’ becomes a contentious border. The move to define ‘participation’ as ‘this’ and not ‘that’ is a bid to have a certain border recognised. If representation and party politics are ‘participation’ and volunteering for a charity is not, then the definition of democratic life is very narrow and most young people will be considered as ‘in deficit’ and in need of being inducted into participation. If charitable volunteering for a well-established and recognised charity is seen as participation, but providing support to refugees in a squatted building is criminalised, the border of recognition is drawn in ways that render particular populations of the city invisible or excluded.

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Dimensions of meaning and practice in youth participation In analysing young people’s different practices in public spaces, six sensitising concepts have been applied aimed at reconstructing different levels and aspects of meaning of these practices. Young people’s practices of participation evolve in relation to discourses, constellations of power and knowledge which enable specific practices and inhibit others (Foucault, 1982, 1998). Discourses with regard to youth and participation frame how youth participation and the societal power relationships in which young people are involved are (re)produced and (re)signified in politics, in youth policy and youth work, in education and welfare, in the media as well as in youth cultural practices. We have seen that European youth policies tend to address young people as ‘resource’ of society in apparent contrast to problematising youth, especially young people who are addressed as disadvantaged and different, which in some local and national constellations of youth policy still prevails (see Chapters 3 and 4). At the same time, even a view of youth as a resource still includes a deficit-oriented approach inasmuch as young people in general are not yet seen as co-citizens but as ‘citizens in the making’ (Hall et al., 1999). As already discussed, dominant discourses are involved in recognising some public activities in public space as of general relevance distinguishing them from others ascribed to serve only particular interest as well as marking some as conformist and others as deviant. Across different contexts, formal settings of youth participation like youth or student councils provide a stage on which they are both displayed and subjected as empowered young people and responsible future citizens, yet in different ways and to different degrees (cf. Butler, 2015). Young people who engage in the well-established Gothenburg Youth Representation Forum organisation are addressed and recognised as co-citizens while members of the residential home council in Frankfurt have the right to co-decide but are assigned a specific role where they are regarded as not being able or qualified to co-decide on wider issues (see Chapter 5). In non-formal settings we found powerful assumptions of what pedagogical staff hold as ‘real’ or ‘right’ participation (see Chapter 12). And even informal participation strives to evolve beyond particular discursive arenas but needs to respond to de-legitimisation and mechanisms of exclusion while reproducing distinctions of participation and non-participation along specific codes in each context. This applies to informal political groups like the Self-managed Social Centre in Bologna, the Manchester online young feminist group and also characterises everyday life youth cultural practices like graffiti or parkour where subcultural criteria and boundaries distinguish who fits in and who does not (see Chapter 9). Youth policies are one element of the way in which discursive representations of youth are institutionalised at local and at national level (Loncle et al., 2012). ‘Regimes’ of welfare states as well as of transitions from youth to adulthood

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have been analysed as ideal type expressions of how young people and their growing up are seen and addressed at nation state level (see ­Chapter 4). In a wider sense, youth policies are all those institutionalised structures that affect young people’s lives (Williamson, 2007). Local youth policies are embedded in and related with such wider regimes, yet do not reflect them one to one as local traditions and networks of actors contribute to different constellations of implementation (Andreotti et al., 2012). For example, local youth policies differ – across and within welfare regimes – with regard to the degree in which they have established youth work infrastructures providing possibilities of participation and in which they are open and responsive for changing needs and initiatives of young people. The support non-formal settings receive differs also depending on their relation to dominant normalities and values if one compares the Scouts group in Zurich or the Educational centre for artistic development ALAP arts project in Rennes with the Islamic Youth Association in Bologna. And youth policies differ with regard to how they interpret and facilitate explicit forms of youth participation (see Chapter 4): by well-equipped bodies of representation (recognising and addressing), by narrow and often tokenistic forms of co-determination (assigning a role or leading the process from above) or by a lack of such mechanisms (leaving young people without power). Even informal participation needs to be seen in relation to local policies, yet in a more indirect way. The informal girl group in Frankfurt have identified the youth centre as a stage to experiment with youth cultural practices and gender roles but needed to challenge existing rules and boundaries to claim space which is normally dominated by young males. The group of street musicians in Eskis¸ehir represent the repressed Kurdish minority but also perform and defend an alternative life style in an authoritarian political climate. The Bologna Ultras Centre and the Frankfurt graffiti crew Hoodboys operate on the politically established and maintained border between legal and illegal activities. At the same time, the case of Gothenburg suggests that in a responsive and well-established youth political environment informal practices seem to be less visible because they are more often turned into non-formal participation. Through providing or denying resources, opening or closing spaces for young people’s everyday life and youth cultural practices youth policies are effective carriers of discourses of ‘normal’ youth, ‘good’ citizenship and ‘right’ participation. ‘Regimes of youth participation’ thus represent constellations of recognition or misrecognition of these practices even if it is not completely clear to what extent regime types reflect nation states or rather specific relationships between local and national policy level. Discourses and institutional policies structure the urban space in which young people move and in which their practices emerge. However, the analysis of how young people’s practices are situated and how they position themselves in urban space reveals that participation requires subjective appropriation of space. At the same time, practices of appropriation themselves

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can be understood as participation. By using urban space for coping with their everyday lives by youth cultural practices young people express the – implicit or explicit – claim of belonging to the city. Experimenting with transforming space into place implies making it receptive for and responsive to own needs and interests, issues and styles (cf. Reutlinger, 2013). Urban space needs being interpreted in terms of public space, or better: different variations of public space between formally organised, non-formal or informal ones. The degree of formality of these public spaces is in mutual relationship with the (mis)recognition of the practices of appropriation as participation or not. Formal youth representation forums are situated in spaces which are endowed with power (e.g. the Town Hall) while at the same time limiting possibilities to specific practices and themes (see Chapter 5). Non-formal settings provide more open spaces that young people can appropriate in different ways. The pedagogical staff in these spaces provide support, recognition and reflection of activities and experiences giving sustainability to certain forms and issues and marginalising others (see Chapter 12). Finally, informal participation evolves in formal and non-formal spaces non-intentionally, independently from or against pedagogical intentions like the informal girl group in the youth centre or where delegates of youth or student representatives question and sometimes transgress official mandates as in youth and student representation forum or ‘backstage’ in the residential care home (all three in Frankfurt). In other cases, public space means ‘outside’ on the street, on squares or in parks – in contrast to inside in spaces with institutionalised rules and purposes (see Chapters 6 and 7). This implies widening the understanding of public space in terms of ‘in the presence of others who see what we see and hear what we hear’ (Arendt, 1958: 50) or of ‘spaces of appearance’ in which individuals become visible regardless of their command of officially acknowledged political speech (Butler, 2015: 89). The identification and distinction of different forms of participation – not only in terms of formal, non-formal and informal settings but also in terms of different types of activities related to different issues – has been addressed by the concept of style. The style perspective is paramount in shifting the research perspective from the question if young people do participate to how they do it. Moving on from studies of subcultures and youth cultures, approaching youth participation from a style perspective means interpreting social space in terms of social positioning and accessibility of capitals reflected by acts of reproduction and transformation of discourses, policies and practices structuring social space (Hall and Jefferson, 1976; Hebdige, 1978). At the same time, it implies asking how young people make meaning from their positioning and how being positioned is connected with the construction of individual and collective identities (Fornäs, 1995; Bennett, 2015). Analysis has revealed that in more formal settings like youth representation forums, humanitarian NGOs or formal youth centres, styles of participation are already predefined and that it is few young people who feel comfortable with accepting the adult

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habitus by which they are invested. However, they do not simply reproduce but rather re-signify such habitus’ thus reflecting complex processes of appropriation and identification between the world of adults and youth culture (see Chapters 5 and 8). Informal practices of young people in public spaces appear to be concerned with self-assertion and distinction from the adult world and from other youth cultural scenes. Sometimes taking forms of resistance like the ultras or the graffiti crew, sometimes of hedonistic identity work like the informal girl group these practices have been interpreted as ‘everyday life participation’ because they result from young people’s coping with their everyday lives structured by uncertainty, pressure of achievement and adaptation, stress and often precariousness and discrimination in public spaces (see Chapter 9). The style perspective reveals that in fact young people follow both particular and common concerns by specific practices in public spaces. The main difference, however, is whether they are recognised by others as participation – or not. In fact, youth participation reflects a hegemonic social inequality of recognition. While the style perspective focuses on the collective level, the biographical perspective has shed light on the personal developments of young people and on why and how different individuals get involved in different practices and settings. The concept of ‘participation biographies’ (Schwanenflügel, 2015) implies that young people’s life stories include experiences with being active in the public sphere which in turn reflect the interrelation of the social and the biographical (Alheit and Dausien, 2002). On the one hand, young people’s careers of engagement and participation consist of various steps and transitions involving learning processes while also reflecting different social positions (see Chapter 10). On the other hand, the different ways in which they make subjective meaning of being active in the public sphere express complex processes of self-identity, especially of searching for belonging and recognition (see Chapter 11). The role of engaging in public spaces in these life stories is often ambiguous and indirect. Rather than following an explicit idea of ‘going public’, young people in their search for belonging and recognition happen to move beyond the spaces in which they are already involved (especially family and school) into or through other public spaces. Those who have had positive experiences in formal institutions like school or youth welfare but feel insecure in peer contexts value formal contexts where membership is secured by clear roles and tasks. In contrast, those who have had negative experiences tend instead to leave institutions and go outside to look for places in which they feel more comfortable and less under pressure. Some of those who lack reliable and trustworthy significant others, looked for and found safe spaces rather in non-formal contexts run by ‘different’ adults with whom they built relationships. Biographically participation means to use and ­subsequently take responsibility in and for those public spaces who have proved to be of ­relevance for the own life.

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Finally, young people getting involved in different forms of participation are also related to processes of learning. However, the question how young people learn participation can be answered in a normative, in a theoretical and in an empirical way. Normative answers prevailing in public discourses as well as in policy and practice according to which young people have to learn participation first imply confident knowledge of what ‘real’ participation is as well as how learning occurs. Although there is much criticism of ‘narrow’ concepts of participation, such answers display certainty in both respect. It is noteworthy that the underlying ideas of learning contradict most learning theories. In fact, analysis has revealed that in formal settings professionals pre-arrange spaces and situations of participation allowing for particular styles. In non-formal spaces like in youth work or youth associations this is less rigid. Here, processes are organised in which young people jointly develop goals which however mostly reflect what is possible to achieve in the respective setting with the support, information and training provided by professionals (cf. Biesta et al., 2009). We have referred to this as ‘pedagogisation’ because young people’s participation is addressed mainly or only in terms of learning and education but not in terms of changing power relationships and strengthening young people’s rights in relation to other actors, especially institutional ones. While in formal settings this constellation is obvious, in non-formal settings it becomes visible only in case of conflict. At the same time, analysis has shown that young people learn about their positioning in public spaces regardless of pedagogical instruction. Learning participation is situated and evolves where young people invest their subjective meaning making in ‘communities of practice’ and where it merges with a collective meaning making (Wenger, 1998). Action research has shown that and how adults can play a significant role in young people’s learning of participation. Where adults refrain from directing young people towards ‘desirable’ and ‘realistic’ goals but offer support and reflection where young people ask for it and where adults accept being part of a joint learning process themselves on the ambiguities of participation, young people learn that how participation means a changing relationship between themselves and society (see Chapter 12). Each of these perspectives has revealed aspects and factors involved in the emergence of how and what young people are doing in public spaces. And, even more importantly, none of these factors alone determine a specific practice.

Relationality, recognition, micro-politics and conflict: re-thinking youth participation What does the insight into the diversity of forms of youth participation and their analysis from the perspectives of discourse, institutionalisation, space, style, biography and learning contribute to a new understanding of youth

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participation beyond the surface of how young people respond to institutionalised offers? A first important insight is that rather than reducing participation to an individual activity, participation needs to be understood as relational and thus also agonistic (Percy-Smith, 2006). In social theory, a relational perspective means that social phenomena and objects of social research are not isolated entities but are rather relations between entities which only in their relatedness emerge as entities. Such an anti-substantialist perspective implies that there is no such thing as ‘participation’ but that participation emerges as a quality of relationships (cf. Elias, 1978; Emirbayer, 1997; Dépelteau, 2018). Young people’s practices in public spaces evolve as an expression of their needs as well as in relation to how they are addressed by other societal actors according to discursive representations. They evolve inside and much more often outside public institutions and the affordances and constraints they offer. Furthermore, they are not only determined by different social spaces but are moments of appropriation and structuration of social spaces as both public and subjectively relevant. Different styles express the different and unequal collective ways in which young people are socially positioned and through their practices position themselves. At the same time, analysis of participation biographies informs how young people invest and reconcile their individual meaning making with formal, non-formal or informal contexts of collective practice. In their biographical processes of searching for recognition and belonging, young people identify with distinguish or distance themselves from different styles moving or acting in public space. They re-signify the ways in which they are addressed as ‘citizens in the making’ with more or less deficits they have to compensate to become ‘real’ citizens. Thus, participation biographies are processes of subjectivation in which young people are both subjected and empowered (Butler, 2015); ­either by adopting an adult citizenship habitus in formal participation – and analysis has shown different life constellations behind this ‘choice’ – or by rejecting it and preferring informal practices ‘outside’. In consequence, the learning processes they undergo while participating have individual and collective aspects. A fruitful approach to understand the social as relational is practice theory. Practice theory does not conceive of social reality as individual acts but as social practice in terms of ‘nexus of doings and sayings’ (Schatzki, 1996: 89). Rather than understanding action as resulting from antecedent motivations and intentions, practice theory assumes that individuals encounter situations in which motivations and intentions emerge as an interaction between previous experiences and the way in which they are addressed and recognised as actors: ‘Performing a practice always requires adapting to new circumstances so that practising [or doing] is neither mindless repetition nor complete invention. Yet individual performances take place and are intelligible only as part of an ongoing practice’ (Nicolini, 2012: 4). Conceiving of participation

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as a social practice therefore means accepting that it is not driven by values and intentional choices but emerges from situations in which needs of belonging and recognition are negotiated in a discursive arena. A relational perspective allows an understanding of participation as power struggle between different individual and institutional actors concerning who is and what it means to be part of a community or society. Secondly, theorising participation as relational sees recognition as a key dimension of relationships in which young people’s practices in public spaces are embedded. In social psychology, recognition means an intersubjective relationship and experience that individuals need to develop self-identity: an understanding of themselves as an individual person (Mead, 1934). Recognition has a cognitive dimension as being recognised as someone or something (a human being, an individual, a person with rights etc.) provides information on the self, it has an emotional dimension connected to feelings of shame and pride involved in identity and motivation for involvement in practice and it has a moral dimension inasmuch as social justice in individualised and democratic societies imply an equal distribution of recognition (Keupp et al., 1999). Social philosophy connects the social psychological meaning of recognition with the perspective of social justice and democracy. According to Taylor (1992) or Honneth (1995) under conditions of democracy and individualisation, equal access to and experience of recognition are core criteria of just societies. Honneth distinguishes different modes of recognition: love as the recognition as a human being with specific needs, rights as recognition as a person with equal status and solidarity as recognition as a full member contributing to a community. Fraser (2003) argues that under conditions of social inequality, recognition alone cannot achieve social justice but must be backed by material redistribution. However, this recognition emerges in and from given normative orders to which individuals are subjected in their emergence into belonging (Butler, 2015). Thus, aspects of life which do not emerge as ‘normal’ struggle to appear and recognition is therefore always accompanied by elements of misrecognition and non-recognition. In concrete terms, this means that young people have to both accept and struggle with the label ‘citizens in the making’ which implies both the direction and the conditions of personal development, what being a citizen means and that they need to learn to become citizens themselves. In fact, in modern societies participation has been conceptualised as balancing individual autonomy and self-determination with cooperation and interdependency. This has resulted in a particular ‘rational’ mode of subjectivation which is inherent to the institutionalised democratic principles of co-determination and representation. The PARTISPACE analysis suggests that (mis)recognition is the most important practice of distinction between different forms of participation. On the one hand, recognition determines what forms and contents of practice powerful societal actors as well as young people themselves see and legitimise as participation. On the other hand, experiences of recognition in young

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people’s biographies influence what form of participation they identify as meaningful for themselves. Thomas (2012: 463) argues that young people do not engage fully if they do not feel a sense of warmth and affection; they cannot participate equally if they are not respected as rights-holders; and they will not have a real impact unless there is mutual esteem and solidarity, and a sense of shared purpose. Where young people’s self-determined forms of participation are regarded as trivial or deviant, young people may experience this as a misrecognition of themselves as individuals; which, in turn, can stimulate biographical learning and struggles for recognition (Honneth, 1995). Following Young (1990), it can be assumed that opening democracy to new groups of actors historically excluded from public life necessarily leads to an extension of communicative acts recognised as political deliberation. The process of emerging into democratic life can be traced even in and through activities of young people’s everyday life participation like for example ‘sitting outside’, ‘hanging out’ or ‘chilling’. Such activities are expressions of how young people cope with everyday life such as the need to balance stress and pressure to achieve in education, training or work as well as to compensate for experiences of discrimination, precariousness and uncertainty. They reflect searches for belonging and recognition in contested public spaces structured by societal contradictions and conflicts. In coping with their everyday lives young people use public spaces and thus – in most instances unconsciously – claim being part of society. At the same time, everyday life practices easily turn into protest and claims of citizenship rights, for example, if benches in public space where young people normally sit and hang out are being removed or dismantled. Also struggles between different groups about the use of the city centre reveal the political aspect of simply being ‘outside’ (e.g. in Bologna, Rennes, Eskis¸ehir or Manchester). This means, third, that the question for participation is inseparable from the question of what is ­political. Butler (2015) argues that in order to be intelligible and acknowledgeable as political subjects, individuals are subject to the norms according to which the political is formed and institutionalised in a given public space. In modern societies, this implies that only certain forms of speech in certain institutionalised realms of public space are acknowledged as political, while other acts are neglected or excluded. She criticises the separation of a sphere of politics from a sphere of necessity as justified by Arendt (1958) and argues that the political needs to extend to include embodied acts that are claims of both at the same time individual need and of belonging to society. This is particularly important in places and times marked by precarity, inequality and abjection. The social therefore needs to be seen as a sphere of contestation in which particular unequal power relationships are articulated, legitimised and institutionalised. The social in this sense becomes a public space.

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The question if everyday life participation is political and what ‘the political’ means in this respect requires consulting political theory, especially approaches concerned with questioning the reduction of the political to institutionalised politics. For example, De Certeau (1988: xvii) refers to the ‘political dimension of everyday practices’ of the ‘silent majority’ as the ‘tactics of consumption, the ingenious ways in which the weak make use of the strong’. In a similar way, the concept ‘micropolitics’ developed by Deleuze and Guattari (1993) means opening the political for ‘minoritarian processes’ of desires emerging from constellations of precarity and misrecognition that are not categorised as ‘normal’ and acknowledgeable needs. Consequently, they criticise conceptions that reduce the political to acts claiming to represent the whole of society. Rancière (1998) distinguishes ‘politics’ and ‘police’. He refers to all institutionalised structures concerned with creating and maintaining a social order ‘of what can be said and seen according to which a certain statement is perceived as speech, another one as noise’ as police (including representative democracy). Political in contrast are acts (or ‘noise’; see Duffy, 2017, for the relevance of ‘anger’) through which ‘what has not been seen and heard so far changes its position in order to be seen or raises his/her voice in order to be heard’ (ibid.: 41). If the political is fluid, instable and implies dissent rather than consensus, this applies also to participation. Participation is not only the involvement in institutionalised forms of engagement and decision-making but also – or even first of all – the conflicts emerging from the claims for being a part of society and taking part in/of society of those who are not or feel not included. There are cases of youth participation which apparently are not conflictual such as youth councils or forms of volunteering in which young people accept pre-defined rules and roles of citizenship and engagement. But even there, conflicts are found at the margins, where for example members of youth councils are not willing to accept narrow boundaries of their mandate. In contrast, there are cases for which conflicts are constitutive like the informal girl group who contest the rules of the youth centre in which they regularly meet in order to make it their ‘home’, alternative groups that squat abandoned buildings (while a similar group did not dare and therefore had to work to pay the rent which undermined their ability to engage politically), political movements claiming public spaces, as well as the graffiti or parkour groups who appropriate their cities by disrespecting private or public property. The classical reference for a conflictual understanding of society is Gramsci (1971) according to whom democracy consists in constant struggles over hegemony. Laclau and Mouffe (1985) have re-interpreted the constant struggle about hegemony as expression of the necessarily antagonistic structure of capitalist societies. They distinguish authoritarian practices of hegemony supressing antagonism from democratic practices or ‘radical democracy’ allowing for conflict. Society emerges from political struggles about who and what belongs to society. Policies for youth participation may be seen as forms of organising hegemony by consent (Gramsci, 1971).

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Conclusions What is the gain of re-thinking youth participation as relational, a struggle for appearance and recognition, as political and conflictual? This chapter and volume will be concluded by briefly highlighting potential benefits of this approach for theory, policy and pedagogical practice. We introduce these suggestions by questions that have been formulated repeatedly from inside and outside the research network and which show the innovative potential of this approach. Is all that young people do in the public participation and political? Yes and no. In coping with their biographies and everyday lives, they use public spaces. These acts of appropriation include explicit or implicit claims for being part of society and attempts to take part in society. These claims are recognised, neglected, delegitimised or even sometimes criminalised. Where they are neglected they imply potential conflicts which need to be included in the arena of political, social and civic acts. Understanding participation as relational, political, conflictual and as reflection of relationships of recognition therefore contributes to an understanding of power in individualised societies and thus of what ‘radical democracy’ beyond formally institutionalised structures of decision-making means. We might say that legitimate youth participation strives for conformity with a regulated ideal. But in every case there is always some element of ‘failure’, some element of partial non-­ conformity, which opens up the possibility of new forms of democratic life, of evolution of public policies and new possibilities of appearance of what was previously invisible. In limiting the focus on legitimate forms of participation it is precisely these new ways of appearance which are rendered unable to appear and thereby invisible. If young people do participate anyway, is there a need of policies supporting young people in their participatory practice? Yes, but policies that strictly define forms, contents and prerequisites of participation and that aim at solving and silencing conflict rather than allowing for the enactment of conflict do not help (according to Rancière they correspond to police, not to politics). If policies aim at fostering participation and democratic experience, they need to develop in a paradoxical way. They need to create spaces without institutionalising and defending them but to allow for struggles and conflict. This means a constant process of building, creating and opening – and then of leaving, withdrawing, watching and listening; accepting the incomplete and fluid rather than the stable. Inclusive youth policies do not aim to include young people into standardised formats but open towards diversity and difference. Only in changing the relation between the recognisable and the unrecognisable can democratic life be further developed. Paradoxically, as certain limited forms of recognised participation are extended, the region of the unrecognisable is preserved accordingly. It is important that our analysis here does not contribute further to this impasse.

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Finally, it needs to be recalled that recognition requires the back up of redistribution – inclusive youth policies are meaningless if education and training, labour markets and welfare are not inclusive and participatory at the same time. If young people do participate, is there any need to support them learning to participate? Yes, but it requires pedagogical action without paternalism and pedagogisation. This means not starting from an asymmetric relationship in which experts define democracy or participation and then provide those who do not know yet respective skills and knowledge and thus reduce relational participation to a trained individual act. Rather than giving young people a voice, it should be assumed that they already have one – even if it may sound as ‘noise’ – and to listen instead. Learning means appropriation of the social and natural environment – involving of course public space – as an ongoing activity. As learning also participation needs to be seen as a social practice and a process of transformation of the relationship between self and world. Participation and learning both depend on experiences of appearance and recognition, the recognition of being able to learn and the recognition of being able to act. This resonates with Dewey’s (1916) ideas on learning democracy through experience and shared action which may be summarised in a simplistic way: democracy is learned by doing, especially if this doing is not predefined but recognises different styles and conflicts as principally legitimate claims of being part of and taking one’s part in and of society.

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Index

Note: Bold page numbers refer to tables action research 6, 27, 86, 89, 209; see also Chapter 12 active citizenship 35, 40, 42–3, 143 agency 10, 20, 23–4, 26, 116, 128, 130, 184–5, 187, 196; see also Chapters 9 and 11 appropriation 8, 23–6, 43–4, 128, 157, 206–8, 214–15; see also Chapters 6 and 7 autonomy 16, 84, 180–1, 186–8, 211 Bauman, Z. 162 belonging 47, 94, 153, 162–3, 202, 210–13; see also Chapter 11 Benhabib, S. 16 Biesta, G. 27, 180, 209, 162 biographical analysis 25–7, 149, 158–9 biography 10, 25–6, 147–9, 159, 164–5, 209–10 Bourdieu, P. 68, 74–5, 114–15, 125, 127, 148, 195 Butler, J. 22, 116, 204–5, 210–12 capital economic 115, 125, 126; cultural 115, 117, 119,123, 126, 150; social 18, 40; see also Chapter 8; symbolic 115 case studies 5, 68, 69–70, 85, 108, 181; see also Chapter 9 Charmaz, K. 6, 15 citizenship 162, 210–13; see also Chapter 12; education 10, 26–7, 52, 72–3; see also Chapter 12 city 53, 56, 91–5, 114, 128, 132, 140, 203, 206–7, 212; see also Chapter 7 conflict 3, 17, 47, 87, 93, 108, 111, 143, 152, 169, 194; see also Chapter 13

Cornwall, A. 87 Council of Europe 7, 49; see also Chapter 3 democracy 1, 16–17, 211–12, 215; radical 213–14 development 23, 50, 53, 57, 84, 153–4, 157–8, 181–3, 203, 208, 211; see also Chapter 9 Dewey, J. 17, 180, 215 discourse 17, 21–2, 86–7, 93, 181–2, 205–9; see also Chapter 3 discourse analysis 15–16, 21–2, 35, 50; critical see Chapter 2 domestication see Chapter 7 emancipation 22, 155, 157, 182 emergence 4, 18, 21–2, 25, 131, 186–7, 211 empowerment 27, 42, 57, 71, 187; see also Chapter 11 Esping Andersen, G. 3, 56 ethnography 24, 27–8, 68, 70 European Commission xv, 7, 21–2, 36, 39, 49 European Union 55–6; see also Chapter 3 European Youth Forum see Chapter 3 everyday life 3, 20, 23, 26–7, 84, 86, 98–9, 104–5, 206, 208, 212–13; see also Chapter 9 Fairclough, N. 34, 44 Ferrera, M. 56 Foucault, M. 23, 78, 130, 204–5 France, A. 146 Fraser, N. 94, 142, 211

220 Index

future 15, 25, 94, 117–18, 127–8, 150; see also Chapter 11 Giddens, A. 26, 147 Goffman, E. 86, 130 Gough, K. 90, 95 Gramsci, A. 213 grounded theory 6–7, 70, 149, 163–4; see also Chapter 13 Habermas, J. 16 Häkli, J. 24, 84, 93, 101,107 Harris, A. 18, 130–1 home 83–4; see also Chapter 7 Honneth, A. 25, 142, 152, 188, 211–12 identity-work 25, 190, 194, 208; see also Chapter 11 innovating pedagogies 179, 193–5 institutionalisation 22–3, 28, 74, 113–14, 132, 209 institutions 3, 18, 21–3, 49, 69–70, 78–80, 115, 138, 140–3, 169–70, 174; see also Chapters 3 and 10 Isin, E. 179, 194 Kallio, K.P. 24, 84, 93, 101, 107 Kemmis, S. 181, 189 Laclau, E. 17, 162, 172, 213 learning 27, 109, 117–18, 158, 209, 215; see also Chapter 12; in action 179–82, 184; reflexive 10, 26–7, 188–9, 194 Lefebvre, H. 87, 130–1 life course 26, 147–9 life trajectories see Chapter 10 local contexts 50–6, 62, 77–8 meaning-making 159n1, 209–10; see also Chapter 11 Manning, N. 146–7 Mouffe, C. 17, 162, 172, 213 narratives 10, 36, 147, 161–4, 170–4 Nico, M. 49 normalisation 57, 78, 137–41, 181 open method of coordination 37, 41, 49 participation adult-led 68–9, 74–7; biography 25–6, 147–9, 164; career 121, 125, 128; see also Chapter 10;

civic 15–20; everyday life 208, 212–13; formal 4, 60, 68, 70, 75–9, 158, 210; informal 4, 18, 74–5, 158, 187, 205–7; non-formal 4, 74, 187, 202, 205–9; political 17, 200; social 17–20; see also Chapter 12; youth-led 51, 191, 195–6; see also Chapters 9 and 12 Percy-Smith, B. 19, 27, 97, 113, 179, 181, 192, 196, 210 politics 17–18, 39, 60, 78–9, 95, 135, 147, 201; micro 209–13 power 6, 15–16, 20–2, 28, 67, 70, 72, 78–80, 100, 111, 115, 119, 130, 150, 152, 159, 204–5, 210–11, 214; see also Chapters 11 and 12; adults 20, 27, 54–5, 101, 110, 187, 191–6; see also Chapter 5; control 22, 61, 69, 78, 84, 86–8, 106–7, 110–11, 150, 184, 187, 196; negotiation 10, 28, 75–6, 79, 153, 180, 184, 188–9, 192 practice 15–16, 18, 21, 25, 27, 34, 47, 69, 75, 83, 88, 93–5, 101, 108, 113–16, 119, 122, 127–8, 148, 162, 180, 184, 189–6, 203; see also Chapter 2; private 99–100, 110, 131–2; public 20, 28, 51, 83, 93–5, 97, 100, 107, 110, 199, 203; see also Chapters 9 and 13; social 7, 27–8, 210–11, 214–16; spatial appropriation practices; see also Chapter 7; youth cultural 18, 150, 155, 200–1, 205–7; see also Chapter 9 public policy 1, 37–8, 43, 46–7, 142, 179, 202, 214–15; design 15–16, 21–2, 34–7, 40, 68, 78; implementation 35, 41, 43–5, 55, 58–60, 71–3, 205–6; targets 2, 7, 19, 46–7, 50, 67; instruments 41, 209; see also Chapter 4 public sphere 24–6, 36, 83–4, 89, 99, 116, 131–6, 143, 208 Putnam, R. 122 Rancière, J. 17, 213–14 recognition 25–6, 61, 77, 83, 132, 140–2, 152–3, 162–7, 170–2, 188, 195, 203; see also Chapter 13 relational practice 10, 180, 189–90 re-signification 9; see also Chapter 8 Rhodes, M. 56 Rosenthal, G. 6, 26, 149, 163–4, 171–2 Schwanenflügel, L. 10, 25, 159 n1, 161, 173, 208

Index 221

self 86, 98, 106, 211, 215; selfconfidence 79, 84, 117, 123, 154, 158; self-efficacy 150, 152, 158; self-responsibility 18, 22, 43, 62, 80, 152; see also Chapter 11 Skelton, T. 24, 90, 95 space 3, 23–4, 206–7; social 16, 23–4, 159, 200, 207, 210; private 86, 89, 105, 110; public 2–7, 20–1, 23–4, 28, 98–102, 107, 110–11, 133, 200, 203, 204, 207–15; urban see Chapter 7; see also Chapter 6 and 7 style 3, 24–5, 47, 94, 159, 199, 204, 207–10, 215; see also Chapter 8; see also participation subjectivation 22, 210–11 Taru, M. 49 Thomas, N.P. 12, 19, 181, 212

UN Convention of the Rights of the Child 1, 19 Vromen, A. 130–1, 142 Walther, A. 3, 18, 22–3, 35, 56–7, 199 welfare regimes 4, 23, 35, 56, 58, 61, 70, 72, 79, 205–6 welfare state 3, 18, 22, 57, 60, 62, 79, 205 Wildemeersch, D. 180,191 Williamson, H. 22, 34, 206 Young, I.M. 212 youth policy 60–2; see also Chapter 4; see also public policy; European 35–7; local 35, 46, 71–2; see also Chapter 4; national 4, 35–7, 46–7, 55–6, 58–60 youth transition regimes 3–4, 23, 56–8, 157