Гражданское участие молодежи в регионе: возможности и ограничения

Abstract

The problem of activating the potential of youth in territories’ development, the transi tion of their latent resources (opportunities) into the actual state of the driving force of social change at the regional level is of particular relevance for public and scientific discourse. From the standpoint of the activist paradigm, young people are seen as a significant subject of territorial development through their involvement in various practices of civic participation. The purpose of the article is to identify the opportunities and limitations of youth civic participation in the development of territories. The authors determine that a favorable institutional environment for the young people’s civic participation is being created in Russian society, however, there are problems in the implementation of youth policy both at the national level and in the regions. Based on the methodology of quantitative sociology (the authors developed a toolkit for a sociological survey, which was tested on the territory of the Vologda Oblast in 2021, N=1900), it was revealed that young people, demonstrate their willingness to civic participation to a greater extent than the population of the region as a whole, but they are somewhat less likely to be included into real practices of socially useful activity. The authors concluded that both political (in vertical interaction with the authorities) and social participation of young people (in the space of everyday  life) is realized primarily in informal (one-time or spontaneous) practices. It is determined that the demotivating reasons for the young people’s engagement in  the civic participation practices in the regional space vary from institutional to social and psychological qualities of the individual. By the example of the Youth Center “GOR.COM35” (Vologda), it is shown that the youth center is a complex structure or a new model of “public-state partnership” that creates conditions for the development of civic participation of young people in the region. The materials presented can form the basis of sociological diagnostics of the level, potential,  and barriers to youth involvement in socially useful activities in order to further develop the priorities of youth regional policy and effectively build the  work of youth organizations.&nbsp