The Gap Between Youth and Politics: Youngsters Outside the Regular School System Assessing the Conditions for Be(com)ing Political Subjects

Carla Malafaia,Isabel Menezes,Tiago Neves

doi:10.1177/1103308820987996

Abstract

Approaches to youth engagement typically focus on withdrawal from conventional politics and participatory transformation. In this paper, we argue that such approaches fall short in grasping how groups with blended styles of relationship with politics assess their political ownership. This became apparent when, in the context of European elections, the rise of extreme right wing in Europe and intensification of austerity in Portugal, we discussed the circumstances framing youth’s relationship with politics with 40 youngsters outside regular school. Quantitative data from regular-school students on the same topic were used to trigger focus groups and later used by participants to interview their peers. Participants displayed ‘ordinary’ approaches to engagement, attributing an unexpected relevance to vote. Socioeducational disadvantages and self-blaming perspectives were actively contested, and the gap between youth and politics is to be filled by a normative equipment, with the school indicated as a fundamental, structured and unbiased locus of political education.

Highlights

Youth participation is a complex story to tell
João, from the arts school, highlights that young people get involved when issues are close to them, suggesting that political partisanship is too distant to deal with issues that have immediate relevance: I think that youngsters today want another way of doing politics, not the politics related to political parties; I think that each person acts according to what affects him/her directly
Having young people talk about the relationship between youth and politics, based on previous empirical results, has led to a two-fold contribution to this field

Summary

Introduction

There is currently a wide agreement that the forms, repertoires and targets of youth political engagement are changing and expanding (Amnå & Ekman, 2014; Barrett & Zani, 2015; Dalton, 2008; Hustinx et al, 2012; Ribeiro et al, 2017). Creative and non-traditional forms of engagement are on the rise, pointing towards a participatory transformation (Barrett & Zani, 2015; Norris, 2004). It can be argued that analysing political engagement requires overcoming both the reductionism of the birth cohort concept and the dichotomous understanding of participation (Harris et al, 2010; Mannheim, [1927]1952). The participatory transformation thesis, while intending to recognize youth’s political agency, may lead to an overemphasis on positive features of new, exuberant participatory styles that risks disregarding the importance of involvement with institutional politics and fails to grasp middle-terms and ordinary approaches to politics

Methods

Results

Conclusion