Young People’s Critical Politicization in Spain in the Great Recession: A Generational Reconfiguration?

Jorge Benedicto,María Ramos

doi:10.3390/soc8030089

Abstract

During the last decade, Spain has experienced, like other surrounding countries, a deep economic crisis accompanied by an unprecedented political and institutional crisis. This has led to a growing mistrust in institutions and a dissatisfaction with democracy, but also an increase in interest in politics, which implies an interesting change regarding other situations. Young people of the so-called ‘crisis generation’, who have socialized in a new and changing context, also participate in this process of change, and have moreover played a leading role in the public space. In order to analyze young people’s politicization process, in this article we use data from the European Social Survey (rounds 1–7, from 2000 to 2014) and the Young People in Spain Survey (2016). We developed a typology of attitudes towards politics and identified, using discrete choice models, the demographic and socioeconomic profile of young people particularly dissatisfied with politics. Our results show that, although young people socialized in the context of the crisis are very critical of politics, instead of moving further away from democratic politics or rejecting it openly, in most cases they politicize their discontent. Even those most critical of the way in which democracy works in the country have a very participatory political behavior, both in forms of nonelectoral and electoral participation.

Highlights

The economic-financial crisis that began in 2007–2008 has had an undoubted impact throughout the Western world, but in some European countries, such as Spain, it has reached huge proportions.To the economic consequences of the prolonged recession, with its negative effects on the standard of living of large sections of the population, we must add a profound political crisis that has affected virtually all institutions in the country and the democratic system itself.According to all available data, young people have been one of the groups most affected by the effects of the socioeconomic crisis [1]
When we examined the distribution of these categories throughout the period under consideration, the high degree of discontent associated with the socioeconomic and political crisis became evident
If we look at the political indicators, there is no clear association with the level of subjective involvement of young people

Summary

Introduction

The economic-financial crisis that began in 2007–2008 has had an undoubted impact throughout the Western world, but in some European countries, such as Spain, it has reached huge proportions.To the economic consequences of the prolonged recession, with its negative effects on the standard of living of large sections of the population, we must add a profound political crisis that has affected virtually all institutions in the country and the democratic system itself.According to all available data, young people have been one of the groups most affected by the effects of the socioeconomic crisis [1]. Beyond the visible consequences in specific areas of social life (for example, youth unemployment rose above 50%), the Great Recession has meant that a large number of young people have stopped their integration processes and have had to face an increasing number of obstacles to achieve personal autonomy [2]. This situation has been aggravated by a succession of corruption scandals and austerity policies, which have ended up showing, for many young people, that this was not an economic problem but rather the inability of the political system to meet their needs and allow them to defend their interests.

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