Social Capital and Civic Engagement: Are Youth Councils a Mechanism to Reduce and/or Perpetuate Social Inequality?

Background and Purpose: Youth engagement in municipal government has the potential to benefit both youth and the community.  Youth gain a sense of control in decision-making processes and participation may lead to feelings of enhanced self-esteem, empowerment and self-efficacy.  The community also benefits when youth bring fresh ideas and solutions. Yet, some forms of youth civic engagement may be related to social class and race resulting in benefits to select youth and communities. This, in turn, may perpetuate a longer-term trajectory of privilege or marginalization. Informed by theories of social capital and civic engagement, the present study focused on one form of youth civic engagement – youth councils – and examined the research question: how do youth councils reduce and/or reinforce social inequality among young people at the city level?  

Methods: An in-depth study of one municipal youth council in a large Northeast city was conducted using ethnographic methods.  Data collection included interviews with 27 youth council members, interviews with 4 adult stakeholders, observations of 8 youth council meetings, and a review of council documents (mission statement, website information, agendas, and meeting minutes). Data were analyzed using thematic analysis, including a cursory review of the data, developing initial codes, applying initial codes to additional data, expanding upon the codes, and collating the codes into themes. Through the inductive coding process, social equality emerged as an integral theme in three areas: member representation, community outreach and social networks.

Results: The youth council had diverse representation on many criteria (e.g., race, gender, neighborhood) however there was disproportionate representation in terms of educational achievement.  All sample youth attended academically oriented schools and were college bound.  Participants offered mixed perspectives as to whether they represent the youth voice in their neighborhood.  Some believed they did, while others did not feel connected to youth in their neighborhood.  Participants had a strong desire to conduct community outreach but did not believe they had the knowledge or skills to effectively reach a diverse constituency.  A consistent theme in participant interviews was the importance of social networks (e.g., family, friends, school) in learning about and getting on the youth council. Once on the council, their social networks expanded to include other youth members, the mayor, city officials and community leaders.   

Conclusions and Implications: The present study has important implications for social work practice, particularly in macro settings.  As advocates of social justice, social workers serve as allies to support youth in engaging in civic life.  They can also support municipal governments in efforts to recruit an educationally diverse youth council.  Social workers have direct access to socially disadvantaged youth, including those attending non-traditional schools, homeless youth and/or those at risk for dropping out of school.  Social workers can provide training and support focused on effective strategies for youth and community engagement. Social workers can also assist youth councils in connecting to community partners (e.g., programs and services) thus enhancing their social networks.