Young People's Perspectives on Civic and Political Engagement

Background and purpose: Concerns about the extent to which young people—especially marginalized youth—are increasingly disengaged from civic and political life are prominent in contemporary discourse and increasingly an impetus driving youth policy. In response, a number of youth-oriented policy frameworks identifying youth civic and political engagement as important goals have been developed at both the supranational (UN, EU) and national level, particularly in Europe. Effectively engaging disadvantaged urban youth, however, can be difficult, and the factors that contribute to these challenges are complex and multi-layered. Indeed, there is still relatively little known empirically about the specific contexts, strategies, and mechanisms through which disadvantaged urban youth can be most effectively engaged. This is particularly true with regard to the engagement of young people as citizens—both civic and political actors with autonomy and responsibility for contributing to the common good. And we know little about how young people themselves view such efforts to engage them, interpret their place in the world, and assess the opportunities, barriers, and potential responses to constraints on their civic and political engagement.

Methods: Based on 18 months of fieldwork including 66 key informant interviews, field observation, and 28 separate focus groups with young people aged 14-25 across three cities—Belfast, Dublin, and London—this paper is part of a larger research project examining youth engagement policy and practice. The paper focuses in particular on the perspectives of urban, primarily disadvantaged young people regarding their orientations toward civic and political life, their views about the opportunities available to them to participate civically and politically, the barriers they face to engagement, and the kinds of recommendations they would make to shape policy and practice that can more successfully engage young people like themselves.

Results: Young people across the three cities had various perspectives on citizenship and its relevance to them, often associating the idea of citizenship with identity, connection, and rights. This was complicated in London by issues of race/ethnicity and in Belfast by the legacy of sectarian conflict. Over all, young people were skeptical about the extent to which their rights were equally valued or that they were treated as full and equal members of society. They outlined a broad range of opportunities to engage civically and politically, provided critiques and identified limitations to these opportunities (including the tendency toward paternalism, tokenism, and ritual versus more genuine, critical opportunities for engagement), and some key barriers to greater engagement (including a lack of trust in politicians and formal politics, a lack of knowledge and the failures of civic education in the schools, and inequality of opportunity based on socioeconomic status).

 

Conclusions and implications: Drawing specifically on young people’s perspectives and experiences, promoting the civic and political engagement of young people requires investment in civic and political education in both the formal and non-formal sector, supporting youth organizations and opportunities at the community level, normalizing participation by engaging them from an early age and in many contexts, lowering the voting age, and addressing structural inequalities.