Article
Regimes of Youth
Participation?
Comparative Analysis
of Youth Policies and
Participation across
European Cities
YOUNG
29(2) 191–209, 2021
© 2020 SAGE Publications and
YOUNG Editorial Group
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DOI: 10.1177/1103308820937550
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Andreas Walther1 , Demet G. Lüküslü2,
Patricia Loncle3 and Alexandre Pais4
Abstract
This article problematizes the assumption that national policies have a direct impact
on youth participation at the local level and analyses the relationships between local
forms of youth participation and local and national policies. Relying on data from
a EU project funded under the HORIZON 2020 programme, the article focuses
on formally institutionalized settings of youth participation and elaborates local
constellations of youth participation in six European cities. These constellations may
be referred to as regimes of youth participation as they reflect wider structures of
power and knowledge that influence the way in which young people’s practices in
public spaces and their claims of being part of society are recognized. However, the
analysis reveals that rather deducing it from the model of welfare regimes, such a
typology needs to be developed starting from the local level and should consider
the ways in which different relationships between local youth policies and national
welfare states affect youth participation.
1
Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main, Institut für Sozialpädagogik und Erwachsenenbildung, Frankfurt
am Main, Germany.
2
Sociology Department, Faculty of Arts and Sciences,Yeditepe University, Atasehir, Istanbul.
3
Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sante Publique, Rennes, France.
4
Manchester Metropolitan University, School of Childhood,Youth and Education Studies, Manchester, UK.
Corresponding author:
Andreas Walther, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt, Campus Westend, PEG, Institut für Sozialpädagogik &
Erwachsenenbildung, Theodor-W.-Adorno, Platz 6, D-60323 Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
E-mail: a.walther@em.uni-frankfurt.de
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YOUNG 29(2)
Keywords
Participation, young people, youth policy, comparative analysis, citizenship, youth
transition regimes
Introduction
Recent debates in both youth research and youth politics at the European level have
been concerned with the question of how to ensure young people’s political, social
and civic participation (Brooks, 2009; Spannring et al., 2008). When the European
Union (EU) started promoting youth participation almost two decades ago, it
addressed national governments as the main youth policy actors capable of facilitating
young people’s participation (EC, 2001). However, rather than strengthening youth
participation, these efforts seem to have contributed to ‘strong discourses’, while
respective policies have remained rather ‘weak’ (Loncle et al., 2012; Williamson,
2011). At the same time, international research is struggling with producing
comparative knowledge of how youth policies address youth participation, especially
as youth participation evolves mainly at the local level initiated by local authorities,
youth work associations or youth-led groups. Thus, it remains unclear how top-down
policy approaches actually influence youth participation.
This article problematizes the assumption that national policies have a direct
impact on youth participation. It aims to analyse the role and the relationship of local
and national youth policies in the specific ways in which youth participation evolves
at the local level, thus addressing a need for research to explore the relationship
between policies and the various forms of youth participation (Brooks, 2009; Gordon
& Taft, 2011). In order to contribute to an overview over local variations of youth
participation whereby existing across different European cities, our analysis starts
from local expressions of youth participation at the local level. It then focuses on the
relationship between national and local youth policies in general and with regard to
youth participation in particular. Rather than searching for a typology at the national
level, the aim is to reconstruct local constellations and the ways in which they reflect
principles and structures of local and national youth policies. The analysis is limited
to forms of formal or ‘adult-led’ youth participation because they can be taken as
more or less direct attempts of public policy actors to foster youth participation in
terms of representation and involvement in decision-making.
The article focuses on six European cities which were studied in the framework
of the HORIZON 2020 project ‘Spaces and Styles of Participation’ (PARTISPACE):
Bologna (IT), Gothenburg (SE), Manchester (UK), Frankfurt (DE), Rennes (FR)
and Eskişehir (TK). It starts with a discussion of understandings of youth policy
and youth participation, and a reference to the limited international research on this
subject. This includes questioning the appropriateness and feasibility of regime
typologies, similar to approaches with regard to welfare or youth transitions, with
regard to the analysis of youth participation. The research context and the multilevel
methodology used to generate data is then briefly described. Subsequently, the
article provides a descriptive analysis of youth participation in the six cities, drawing
on one formalized setting for each case, followed by the structure of local youth
policies and the organization of welfare and youth transitions at the national level.
Accordingly, the typical elements of these constellations are elaborated. In the
Walther et al.
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discussion, the characteristics of these constellations are juxtaposed and the role of
national and local contextual factors is discussed. The article concludes by reflecting
on the potential of applying the regime concept to the comparative analysis of youth
participation.
Comparative Research on Youth Policy and Youth
Participation
Youth participation is a rather fuzzy concept. Due to its political relevance in
democratic societies, even scholars struggle to separate its analytical aspects from its
normative aspects. There is also a lack of overarching definitions across different
disciplines. Philosophy emphasizes the relationship between self- and co-determination,
which can also be conflicting (Gerhardt, 2007; Laclau & Mouffe, 1985). Political
science stresses decision-making in political institutions, such as voting or being a
member of a political party (Almond & Verba, 1963). In sociology, this is extended
to belonging and membership (for example involvement in organizations; Spannring
et al., 2008). Due to young people’s scepticism and distrust of traditional political
institutions (Pickard, 2019), attention has been recently extended to include forms of
civic participation—like youth councils, the primary focus of this article—which
often aim at introducing young people to and preparing them for institutionalized
mechanisms of citizenship (Matthews, 2001). This also applies to education and
social work, where participation is both an aim and a principle of working with
young people (Arnstein, 1969; Batsleer et al., 2020).
The EU project PARTISPACE began questioning existing definitions of
participation because of their institutional and hegemonic character which excludes,
neglects, stigmatizes or even criminalizes many expressions and practices of young
people in public spaces (Walther et al., 2020). The findings of this study suggest that
in principle all practices of young people in public space can be potentially located
on a continuum between informal and formal, and between every day and political
participation (Harris et al., 2010). Thereby, we understand youth participation as the
relation between young people’s practices in public spaces and the ways in which
adults and institutional actors’ recognize their implicit and explicit claims of being a
part of the respective society (Batsleer et al., 2020).
Such differentiation is helpful in analysing the relation between youth participation and youth policy because it reveals that the forms of participation on which
policymakers generally focus are only marginal among the many different forms
of young people’s involvement in society (Matthews, 2001; Spannring et al.,
2008). This makes it necessary to clarify what is meant by youth policy. Following
Williamson’s (2007, p. 100) statement, ‘every country has a youth policy, by intent,
by default or by neglect’, youth policies stand for a set of public measures addressing
young people, the forms and contents of which vary considerably. In some contexts,
they primarily include the provision of leisure activities, while in others they also
cover the fields of social inclusion versus exclusion, education, health, or transitions
to work. There is a widely shared distinction between a cross-sectoral understanding
of youth policies, including all policies affecting young people’s lives, and specialized youth policies that focus on youth work and youth participation. However, the
relationship between these two policy approaches varies across local and national
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contexts. Youth policy targets also differ regarding age or whether all young people
or only the disadvantaged are addressed (Loncle, 2012).
Despite European institutions’ efforts to influence member states to consolidate
their youth policies and to develop youth participation, it seems that only very limited
progress have been made (Brooks, 2009; Perovic, 2017; Șerban & Barber, 2018). In
fact, political references to youth participation has been interpreted as the symptom
of a structural youth policy deficit in which addressing young people as ‘citizens in
the making’ (Hall et al., 1999) and inviting them to volunteer and engage in decisionmaking are interpreted as acts of securing legitimation and governance (Akiva et
al., 2014; Flanagan et al., 2017; Kennelly, 2011; Loncle et al., 2012). However,
there is little research on youth policies, especially in an international comparative
perspective and with regard to youth participation (Brooks, 2009; Loncle, 2017;
Nico & Taru, 2017; Planas et al., 2014).
The few existing comparative studies tend to conceive youth policy as an element
of the welfare state referring to Esping-Andersen’s (1990) model of welfare regimes
(Wallace & Bendit, 2009). This model compares welfare states according to access
and levels of social security and relationships between the state, the market and
the family. It allows to distinguish constellations where all citizens have access to
high levels of benefits (like in the social democratic regime type in Scandinavian
countries) from welfare states securing broad access but low benefits (like the liberal
regime type in the Anglo-Saxon countries) or others characterized by differential
access to and level of benefits according to employment and family status (the
conservative type in continental Europe, see Gallie and Paugam [2000] or Ferrera
[2005] for modifications with regard to Southern and Eastern European countries or
in terms of gender).
However, welfare regimes not only represent a comparative typology of welfare
states but also a theoretical concept of how modern societies organize welfare
(Chevalier, 2016). The concept of ‘regime’ implies that welfare not only involves
state institutions but also other actors and mechanisms of social integration. This
‘governance beyond government’ relies on particular discourses—constellations
of power and knowledge—on the relationship between the individual and society,
and on assumptions of what is seen as ‘normal’ in this respect. In a wider sense,
regimes stand for different modes of integrating individuals and society in modern
capitalist democracies (Walther, 2017) and thus may also apply to the analysis of
youth participation.
While the theoretical concept of (welfare) regime seems fruitful for conceptualizing the powerful interplay of aspects involved in youth participation, there are
nonetheless two challenges in applying Esping-Andersen’s comparative model in
this respect: First, it has neither addressed youth policies nor youth participation in
its comparative analysis. Thus, it remains unclear if they share the same logic and
institutional structures like monetary security schemes. In fact, typologies departing
from the welfare regime model seem to be more applicable to the so-called ‘hard’
policies like education or labour market policies governed by standardized regulations and large budgets at the national level (Loncle et al., 2012). Also Salamon et
al. (1998) who have applied it to conceptualize the ‘social origins’ and developments of civil societies had to limit their analysis to the structural aspects of the
non-profit sector. The model has been also used as a framework for analysing young
people’s transitions to the labour market (Walther, 2006), combining institutional
Walther et al.
195
factors such as access to welfare, education, training or the labour market with cultural aspects. Youth transition regimes reflect different discursive representations of
youth on a continuum between youth ‘as a resource’ and ‘as a problem’ (EC, 2001;
Kennelly, 2011): personal development like in Sweden (universalistic regime),
economic independence like in the UK (liberal), family dependency for example
in Italy (under-institutionalized) or occupational socialization like in Germany or
France (employment-centred). This comes much closer to the purpose of this article,
however, so far references to youth participation have been marginal. Walther (2012)
argues that comprehensive education systems reflect the higher degrees of choice
that young people have in terms of life planning rather than in systems based on early
selection. The same applies to integrative versus compensatory schemes in schoolto-work transitions. Chevalier (2016) shows that differences in young people’s
access to social benefits affect their dependency on their parents or unfair working
conditions and their recognition as a person with individual rights. Similarly, Soleri-Martí and Ferrer Fons (2015) found statistical correlations between institutional
expressions of young people’s citizenship status and different ways of regulating
their transitions to work.
Second, in most European countries, youth policies (like many other sectoral
policies) tend to be framed by national legislations but implemented at the local
level where socio-economic conditions, local traditions and actor networks may
dilute or override national policy directions (Loncle et al., 2012). As youth policies
are less regulated by law than other sectoral policies, they sometimes depend on
the good will of public authorities or even individual policymakers. This ‘softness’
and particularities make cross-country comparative analysis difficult. Andreotti et
al. (2012) have shown and convincingly argued that comparing social policies at the
local levels—different from national welfare states—faces difficulties in developing
typologies due to the complexity of relationships between single policy decision
processes, actor relationships, organizational cultures and users of youth policies
(Arvidson et al., 2018; Jensen & Lolle, 2013; Mingione et al., 2002). If we still refer
to regimes, we first of all refer to the theoretical way in which they conceptualize
the complex constellations of governing the relationship between individuals and
society. Rather than aiming at developing a systematic regime typology, we provide
analytical descriptions of local constellations which are understood as a first tentative
step towards a model of youth participation regimes, that is, different expressions of
youth participation at the local level and their relationships with local youth policies
and national welfare states.
Methodology
The analysis presented in this article draws on data and findings of the research
project named ‘Spaces and Styles of Participation. Formal, non-formal and informal
possibilities of young people’s participation in European cities’ (PARTISPACE)
funded by the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 programme. This project
aimed to look behind the surface of youth participation which often tends to be
equated with institutionalized settings of representation that seek to provide young
people ‘participation competences’ (EC, 2009). In the project, such formal settings
addressing youth participation in an explicit and organized way were contrasted with
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non-formal ones and informal practices of young people in public spaces in order to
show the extreme diversity in how young people participate in society. Settings were
conceptualized as non-formal where youth participation is not addressed in explicit
ways but activities evolve from young people’s interests such as in youth work.
Informal participation refers to all practices of young people in public spaces which
can be understood as expressions of claims of being part of society. While the main
aim was to broaden the perspective towards youth participation and to extend the
concept to non-formal and informal practices in public spaces, this also contributed
to a more explicit insight into formal youth participation. In this article, we focus on
the formal settings of participation that local and national authorities recognize as
youth participation. As they can be interpreted as explicit youth policy choices made
to facilitate youth participation at the local level, they allow for an analysis of the
relationship between youth policy and youth participation.
The project studied participation across eight cities from which six were selected
for this article applying the model of youth transition regimes as a heuristic
rationale for a diversity of contexts: Bologna (IT) for the sub-protective or underinstitutionalized model, Gothenburg (SE) for the universalistic one, Manchester
(UK) for the liberal one, while Eskişehir (TK) has been included as a case of system
of youth transitions in transformation. Frankfurt (DE) and Rennes (FR) have been
selected both for the employment-centred regime to assess if and how similar
national contexts affect youth policies and youth participation at the local level. All
cities are major cities but not capitals of their respective countries.1
The article draws on three types of data: First, in processes of mapping the cities
with regard to youth participation, 20 expert interviews and 12 group discussions
with young people were conducted on representations of youth and participation
in each city. Sampling ensured a diversity of perspectives by interviewing experts
with different functions and from different institutions (e.g., local authorities, youth
work, youth organizations, or research) and young people in different school types
and levels as well as in youth work and other out-of-school contexts relevant for the
respective contexts. Second, six contrasting settings of young people’s practice in
public spaces characterized as formal, non-formal and informal were selected based
on the findings of the mapping. Ethnographic case studies of each of these settings
included participant observation, group discussions and biographical interviews with
young people active in the settings. Observations were documented by extensive
field notes and interviews, and group discussions were audio recorded and fully
transcribed. Selected data sets were translated to facilitate in-depth comparative
analysis. For this article, data from one formal setting of youth participation per city
were analysed. These case studies are neither positioned as being representative for
the respective local contexts nor do they compose a homogeneous sample. Instead,
they offer exemplary insight into the variations in formal youth participation policies
at the local level. Finally, reports on national youth policies and discourses on youth
as well as on European discourses on youth participation were also a date source
(Andersson et al., 2016; Becquet et al., 2020).
Variations of Youth Participation in European Cities
While focusing on cities, this analysis addresses the potential link between local
youth policies and forms of youth participation initiatives, and the wider contexts of
Walther et al.
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national welfare states and youth transition regimes in which they are embedded.
Here, the cities are considered both as a level of policymaking and as young people’s
life worlds with youth participation being one of the expressions of their relationship. In the following paragraphs, we will briefly describe formal youth participation
in the six cities. These descriptions necessarily are not complete but offer insight into
selected key aspects that have emerged from the analysis. As an ‘entry point’, we
have chosen one formal setting of youth participation per city which are interpreted
as explicit expressions of how local youth policies aim at facilitating youth participation. The descriptions of these settings reveal, first, differences in whether cities
have formally established youth representations or what other formalized mechanisms are referred to in terms of youth participation. A second aspect is that formal
settings of participation differ according to their mandate, target groups and the
resources they are equipped with. Third, they also show different roles of adults and
different rules through which recognition and power are conditioned (see Lüküslü et
al., 2020). This is then related to the structures, approaches and achievements of
specialized youth policies at the local level. Therefore as a fourth aspect, local youth
policy contexts are considered with regard to their institutionalization and coordination, and the way in which they recognize young people as members of the local
society. Do they provide an infrastructure such as youth work premises that young
people can use according to their interests and (how) do they respond to young
people’s newly arising needs or practices? Fifth, the local case studies also reveal
that both youth policy in general and formal participation in particular do not meet
the needs and interests of most young people. This is reflected by critical perspectives of both young people—either in terms of reactions to the policies or of involvement in practices outside formal institutions—and of experts such as youth work
practitioners. Finally, these local structures are contextualized with regard to national
structures of welfare and youth transitions. Analysis shows that these make a difference in how young people are represented, addressed and endowed with influence
regarding their own lives, while not necessarily affecting local youth policies and the
ways they foster youth participation directly. Thus, the perspective is widened
towards a cross-sectoral perspective understanding of youth policy (Andersson et
al., 2016). The descriptions conclude with highlighting the specific logics and power
relationships of local constellations of youth policy and youth participation by which
young people are addressed as ‘citizens (in the making)’ (Hall et al., 1999).
The Youth Representation Forum2 in Gothenburg (Sweden) is a municipal structure
for young people’s co-decision-making, consultation and initiatives. It is elected by
all young people aged 12–17 years, based on district councils, and disposes of a
significant budget to organize projects and support young people’s initiatives. The
young people involved in the core group experience empowerment in making their
interests and views public and have managed to develop an informal atmosphere in the
core group. However, they also criticize adult interference and the lack of real power.
Thus, they assess youth participation as ‘lap-dog of politics’ (group discussion Youth
Representation Forum Gothenburg). The Forum is part of a well-developed youth
policy structure coordinated by a specialized department, while the youth sector is
organized at the district level and secures significant youth work infrastructure across
the city. All institutions addressing young people are endowed with participatory
mechanisms that reflect a high responsiveness to young peoples’ changing needs and
initiatives, and contribute to young people’s trust. However, youth policies struggle
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with compensating effects of the sharp social segregation in the city and, apart from
this, youth policy may also contribute to silencing young people’s informal practices,
which in the research appeared to be less visible in Gothenburg than in other contexts.
Youth policies at the local level stand in a dynamic dialogue with the national policy
level. The way in which youth transitions are organized has been classified as a
universalistic transition regime in which youth is seen ‘as a resource’ and therefore
addressed in terms of comprehensive individual development and provided
individualized access to resources and services. Nevertheless, in this context as well,
youth work has a legitimation function undermining its sustainability. In a group
discussion, youth workers criticize: ‘Burn a car, get a job. It’s a classic thing, you
throw money at the problem. As soon as it is gone, no money.’ At the same time, the
youth workers reveal a moralizing and deficit-oriented view towards young people
who do not actively engage in institutionalized forms of participation: ‘They don’t
understand that participation comes from yourself as well. It’s about always doing
the best you can with the prerequisites you have.’ In sum, responsive youth policy
and youth work infrastructure ensure youth participation. However, this potentially
also silences informal practices and counter-initiatives while being not sufficient in
balancing the effects of segregation. In sum, youth participation reflects a responsive
youth policy and infrastructure characterized by not only supporting young people
to be responsible co-citizens but also by normative expectations to participate in the
‘right’ way. This local constellation can be referred to as ‘conditional recognition’.
A Youth Representation Forum also exists in Manchester (United Kingdom) as a
municipal structure with elected members, yet without systematic links with youth
work in the city. The Forum was established in 2011, in the aftermath of the austerity
measures and the ‘riots’ in several cities in the UK ascribed mainly to young people
(Cooper, 2012). The space is intended to offer young people an opportunity to get
involved in the city life and to prevent alienation and distrust. This history is reflected
in how adult youth workers guide the group activities towards consensus and predefined agendas. The modus operandi of this setting follows a top-down, adult-led
and pre-determined structure, noticeable in the choice of themes and activities as
well as in how the sessions function. Most of its activities are structured around
educational campaigns (like ‘Don’t hate, educate!’) defined by regional or national
youth councils or by local or national government structures. It also reflects recent
developments in youth policy in Manchester characterized by the outsourcing of
youth services to the voluntary sector. Youth work is thereby being increasingly
replaced by measures of social inclusion for at-risk groups in response to young
people’s high levels of precarious living conditions in the city (e.g., homelessness),
while at the same time it also reproduces young people’s marginalization in the city.
In a group discussion, youth workers characterized their work as ‘trying to do a
difficult dance’ and ‘making sure things don’t explode’. The situation in the city
is partly the result of austerity policies and the (neo-)liberal approach to welfare
and youth transitions at the national level, which prioritizes private investment or
communitarian engagement over state activity. The way in which young people
engage in the Forum to develop their skills and competences aligns with a rhetoric
of social change. While some young people see this approach as being ‘all too sugar
coated’ (group discussion Youth Representation Forum Manchester), others say:
‘It’s still under the same umbrella, wanting to change the world, but in terms of
long term what I believe is that essentially it will be my qualifications’ (biographical
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interview member Youth Representation Forum Manchester). The local constellation
is characterized by a strong emphasis on precarious living conditions and social
inclusion, while at the same time austerity policies have caused dramatic cuts and
a shift from youth work. The concomitant paternalistic and ‘pedagogized’ approach
to youth participation can be labelled, ‘leading the process from above’ and
characterizes the neoliberal logic informing also youth policies at the national level.
The mandate of the city-wide Youth and Student Representation (YSR) in Frankfurt
(Germany) is limited to school-related issues such as campaigns and consultation
regarding school policy and management. The assembly comprises two delegates
per school and meets two to three times a year. It is organized and prepared by an
elected board and president as well as thematic committees under the assistance of
a voluntary youth worker. They also represent school youth in the city councils’
various committees. The budget for their activities has recently increased, reflecting
the recognition they receive from the city council. However, the board members
are aware that ‘70, 80% (of young people) do not even know about the YSR’
(biographical interview, member Youth and Student Representation Frankfurt). This
was confirmed in many group discussions in schools and youth centres. Many young
people also criticized the forum’s lack of power and effectiveness and that members
‘think they are someone special’. To mitigate this tension, the board has sought to
stretch its mandate to include youth cultural issues beyond school. However, to avoid
conflict with the authorities and to prevent the young people from getting frustrated,
the youth worker often tries to talk them out of such activities. At first sight, such
limitations seem contradictory as in Frankfurt, local youth policy is coordinated by a
specialized department responsible for a wide and diversified infrastructure of youth
centres across the city. However, both at the city level and national level, youth
policies are rather institutionalized as ‘youth welfare’ aimed at the social integration
of at-risk young people which reflects the simultaneity of economic wealth and
social segregation in the city. Against the backdrop of an employment-centred
transition regime characterized by selective education and training allocating youth
to different occupational and social positions, the national Child and Youth Welfare
Act is characterized by a dominant deficit-oriented view and a protective approach
towards young people. Both access to support and participation rights are conditional.
Additionally, youth welfare has been marked by a shift towards activation coinciding
with a prioritized focus on childhood and school-related support services in recent
years. Young people are addressed primarily as students which affects youth work
inasmuch as it narrows its scope for participation (Meuth et al., 2014). Under the
surface of a discourse of ‘youth-as-a-resource’ representations of ‘youth-as-aproblem’ prevail. Many experts are ambiguous about participation and complain
about young people’s lack of motivation: ‘I don’t know what they want. They have
criticised everything…although the centre offers so many opportunities’ (expert
interview, youth worker, Frankfurt). A gap of mutual distrust seems to have emerged
between youth welfare actors aiming at education for participation in the ‘right’ way
and young people’s emphasis on ‘chilling’ as the most important activity in public
spaces. While experts refer to ‘chilling’ as doing ‘nothing’, the following account
of a group of young men in a disadvantaged district shows the fluid boundaries
between ‘everyday life participation’ (Batsleer et al., 2017, p. 183) and political
participation: ‘We want to have more influence in our neighbourhood cos we’re
a part of it. For example, removing the benches used by young people who chill
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outside means interfering with a territory of young people that is used 24 hours a day’
(group discussion, young people, Frankfurt). In sum, interpretation of youth policy
as youth welfare and a shift towards activation undermine possibilities of youth
participation. Summarizing, young people’s needs and interests are increasingly
subject to a normalizing approach of local youth welfare, while their distrust
towards institutions increases. Inasmuch as young people are addressed primarily as
students and participation is limited to school, this constellation may be referred to
as ‘assigning them a role’.
In contrast to the first three cities, in Rennes (France) there is no youth
representation at the local level. There is, however, a Youth and Information Centre,
which combines the assets of a youth centre and a regional youth policy agency with
the legal form of ‘association of associations’. The centre’s mission, organization
and building have been modernized in the recent decade contributing to raising its
importance in the city and the region. Young people can use the premises for their
own projects and youth workers provide support to external groups. It is funded by
the city, the region and the state, which creates recurrent problems of coordination
and leadership. Recently, initiatives have been aiming at including young people
more systematically in decision-making processes like involving them in the
managing board on the condition they have internalized the organizational rules
and routines. Nevertheless, some youth leaders and volunteers express feelings of
not being completely heard by adults. This reflects that in Rennes, youth policy
is structured around complex relationships between public actors and associations.
Youth participation initiatives often appear to be too demanding and not always
accessible to those not involved in the respective associations. Youth and social
workers express the dilemma that if they should send young people to public events
of youth participation, which they expect to be tokenistic, they would thus eventually
lose their credibility with these young people. This means, in whatever way they act,
they function as gatekeepers of participatory arenas of limited power and resources.
At the same time, engaged young people reproduce these barriers by distinguishing
themselves from those young people who do not participate in the activities but are
‘passive’ (group discussion, young people, Rennes). As the city is primarily referred
to as a ‘student city’,3 youth policy is centralized in the city centre, privileging the
student population and marginalizing youth in the suburbs. At the same time, similar to
Frankfurt, political protest—a common form of student mobilization—like the NDE
social movement that emerged spontaneously in several French cities as a response
to a liberalization of labour law, is rarely recognized as a form of participation.
At the national level, youth policies used to be organized in a centralized way
concentrating on limited areas such as engagement and fighting against early school
leaving. These policies are thus organized according to the employment-centred
regime type. Recent decentralization processes have increased the competency of
regions and municipalities regarding youth policy, yet, without allocating them the
corresponding resources due to austerity policies. Altogether, weak local policies and
strong associations make young people’s influence conditional on the will to engage
in organizational structures. This structure reproduces social divisions not only
between students and other young people but also between members of associations
and the rest. Insofar as individual young people take roles within associations, the
constellation coincides with ‘assigning them a role’, while for the majority youth
participation takes the pattern of ‘leading the process from above’.
Walther et al.
201
Although sharing a lack in formal youth representation and the image of a city
dominated by students, the case of Bologna (Italy) appears quite different. Here,
a group of high school students who had to fulfil a compulsory extracurricular
citizenship education activity was studied. The Anti-Corruption Group aims at
raising awareness about issues of corruption and citizenship. Contrary to other such
groups, it is self-organized and run by a group of older students sharing a middle
class social and political habitus. Although adults are not co-present, activities seem
to follow adult agendas as the group is supervised by the head teacher and is a
member of a national anti-corruption association. Paradoxically, in Bologna the local
youth policy discourse refers back to a time when proactive local social policies and
diverse initiatives with and for young people inspired by left-wing activism were
celebrated with the slogan ‘la dotta, la rossa, la grassa’ (‘the educated, the red and
the fat one’). In an expert interview a representative of the governing party states:
‘Bologna has never been deaf to claims of its younger population. Since the 1970s,
politicized groups of young people have occupied buildings. Local institutions have
generally opted for a dialogical solution even when actions were non-democratic’.
Therefore, to some extent political protest is recognized as a form of participation.
Self-managed centri sociali (social centres) that emerged from protest and have been
answering to (not only) young people’s needs for spaces and social services have
been tolerated. However, recently ‘local institutions (university and municipality)
are moving towards a more repressive approach’ (expert interview youth policy
expert, Bologna) and a rather tokenistic attitude: ‘Over the last few years, we have
observed an increasing use of the word “participation” but we have rarely noticed
real participatory decision-making processes without pre-defined dynamics and
outcomes’ (expert interview political activist, Bologna). Thus, responsiveness to
youth initiatives has never materialized in terms of sustainable youth work offers.
Nowadays, school is the only public institution that addresses all young people
also in terms of non-formal citizenship education. This structural deficit applies
also to the national level of youth policies and welfare representative of the underinstitutionalized transition regime. Young people lack an institutionalized status
but are addressed in terms of dependency (based on family of origin) which in the
recent crisis has turned into an image of ‘victims’. In fact, the structural deficit of
youth policies has contributed to the politicization of youth participation, yet without
materializing in the development of a youth work infrastructure. Therefore, the key
characteristic of the constellation is ‘leaving young people alone without power’.
The same applies to Eskişehir (Turkey). Also here, no formal youth representation exists. The Youth Centre, funded and implemented by the national Ministry
for Youth and Sports, has been sampled as a formal setting because similar to the
centre in Rennes it is more formal than youth centres elsewhere. Its programme and
staff are elected by the Ministry in accordance with central youth policy guidelines
and their activities include formal education like language classes. In this top-down
constellation, young people are considered ‘users’ incapable of engaging in activities
on their own and even adult youth workers have limited power and autonomy. They
have an authoritarian and hierarchical relationship with their superiors: age, status
and power matter. They are constrained to position themselves clearly as adults
and reproduce a sharp distinction towards young people. The latter is expressed for
example in the dress code: ‘We are dressed casual but still good.… I won’t wear a
ragged jeans or have long hair’ (biographical interview, youth worker, Eskişehir).
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One factor for this situation is that both locally and nationally, youth policy, youth
work and the notion of youth participation have only recently been introduced in the
context of the EU integration process. Another factor is the antagonistic political
situation in the country which also affects the youth sector. In Eskişehir, two youth
centres have been established: apart from the Ministry also the local authority led
by representatives of the opposition party has implemented a youth centre. Thus,
the development of youth policy and youth work seem to be torn between a process
of liberalization towards western consumer culture and re-traditionalization with
the rise of an authoritarian policy regime. Affiliation with different political milieus
(conservative and social democratic) is reflected in the (self-)selection of young
people using the centres. Corresponding to the image of Eskişehir as a ‘student city’,
these are mainly students from high schools and the university while other young
people are not explicitly addressed. At the same time, experts ascribe the lack of
formal youth representation and the weakness of student councils to young people’s
disinterest as well. The largely normative, if not moralistic and authoritarian way in
which young people are addressed is reflected by experts and professionals referring in interviews to young people exclusively in terms of needing to be ‘saved’,
‘protected’, ‘oriented’, ‘emancipated’ and ‘empowered’ and reveals a dominant
deficit-orientation of policymakers and many (not all) professionals towards young
people. Overall, in a context in which youth participation and youth work depend
on European influence while being politicized, youth citizenship keeps being denied
(Lüküslü & Osmanoğlu, 2018; Yılmaz, 2017). The local constellation therefore
combines aspects of ‘leading the process form above’ and ‘leaving young people
alone without power’.
Altogether, these—albeit not comprehensive but exemplary and selective—
descriptions and outlines of local constellations of youth policy and youth participation
reveal some convergence but also diversity in terms of local constellations of youth
participation across European cities.
From Local Constellations to Regimes of Youth
Participation?
The earlier descriptions have revealed that existing forms of formal youth
participation differ with regard to their mandate, target group, resources and rules as
well as with regard to the role of adults. It has also been shown that these differences
reflect certain aspects of local youth policies as well as of national structures of
welfare and youth transitions. The constellations stand for different forms in which
youth policies establish formal youth participation at the local level which however
must neither be mistaken as full expressions of youth participation in the respective cities nor as representative for national patterns. Nevertheless, the six local
constellations can be reconstructed as ideal-typical relationships of youth policy and
youth participation which involves different relationship of knowledge and power—
or better, normalities—in the social integration of young people: ‘conditional
recognition’, ‘assigning a role’, ‘leading the process from above’ and ‘leaving young
people alone without power’ (see also Table 1).
The variations among these constellations cannot be explained one dimensionally
with regard to local or national policies, but require taking more complex relationships
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Walther et al.
Table 1. Patterns of Participation, Local Youth Policies and National Welfare Regimes
Participation Setting Characteristic
Local Youth Policy
Bologna (IT)
Leaving young people Structural deficit
alone without power outside of schools
Eskişehir (TK)
Leading the process
from above, leaving
young people alone
without power
Assigning young
people a role
Frankfurt (DE)
Gothenburg (SE)
Manchester (UK)
Rennes (FR)
Conditional
recognition
Leading the process
from above
Leading the process
from above
Marginal, recent
tension between EU
and national politics
Infrastructure but
focus on education
and protection
Infrastructure and
responsiveness
Austerity, outsourced
to voluntary sector,
focus on social
inclusion
Austerity, dominance
of associations
National Welfare
Regime
Underinstitutionalized
regime type
Not included in
typology (underinstitutionalized)
Employment-centred
regime type
Universal regime type
Liberal regime type
Employment-centred
regime type
Source: Authors’ own.
into account (Jensen & Lolle, 2013; Loncle, 2011). The analysed cases represent
possible constellations that emerge as complex relationships between the structural
characteristics of cities, specialized youth policies at the local level, the wider
context of welfare and youth transitions at the national level, cultural representations
and how young people deal with these conditions in diverse ways. Although it
should be noted that the formal settings only reflect a marginal component of youth
participation at the local level, they nonetheless represent and reproduce powerful
discourses regarding the legitimacy of young people’s needs, interests and practices.
In the following paragraphs, we want to discuss if and in what sense they may be
referred to as—not national but local—regimes of youth participation.
At first sight, these settings may be assessed following Arnstein’s (1969) ‘ladder
of participation’ distinguishing between effective and tokenistic participation. Such
a continuum, however, not only suggests that participation should be measured in
a quasi-quantitative way but also neglects that ‘more’ participation does not come
without conditions, including such expectations of using power and resources in
the ‘right’ way. At the same time, it seems obvious that where formal representation
coincides with a solid infrastructure of youth work, it is not the only expression of
recognizing young people as members of the local society but provides spaces for
individual and collective expressions of being young. This is even more the case
where this infrastructure is managed in a way which is responsive to young people’s
changing needs and practices. Infrastructure and responsiveness depend on the way
in which youth policies are institutionalized at the local level and on the resources
they command. Here the national level comes into play and this is especially visible
with regard to the extremes in our sample, Gothenburg (SE) versus Eskişehir (TR)
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and Bologna (IT). The strength or weakness of national policies pre-define larger
or narrower scopes of action for local youth policies and are also reflected in the
different cultural representations of youth. The other cases, although they do also
reflect national policy structures and discourses such as protective ‘youth welfare’
(Germany), corporatism and de/centralization (France), and controlling youth as
a problem under conditions of austerity (UK), reveal the manifold ways in which
national policies are interpreted and implemented differently at the local level. These
depend upon local constellations of governance and governmentality (Arvidson et
al., 2018; Stenson, 2008).
Apart from the influence and power of formal settings of youth participation, the
resources, the different role of adults involved and the rules through which recognition
and power are conditioned also contribute to different processes of young people’s
subjectivation (Butler, 2015). In this respect, however, due to the global process of
shifting welfare states and youth policies towards activation, the commonalities across
the different constellations, seem to prevail. Activation implies an increasing role of
self-responsibility for social integration in terms of involvement in lifelong learning
and of conditions of access to social benefits and social services. The new discourse
of youth participation has evolved in parallel with and is more or less directly linked
to this development. It contributes by providing positive connotations of individual
responsibility in contrast to dependency from the solidarity of others (Masschelein &
Quaghebeur, 2005). Obviously, this has different repercussions in different local and
national contexts. Yet, even in the Swedish case, youth participation seems to serve as
a powerful means to subject young people to norms of recognition and present them
as ‘good citizens’. The difference lies in the modus operandi of how good citizens
are being made—by empowering them through the self-responsible appropriation
of resources and recognition (Gothenburg) or by ‘forcing’ them to develop selfresponsible ways of coping with the lack of resources and recognition (Bologna)
(Hall et al., 1999; Lüküslü et al., 2019; Raby, 2014; Walther, 2012).
Conclusion
In this article, we have analysed the role of local and national youth policies on the
institutionalization of youth participation. We have introduced exemplary settings in
formal youth participation and analysed how they are related with local youth
policies and structures of national welfare states. We have found clear analogies
between local constellations of youth participation and youth policies at the local
and national levels even if national welfare states’ effects on local youth policies and
youth participation are not direct. The local constellations we have elaborated rely
on the analysis of single cases. They therefore do not represent the complete spectrum
of youth participation in the respective cities. Instead, they detail the aspects of
youth participation that emerged as ‘typical’ during our analysis. They may be seen
as the first steps towards a typology of youth participation regimes. Referring to
‘regimes’ is justified by the fact that different patterns of youth participation—albeit
elaborated from single cases—reflect general structures of social integration and
reproduction—or wider social contexts that have evolved over time (Salamon et al.,
1998). The regime types include both the governance of youth beyond public
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Walther et al.
institutions and constellations of power and knowledge in addressing youth. While
they empower young people, they also, at the same time, limit their agency and how
they might articulate their claims to be a part of and take part in society which are
inherent to their everyday life practices in public spaces. This is even more
noteworthy in the context of the shift towards activation in youth policies. Facilitating
youth participation may be understood as serving as a ‘showcase’ of young people’s
responsibility and involvement in the process of formation, subjectivation and young
people’s empowerment as ‘good citizens’ (Butler, 2015; Kennelly, 2011). But this,
also, takes different forms.
The core of such an understanding of youth participation regimes is the
relationship between governance, power and knowledge. We suggest that—different
from transition regimes or welfare regimes—youth participation regimes do not
coincide with national contexts. While national welfare states obviously play a role
in addressing young people as ‘citizens in the making’ in different ways, it seems
more appropriate to start from conceptualizing regimes of youth participation at
the local level (see Arvidson et al., 2018 for local civil society regimes). In sum,
developing a typology of youth participation regimes cannot simply mean clustering
different countries but needs to be sensitive of the relationships between local
youth policies and national welfare states with regard to the ways in which young
people are represented and addressed—whether it is as a resource or a problem or as
‘citizens in the making’.
Acknowledgement
The views expressed in this book are the sole responsibility of the authors and do not
necessarily reflect the views of the European Commission.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship
and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The research project ‘Styles and Spaces of Participation. Formal, non-formal and informal
possibilities of young people’s participation in European cities’ (PARTISPACE) received
funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under
grant agreement No 649416.
ORCID iD
Andreas Walther
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6999-3862
Notes
1. The two other cities were Plovdiv (BG) and Zurich (CH), for more information on the
PARTISPACE project see www.partispace.eu.
2. Names of cases have been changed for reasons of anonymization.
3. All six cities have a large population of students. However, unlike their colleagues from
Gothenburg, Manchester and Frankfurt, experts in Bologna, Eskişehir and Rennes refered
to their cities explicitly as ‘student cities’.
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YOUNG 29(2)
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Authors’ Bio-sketch
Andreas Walther is professor of education, social pedagogy and youth welfare,
and the director of the research centre Education and Coping in the Life Course at
Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, Germany. He published, ‘Regimes of Youth
Transitions’ (YOUNG, 2006) and co-edited Governance of Educational Trajectories
(London, Bloomsbury 2016) and Young People and the Struggle for Participation (London,
Routledge, 2019). He has coordinated a series comparative European projects on
youth transitions and youth participation. Apart from this, he is interested in youth
policies and youth welfare, and the emergence of transitions in the life course.
Demet G. Lüküslü is professor of sociology at Yeditepe University, Istanbul,Turkey
where she is also chair of the department. She received her PhD in sociology from
Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris, France in 2005. She
is the author of Türkiye’de ‘Gençlik Miti’: 1980 Sonrası Türkiye Gençliği (The ‘Myth of
Youth’ in Turkey: The Post-1980 Youth in Turkey; İletişim Yayınları, 2009) and of
Türkiye’nin 68’i: Bir Kuşağın Sosyolojik Analizi (Turkey’s 68: The Sociological Analysis of
Walther et al.
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a Generation). Her areas of research include youth studies, social movements,
sociology of everyday life and cultural studies.
Patricia Loncle is professor of sociology at the National School of Public Health,
Rennes, France where she is working as a researcher and a teacher. She received her
habilitation in Sociology from Sciences Po Paris, France in 2009. She is the author of
Politiques de jeunesse, les enjeux de l’intégration (Youth policies, the challenges of the
integration, Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2010) and co-edited Young People and
the Struggle for Participation with Andreas Walther, Axel Pohl and Janet Batsleer
(London, Routledge, 2019). Her areas of research include youth policies and youth
studies.
Alexandre Pais works in Manchester (Faculty of Education, Manchester
Metropolitan University), where he reads, writes and teaches about all aspects of
educational research amenable to philosophical investigation. He is a scholar of
Lacan and Hegel. Before working in higher education, Alexandre was for 10 years a
mathematics teacher in Portugal.