Active Citizenship In Europe

This volume engages with the contested concept of ‘active citizenship’. It analyses the use and understanding of active citizenship in youth civic and political initiatives in the Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, Italy, Portugal and the UK. Using ethnographic data and insights from the cross-European project CATCH-EyoU, the contributors to this collection illuminate the experiences of young people taking action for social change. It does so at a unique moment when a resurgent populist political right is deploying racial prejudice and neoliberal protectionism in both established media and new digital media to fuel xenophobic nationalism. The book asks a range of questions, including: What is life like for active young citizens with an interest in the civic and political spheres? What practices, relationships and motivations characterise their participatory movements, organisations, initiatives and groups? The chapters use case studies to analyse how friendship and emotion, social media, diversity-work, racism, precarity and burnout feed into motivating and developing or curtailing sustained pro-democratic activism. Youth Active Citizenship in Europe will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of disciplines including politics, sociology, education and cultural studies.

The book provides an overview of key issues in the debate concerning the emergence of active citizenship in Europe. The specific focus of enquiry is the promotion of patterns of civic and political engagement and civic and political participation by the EU and the relative responses drawn by organizations of the civil society operating at the supranational level and in Italy, Turkey and the UK. More specifically, it addresses key debates on the engagement and participation of organized civil society across the permanent state of euro-crisis, considering the production of policy discourses along the continuum that characterized three subsequent and interrelated emergency situations (democratic, financial and migration crises) that have hit Europe since 2005. Active Citizenship in Europe will be of interest to students and scholars in a range of fields, including sociology, politics, European studies and international studies.

This collection presents the main outcomes concerning social rights, active citizenship, and governance in the European Union, as presented at the final conference of the Civil Society and New Forms of Governance in Europe (CINEFOGO) Network of Excellence (Brussels, March 2009). The classic social debate about active citizen involvement in governance has re-emerged in the changing contexts of globalization and European integreation. Researchers have been involved in deepening the understanding of the role of civil society and new forms of governance in Europe and the making of European citizenship. They have been systematically studying political, legal, institutional, and economic conditions, as well as the different roles of various actors and institutions, the extent of their involvement in decision-making, and how their actions influence the changing human living conditions, including the actual accessibility of social rights for EU citizens. Different aspects of the structural changes to welfare states, and the extent and forms of citizens' participation in addressing public affairs, have been placed in the center of research attention. (Series: European Civil Society)

This volume engages with the contested concept of ‘active citizenship’. It analyses the use and understanding of active citizenship in youth civic and political initiatives in the Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, Italy, Portugal and the UK. Using ethnographic data and insights from the cross-European project CATCH-EyoU, the contributors to this collection illuminate the experiences of young people taking action for social change. It does so at a unique moment when a resurgent populist political right is deploying racial prejudice and neoliberal protectionism in both established media and new digital media to fuel xenophobic nationalism. The book asks a range of questions, including: What is life like for active young citizens with an interest in the civic and political spheres? What practices, relationships and motivations characterise their participatory movements, organisations, initiatives and groups? The chapters use case studies to analyse how friendship and emotion, social media, diversity-work, racism, precarity and burnout feed into motivating and developing or curtailing sustained pro-democratic activism. Youth Active Citizenship in Europe will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of disciplines including politics, sociology, education and cultural studies.

Being an ‘active citizen’ involves exercising social rights and duties, enjoying choice and autonomy, and participating in political decision-making processes which are of importance for one’s life. Amid the new challenges facing contemporary welfare states, debate over just how ‘active’ citizens can and ought to be has redoubled. Presenting research from the first major comparative and cross-national study of active citizenship and disability in Europe, this book analyses the consequences of ongoing changes in Europe – what opportunities do persons with disabilities have to exercise Active Citizenship? The Changing Disability Policy System: Active Citizenship and Disability in Europe Volume 1 approaches the conditions for Active Citizenship from a macro perspective in order to capture the impact of the overall disability policy system. This system takes diverse and changing forms in the nine European countries under study. Central to the analysis are issues of coherence and coordination between three subsystems of the disability policy system, and between levels of governance. This book identifies the implications and policy lessons of the findings for future disability policy in Europe and beyond. It will appeal to policymakers and policy officials, as well as to researchers and students of disability studies, comparative social policy, international disability law and qualitative research methods.

This book applies a number of different disciplinary and geographical perspectives to ascertain whether and how European youth identify with the EU, trust EU institutions and engage in EU issues. It investigates the factors and processes that predict the different ways in which young Europeans engage (or do not engage) with social and political issues and become active European citizens. The volume is based on results from the first two years of the Horizon 2020 CATCH-EyoU project (“Constructing AcTive CitizensHip with European Youth: Policies, Practices, Challenges and Solutions”). It addresses different dimensions of active citizenship in the EU and different processes and contexts that explain the construction of youth active citizenship, including societal-level factors such as policy context and media; interaction-level contexts such as school and family; and individual-level factors. The final chapter emphasizes the impact of the current historical context on the development of young Europeans’ civic identity and their understanding of the social and political reality. With contributions from a variety of disciplines including psychology, political science, communications and education, and spanning geographic contexts across Europe, this book will be of interest to researchers studying contemporary European youth and the construction of young people’s identity. This book was originally published as a special issue of the European Journal of Developmental Psychology. Chapters 1 and 5 are available Open Access at https://www.routledge.com/products/9780367236557.

This book evaluates the role that civic engagement, political participation and active citizenship can play in promoting the establishment of a European polity. The chapters included here examine how the practice of active citizenship is managed and constructed in the context of a European drive to increase civic engagement and political participation in three member states (Portugal, Italy and the UK) and one accession country (Turkey). Looking at both processes and policies promoting active citizenship at the European and national levels, this book uncovers current discourses as well as political priorities and values that surround the activities of non- governmental organizations (NGOs). Of particular interest are debates about the nature and level of civic and political participation and engagement of marginal groups (women, youths, migrants and minorities) as they are particularly vulnerable to social exclusion. The book focuses on the interaction between institutions and civil society actors, addressing a number of questions related to their reciprocal role in influencing, shaping, criticising or disregarding certain political priorities. This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of Civil Society.

This publication gathers contributions to understand better and further develop the European Citizens’ Initiative. This participatory and agenda-setting tool introduced into the Treaty of Lisbon has not yet reached its full potential of citizen engagement, nor has it driven the significant policy changes initially expected. Bearing this in mind, the project ECI: From A to Z aimed to promote the knowledge and use of the European Citizens’ Initiative within the higher education arena by engaging investigators and students from four different Universities (University of Coimbra; Georg-August University of Göttingen; Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iaşi and the University of Vigo) to work together to share their concerns and common views on the European Union role and policies. This publication describes the methodology followed and results reached under the project, but more than that, it is a practical toolkit for all who wish to know more about the European Citizens’ Initiative and how to put it in motion.