Young People And The Struggle For Participation

Young People and the Struggle for Participation rethinks dominant concepts and meanings of participation by exploring what young people do in public spaces and what these spaces mean to them, individually and collectively. This book discusses how different spaces and places structure and are in turn structured by young peoples’ activities. Drawing on findings from a comparative study in eight European cities, insights into different styles of youth participation emerging from formal, non-formal and informal settings are presented. The book provides a comparative analysis of how transnational discourses, national welfare states and local youth policies affect youth participation. It also investigates how it comes about that young people get involved in different forms of participation in the course of their biographies. This book will appeal to academics, researchers and post-graduate students in the fields of youth studies, community studies, sociology of education, political science, social work, psychology and anthropology.

The Politics of Wellbeing in Transition examines the factors that can either help or hinder of young people's health and well-being through the lens of migration and migration control. It draws on data from a three-year-long study that examined former unaccompanied migrant children and young people with varying immigration statuses as they made the transition to adulthood. The accounts of the lives of young people from Afghanistan, Albania, and Eritrea presented in this book reveal the complexity realities that lie behind the concept of wellbeing within contexts of fluctuation and uncertainty; and how the ability to secure subjective well-being is governed by factors including country of origin, ethnicity, class, caste, and gender. By situating this work within an interdisciplinary analysis of wellbeing and how it has been conceptualized to date, this book highlights the limitations of existing understandings and how they might better capture the realities of what wellbeing means for lives in transition. At the same time Chase demonstrates the inherently political nature of wellbeing as a theory and a domain of policy and practice--to understand the promotion of well-being in the context of youth migration means critically engaging with issues of power, social justice, inequity, and discrimination.

Learning about politics and life as a citizen is part of the transition to adulthood. During this stage young people in most Western democracies are introduced to political processes and issues, as well as a range of political activities including voting and participation in social movements. But young people make this transition differently. The articles in this Book explore a range of ways that young people participate politically and also discuss those who are not ‘active citizens’.

A Handbook of Children and Young People’s Participation brings together key thinkers and practitioners from diverse contexts across the globe to provide an authoritative overview of contemporary theory and practice around children’s participation. Promoting the participation of children and young people - in decision-making and policy development, and as active contributors to everyday family and community life - has become a central part of policy and programme initiatives in both majority and minority worlds. This book presents the most useful recent work in children’s participation as a resource for academics, students and practitioners in childhood studies, children’s rights and welfare, child and family social work, youth and community work, governance, aid and development programmes. The book introduces key concepts and debates, and presents a rich collection of accounts of the diverse ways in which children’s participation is understood and enacted around the world, interspersed with reflective commentaries from adults and young people. It concludes with a number of substantial theoretical contributions that aim to take forward our understanding of children’s participation. The emphasis throughout the text is on learning from the complexity of children’s participation in practice to improve our theoretical understanding, and on using those theoretical insights to challenge practice, with the aim of realising children’s rights and citizenship more fully.

Explores whether, and how, young people work with and against contemporary politics at institutional and grassroots levels.

This book contributes to the studies on learning processes occurring outside “traditional” socialization settings such as family and school, by analysing civic and political participation and learning experiences. In this perspective, the book delves into the connections between the concepts of learning and participation and, in various ways and from different perspectives, critically interrogates learning and participation as interrelated phenomena, with the aim of revealing complexities implicated in pathways to adulthood. Being interdisciplinary in its nature (contributors come from disciplinary backgrounds such as educational sciences, child and youth studies, social work, sociology and political science), the volume provides an up-to date analysis of contemporary issues connected to youth participation and learning. The work taps into central areas of everyday life of young people and youth meaning-making and generates and presents qualitative knowledge about what it means to be young in Europe today.

Bringing together theories, ideas, insights and experiences of practitioners and researchers from Brazil, India, South Africa and the UK, this book explores children and young people's involvement in public action. The contributors consider the potential of children and young people's participation to be transformative.

This book presents a model for reforming and developing Indigenous related legislation and policy, not only in Australia, but also in other jurisdictions. The model provides guidance about how to seek, listen to and respond to the voices of Indigenous children and young people. The participation of Indigenous children and young people, when carried out in a culturally and age-appropriate way and based on free, prior and informed consent, is an invaluable resource capable of empowering children and young people and informing Indigenous related legislation and policy. This project contributes to the emerging field of robust, ethically sound, participatory research with Indigenous children and young people and proposes ways in which Australian and international legislators and policymakers can implement the principle of children’s participation by involving Aboriginal children and young people in the development of law and policy pertaining to their lives. This book provides accounts from Aboriginal children and young people detailing their views on how they can be involved in law and policy development in the future. It shows the latest state of knowledge on the topic and will be of interest to researchers, academics, policymakers, legislators, and students in the fields of human rights law, children’s rights, participation rights, Indigenous peoples’ law, and family, child and social welfare law.