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Youth participation and citizenship education have been widely discussed; however, there is no shared understanding on the best way for young people to acquire citizenship skills, attitudes, and knowledge. Although there is an extensive body of literature on citizenship education at school, other learning environments have received less attention. This article brings together the views of young people and youth policymakers on non-formal and informal citizenship education. The empirical analysis of the paper is based on the material collected in the framework of two large-scale European projects: MYPLACE and CATCH-EyoU. The in-depth, micro-level analysis of the viewpoint of young people is based on interviews conducted in ethnographic case studies. In addition, interviews conducted with Estonian youth policymakers were used as a source of information for the in-depth analysis of the attitudes of policymakers. The analyses draw attention to the differences in understanding between youth and policymakers and the top-down and bottom-up learning environments in youth organisations. The shortcomings of non-formal and informal learning as a form of citizenship education are outlined on the basis of different understandings of the meaning of citizenship.

Generalized social trust (social trust) is often seen as the glue that holds a society together and fosters cooperation among individuals. There is a growing amount of empirical evidence that social trust is conducive to many positive societal and individual outcomes, including democracy. In this paper, we examine the change in social trust levels in the three Baltic countries—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—from 1991 to 2018 using data from the World Values Survey, European Values Survey, and the European Social Survey. Our findings show that change trajectories in social trust have not followed the same path in all three Baltic countries. A steady rise in the levels of social trust in Estonia and Lithuania during the last decades is rather unprecedented from an international comparative perspective, whereas, in Latvia, where levels of social trust have been historically lower than in the other two Baltic countries, social trust has been surprisingly stable since 2008. Our results offer partial support for the hypothesis that a trustworthy state and good governance play some role in generating social trust.

Supporting young people who are not in education, employment or training (NEET) represents a new global policy challenge. There is a need to increase knowledge about policymaking connected to multidisciplinary approaches in order to provide better services for NEET youth. This study focuses on interpretations by specialists in the youth field in Estonia regarding the current public policy support system for NEETs and the associated factors affecting the achievement of policy goals. Based on document analysis and semi-structured interviews with specialists from all levels of the national NEET support system, this study demonstrates that the cross-sectoral and multi-level public policy system for NEETs lacks sufficient understanding of the central aims. The support strategy is, rather, created for use within a single structure and does not have a common meaning from a system-wide perspective. State-level coordinating parties need a common understanding at the beginning of policy creation concerning the system’s long-term aims, information flow and performance, agreed-upon roles transcending sectors, and process management across structures. This change would enable better outreach and integrated services at the local level and be accurately based on the needs of youth with heterogeneous backgrounds whilst avoiding barriers at the individual case level. Keywords: NEET; policy creation; policy coordination; information flow; multidisciplinary service; Youth Guarantee; Estonia. ······ Sprijinirea tinerilor care nu se află nici în sistemul educațional nici în cel ocupațional sau de pregătire (NEET) reprezintă o provocare globală de tip nou. Există o nevoie de a spori cunoașterea asupra design-ul politicilor, în conexiune cu abordarea multidiciplinară, spre a pune la dispoziție servicii mai bune celor NEET. Acest articol se concentrează pe interpretările specialiștilor în domeniul tineretului din Estonia cu privire la sistemul actual de politici publice pentru NEET și la factorii asociați care influențează îndeplinirea scopurilor acestor politici. Pe baza analizelor de documente și a interviurilor semi-structurate cu specialiști de la toate nivelurile din sistemul de suport NEET, acest studiu demonstrează că politicile publice cros-sectoriale și de multinivel din Estonia duc lipsă de înțelegerea pe deplin a problemelor centrale. Strategia de suport este creată, mai degrabă, pentru a fi folosită într-o singură structură și nu are un înțeles comun cu perspectivă largă, de sistem global. Părțile care coordonează aceste strategii de la nivel de autoritate de stat necesită o înțelegere globală de la începutul creării politicilor cu privire la scopurile pe termen lung ale sistemului, cu privire la fluxul de informații și la performanțe, să se pună de comun acord asupra rolurilor transsectoriale și asupra proceselor manageriale transstructurale. Această schimbare va permite o mai bună putere de pătrundere a acestor servicii integrate la nivel local și o centrare mai precisă pe nevoile tinerilor cu backgrounduri diferite, în timp ce barierele diferitelor cazuri individuale vor fi evitate. Cuvinte-cheie: NEET; design de politici; coordonare de politici; flux de informații; servicii multidisciplinare; Youth Guarantee; Estonia.

Few would disagree that youth civic participation is a desirable objective in democratic societies. Unfortunately, we often forget that intensive civic participation has a price for young activists, who sometimes work for a cause with an intensity that would be overwhelming even for paid employees. This chapter focuses on the costs of very intensive civic participation with a focus on overload and burnout. Insights into the lives of extremely committed young activists are based on a wider reading of the literature on conjunction with an extended ethnographic case study in Estonian youth organisation called DD Academy. Their experiences exemplify that very high expectations for oneself and imposter syndrome can both contribute to burnout amongst civically very active young people.

This paper presents an exploratory typological analysis of young people (aged 15–30) as political and civic actors in Estonia and the Czech Republic. We compare youth civic engagement patterns in these two East European countries, sharing similar socio-historical contexts, and analyse the sociodemographic and attitudinal profiles of the resulting participation types. The study draws on Estonian and Czech data sets collected from November to December 2016 within the Horizon 2020 project ‘CATCH-EyoU – Constructing AcTive CitizensHip with European Youth: Policies, Practices, Challenges and Solutions’. Two independent methods (latent class analysis and cluster analysis) demonstrated shared patterns in the political and civic activities employed by the Estonian and Czech participants, suggesting the existence of four clearly distinguishable types of young citizens. A more detailed analysis revealed that the socio-demographic and attitudinal profiles of active young people, and therefore, the factors of political socialization, differed quite substantially in the two countries.

Although it is arguably a fundamental democratic or human right of a child to feel safe at school, many children and adolescents have to face peer victimisation in schools on a daily basis, and occasionally through several levels of education. Long-term victimisation may have detrimental consequences for the victim, including a negative effect on educational attainment. This study provides an insight into the lives of five young people who have dropped out or are at risk of dropping out from Estonian vocational schools because of peer victimisation. The study is based on in-depth face-to-face personal interviews. Four superordinate themes with associated subthemes are addressed: ‘experience of victimisation’, ‘social context’, ‘lack of support’, and ‘quitting as a survival strategy’. The stories of the bullying victims reveal how the victimisation has shaped them and their educational pathways by compelling them to discontinue their vocational training.

Dropping out of school before achieving any qualification is a serious problem both at an individual and societal level. This study provides an insight into the lives of young people who have dropped out or are at a risk of dropping out of vocational schools in Estonia and gives an overview of the reasons behind the interruption of their studies. The study is based on in-depth face-to-face personal interviews in 10 Estonian vocational educational institutions with those who have interrupted vocational training, those in danger of interruption and representatives of vocational educational institutions. Qualitative content analysis was used to analyse the interviews. Personal, family-related, school-related and economic reasons for leaving school as well as possible measures to prevent dropping out of vocational schools are discussed.

The article is dedicated to explaining why value similarity fosters generalised social trust in high-trust societies. Previous findings by Beilmann and Lilleoja suggest that value similarity is more important in generating individual-level social trust in countries where the overall levels of social trust are higher, while in countries with a low level of social trust, congruity of the personal value structure with the country-level value structure tends to be coupled with lower trustfulness on the part of individuals. The article explores the meso-level indicators that could explain this relationship. The relationship between social trust and human values was examined in a sample of 2,051 people in Estonia, using data from the European Social Survey, round 7. The results suggest that when differences in socio-economic factors are controlled for, value similarity remains a significant factor in fostering generalised social trust in Estonian society. However, its direct effect is relatively low when compared with predictors such as trust in certain institutions, economic well-being, and ethnicity. Trust in the legal system and the police plays a particularly important role in fostering generalised social trust in a high-trust society wherein people believe that other people in general treat them honestly and kindly.