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Inledningsanförande vid seminariet "Samtal i Höga Kusten. Perspektiv på kunskap, folkbildning och demokrati".

Medborgarnas frivilliga deltagande i politiken uppfattas som centralt för en levande demokrati. Baserat på fler än 300 färska studier visar den här rapporten att ungas politiska deltagande blivit allt svårare att definiera och avgränsa. Ett skäl är att ungdomar hela tiden utvecklar nya vägar för att försöka påverka, som reaktion på sociala, samhälleliga, teknologiska och politiska förändringar. Ett annat är att vissa handlingar motiveras av traditionella medborgarplikter, medan andra utformas mer utifrån en strävan efter ett individualiserat och uttrycksfullt självförverkligande.

The chapter focuses specifically on civic engagement as a distinct mode of political activity among citizens in contemporary democracies. In the first section, we review existing definitions of “civic engagement” in the literature, noting in particular the lack of common notions of what it entails, as well as the critique against too wide or all-encompassing definitions. In the second section, we develop a conceptual discussion about civic engagement and political participation, and suggest a thin notion of civic engagement that may be measured in a straightforward way in empirical studies. In the third section, we turn to an overview of recent empirical works on civic engagement and democracy, highlighting key findings and suggesting avenues for further research.

This dataset contains the underlying data of the following article that has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Adolescent Research: Albanesi, C., Prati, G., Guarino A., Cicognani, E., (in press) SCHOOL CITIZENSHIP EDUCATION THROUGH YPAR: WHAT WORKS? A MIXED METHOD STUDY IN ITALY. Journal of Adolescent Research The dataset consists of quantitative and qualitative data. Longitudinal quantitative data were collected in Italy within Work Package 9 of the Horizon 2020 research project CATCH EyoU (Constructing AcTive CitizensHip with European YOUth: Policies, Practices, Challenges and Solutions). The sample consists of 56 Italian students who completed the fours waves. The dataset was used in the analysis of evaluation of the school intervention based on YPAR approach, considering school climate, quality of participation and peer norms. The four times of data collection are identified by the following letters: T1 (October 2016) = all variables with “A”; T2 (May 2017) = all variables with “KA”; T3 (October 2017) = all variables with “B”; T4 (May 2018) = all variables with “KB” The National report contains the evaluation of the overall school intervention, integrating qualitative and quantitative data. This data is made available for open access in compliance with H2020 Program regulation, following the guidelines stipulated by the Data Management Plan adopted by the CATCH-EyoU research project.

This article examines the role of teachers, parents, and friends in stimulating the development of societal interest among adolescents. It assesses the extent teachers can compensate for societal interest differences among adolescents that arise due to socioeconomic differences. The YeS panel study is used, with 587 students aged 13–18 assessed annually over a six- year period (2010–2015) and uses latent growth curve modeling (LGCM). Our findings indicate that awareness-raising by each of the three groups contributes to the development of societal interest among adolescents, with teachers being the most influential socializing agent. Teachers were more influential societal interest development among adolescents from less privileged homes, confirming our hypothesis that schools can compensate for societal interest differences.

This chapter describes a political scientist’s progression from analyses of the development of Western democracies to a focused interest in young citizens’ civic knowledge, attitudes, and engagement in these democracies. The IEA CIVED data are an important but not fully utilized research resource. With some notable exceptions, political scientists often seem to disregard the 18 years of preparation of first-time voters. Fueled by the Swedish parliamentary democracy commission’s pleas for civic education to build the democratic infrastructure of the country, his scope of concern widened into a fascination with the political socialization taking place during adolescence in everyday life contexts. The multi-disciplinary IEA studies were a major inspiration to create a research team collaborating with developmental psychologists and communication scientists. They longitudinally followed 13 to 30-year-old Swedes over six years in order to see how political views become shaped in adulthood as alienated, passive, active, or standby citizens. More than anyone expected even a decade ago, adolescents have entered as major political actors into international, national, and local political arenas throughout the world. Political scientists have become curious about what happens in school as well as in other contexts. Furthermore, the major threats many democracies are facing in terms of climate change denial along with populism can neither be properly understood nor solved without the engagement of this generation.

This dataset contains the underlying data of the following article published in the journal Youth & Society: Tzankova, I., Prati, G., Eckstein, K., Noack, P., Amnå, E., Motti-Stefanidi, F., Macek, P., & Cicognani, E. (2020). Adolescents’ patterns of citizenship orientations and correlated contextual variables: Results from a two-wave study in five European countries. Youth & Society. https://doi.org/10.1177/0044118X20942256 The dataset consists of longitudinal quantitative data collected in Italy, Sweden, Germany, Greece and the Czech Republic within Work Package 7 of the research project CATCH EyoU (Constructing AcTive CitizensHip with European YOUth: Policies, Practices, Challenges and Solutions). The sample consists of 1914 adolescents between 14 and 19 years old. They participated in the study on a voluntary basis and filled paper and online questionnaires, after receiving an invitation from the researchers and a presentations of the aims of the study. The data was used in the analysis of patterns of citizenship orientations identified by civic and political participation, political interest and political trust, as well as their association with contextual variables at a one year interval. In particular, the following variables are included: age, gender, parents’ education, perceived income, migrant background, school track, peer and family norms of participation, democratic school climate, student participation at school, school quality of participation, sense of community, civic and political participation, political interest, political trust. This data is made available for open access in compliance with H2020 Program regulation, following the guidelines stipulated by the Data Management Plan adopted by the CATCH-EyoU research project.

Political interest is one of the most important individual-level predictors of media use, public opinion formation and engagement. When, how and why some citizens develop a strong interest in politics is however less clear. This study analyzes the development of political interest during the formative years of adolescence, using a five-wave panel study among Swedish adolescents, covering a period of four years. Based on the citizen communication mediation model, we analyze how interest in political and current affairs news among family and friends influence adolescents’ political interest. Taken together, while the findings lend support for several of the hypotheses, mechanisms and processes derived from the communication mediation model – parents’ appear more important than peers when it comes to shaping adolescents’ political interest., Political Socialisation Program

The future of the EU largely depends on the extent to which it will survive its young citizens’ everyday evaluations. Essentially, youths are assessing its fairness, efficiency, and trustworthiness to promote a life in which their dreams about such things as happiness, justice, and health can be fulfilled. Simultaneously, the young Europeans closely follow how European governance structure manages to avoid poverty, climate change, corruption, and other societal dysfunctions.

WP9 of the CATCH-EyoU project proposes a school-based socially innovative intervention that involves students and teachers. It examines how young people engage in social issues having local and European relevance, combining a participatory approach, community analysis, and structured dialogue with public authorities. The dataset contains the national report with the main results of the implementation of this intervention in the Portuguese contexts. The transcriptions and analyses of qualitative data (focus groups, interviews) contained in the report serves as the underlying data of the following scientific paper accepted for publication in the journal “Psicologia di Comunità” (https://www.francoangeli.it/riviste/Sommario.aspx?IDRivista=139&lingua=it): Joana Cruz, Carla Malafaia, Filipe Piedade, José Eduardo Silva, Isabel Menezes (2019). Promoting European active citizenship: A participatory intervention towards the politicisation of youth social concerns. Psicologia di comunità. The data has been collected from an upper secondary school in Portugal, involved in the WP9 EU citizenship education intervention. This data is made available for open access in compliance with H2020 Program regulation, following the guidelines stipulated by the Data Management Plan adopted by the CATCH-EyoU research project.

Political participation is one of the most studied aspects of the contemporary development of western democracies. A recent trend focuses the lack of political participation among younger generations. At the same time, the last decades have also witnessed a growth in the share of young European Union (EU) citizens who express alienation, and distrust toward social and political institutions at the national as well as the European level. By studying young people across different countries of the EU, the current study aims to examine if youths’ political passivity is better explained by political apathy or alienation. Our analyses are based on a comparative survey data collected by the Catch-EyoU project comprising approximately 4 454 late adolescents assembled from eight member countries of the EU. Results from logistic regressions predicting non-voting from apathy and alienation support the idea that political passivity is best understood as the result of political apathy. Moreover, it seems that the underlying separator of apathetic and alienated youths is cognitive awareness of political life. These results are discussed in relation to potentially built-in paradoxes of apathy present in efficient and well-functional welfare-state democracies., The research reported in this paper was funded by European Union, Horizon 2020 Programme, Constructing AcTiveCitizensHip with European Youth: Policies, Practices, Challenges and Solutions (www.catcheyou.eu) Grant Agreement No 649538. The views and opinions expressed in this publication are the sole responsibility of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Commission. The author(s) would like to thank Erik Amnå, Shakuntala Banaji, Elvira Cicognani, Veronika Kalmus, Petr Macek, Isabel Menezes, Frosso Motti-Stefanidi, and Peter Noack, for the data which were collected by their team to be used in this paper. Data used in this study are publicly available from the Digital Scientific Archive (Det vetenskapliga arkivet, DiVA) – Örebro University at http://oru.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1139877/DATASET02.csv, Constructing active citizenship with European youth: Policies, Practices, Challenges and Solutions (Catch-EyoU)

How does academic literature across various disciplines conceptualize and empirically address active citizenship? What are the potential benefits and dangers of dominant epistemological and ideological perspectives on ‘good citizenship’? Our paper engages with these questions by drawing on literature across 12 disciplines. We used textual analysis software TLAB to quantify and visualize co-occurrences, word associations and thematic clusters in the abstracts of 770 texts gathered by eight country teams and original in-depth qualitative analyses of ideological positions and discourses taken up in a selection of key texts across the corpus. Our paper elaborates the findings: that many of the key themes surrounding young people and citizenship in the literature share little or no connection with European citizenship; that there is a significant gap in the literature on young European citizens; and that studies connected to internal, status-based factors connected to citizenship are far more prevalent than those examining external, practice-based factors or dissidence and dissent. Our conclusions examine the potential normative implications of the disjuncture between dominant conceptions and critical accounts of youth active citizenship., Funding Agency:FCT-Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation BD/123619/2016, Catch-EyoU

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