Precarious Voices? Types of " Political Citizens " and Repertoires of Action among European Youth (original) (raw)
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Italian Political Science Review (IPSR), 2018
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Acta Politica - International Journal of Political Science, 2017
In this paper, the authors analyse non-institutionalised political participation patterns of precarious urban youth in five European cities—Cologne (Germany), Geneva (Switzerland), Kielce (Poland), Lyon (France) and Turin (Italy)—following the 2008 financial crisis. In particular, the aim is to test the validity of the ‘grievance theory’ on precarious youth. In fact, the political participation of precarious youth has been overlooked to date. The article shows that across the cities, precarious workers exhibit higher levels of political participation owing to a sense of relative deprivation with respect to their regularly employed counterparts. The authors apply a logit analysis to duly consider the local context (i.e. unemployment regulations and labour market regulations). The empirical results show that precarious youth are more active than regular workers when unemployment regulations and labour market regulations are at their intermediate level, featuring as ‘issue-specific’ political opportunity structures. In sum, the article contributes to the debate on occupational disadvantage and political participation, shifting the focus on precarious young workers.
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https://doi.org/10.1177/02633957211031742 The declining political engagement of youth is a concern in many European democracies. However, young people are also spearheading protest movements cross-nationally. While there has been research on political inequalities between generations or inter-generational differences, research looking at differences within youth itself, or inequalities between young people from different social backgrounds, particularly from a cross-national perspective, is rare. In this article, we aim to fill this gap in the literature. Using survey data from 2018 on young people aged 18-34 years, we analyse how social class background differentiates groups of young people in their political engagement and activism across nine European countries. We look at social differentiation by social class background for both political participation in a wide variety of political activities including conventional, unconventional, community and online forms of political participation, and at attitudes linked to broader political engagement, to paint a detailed picture of extant inequalities amongst young people from a cross-national perspective. The results clearly show that major class inequalities exist in political participation and broader political engagement among young people across Europe today.
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