Introduction: The Challenge of Youth Participation

Abstract

This book emerges out of an extensive research project that was undertaken for the European Commission’s Education, Audio-Visual and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA) between 2012 and 2013 during which we conducted a multi-method comparative analysis of the normative definitions and orientations towards contexts, practices and experiences of democratic participation by young people across six countries in the European Union. Our research team consisted of the five authors — Bart Cammaerts, Michael Bruter, Shakuntala Banaji, Sarah Harrison and Nick Anstead — all based at the London School of Economics and Political Science in London and eight methodologically trained field research assistants in carefully selected northern, southern, eastern and western regions of Europe: Austria, Finland, France, Hungary, Spain and the United Kingdom.¹