Understanding Youth Participation Across Europe: From Survey to Ethnography

Description

This edited volume presents findings from a major cross-European research project mapping the civic and political engagement of young Europeans in the context of both shared and diverse political heritages. Drawing on new survey, interview and ethnographic data, the authors discuss substantive issues relating to young people’s attitudes and activism including: attitudes to the European Union and to history; understanding of political ideologies; how attitudes to democracy are shaped by political heritage; activism in radical right wing groups and religion-based organisations; and digital activism. These contributions make the book’s case that transnational and multi-method projects can enrich our understanding of how young people envisage their place and role in Europe’s political and civic space. The book challenges methodological assumptions that survey research shows the big picture but at the cost of local nuance or that qualitative research cannot speak beyond the individual case, and demonstrates the added explanatory value of triangulating different kinds of data. Understanding Youth Participation Across Europe will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of disciplines, including Sociology, Political Sociology, Youth Studies and Political and Civic Participation. Front Matter ....Pages i-xxxvi Introduction: Thinking Globally, Understanding Locally (Gary Pollock, Hilary Pilkington, Renata Franc)....Pages 1-15 Front Matter ....Pages 17-17 Survey Research and Sensitivity to Context: The MYPLACE Project and Its Case Study Approach (Gary Pollock)....Pages 19-36 Beyond ‘Left’ and ‘Right’? The Role of Culture and Context in Young People’s Understanding of Ideology (Inta Mieriņa)....Pages 37-66 Attitudes Towards the EU Among Young People in Eastern Germany, Greece, and the UK: Embedding Survey Data Within Socio-Historical Context (Robert Grimm, Gary Pollock, Mark Ellison, Alexandra Koronaiou, Evangelos Lagos, Alexandros Sakellariou)....Pages 67-98 Front Matter ....Pages 99-99 Can Qualitative Data Speak Beyond the Individual Case? Employing Meta-Ethnography for the Synthesis of Findings in Transnational Research Projects (Hilary Pilkington)....Pages 101-121 ‘One Big Family’: Emotion, Affect and Solidarity in Young People’s Activism in Radical Right and Patriotic Movements (Hilary Pilkington, Elena Omelchenko, Benjamin Perasović)....Pages 123-152 Believing in Participation: Youth, Religion and Civic Engagement (Alexandros Sakellariou)....Pages 153-177 Young People’s Attitudes to, and Practices of, Political Participation on the Internet: What Can We Learn from Large-Scale Qualitative Research? (Flórián Sipos)....Pages 179-206 Front Matter ....Pages 207-207 Introduction to Triangulating Data (Renata Franc)....Pages 209-226 Youth, History and a Crisis of Democracy? Perspectives from Croatia (Renata Franc, Benjamin Perasović, Marko Mustapić)....Pages 227-263 Does History Matter for Young People’s Political Identity? The Role of Past Authoritarianism in Germany and Spain (Britta Busse, Mariona Ferrer-Fons, Robert Grimm, Jochen Tholen, Sanjin Uležić, Kevin Wolnik)....Pages 265-291 History in Danger and Youth Civic Engagement: Perceptions and Practice in Telavi, Georgia (Tamar Khoshtaria, Mariam Kobaladze, Tinatin Zurabishvili)....Pages 293-315 Conclusion: What is the ‘Value Added’ of Multi-method, Transnational Research? (Hilary Pilkington, Renata Franc, Gary Pollock)....Pages 317-329 Back Matter ....Pages 331-340