Question

Un texto sobre la participación de los jóvenes en la política (en ingles)

Answer 1

The participation of young people in politics

One of my recurring obsessions, and in this blog I have commented repeatedly, is the political participation of young people. One hypothesis that arises here in a literary way is that the deficit of political involvement of the youth has conditioned that today we have a political environment not favorable, including a deficient institutional framework. Even outside the epic of state refoundations, the generational dilemma that arises about duality - which Cives explained fantastically here - may be a clear example, although I recognize that I have yet to make much more effort to demonstrate it with evidence in hand. In any case it seems that the young people have been a group widely marginalized in Spain.
I do not think it is necessary to use the rosary of data which indicates that, in the present economic situation, the structural problems of the labor market and the almost total lack of social policies centered on young people have serious implications. It is evident that this fact compromises the present and future growth of Spain. For example, there are studies that indicate that the generation under the age of 30 is not entering the labor market at the same rate as the cohorts prior to their age and are the group that may suffer a longer loss of employment. We are wasting part of our most trained human capital.
In addition, young people have become a collective at risk of social exclusion. The INE data showed that in 2011 the percentage of the population aged 16-24 increased below the poverty line, from 19.4% to 21%. In fact, the focus is already being placed on child poverty, a very localized risk in young families. To this situation of inequality must be added other dimensions. First, the existence of important educational imbalances that result in a high rate of schoolchildren who do not complete secondary education, which in turn is related to employment and the risk of poverty. And secondly, the key role played by the environment and family resources as a mechanism to cushion the impact of the crisis on young people. A loss of equity and equal opportunity at the same time.
Therefore, everything seems to point out the emergency situation of young people in Spain. The question is; Is this involving greater political participation of the young or are they demobilized? Is that participation being transformed from what it was in the past? Here are two possible explanations.
The death of (classic) ideologies?
One of the general hypotheses about youth participation is that which refers to the change in economic and class structures that have occurred since the 1970s. There is literature that points to a possible erosion in the centrality of the left axis -right in its classical configuration and that this would necessarily be affecting the political participation of young people. Transformations are relatively well known. The growth of the "high-collar" professional sectors, the decline of the classical industry and the increase in the services sector, the loss of influence of the parties and the class unions, the emergence of the post-materialistic axis ... It would be causing what We call it a generational effect. This means that as we young people are socializing in this particular scenario our relations with the political are necessarily affected.
A whole stream of literature on participation indicates that the uncertainty and precarious employment that affects our generation would have led to a weakening of family and community ties, making young people face scenarios more uncertain and less stable than their parents. I do not know if this comparison would resist the Spanish case, in which the family nuclei are the fundamental cushion of the economic stability of young people (remember the late emancipation). To some extent (speculation), the intergenerational solidarity component in the family nucleus of Spain could attenuate this possibility. However, it is also true that having the highest temporality rates across Europe plays in the sense proposed by the hypothesis.
In any case, this literature says that the transitions between the stages of being young and adult were becoming more difficult, more prolonged and more individualized. This situation would imply that the young people had developed a culture linked to the immediacy, which would make them have less time for participation. It could even be linked to increasing electoral volatility, although it has to be fought with a lot of tweezers. In any case, young people would be living in an uncertain structural context for articulated participation.
Live young, participate dangerously
Now, although the previous litter