Joining the Adventure? Exploring Young People's Experience Within Spaces for Youth Participation in the United Kingdom And
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Joining the adventure? Exploring young people’s experience within spaces for youth participation in the United Kingdom and Greece. by Maria Tsekoura A thesis submitted to the University of Birmingham for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy School of Social Policy College of Social Sciences The University of Birmingham March 2012 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. Abstract Youth participation has gained increased prominence within recent policies and is expected to serve a number of agendas and aims including the empowerment of young people, the creation of future active citizens, the prevention of anti-social behaviour and the integration of youth into society. When young people’s involvement in participatory activities is discussed, it is often done on the basis of its expected outcomes, and more rarely in terms of how young people themselves make sense of and use existing opportunities. This study addresses this issue by focusing on how young people conceptualise participation, how they represent their experience within particular projects and how such experience relates to participatory policies. Drawing from different contexts - Greece and the UK - this thesis presents examples of how engagement with similar processes of participation is mediated through the environments within which young people shape their everyday lives. The particular values and strategies that the participants associated with their involvement allowed for commonalities to emerge across contexts. Such approaches to participation are summarised in three profiles, namely the professionals, visionaries and adventurers. In this study, young people’s perceptions of themselves as participants are often in stark contrast with policy frameworks which construct young participants as active citizens in the making in both countries. Processes within the explored spaces for participation were dominated by policy priorities, while minimal space was allowed for a type of deliberation which enables young people to affect the contexts within which their lives unfold. While young people were expected by policies to populate spaces for participation, there were examples of the participants making efforts to re-interpret/contextualise the meaning of participation according to their lived experience, to maintain a critical distance from funding bodies and to enlarge their repertoires. Acknowledgements I would like to thank those people whose support was of central importance in undertaking this study: The Greek State Scholarships Foundation (IKY), whose financial support made this project feasible. I owe a great deal of debt to the people who participated in this research and those who enabled access to the various projects. My gratitude goes to all of the young people who took part in this study: those who enjoyed the discussion, those who quizzed me and those who trusted me. Whilst I cannot record individual thanks for reasons of confidentiality, I am grateful to you for sharing your thoughts and experiences with me. I have approached them with respect and tried to do justice to them. From IASS: my supervisors Dr Nathan Hughes and Dr Stuart Connor and my first supervisor Dr Bob Matthews for their support, constructive criticism, and especially for refocusing me during the many times I attempted different ways to engage with my data. Gary Manders for the long thoughtful discussions which enabled me to test and expand my ideas, as well as for his support with the proofreading of this thesis. Dr Jan Waterson, who as Director of Postgraduate Research for the first three years of this study, offered me the necessary support which made the PhD processes smoother. My colleagues in IASS with whom I shared thoughts, frustrations and ‘moments of epiphany’. I would also like to thank Professor Christina Vagia, who supervised this study on behalf of the Greek State Scholarships Foundation (IKY), for her collaboration. Many thanks must go to my family for their support. As it is customary to dedicate the thesis to someone with a special place in one’s life, I would like to dedicate this thesis to my sister Virginia, whose belief in me when I was a teenager allowed me to widen my aspirations and whose unexpected loss inspired me to think about all things important in life. Contents Acknowledgements ........................................................................................... 3 List of Tables and Figures .................................................................................... I CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION............................................................................... 1 1.1 Exploring Youth participation ............................................................................. 2 1.1.1 What is youth Participation? ............................................................................................. 4 1.1.2 What is youth?................................................................................................................... 8 1.2 Youth participation in context ........................................................................... 11 1.3 Thesis outline ................................................................................................... 16 CHAPTER 2: PARTICIPATION, CITIZENSHIP AND EMPOWERMENT ..................... 18 2.1 Discourses and contexts of participation............................................................ 21 2.1.1 Participation as responsibilities towards the community ............................................... 21 2.1.2 Participation as a right and manifestation of identity .................................................... 25 2.1.3 The significance of participation within deliberative and governance processes ........... 30 2.2 Participation in Social Policy: from beneficiaries to active citizens ...................... 37 2.3 Discourses of youth and participation ................................................................ 45 2.3.1 Participation as positive youth development .................................................................. 48 2.3.2 Participation as active citizenship in a risk society .......................................................... 52 2.3.3 Participation as the right to have voice in decision making ............................................ 57 Chapter Summary ................................................................................................... 61 CHAPTER 3: SPACES FOR PARTICIPATION AND YOUNG PEOPLE AS SOCIAL ACTORS ........................................................................................................... 63 3.1 Participation as policy space .............................................................................. 66 3.1.1 The multiple facets of participation ................................................................................ 70 3.1.2 Youth participation and space ......................................................................................... 77 3.2 Young people as social agents ........................................................................... 83 3.2.1 Discursively constructed social actors within fields of possibilities ................................ 84 3.2.2 Habitus and social world: like fish in water ..................................................................... 87 3.2.3 Connecting agentically with structuring environments .................................................. 91 3.3 Young people’s socio-political expressions ......................................................... 98 3.4. Establishing the Research Questions ............................................................... 103 CHAPTER 4: METHODOLOGY .......................................................................... 107 4.1 Making sense of and acting upon the world ..................................................... 107 4.2 Making sense of and acting upon the world: Research design .......................... 111 4.2.1 Case studies ................................................................................................................... 116 4.2.2 Instances of participation .............................................................................................. 124 4.2.3 Ethical considerations .................................................................................................... 130 4.3 Data collection ................................................................................................ 131 4.3.1 Semi-structured Interviews ........................................................................................... 132 4. 3.2 Document analysis ........................................................................................................ 141 4.4 Making sense of and acting upon the world: Interpretation ............................. 145 Chapter Summary ................................................................................................. 153 CHAPTER 5: FRAMING YOUTH PARTICIPATION WITHIN