Author Description

Abstract Youth forums, child conferences, youth parliaments.... Because of the increasing detachment from established politics shown by the rising generation more and more participation models are set up for young people. But there are hardly any systematic studies examining the effects of such models. And there is also a lack of social theoretical research analysing the political participation of youths. Based on a qualitative empirical survey, this study focuses on these two until now neglected aspects of the debate on participation. The author systematically analyses the participation model of the youth parliament and on the basis of her empirical results examines the social theoretical dimension of the political participation of the young generation. Against the background of an individualisation and pluralisation of the living conditions, the main question is which conditions have to be fulfilled for an adequate inclusion of young people in politics. The data were collected in guided interviews with 11- to 18-year-old elected members of a youth parliament. The interviews focused on the attitude of the interviewees towards conventional politics in general and the work in the youth parliament in particular. The interview material was evaluated using the method of the Grounded Theory. This is an evaluation procedure aimed at developing a theoretical concept with the help of the collected data. At the end of this process a core category is defined which according to the data under consideration represents the core phenomenon. In this context, the issue of recognition and/or denied recognition turned out to be the main phenomenon during the course of the analysis. E.g. the experience – described very much in detail by the interviewees – that in established politics they are not sufficiently recognised as individuals with specific ideas was identified as a fundamental problem. The issue of recognition also proved to be a core category for the concrete participation in the youth parliament.