Participation! Premises for civic participation among youth with diverse ethnical backgrounds in urban contexts
The aim of this seminar is to discuss and analyze premises for civil participation for young people representing diverse ethnic backgrounds in urban settings across Northern Europe. Young people of immigrant backgrounds are frequently, for example in media and political debates, described as corrosive elements that do not and refuse having context with surrounding society. Such debates are often entrenched in an ethnified and gendered perspective on criminal activities, educational drop out, social inclusion, exclusion and segregation, and ideas of “parallel societies” and “the ghetto”. In this seminar we will focus on alternative ways of looking on ethnic youth’s civic participation in cities across Northern Europe. Question that we seek to raise and discuss include:
1: How are activities including mixing (not least in the field of aesthetics, including music, art, dance) take place in urban environments
2: How and whether urban space facilitate civic participation and interaction across ethnic lines
3: How and whether urban administrative measures and policies facilitate civic participation and interaction across ethnic lines
4: Whether and how existing political parties and civil society organizations facilitate the participation of ethnic minority youth
5: How and in what respects important educating institutions (i.e. public schools) and their strategies towards ethnic minority youth are decisive for the inclusion and exclusion of ethnic minority youth
6: How processes of inclusion/exclusion of ethnic minority youth intersects with the variable of gender