A common thread connecting the contributions gathered in this volume relates to the observation that public as well as scientific discourses tend to measure young people's political and social participation one-dimensionally and against the standards of formally institutionalised and acknowledged contents and forms of participation. Consequently, the assessment of youth participation tends to be reduced to a quantitative measure of ‘more’ or ‘less’ both in historical perspective and across different social and educational backgrounds; or to a qualitative distinction between ‘real’ and ‘false’ participation from both affirmative and critical viewpoints. Both perspectives imply a secure and shared knowledge that allows distinction between participation and non-participation. This chapter builds on the previous chapters. However, rather than summarising them, it aims to extract three core perspectives which seem promising in overcoming this dichotomy: (1) an ideology-critical perspective analysing the meaning and function of current participation discourses; (2) a comparative perspective transcending assumptions of normality regarding the participation of young people which in national contexts appear to be held as self-evident or even natural; and finally (3), a biographical and cultural perspective which conceptualises participation as individual agency that flows consequently from the subjective perspective of individual actors.

Beyond discourses

Both classical critical theory as developed by Adorno and Horkheimer and modern discourse analysis following the work of Foucault have repeatedly pointed out that there is no single concept within concrete societal discourses which does not fulfil specific functions, that is not embedded within grown power relationships and that is not related to the interests of particular actors. The same applies for the concept of participation which has been increasingly referred to, starting from the last decade of the 20th century, and triggered by documents such as the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child or the EU White Paper A New Impetus for European Youth (European Commission, 2001). The historical and societal context can be denoted by late or reflexive modernity characterised by the acceleration of individualisation and the de-standardisation of institutionalised life courses.