Participation in transition: youth and the reinvention of politics

This chapter explores the dynamic relationship between youth, politics and social change, highlighting how the transformations occurring on each side of this triangle interact with the others. The change of transition processes radically alters the context in which youth moves, by acting as much on the characteristics ascribed to the life cycle as on youth cultures, and imprinting a significant generational specificity on the way in which young people relate to the collective dimension. The hypothesis is that the process of depoliticisation that characterises the new generations is accompanied by a process of repoliticisation which takes shape in an invisible but radical way. The reinvention of politics comprises detachment from politics and politicisation of everyday life, individualisation and new forms of responsibility and engagement. Young people are active in the development of new practices and new styles of engagement, which mostly take place outside the traditional boundaries of institutional politics.