ABSTRACT
This chapter examines participation and engagement of adolescents and young adults in Germany. Civic and political participation is vital for the survival and development of a democratic society. It considers a comprehensive understanding as particularly instructive when it comes to young people, as the answers to the question as to how much youth do participate with regard to social and political issues are quite different depending on the form of participation. The chapter examines the workings of factors suggested by the literature to be predictive of young people's participation. Our own findings on the engagement and participation of German and Turkish youth in Germany are based on analyses of focus group discussions and of data collected by way of questionnaire assessments. Summarizing various forms of offline engagement vs. online engagement, low to medium levels of activities on average, with participants of Turkish background scoring higher in offline as well as in online engagement than the young Germans are identified.
