ABSTRACT
The ideas of citizenship and empowerment have become powerful policy concepts in the last years, but their meaning is ambiguous. The debates about citizenship and empowerment take place in the context of more general social value-shifts in late modern (or postmodern) societies which include the increasing importance of individualisation and reflexivity. Citizenship can imply a variety of rights and these rights are subject to different kinds of mobilisation at different times. This chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book. The book brings together a European focus on youth, showing the forms of citizenship participation in East and West Europe. It discusses the participation of young people in environmental planning, a theoretical critique of dominant concepts, an account of Nordic volunteers and new living arrangements of young people. The book presents two accounts of new skinhead gangs in Nordic countries (Tarja Hilden and Timo Virtanen).
