ABSTRACT
In recent years numerous policy interventions and programmes have been established nationally and internationally to make sure that young people attach to the structures and practices of society. As the authors argue, young people’s inclusion and activity in society has turned into “serious business”, which is closely managed and monitored. The chapter explores assumptions that underpin the dominant political and research discourses on youth participation, highlighting also their tensions. Empirically, it reviews and discusses two participation experiments utilising the Virtual Council e-participation service (introduced in Chapter 2), which illustrate how such discourses come to embody how youth participation is understood, structured, practised and researched. The authors point out some significant differences between the experiments and contemplate the effects of how and from whose starting points the participation is organised. While discussing the cases, they also engage in critical self-reflection of their own values, research ethics, knowledge assumptions and research strategies. The authors argue for the ethical responsibility of the researcher to be clear about what kind of discourses and “truths” regarding youth participation they take part in through their research and highlight how they have engaged in such considerations in their own studies.
