Since space is at the heart of the PARTISPACE project, the thematic group space has a great amount of empirical data at its disposal. The group is working to develop an analytical framework that contains different concepts useful for a spatial understanding of youth participation.

Reflection springs from two main research questions. The first one focuses on how young people make use of different spaces in the city. This investigation is based on the micro-level and is centered on spatial practices. These are practices related to the appropriation of spaces, places and/or territories in the city by young people. Within this topic, it seems to be relevant to stress also the sensorial aspects of these embodied practices.

The second research question concerns how the spatial practices connect young people to the city. This is a discussion on a more general and abstract level where the group of researchers explores spatial imaginaries, that is how young people imagine or – more specifically – represent their cities including their and other people’s place(s) in urban spaces. They are using examples from all eight cities involved in the project and link them to one another by constructing a ‘topography’ of young people’s participatory practices. ​

Young European citizens are at the heart of a ‘crisis of representative democracy’ and, according to recent accounts, distrusting of political systems, institutions, and social elites (e.g. Newton, 2001; Mishler and Rose, 1997; Seligman, 1997; Kaase, Newton and Scarbrough, 1996). However, it is plausible that this claim arises from an institution-led normative understanding of youth participation and not from an analysis of what young people actively do for themselves, their community and wider society. Against this backdrop, and aiming at a deeper understanding of an individual’s life as a social being part of a larger sociocultural context, a focus on individual biography is essential in order to explore the “told life” (i.e. subjective meaning making with regard to one’s individual life course and the participation experiences embedded within it).

The aim of the biographical analysis is to explore the relationship between biographies and young people’s styles and spaces of participation. The analysis conceives of social and political participation as a crucial element of a young person’s biography and, vice versa, argues that the biography is integral to participation experiences. The analysis, which includes 16 biographies across the eight European cities, is twofold. First, we explore how participation trajectories (careers) emerge and develop differently, why young people decide to engage and for how long, and who (significant others) or what (turning point) contribute/ support this decision and in what way. Second, we explore the ways in which biographical experiences relate to and bring about young people’s participation, based on the idea that a biography is a subjective construction of a life story, and an ongoing and changing identity process that over time links the past, present and future in terms of subjective meaning and continuity.