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Presentation at the 14th Congress of the French Association of Political Sciences (AFSP)

From 10th to 12th July 2017 at the University of Montpellier (France) Patricia Loncle (EHESP, CRAPE/Arènes) and Céline Martin (Université de Cergy-Pontoise, EMA) will present partial findings from PARTISPACE research at the 14th Congress of the French Association of Political Sciences (AFSP).

Find out the whole programme here and the two abstracts below:

AFSP pictureThe roles of local administrative executives in the framing of a local youth policy: partial diffusion of apparently non-political norms in the local politico-administrative sphere

The presentation relies on the data gathered in the framework of an ongoing H2020 project (www.partispace.eu) on youth participation in eight European cities. In the project, we led in particular around thirty interviews with locally elected people and administrative and associative executives in the youth sector.

The local youth policy of the studied city has a quite long consensual legacy and has been led from its origins more by administrative and associative executives than by locally elected people. Nevertheless, this public policy, which is still seen as mainly apolitical, benefits for a decade from a growing legitimacy. The recent evolutions of this policy are thus very interesting to analyze.

Actually, the collected data permits to study: the ways part of administrative and associative executives propose norms and values of intervention which will largely fed the local youth policy; the roles of locally elected people about an issue presented as essentially neutral, the discordant voices and discourses that are expressed by some administrative and associative leaders.

Which influence of the interactions between volunteers and beneficiaries on the engagement and politisation routes ? the example of two local associations in the social and artistic fields

The intervention relies upon qualitative data (interviews and observations) gathered in the framework of a H2020 research project (www.partispace.eu) on youth participation in eight European cities. We propose to focus here on two associations studied in this research.

These two associations, which address to various publics (young people who find their a new engagement on the one hand and asylum seekers who want to learn French on the other hand), actually share common characteristics: they receive few public funds whereas their intervention is an answer to the lack of public intervention; they largely deviate from their initial objectives and progressively integrate the whole range of questions regarding the integration of their public; they lead to many exchanges between volunteers and the public far beyond the formal meetings; they influence the routes of the people who take part in it (both volunteers and the public); they impact (with more or less awareness) the critical thinking of the participants and even their politicization.

The intervention focuses, in particular, on the comparative influence of the interactions built between volunteers and the public on their integration and politicization routes.