MOSAIC - The training kit for Euro-Mediterranean youth work

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4 Youth participation and active citizenship
Figure 4.1
Citizenship cannot be reduced to a catalogue of rights and duties, but entails
membership of a group or groups, bringing identities into play in a very profound
way. It consequently requires an ethical shift that includes a personal and collective
emotional dimension.
François Audigier 1
4.1 Introduction
Every day we witness international organisations signing treaties, parliaments passing
new laws, different groups demonstrating in the streets, people electing their parliamentary
members, and municipalities collecting taxes. Although, at first sight, these
actions seem to have little to do with us, they might affect to different extents our daily
lives, directly and indirectly. The question is, then: what do these actions have to do
with youth participation and democratic citizenship? How do they really affect us?
What do we need to do if we want to actively use and live these concepts?
If we move out of our domestic surroundings, are there other meanings and interpretations
of these concepts and if yes, how could we deal with them? Euro-Mediterranean
youth work is a very lively example of an environment with multiple understandings
of youth participation and democratic citizenship. While, on the one hand, there are
various factors affecting the evolution and interpretation of these concepts, on the
other hand there also exist many different ways in which Euro-Mediterranean youth
work can deal with it.
Themes