Familiarity in action: (Dis)engaging institutional youth participation and transformative experience

Youth participation is a two-sided public policy issue. Besides lending legitimacy to decision-making, it is believed to enhance citizenship skills and strengthen democracy. Drawing on participant observation of a youth council in Finland, this paper critically examines these objectives by asking how council members coordinate their interactions to fulfil their institutional duties and how participation transforms their civic capacities. It critically interrogates the implicit definitions of ‘good citizenship’ embedded in the Youth Council by analysing how members become involved in the council and why they disengage from it. The findings offer empirically grounded insights into how participatory practices can, at times, transform participants from passive spectators into active citizens. The analysis highlights that engagement in the Youth Council hinged on the capacity of the representatives to adapt to a certain organisational style. Moreover, the study shows how different capacities and conflicting motivations among participants can cause participatory initiatives to perpetuate disenchantment with democracy instead of promoting it.