Young People and the Struggle for Participation rethinks dominant concepts and meanings of participation by exploring what young people do in public spaces and what these spaces mean to them, individually and collectively. The book discusses how different spaces and places structure and are in turn structured by young peoples' activities.

1. Contested practices, power and pedagogies of young people in public spaces: an introduction. PART I: Conceptual and contextual frameworks of youth participation. 2. Researching youth participation - theoretical and methodological limitations of existing research and innovative perspectives. 3. Discourses of youth participation in Europe. National and transnational perspectives. 4. Do youth policies matter? National and local youth policies as contexts of Youth participation. Part II: Empirical insights into forms and meanings of youth participation. 5. "This is a compressed political system." Ambivalences of formal youth participation. 6. Young people's appropriation of public space: participation through voice, sociability and activity. 7. Making a home in the city: how young people take part in the urban space. 8. Examining styles of youth participation in institutionalised settings as accumulation of capital forms. 9. Participation and everyday life: emerging meanings in youth cultural practices. 10. The interplay between life trajectories and participation careers. 11. Participation biographies: meaning-making, identity-work and the self. Part III: Towards new ways of understanding and supporting youth participation. 12. Everyday pedagogies: New perspectives on youth participation, social learning and citizenship. 13. Struggle over participation: Towards a grounded theory of youth participation.