Youth, political participation and social participation. The case of the Swiss Italian HPS

This paper discusses youth's relationship between political and social participation during the transition period leading to adulthood. Many studies on this topic claim young people are less and less attracted by conventional political participation (i.e. electoral participation and party membership), preferring practices usually grouped under the concept of social participation (i.e. membership or activism in social and/or cultural associations). Results from a case study, built on a representative sample of University of Applied Sciences of Southern Switzerland students, show the link between the two modes of participation, social and political, considerably varying throughout the transition process to adulthood, in a complex and chiefly "non linear" manner, not corresponding to the same variation measured by a simple age indicator.