Young people's participation and representation in society

There has been a surge of interest in the geography of children and childho od. With it has come a growing awareness that children form a marginalised and subordinate group in (adult) society. A culture of non-participation by young people is endemic within the United Kingdom. For the most part, youn g people are provided with few opportunities to engage in discussions about their economic, social and environmental futures and seldom given chances to express their preferences outside of adult-dominated institutions. It wo uld seem that participation is still conceived to be an adult activity. In this paper, we consider competing per perspectives on the appropriateness a nd capability of children to participate and the form that participation sh ould take; we then examine young people's participation and representation within the UK at the national level and consider some recent initiatives wh ich encourage closer involvement at a local level; we discuss examples with in mainland Europe where the political participation of children has been t aken more seriously and where working mechanisms by which children are poli tically enabled are further developed; and lastly, we engage in further cro ss-cultural comparison in order to see whether ideas about children's parti cipation and involvement in public life extends beyond 'the west'. By makin g such comparison we seek both to inform the debate on children's participa tion and representation within the UK and to draw attention to how an under standing of children's political engagement contributes to an emerging geog raphy of children and childhood. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.