Introduction

This statement from the general director of the direction of education and culture of the European Commission appears to belatedly recognise the progressive institutionalisation of a sector of youth policies at European level.

Nevertheless, despite the many efforts of the European institutions to orientate in favour of youth policies, despite their attempts to designate priorities and to organise decisions in a comprehensive way, youth policies, at least in national arenas, seem to remain weak, fragmented and poorly funded. Our hypothesis is that a deep hiatus exists between the multiplicities of political discourses on youth on the one hand and the weakness of youth policies on the other hand. One might say that the emphasis on youth participation actually reflects the weakness of youth policies and the lack of strong political will and strategy regarding youth; participation takes the place of political aims and strategies. The discourse on youth participation implies that policy contents are actually being replaced by policy procedures.

One explanation for this discrepancy is that youth policies belong at least partly to the category of symbolic public policy (Edelman, 1960). Youth research has repeatedly pointed to the fact that addressing youth issues serves for reassuring societal actors with regard to concerns of societal reproduction (Kelly, 2001). The notion of youth is itself blurred enough to develop ideological and collective postulates for two main reasons: youth is considered as a problem and/or as a resource for society and it is seen as a way of legitimisation for decision makers. Images of youth as a resource and as a problem have a long history: they appear all across Europe in the context of nation state building at the end of the 19th century; youth was then envisaged as a soldier (or a mother of future soldiers) eager to defend their homelands.