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Youth As Youth Policy Actors: Options Of Youth Participation In Estonian Youth Policy
Raising youth active participation in decision making process is the one’s of main priority of many international and national agendas on youth. For instance, one of two overall objectives of the European Union Youth Strategy (2010-2018) is to encourage young people to be active citizens and participate in society.
Comprehensive analysis of the present existing options of youth participation in youth policy offers a more effective way to understand youth ability to influence their own lives. A focus on the youth involvement in civil society brings to discuss about various forms from 'true' to 'false' forms of activism. Scholars in youth field identify that not every action of young people in society should be seen as the full of value.
The objectives of the paper is to explore how and whether the state provide opportunities to youth participate in decision-making process of youth policy and how this process is organized in Estonia. Author have chosen for analysis Estonia, as example of Baltic states, where in youth policy it is possible to find at the same time EU appoaches and post Soviet experience.
The youth participation will be analyzed through a review of theoretical literature with providing some practical examples and empirical data from youth sector, using the Estonia states´documents, statistics, surveys and data from individual research (10 interviews and 1 focus group with experts from youth field) The main question for author is to explore whether youth opinions are taken into consideration by politicians.