The Spatial Scope of Youth-Related Claims Making in Nine European Countries

Abstract

This comparative examination sheds light on the spatial scope of actors making youth-related claims in mainstream media. Drawing on the “political opportunity structure” approach, our main argument is that the spatial scope of political debates on youth-related issues are driven by institutional arrangements reflecting windows of opportunities for the representation of various youth interests. Methodologically, we draw on “claim-making” analysis of five newspapers for each of the nine countries of the EURYKA project, that is, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Our cross-national exploratory analysis aims to show, (a) how state configuration and youth regime contexts impact on the spatial scope of youth and nonyouth actors, and furthermore, on specific state, civil society, and interest group actors, as well as (b) whether this leads to a new clustering of countries across spatial divides in the age of youth precarity. Cross-national variation is especially considered by looking at how institutional arrangements vary in each country, based on their youth policy regimes, the specific state structure and the impact of recent economic crisis on youth welfare policies.