Authors:Kira Renée Kurz, L. Constantin Wurthmann, Martin Gross Abstract: While in most countries the age of candidacy is 18, young people are strongly underrepresented in legislatures around the world. This results in a notable age gap between the average parliamentarian and the electorate. So far, the majority of studies focus on structural and party-level factors contributing to age disparities in descriptive underrepresentation. And even though young candidates are perceived as less experienced, recent research shows varying effects of candidates’ age on voters’ willingness to elect them. What is mostly lacking, however, is an individual-level perspective on age-centred representation. How does a political representative’s age matter for citizens and do citizens’ preferences regarding representation differ between age groups' We base our theoretical arguments on the literature on candidate characteristics and ingroup-outgroup behaviour. Empirically, we provide evidence based on original data collected in Germany—that age matters for citizens on all levels of government, but especially for young people (below 31 years). Furthermore, we observe strong and significant ingroup preferences for both young and elderly citizens (60 years and above). Yet, with regard to outgroup discrimination, we find a notable asymmetry: Young adults exhibit aversion to being represented by individuals over 60 years, whilst seniors do not significantly discriminate against young representatives. These preference patterns speak to recent findings that enhanced descriptive youth representation leads to an increase in turnout among young people by providing additional insights into the mechanisms behind this relationship. PubDate: 2025-04-03 DOI: 10.17645/pag.9251 Issue No:Vol. 13 (2025)
Authors:Philipp Kleer, Simone Abendschön, Gema García-Albacete, Lidia Núñez, David Sánchez Abstract: Political interest is one of the main determinants of political participation. Understanding the development and the mechanisms involved in forming this crucial cognitive orientation is necessary for an enhanced understanding and a successful political integration of young people. We know that political interest starts forming at an early age and that this process depends on several social characteristics, i.e., socioeconomic and immigration background have proven to be a significant element. However, the direction of the differences in the political interest of adolescents with an immigrant background compared to native adolescents is disputed. At the same time, some studies present lower political interest levels for immigrant youth, and others found higher political interest levels. Our article explores whether these inconsistent findings are related to (a) different discrimination experiences and (b) the moderation effects of these discrimination experiences on one important correlate of political interest—social participation. We expect that experiences of discrimination represent an important determinant of political interest. Despite its importance, little attention has been paid to the mechanisms by which discrimination fosters political interest. We rely on data from the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Survey in Four European Countries (CILS4EU), allowing us to account for a wide range of discrimination experiences of youth. We use linear regression models to examine the effect of discrimination experience on political interest. From our results, both discrimination experience and social participation positively affect youth’s political interest, but neither amplifies the other effect through suggested moderation. PubDate: 2025-04-03 DOI: 10.17645/pag.9309 Issue No:Vol. 13 (2025)
Authors:Arndt Leininger, Sabrina J. Mayer Abstract: This thematic issue covers the political participation of youth and immigrants in contemporary democracies. The articles in this issue advance knowledge in youth studies, migration studies, and political behavior, theoretically and empirically. They do so by proposing innovative perspectives on voter turnout, political efficacy, protest behavior, representation preferences, and intersectional dynamics among young and immigrant-origin voters. Utilizing diverse methodological approaches, including quantitative analyses, qualitative interviews, and intersectional studies, the contributions highlight significant participation gaps and the factors that influence these disparities. The findings underscore the importance of addressing inequalities to strengthen democratic representation and stability. PubDate: 2025-04-03 DOI: 10.17645/pag.10364 Issue No:Vol. 13 (2025)
Authors:Mauricio Morales, Mario Herrera, Teresa Pérez‐Cosgaya Abstract: It is often argued that non-citizens are less interested in the political processes of the host country and, therefore, vote less than citizens. We discuss this using Chile’s administrative electoral census for the 2012–2023 elections. We choose Chile for three reasons. First, it is one of the few countries worldwide that allows non-citizens to vote in local and national elections. Second, Chile requires only five years of permanent residence for non-citizens to vote. Third, Chile implemented a voluntary voting system between 2012 and 2021 and a compulsory voting system in 2022. This latter particularity means that voting is compulsory for non-citizens registered on the electoral roll. How much and how did the electoral participation of citizens and non-citizens change with the introduction of compulsory voting' Four results stand out. First, citizen turnout averaged 44.7% under voluntary voting, while non-citizen turnout averaged 17.1%. Second, with the introduction of compulsory voting, the figures narrowed. Citizens averaged 86.3% and non-citizens 60.0%, tripling their turnout compared to elections organised under voluntary voting. Third, there is a gender gap in voter turnout in favour of women, both among citizens and non-citizens. Fourth, since 2020—when a constitutional referendum was held during the Covid-19 pandemic—there has been a higher turnout of young people in citizen and non-citizen groups. These results are beneficial for assessing the institutions that regulate the right and exercise of the vote for non-citizens, the impact of compulsory voting on electoral participation, and the re-boosting of youth participation. PubDate: 2025-03-18 DOI: 10.17645/pag.9152 Issue No:Vol. 13 (2025)
Authors:Floris Vermeulen, Nella Geurts, Jaco Dagevos, Niels Spierings Abstract: Representative democracy functions optimally when all citizens can participate, are heard, and feel represented. We know, however, that those interested and satisfied in politics rarely reflect a cross-section of the population. What’s more, the influence exercised by certain groups in a democracy is unevenly distributed, and citizens with an immigration background feel on average less represented politically than citizens without one. This article explores how processes of perceived inclusion and exclusion influence the sense of political representation experienced by Dutch citizens with an immigration background. Our study aims to offer greater insight into perceptions of political representation and gain an understanding of what leads to these experiences. We draw on data from six focus group discussions with people who share the categorical trait of being deemed “different” by the majority society along various dimensions, such as ethnic and religious background, race, postcolonial background, and migration motive (e.g., asylum-seeking). Prior to our analysis, we expected these potential grounds for exclusion to have differing influences on perceived representation and how members of the groups relate to the political institutions. Our results show that descriptive representation is a critical start though not enough for adequate substantive political representation of people with an immigration background. Our respondents felt substantive representation fails in the Netherlands due to a lack of perceived representation in the form of politicians with shared experiences who know what it feels like to be excluded, opposed, and dismissed as problematic. PubDate: 2025-03-18 DOI: 10.17645/pag.9212 Issue No:Vol. 13 (2025)
Authors:Odelia Oshri, Reut Itzkovitch-Malka Abstract: A well-documented fact is that Muslim citizens tend to vote for the left in greater proportion than non-Muslim citizens. In Western Europe, this difference in the vote for left-wing parties exceeds 30%. Interestingly, the gap endures despite Muslims’ integration into the host society, which is expected to militate against group voting. Why, then, do Muslims continue to vote as a group' And what factors account for their leaning towards the left' We argue that exclusion and discrimination, to which Muslims are regularly subjected as a group, work against the effect of integration on their vote choice, as it strengthens the saliency of group interests and “linked fate” in their voting calculus. Using public opinion survey data, we show that the more Muslims feel discriminated against by their host society, the more likely they are to engage in group voting and vote for the left. We also show that political exclusion, proxied by the electoral strength of radical-right parties, has a positive association with Muslims’ support for left-wing parties. Finally, we delve into the British case and show that experiences of physical violence are also manifested in stronger group voting by non-Western immigrants. Our article sheds light on a phenomenon that has the potential to reshape the electoral landscape in Europe by rendering ethnic and religious identity a crucial dimension of party competition. PubDate: 2025-03-18 DOI: 10.17645/pag.9313 Issue No:Vol. 13 (2025)
Authors:Simona Guglielmi, Nicola Maggini Abstract: While citizenship acquisition varies across the EU, children of immigrants are expected to comprise a growing share of the voting-age population in the coming years. Consequently, understanding the factors influencing their political integration has garnered increasing attention from researchers and policymakers. Existing studies highlight the complex and context-dependent interplay of structural, cultural, and policy-related factors that shape immigrant political engagement. Additionally, some scholars have noted that the standard model of youth political socialisation—where political learning is transmitted from parent to child—may be “disrupted” in immigrant families. Against this backdrop, this article investigates the critical role of family political discussions and parent–child political alignment in (re)producing ethnic inequalities in political engagement among late adolescents, using Lombardy (Italy) as a case study. The project MAYBE—Moving into Adulthood in uncertain times: Youth Beliefs, future Expectations, and life choices (University of Milan) collected survey data from 2,756 final-year high school students (aged 18–19) between February 2023 and March 2024, including 620 students with migrant backgrounds. The study applied a multilevel regression model—spanning 81 schools, 165 classes—to investigate individual and contextual factors, such as the classroom political climate and municipal electoral competitiveness. Migrant parents navigate the host country’s political environment with varying levels of familiarity, shaped by their connections to the political culture of their country of origin. Findings suggest that these dynamics create unique pathways for the political socialisation of their children, in which the influence of socioeconomic status and intergenerational social learning on political engagement differs significantly from the patterns observed among native-born youth. PubDate: 2025-02-27 DOI: 10.17645/pag.9282 Issue No:Vol. 13 (2025)
Authors:Robin Stünzi, Rosita Fibbi, Gianni D'Amato Abstract: Research focusing on the political incorporation of immigrants’ descendants is rather scarce, in contrast to the high level of scholarly attention paid to the case of foreign-born immigrants. This exploratory study addresses this gap by adopting a sociological and neo-institutionalist approach to investigate the trajectories leading to political involvement of children of immigrants elected to local parliaments across a selection of Swiss cantons. The analysis of the factors shaping their mobilization in relation to the features of local policies for immigrants’ integration and cantonal conceptions of citizenship sheds light on the variability of their political incorporation. The article thus makes a twofold contribution to the existing literature. First, it highlights the distinctive role played by local schools in the political socialization of immigrants’ descendants, compared to that of their Swiss-origin counterparts. Second, it shows the decisive impact of cantonal institutional and discursive contexts in shaping the categories that are relevant for political action, influencing collective identities, claim-making, and political mobilization. PubDate: 2025-02-12 DOI: 10.17645/pag.9293 Issue No:Vol. 13 (2025)
Authors:Baowen Liang, Allison Harell Abstract: Racialized minorities constitute an increasingly substantial segment of modern electorates in Western democracies, in part driven by immigration. Analyzing data from the 2021 Canadian Election Study (N = 9,496) and yearly Democracy Checkup surveys between 2020 and 2023 (N = 26,908), we explore the significance of racial identity as a determinant of voter turnout. Our findings reveal stark disparities in electoral participation between the most racialized minority groups in Canada and the White majority. Except for Latino identifiers, Indigenous, Asian, Black, and Arab-identifying respondents all exhibit lower voting rates, with Black voters facing the most significant gap, nearly 16 percentage points below their White counterparts. The gap is particularly prominent among second-generation racialized Canadians, suggesting that newcomers to Canada exhibit relatively high levels of engagement compared to their children. Next, we explore three key individual factors that may contribute to the gap: differences in socioeconomics, psychological engagement, and mobilization and community embeddedness. We employ a linear decomposition technique to assess the contributions of these factors to the majority–minority participation gap. Our analysis underscores the potency of socio-economic and psychological models in explaining minority under-participation in the Canadian context. The mobilization and community embeddedness model, however, exhibits weak explanatory power. Despite these insights, a substantial portion of the participation differentials remains unexplained, suggesting the necessity for novel perspectives to understand gaps in the electoral participation of racialized electors. PubDate: 2025-02-12 DOI: 10.17645/pag.9377 Issue No:Vol. 13 (2025)
Authors:Martín Portos Abstract: Young people’s mass mobilisation has been key for restructuring political competition in Southern Europe in the last decade. From a comparative standpoint, this article examines the drivers of protest in Greece, Italy, and Spain. The main results point towards a strong heterogeneity among the three cases: while women and people with left-libertarian attitudes form the basis of youth-driven contemporary street protest in Spain, these findings are partially confirmed for Italy and ruled out for Greece. We argue that protest legacies and trajectories need to go together with politicisation and issue salience to get individual-level correlates of protest activated—however, our mixed empirical evidence suggests that some context-specific conditions intervene in this relationship. Our results point towards a strong heterogeneity in the profile of protesters, inviting us to question the use of Southern Europe as a valid unit of analysis for the study of contemporary social movements and protests. PubDate: 2025-02-05 DOI: 10.17645/pag.9179 Issue No:Vol. 13 (2025)
Authors:Susanne Garritzmann, Sigrid Roßteutscher, Arndt Leininger, Birgit Becker, Thorsten Faas, Max P. Jansen, Armin Schäfer Abstract: Unequal political participation increasingly challenges democracies. The turnout gap is particularly large among younger voters, with severe implications for future developments of democratic representation, legitimacy, and quality. This article focuses on the role of political efficacy beliefs in explaining unequal turnout among newly enfranchised citizens. We argue that internal political efficacy beliefs are particularly important for turnout among the newly enfranchised from lower-class backgrounds, as they lack alternative mobilizing factors such as politically aware and active parents, political knowledge, and mobilizing networks. Furthermore, we argue that once these voters successfully turn out in their first election, they are as likely as those from higher-class backgrounds to turn out in their second election. We empirically test these arguments using original longitudinal data on newly enfranchised citizens from three German federal states (Bundesländer). Overall, our results support the argument: Political efficacy beliefs are a stronger predictor of first turnout among young adults from disadvantaged backgrounds compared to those from more advantaged backgrounds, and those who do turn out are as likely as those with higher-class backgrounds to turn out in their second election. This highlights the relevance of political efficacy beliefs in the (re)production of persisting political inequality. PubDate: 2025-01-29 DOI: 10.17645/pag.9196 Issue No:Vol. 13 (2025)
Authors:Gema García-Albacete, Lidia Núñez, David Sánchez, Simone Abendschön, Philipp Kleer Abstract: One of the most persistent and puzzling inequalities across Western democracies is that women are less interested in politics than men. We know that political interest is developed—or not—at an early age, and that it becomes a key determinant of political involvement during adulthood. Due to its early development, recent research suggests focusing on gendered political socialization patterns to understand why women display lower levels of political interest than men. A recent systematic literature review on political interest confirms that the gap is already present at an early age. In addition, the review shows that research and evidence on the potential intersectionality of inequalities on young people’s political interest is surprisingly scarce. In this article we present novel evidence on the interaction of gender with an additional source of political inequality: immigration background. In doing so we use the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Survey in Four European Countries (CILS4EU) dataset, a longitudinal survey that follows a sample of adolescents with foreign-born parents that can be compared to natives in four countries. The analyses follow the latest recommendations regarding the use of interactions to evaluate claims of intersectionality. The results of our preliminary tests indicate that girls with an immigrant background are more interested in politics than girls without personal or family immigration background. Furthermore, the results are compatible with an intersectional approach by which being both a girl and having an immigration background has an independent positive relationship with political interest. Finally, we do not find significant differences between first- and second-generation immigrant girls. PubDate: 2025-01-29 DOI: 10.17645/pag.9286 Issue No:Vol. 13 (2025)
Authors:Philipp Hoffmann, Verena Benoit Abstract: With nearly a third of the German population having a migration background, immigrant political participation is crucial for democracy and immigrants’ integration. Adults with a migration background tend to participate less than the majority population. The findings become less conclusive when focusing specifically on young adults. The socialization phase during youth and young adulthood lays the foundation for future political participation and thus holds significant importance. At the same time, established factors that explain political participation, such as socio-economic status, political interest, or political efficacy, may not yet be fully developed in young adults. The present study starts here and focuses on the conventional and unconventional political participation of young adults (ages 18–30) with and without a migration background in Germany. Specifically, we investigate the moderating effects of perceived discrimination and national identification, which play a key role in shaping immigrants’ political integration. We use the civic voluntarism model as our baseline and explanatory framework. It provides a foundation for understanding differences in political participation more broadly. For our analyses, we rely on data from the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Survey in Four European Countries (CILS4EU-DE, wave 5; linear regressions). First, we find contrary effects of perceived discrimination on recruitment networks and unconventional participation: Positive for individuals with a migration background and negative for individuals without a migration background. Second, national identification weakens the positive impact of political interest among the majority population and of recruitment networks among immigrants. Lastly, we observe no moderating effects for resources and conventional political participation for either group. PubDate: 2025-01-22 DOI: 10.17645/pag.9253 Issue No:Vol. 13 (2025)
Authors:Jan Eichhorn, Christine Huebner Abstract: Debates about the lowering of the voting age to 16 often include claims about the possible longer-term outcomes of earlier enfranchisement for the electorate. It has been shown that, when eligible to vote, 16-and 17-year-olds turn out to vote in higher proportions than slightly older peers (Zeglovits & Aichholzer, 2014). However, questions remain regarding the longevity of this early voter boost and whether it carries on as young people grow older (Franklin, 2004, 2020). Using original survey data collected from 863 young people in Scotland, we investigate the outcomes of being eligible to vote in elections from age 16/17 and its effects on political behaviour for young people aged up to 24. We compare levels of political engagement, including voting in the 2021 Scottish parliament elections, among cohorts of young people who were enfranchised at age 16/17 to cohorts who experienced their first election aged 18 or older. We show that young people who were eligible to vote at 16/17 exhibited greater levels of turnout in the 2021 Scottish parliament elections, up to seven years after the initial lowering of the voting age than those who got to vote for the first time at 18 or older. This finding provides new evidence in support of theories on the longer-term effects of voting at age 16/17 on electoral political engagement. However, we find no similar pattern for non-electoral political engagement, showing that the outcomes of the lowering of the voting age may be limited to turnout. PubDate: 2025-01-22 DOI: 10.17645/pag.9283 Issue No:Vol. 13 (2025)
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