The debate on whether young people today vote more or less than before or whether they trust institutions appears time and time again in the media and academia, with little new to report. In most cases, this ends up projecting a negative or, at least, hopeless image of today’s youth and their involvement in the political arena, making invisible the contribution that many young people make to the development of an active and participatory citizenship.

To overcome this kind of loop in which the debate on youth and politics finds itself—often reduced to discussing the percentage of the young population that carries out a series of actions (voting, demonstrating, signing petitions)—without understanding the meanings they attach to them, this research proposes changing the focus. It aims to concentrate on what young people do in the collective sphere and the meanings they attribute to their commitments, starting from their interests and what they consider to be of concern to them as members of society.