Page 74 - Šolsko polje, XXX, 2019, št. 5-6: Civic, citizenship and rhetorical education in a rapidly changing world, eds. Janja Žmavc and Plamen Mirazchiyski
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šolsko polje, letnik xxx, številka 5–6
Figure 1. Changes in expected voting participation and asylum
application rates.
This result is relevant for two reasons. First, the arrival of migrants
into Europe fueled a political debate on whether member countries have
the legal and moral obligation to host asylum seekers. This became a major
issue in the agenda of most political parties across EU-member countries
in recent national elections. Therefore, the results we document above in-
dicate that the increased political engagement of the European youth can
be associated to the arrival of migrants and/or the political debate subse-
quently triggered. Second, as noted in the literature review, there is evi-
dence in the literature that civic and political engagement of young adults
is, to some extent, a reflection of societal civic and political engagement.
This suggests that the arrival of migrants might not only be associated
with the expected political behaviour of the young population, but rath-
er to actual societal political engagement. We explore this last idea in the
next section, in which we look at the correlation between eighth graders
expected political participation and actual national voter turnout.
Expected political participation and actual turnout
We proceeded by providing empirical evidence on the correlates between
contemporaneous young adults’ political participation expectations and
national voter turnouts, which underscores the relevance of the results
presented in the previous section. For this, we relied on data from ICCS
2009 and 2016 and national turnout results for the countries selected in
72
Figure 1. Changes in expected voting participation and asylum
application rates.
This result is relevant for two reasons. First, the arrival of migrants
into Europe fueled a political debate on whether member countries have
the legal and moral obligation to host asylum seekers. This became a major
issue in the agenda of most political parties across EU-member countries
in recent national elections. Therefore, the results we document above in-
dicate that the increased political engagement of the European youth can
be associated to the arrival of migrants and/or the political debate subse-
quently triggered. Second, as noted in the literature review, there is evi-
dence in the literature that civic and political engagement of young adults
is, to some extent, a reflection of societal civic and political engagement.
This suggests that the arrival of migrants might not only be associated
with the expected political behaviour of the young population, but rath-
er to actual societal political engagement. We explore this last idea in the
next section, in which we look at the correlation between eighth graders
expected political participation and actual national voter turnout.
Expected political participation and actual turnout
We proceeded by providing empirical evidence on the correlates between
contemporaneous young adults’ political participation expectations and
national voter turnouts, which underscores the relevance of the results
presented in the previous section. For this, we relied on data from ICCS
2009 and 2016 and national turnout results for the countries selected in
72
