Abstract
This article presents current debates regarding the presence of young people in the public domain. There is a wealth of discussion and perplexity regarding how young people choose to get active in the public domain that originates from the distinct use of the term political in academic and policy debates. This article will proceed in the following way: it will summarise the main tenets of the Decline discourse, it will present how the Personalisation discourse draw our attention to alternative ways of involvement, it will discuss how Context focused discourses highlight how participatory decision making relates to the ways young people conceptualise their daily lived experience, and concludes arguing that youth participation can be better understood when it is contextualised within everyday lived experience.
Key words:
Youth; Participation; Decline discourse; Personalisation; Lived experience.