CATCH-EyoU – Constructing AcTive CitizensHip with European Youth: Policies, Practices, Challenges and Solutions

 

Funding

Horizon 2020 – Framework Programme for Research and Innovation, European Commission ('H2020-EU.3.6. – Europe in a changing world - inclusive, innovative and reflective societies')

 

Project reference

Grant agreement No. 649538

 

Coordinator

Elvira Cicognani, Alma Mater Studiorum – Universita Di Bologna (Italy)

 

Participants

Alma Mater Studiorum – Universita Di Bologna (Italy) (Coord.)
Orebro University (Sweden)
Friedrich-Schiller-Universitat Jena (Germany)
Ethniko Kai Kapodistriako Panepistimio Athinon (Greece)
CIIE/FPCEUP – Universidade do Porto (Portugal)
Masarykova Univerzita (Czech Republic)
London School of Economics and Political Science (United Kingdom)
Tartu Ulikool (Estonia)
Forum Nazionale Dei Giovani Associazione (Italy)

 

Portuguese team

Isabel Menezes (Portuguese team PI)
Tiago Neves
Henrique Vaz
Luís Grosso Correia
Pedro Ferreira
Manuel Loff
Maria José Brites
Norberto Ribeiro (postdoctoral research fellow)
Filipe Piedade (PhD fellow)
Joana Cruz (PhD fellow)
Katerina Enchikova (PhD fellow)
 

Duration

36 months
Start date: 01-09-2015
End date: 31-08-2018

 

Web

http://www.catcheyou.eu/

 

Description

A major challenge for the EU is currently “bridging the gap” between young Europeans and EU Institutions, and improving dialogue, in order to enhance young people’s trust in EU Institutions and their active engagement in EU issues. Including young people’s perspectives is essential to ensuring the continuation of participatory and representative democracy. Through the joint contribution of different disciplines (Psychology, Political Science, Sociology, Media and Communications, Education) CATCH-EyoU has the aim to identify the factors, located at different levels (psychological, developmental, macro social and contextual) influencing the different forms of youth active engagement in Europe. Through different studies, qualitative, quantitative, and an active citizenship intervention in schools, the project will provide a multifaceted understanding of the different factors influencing the perspectives of young people on Europe and of the ways in which young people engage in society, offering policy makers new instruments and “conceptual lenses” to better understand this generation, how they approach public authorities and how they engage materially and symbolically in order to participate in the construction of the societies they inhabit and shape the governmental regimes under which they live. This new understanding will help to bring the European Union closer to all its citizens, not only the young.