MYPLACE explores how young people‟s social participation is shaped by the
shadows (past, present and future) of totalitarianism and populism in Europe.
Conceptually, it goes beyond the comparison of discrete national „political cultures‟
or reified classifications of political heritage („postcommunist‟/‟liberal democratic‟);
it is premised rather on the pan-European nature of a range of radical and populist
political and philosophical traditions and the cyclical rather than novel nature of the
popularity they currently enjoy. Empirically, MYPLACE employs a combination of
survey, interview and ethnographic research instruments to provide new, pan-
European data that not only measure levels of participation but capture the meanings
young people attach to it. Analytically, through its specific focus on „youth‟ and the
historical and cultural contextualization of young people‟s social participation,
MYPLACE replaces the routine, and often abstract, iteration of the reasons for young
people‟s „disengagement‟ from politics with an empirically rich mapping of young
people‟s understandings of the civic and political space that they inhabit. In policy
terms, MYPLACE identifies the obstacles to, and facilitators of, young people‟s
reclamation of the European political arena as a place for them.