Childhood, adolescence and citizenship participation in municipalities. The view of technical personnel and elected representatives

Abstract

At the municipal level, children and adolescents have a voice to build, interpret, and also project a model of active and inclusive citizenship, and to develop their right to participation; however, each municipality collaborates to a greater or lesser extent. This article, which shows the partial results of a more extensive investigation on child and adolescent participation in the municipality, studies the view or social representation of technical personnel (TP) and elected representatives (ER) with regard to this participation. Four indicators are analysed: first, the reasons why the participation of children and adolescents is promoted for each of the participating sectors; second, how the ERs characterise participation in municipal policies; third, how the TP consider participation to be viewed by the administration; and finally, in the opinion of the TP, the convergences and divergences between citizen participation and the participation of children and adolescents are shown. The instrument used was a questionnaire answered by 191 TP and 88 ERs from 179 Spanish municipalities. Among the conclusions, it is worth highlighting, on the one hand, the value that all the people included in the study attribute to the participation of children and adolescents in their municipalities, the strength of achieving an inclusive dynamic, but at the same time, the difficulties that certain models, excessively adult-centred, present for achieving the desired objectives.