Young Italians, NEETs and political engagement: any good news?

One of the effects of the economic crisis is the growth of those young Italians falling in the NEET category. According to a Eurostat report (2018) on youth conditions in European countries, Italy shows as the country with the highest percentage of young people who are “neither in employment nor in education or training”. Furthermore, young Italians are reported to be less active than previous generations of young people. We explored three forms of participation (political talking, protest participation, online participation) using five explanatory models: Socio-Economic, Grievances, Networks embeddedness, Media exposition, Channels of Political Information to verify the idea of the marginality of young people. Our result shows some good news. Namely, that there are many young Italians who engage in political life with various forms, that the NEET condition does not preclude political participation, and that socio-economic differences and inequalities do not necessarily overlap with political participation, if political information circulates through formal, informal, and media networks and if people, are good consumers of both traditional and new media contents. Those findings should suggest more caution when discussing youth participation in social and political life and the supposed “narcotizing” effect of media exposition and online social interactions.