'You are the First One Who Has Shown Any Interest In What I Think About Things' ꟷ Youth Experts in Legislative and Policy-Making Processes

The precondition for the democratic development of societies is the participation of youths and students from various backgrounds, referred here as youths, into democratic processes such grassroots actions and in legislation/policy-making processes. Especially in view of the desired change towards more equal, inclusive and sustainable societies, active citizenship, participation, empowerment and engagement of youths is an essential requirement to lasting legitimate changes. However, due to numerous factors, youths from non-political studies may not be interested, guided towards, are unaware or not engaged in or even familiar about the legislative and policy-making processes. Additionally officials and politicians may not recognize the value and the expertise of the youths from non-political studies, overlooking the perhaps hidden expertise. This qualitative research combines multidisciplinary theoretical frame and case studies carried out in Finland. The theoretical framework combines communication, law and power-relations studies. The case studies are teaching-workshops, which took place in Tredu, Tampere Vocational College, which is a regional upper secondary level college in the second largest city region in Finland. Each teaching-workshop had objective to introduce the youths to legislation and policy-making processes and to increase the knowledge how to apply the possible expertise of youths to legislative and policy making-processes such as in law-drafting. The wider purpose was to research is there hidden knowledge found among youths from non-political studies and how this knowledge can be part of the legislative and policy-making processes. The results indicate that various youths from non-political studies have vast amounts of knowledge that could be applied to legislation processes, while other youths seemed not interested or encouraged to be part of the legislative and policy processes. Also, what seemed to be missing was the comprehension of the knowledge and expertise the youths have, and how valuable it could be if applied to the decision-making processes. The youths expressed detailed opinions and legislative as well as policy initiatives. However, the often heard phrase was: “I don’t know how to say it in a smart way, let the smarter people decide”. Results show that youths in Tredu were lacking the empowerment and wider opportunities to participate, which would guide them to take space and to be active in legislative and policy-making processes if they want. The study concludes that youths from non-political studies, need to be inspired and encouraged to be active in policy and legislative processes as legitimate actors. The results of this study presents the good practices and recommendations on how to teach youths about their rights as equal citizens, how to empower them to become active in legislative and policy-making processes. Also how officials and policy makers could connect with the youths from various backgrounds, to gain valuable and usable knowledge that can be used to create better and more sustainable laws and policies.