Voices in the Margins: Exploring the Relationship Between Discrimination Experience and Political Interest Among European Youth

Political interest is one of the main determinants of political involvement and participation. Understanding the mechanisms towards this crucial orientation is necessary for the successful political integration of young people. We know that political interest develops at an early age and that it does it differently for youth with immigrant background, however research has shown different results regarding the levels of political interest of adolescents with an immigrant background compared to native adolescents; while some studies present lower political interest levels for youth of immigration (Wray-Lake et al., 2020; Alozie et al., 2003), other studies found higher political interest levels (Hochman & García-Albacete, 2019). Previous research showed that the antecedents of political interest for young people with and without immigrant background vary. In this paper, we examine a novel source of political interest that we expect to be relevant: experiences of discrimination. To test this claim, we rely on data from the CILS4EU project, which combines three waves from four countries. We also use structural equation models to examine paths towards political interest. From our results, we can see that immigrant and lower SES youth show higher levels of discrimination experience and that the positive effect of discrimination experience on political interest is partly mediated via political discussions at home and work in voluntary organizations.