A Connected World?: Youth Transnational Political Participation and the Internet

The study of transnational migration has been developed in Europe in a prolific way during the last two decades (Pries 2002; Vertovec, 2003; Bauböck , 2003; Faist, 2013), with a special emphasis on the importance of the multidimensional social relations that link countries of origin and destination, building social fields which intersect and affect geographic and political boundaries (Rábago, 2013). So far the study of transnational political participation has focused somehow primarily on the electoral participation of migrants and their participation in migrant associations particularly in the United States. The main concept of transnationality has been extended through the work of multiple scholars until reaching the full spectrum of activities. Nevertheless while transnational economic, social, or cultural activities are performed through political boundaries without directly questioning them, political transnationalism affect ultimately the very notion of the entity whose borders are crossed, challenging the traditional perspective that national politics are decided exclusively within the nation state, defying exclusive loyalties of citizens towards a single state (Rawls, 1993), and acting as if in fact the political community was de facto extended beyond the territory of the State (Bauböck, 2007). Within the framework of the European H2020 Project MOVE (Grant Agreement No649263) that examines youth mobility in the European Union for labor, studies, entrepreneurship, and volunteering; the aim of this paper is to outline the theoretical bases of the questionnaire in relation to the topics that concern political participation and civic engagement of young Europeans with a special focus on online participation. We will discuss the design of a questionnaire for a web based survey (n6400) which aims at capturing young people’s own understandings and ways of engaging in society, including their engagement in social action, volunteering, associationism, activism, etc. Much of the current debate about online surveys is reminiscent of a previous era when mail and telephone surveys were met with suspicion (Konstan et al., 2005; Sue and Ritter, 2012). Regardless the clear advantages online surveys present (low-cost, fast response, and easy fielding as major benefits), the major reason to use an online survey is the existence of a perfect match between our target population, and its ICT’s connection, access to the Internet among 16-29 years old cohort in EU-28 countries is around 94%, 80% of them have a Social Network Profile, presenting thus a potential scenario with greater accessibility than face-to-face interviews (Duffy et al., 2005) or fixed-telephone ratios, which have dropped down in the last decade among young people, who are more likely to use their cellphones (70%)(Häder, 2012). The questionnaire design aims at contributing towards the study of youth engagement and participation taking insights from previous works on online political activities (Anduiza, 2007; CIS, 2009), migrant political participation (Morales, Pilati, 2014; Localmutidem Project), and applying a transnational focus regarding the type and direction of this participation discerning between politics aimed at origin, at host country, to improve the rights or conditions at the host country of those from origin country, or towards international or global issues (Ostergaard-Nielsen, 2009).