The Representative Disconnect of Urban Youth What Young People in the Socio-Economically Disadvantaged Neighborhoods of Brussels Expect from Their Political Representatives.

This paper shares findings from a recent study on the representational needs and views of Brussels youth (18 to 30) living in socio-economically vulnerable and ethnic minority neighborhoods. The paper draws on six focus group discussions with young urbanites (2024) that center on the question whether, how, when and by whom they feel politically represented (cf. Celis et al. 2008. Severs et al. 2013; Akachar et al. 2017). The focus groups draw on youth’s lived experiences with politics, and unpacks their understanding of political representation (“what does it mean to be represented?”), their normative expectations towards representation (“how should they be represented?”), and their aspirations, hopes and fears for the (democratic) future. This paper zooms in on parts of the focus group discussions in which youth elaborate on the relationship between substantive and descriptive representation and exchange their views on “preferable descriptive representatives” (cf. Dovi 2006; Severs & de Jong 2018) against a general representative malaise and feeling of being misrepresented. Our focus on urban youth in socio-economically disadvantaged neighborhoods is motivated by various scholarly insights. First, the observation that urban disadvantaged neighborhoods often exhibit high levels of political disaffection, and that dissatisfied urban youth, in contrast to their rural counterparts (who more frequently channel political distrust by voting for far right populist parties), often disengage entirely from politics (Kenny & Luca, 2021). Second, our project’s focus on urban settings is motivated by the insight that contemporary challenges, related to climate change, refugee/migration crises, and multiculturalism typically manifest themselves first and most outspokenly in urban contexts, contributing to our project’s capacity to generate insights on how today’s series of once-in-a-lifetime events (e.g., health pandemics, asylum/refugee crises as result of war on the European continent, energy crises and exacerbated climate change effects) affect, shape, restrain and trigger our democratic imaginaries.