Youth Councils provide an excellent way to involve young people in civil activities. They are established by groups of young people selected by their peers in democratic elections usually organized in schools. Youth councilors are the representatives of all young people in a given territory. Their activity aims at increasing the sensitivity of local authorities to the needs of young people and giving opinions on the activities of local governments. It is their task to show that every person, including youngsters, can exert an impact on their surroundings. The establishment of Youth Councils can be beneficial for both parties: young people can take an active part in decision making, while local authorities can draw new ideas and inspiration from their cooperation with the young.

The article is part of a series of publications on the activities of youth councils in local selfgovernment communities. It focuses on describing the functions performed by such entities and attempts to answer the question about which of the functions performed by youth councils is of key importance in the opinion of councillors. The article is based on empirical research (quantitative research) conducted using a questionnaire. The research was carried out in 18 voivodship cities in Poland, and its aim is to expand the discussion on the functioning of youth councils as structured entities within local self-government units.

In this article the authors considered problems of the realization of youth policy in the Republic of Kazakhstan. There are some factors which objectively complicate the realization of youth policy in Kazakhstan: the lack of social-political ideology which could be able to play the part similar to the role of communist ideology in the USSR or liberal-democratic one in the USA, the domination of ethnic identity over the civil one; the system of values, which unites community, must not only be a subject for general consensus in the society but gather the youth together emotionally, appealing to an irrational beginning in individual and massive psychology; the problem of social growth of the youth. Mostly, the youth in Kazakhstan can be divided into two groups: socially safe and socially unsafe. In the article analysis methods and content analysis were used as well as the results of sociologic researches.

Process of changing the youth policy in Poland caused by the youth strike for climate

The youth policy in Poland began to develop in connection with Poland’s accession to the European Union. Since 2019, these research areas were joined by the activities of young people as a part of the international youth social movement, i.e., the Youth Strike for Climate. The article presents the following research hypothesis: the activity of the Youth Strike for Climate indicates that the youth policy in Poland is undergoing a process of climatization. The following research questions were asked: What factors influence the interest in climate issues among young people? Was the youth gathered around the YSC active before the YSC activity? Is the activity at YSC related to other social/political activity of young people? Does the YSC influence political decisions? As a result of the survey, literature analysis and the conducted research, the research hypothesis was confirmed.

This paper is a continuation of my reflection upon “neo-liberal entanglements of education” and an attempt to interpret Michel Foucault’s works with respect to selected aspects of youth policy in Poland. My focus here is on the relations between the issues of government and morality. I will begin with a brief examination of Foucault’s views on government and governmentality, pointing out some trains of thought that will be developed in the further sections. In what follows, I will present an attempt at the risk discourse analysis, focusing my attention on the regimes of truth employed in youth policy. Discussing the political and economic potential of realized risk used by the neo-liberal program, I will refer to some specific ideas of “technologies of the self” – from the Greek principle of care for oneself; then, the idea of getting to know oneself to the modern ethics of investing in oneself. Finally, referring to Foucault’s findings, I will place neo-liberal techniques within the context of two regimes: the discourse of threat (risk) and the discourse of civicness. I will examine how the production of the “threat” and “civicness” as educational practices of constituting of the self takes place within these regimes.