The View From Below: Low-Status Youth Representations of the Political in Switzerland

Abstract

This study investigates political (dis)engagement of low-status youth by analysing their social representations of the political. Through focus group discussions, we explore how low-status positions of young people shape their relationship with the political system and its actors. Seventeen focus group discussions involving 99 participants, aged 15–28 years, were conducted in vocational schools in Switzerland. Using a two-step analytical framework grounded in social representations theory, we examine both representational content and its negotiation in communication. Representations of societal power differentials played a central role in how participants made sense of their disengagement. Participants often depicted the political system as distant, abstract, and beyond their influence. This externalisation had two main implications: a sense of powerlessness, where participation seemed futile; and a moral antagonism between ‘us’, the hard-working, honest, ordinary people, and ‘them’, the self-interested, disconnected elite. These findings show that political disengagement is not only the result of apathy, but a socially embedded, identity-protective response to structural and symbolic exclusion. The study offers a critical account of youth political behaviour, showing how disengagement is shaped by power, identity, and group positioning – and how it can express critique rather than indifference.