Committed citizen participation is one of the pillars of a healthy democracy, because it safeguards social progress, empowers minority groups and enables future social improvements. In this sense, it is crucial that young people fully develop their active participation and exercise their citizenship.
This study focuses on one of the crucial variables in this respect: educational attainment. Previous research shows clear differences and inequalities in youth participation based on the educational trajectories of both parents and young people themselves, especially with regard to university attendance. While past studies have treated both variables separately, our approach is innovative in that we study the educational situation of young people by considering both variables in combination. To this end, in a sample of 1,869 Spanish young people aged between 17 and 19, we differentiated four profiles based on whether or not their parents had university degrees and whether the young people themselves were going to enrol in university. We studied their forms of participation and the role of two mediating variables: parental interest in socio-political issues and civic socialisation practices at school.
Binary logistic regression and mediation analyses showed that non-university educational situation was associated with unconventional participation (e.g., demonstrations, creating online content), while university educational situation predicted more normative or conventional forms (e.g., voting, volunteering, or donations). Parental interest and greater civic socialisation practices at school only had a significant mediating effect on social participation for the educational situation where young people themselves were going to university and whose parents had a university education.
Overall, the results seem to support the status transmission theory in explaining participation and highlight the systematic disadvantages of young people in other educational situations. The results also suggest guidelines for promoting civic engagement among young people from different social and/or sociodemographic groups.