French youths are political, even if they don’t vote

THEY may not head to polling stations for France’s presidential election today but it doesn’t mean they don’t care.

“We are called disengaged, depoliticised, but it’s just that we get involved differently,” said Loic Frohn, 19, who rejects the cliche that French youth are selfish and indifferent.

Backing his view, studies show high levels of civic engagement among the country’s younger population despite a tendency to neglect politics.

Frohn grew up in a workingclass suburb of Paris and says he is motivated by a desire to fight for “equality, diversity and solidarity”.

He works in a civil service programme that pays youths aged between 16 and 25 around €600 (RM2,830) for a six-to 12-month mission.

Participants typically make home visits to pensioners and help handicapped people with sporting and cultural activities.

Frohn also became an ambassador of the programme, visiting schools to persuade others to take part.

Last year nearly 100,000 people took part in these programmes, nearly tripling enrolment in just two years.

“They say we are not active perhaps because of (low) voter turnout rates,” Frohn said.

“But rather than vote for people who don’t necessarily reflect our values, we instead project our values ourselves, through our actions,” Frohn added.

In France, abstention rates are highest among older and younger voters, with the younger population counting the lowest proportion of registered voters.

During the last French presidential election in 2012, nearly one registered voter out of five (19%) under the age of 25 did not vote – one-and-a-half times the abstention rate (13%) of the overall population.

Last month, half of 18- to 25-year-olds questioned for several polls said they plan to skip voting in the country’s two-stage presidential election this Sunday and May 7.

“Defiance toward the political system is overwhelming,” said Anne Muxel, a sociologist who works on the French part of the European-wide survey Generation What.

Among the 20,000 in that survey, 87% do not have confidence in politics and 99% consider politicians more or less corrupt.

“This does not mean that young people no longer believe in political activities”, or are apathetic, she added.

“There is a strong propensity toward direct democracy and protesting,” said Muxel, noting a majority of young people have high confidence in humanitarian organisations.

Studies show French youth are increasingly involved in civil society.

Just behind Iceland, young French people are the most active in volunteer work in Europe, according to the 2012 quality of life survey by Eurofound.

In 2016, 35% of respondents to a survey by the CREDOC research centre volunteered at least intermittently, up from 26% the previous year.

Shock from France’s worst terrorist attack two years ago, when concertgoers were killed at the Bataclan hall in Paris, “clearly prompted a desire for engagement, for perhaps more morally-driven activism, an awareness, at any rate, and a return to civic participation,” said Muxel.

But civic engagement is not new to young people in France, as demonstrated by a willingness to hit the streets to protest against reforms, Muxel noted.

Beyond traditional ways of participating in civic life like voting, other types of engagement are cropping up, for example in digital-based activities, says Milena Lebreton-Chebouba of the French youth forum, which brings together a range of organisations.

“We tend to limit our activities to volunteering, but a young person who decides to produce an explanatory video or write a blog about citizenship in their free time is also engaging in a form of activism,” says Nicolas Bertrand, 26, who used to volunteer for an organisation promoting journalism geared to young people.

There are also petition signings and brand boycotts.

“Young people are perhaps not the most involved in sacrificial activism but they have a real conscience,” Bertrand said. — AFP