"Choiceless & Voiceless"

International Seminar
Berlin-DE, 5-12 July 2009

In June 2009, elections for the Parliament of the European Union were held. Everyone has been talking about voter turnout, and many projects were trying to encourage young people to use their right to vote. And yet, hardly anyone talks about the people who do not vote, except when to blame them.
They are mystified, ignored, thrust aside.
We want to look into the corners that other people ignore. Who are the non-voting young people? In most European countries, non-voters tend to be concentrated in specific demographic and socioeconomic groups, especially the young and the poor. What is missing, in their opinion, to make voting attractive – or actually even possible?
We want to risk an attempt to see behind the curtain of non-voting and non-voters.
The approximate structure will be scientific theory and reflection in the first two days, and more practice and field enquiries in the days after.
This means that we invite external experts for the beginning of the seminar to have free time for going out and talking to “real” non-voters after that. We’ll also do a lot of group work to be more flexible and be able to discuss more intensely.

AIMS & OBJECTIVES
The seminar aims to make participants explore the complexity of the phenomenon of non-voting and to start a dialogue between young non-voters and voters to finally develop approaches and strategies for better integrating young non-voting people into political processes.
To fulfil its aim, the seminar has the following objectives:
 to listen to and discuss with social scientists who will offer their expertise on the topic,
 to exchange arguments with politicians and journalists to get to know different perspectives and interests,
 to become active and run the streets of multicultural Berlin in order to add personal “stories” to the scientifically-based knowledge pool simply by asking young non-voters about their motivations and experiences,
 to illuminate the different and multi-facetted backgrounds which avoid young people from voting and to give them an authentic voice which can be publicly heard,
 to launch a dialogue between decision-makers and non-voters as well as between voters and nonvoters.

Young Society Initiative is a promoter of the project "Choiceless & Voiceless - Nonvoters in Shadow of the Society" seminar that will take place 5-12 July 2009 in Berlin.