Young people perception of community power and their territorial social perspectives

Our researches focalized for several years on youth of Naples area' experience underpinning that young people have a sense of belonging (Sarason, 1974; McMillan, Chavis, 1986) to their local community that doesn't relate either to their plans inside the community or to action in favour of it(Arcidiacono, Procentese, Di Napoli submitted) They not think of themselves in relation to the future of their own local context and at the same time feelings of mistrust towards their own communitarian context occur (Arcidiacono, Di Napoli 2005; Arcidiacono, 2004).A qualitative research with 600 hundred people living in the city of Naples in neighbourhoods according to their locations, downtown, first outskirts and second outskirts, and in the district of Naples in small (number of inhabitants inferior to 20000), medium (number of inhabitants between 20.000 and 50.000) and large municipalities (number of inhabitants higher than 50.000) was conducted.The research particularly investigate how young people's interact with the territorial contexts in relation to their features, and in relation to their individual and collective plans; A second goal is to investigate:1) Local communities as represented by young people in relation to their past and their future2) Personal and collective expectations towards the future of the local community3) Aspects allowing in relation to the context, a personal investment by individual and shared action The interviews to young people, analyzed by Grounded theory approach (Strauss, Corbin, 1997), suggest that a core category explaining the relation between young people and the context to which they belong is the perception of the lack of opportunity, a lack of power, where power is as Prilleltensky (2006) theorises “a combination of ability and opportunity to influence a course of events”. These data invite all of us to reflect on the importance of the citizen's power perception, particularly young people, in planning collective action and personal involvement.ReferencesArcidiacono, C. (2004). Sentiemento de comunidad y esperanza. In Sanchez Vidal A. et al, (Eds) Psicologia comunitaria Europea: comunidad, poder, ètica Y valores, Barcelona: UB, pp. 218-228.Arcidiacono, C., Di Napoli, I. (2005). Social trust: an exciting new topic to discover, paper, European Community Psychology and the Mediterranean - Participation and Relationship in the Urban and Regional Context. Tools and Methodologies for Local Empowerment, Napoli 16 SeptemberMcMillan, D., Chavis, D. (1986). Sense of community: a definition and theory. Journal of Community Psychology, 1, pp. 6-23.Prillelltensky I. (2006).The Role of power in Wellness, Oppression, and Liberation. The promise of Psychopolitical validity, Journal of Community Psychology. in press.Sarason, S. B. (1974). The psychological sense of community: prospect for the community psychology, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.Strauss A., Corbin J. (1997). Grounded theory in practice, London: Sage