This study builds on the well-known civic voluntarism model of political participation. By doing this, we contribute to a political sociology of participation by refining the role of socialization in political engagement. We suggest that the action repertoires of young people engaging in politics can be narrower or broader owing to their previous embeddedness in certain social settings, which act as spheres of socializing practices. We focus more specifically on three socializing spheres: educational (schools), recreational (social clubs), and civic (community organizations). Our analysis, covering nine European countries, largely confirms our expectations. We find that active engagement in these spheres of socializing practices leads to a broader range of political activities in young people’s action repertoires. This holds in particular for the civic sphere. The findings provide a fresh look at the role played by socializing spheres, shifting the focus from the dichotomy between participation versus non-participation to an analysis of the breadth of participation.

本研究建立在著名的公民自愿政治参与模型之上。通过这样做，我们通过完善社会化在政治参与中的作用，为参与的政治社会学做出贡献。我们建议，由于他们以前嵌入某些作为社交实践领域的社会环境，参与政治的年轻人的行动范围可以更窄或更广。我们更具体地关注三个社交领域：教育（学校）、娱乐（社交俱乐部）和公民（社区组织）。我们的分析涵盖九个欧洲国家，在很大程度上证实了我们的预期。我们发现，积极参与这些社交实践领域会导致年轻人行动范围内更广泛的政治活动。这尤其适用于公民领域。这些发现重新审视了社交领域所扮演的角色，将关注点从参与与不参与之间的二分法转移到了对参与广度的分析。