This report provides a summary of the major findings of Power2Youth that are pertinent to policy development. It recommends guidelines for developing progressive and youth-informed national and supranational policy for dealing with young people’s marginalization in the South and East Mediterranean (SEM) countries examined.

Before doing so this report addresses the key definitional challenge of the research (what is “youth”?) and then describes the approach taken to by the Power2Youth consortia. The report also describes the demographic challenges facing SEM countries and, drawing on the country-specific analyses, provides an overview of how the issue of “youth” has been addressed in national policies so far.

The following section of the report offers a definition of “social exclusion” before describing what have been identified as the six most common forms of marginalization experienced by young people with regard to policy.

The final section of this report concludes by outlining a set of guidelines for developing youth-informed or “youth-wise” policies, that is to say, policies that address the social conditions that give rise to young people’s marginalization, and that do not further exacerbate their problems.

Power2Youth is an EU-funded project which offers an interdisciplinary, gender-sensitive analysis of the economic, political and socio-cultural conditions of young people. It explores the root causes and complex dynamics of youth exclusion and inclusion in the labour market and civil/political life, and investigates the potentially transformative effect of youth agency.