Drawing upon data from a research project in development in Portugal in 38 municipalities that cover the totality of border regions, this proposal attempts to unpack various levels of youth policies that have been put forward to impact youth sector, focusing on processes of decentralisation towards the regional/local level. Drawing on theoretical and conceptual perspectives regarding the relevance of multilevel governance (Monteiro & Horta, 2018) and territorialised policy appropriation, this paper explores regional translation and interpretation of European and national level youth policies into local level policies. We are interested in understanding through different discourses if we are upon either more decentralised appropriations or more upon a process of Europeanised youth policies (Wallace & Bendit, 2009).

The past decades, including year of economic and financial crisis, have witnessed challenges whose implications influenced European and national level the development of policies regarding challenges for young people. Consequently, and more recently, national level youth and other youth related policies are aiming to address specific problems namely those emerging from regional specificities. It is well known the regional dyssimetries affecting peripheral regions, as border regions in Portugal (Silva, 2013; Silva, 2014), existing several constrins in accessing education (Bagley & Hillyard, 2015), Therefore, an approach to youth based on its diversity seems to be very much needed against a vision that homogenised young people, their needs, agency opportunities and cultures.

Our understanding on the effectiveness of policies might be located in the local level appropriation and capacity to encourages participation on policies design at the same time that promotes through participatory approaches capacity building, not only of young people as peer group and as individuals, but of the overall community, by raising a collective awareness (Bertozzi, 2015), not to mention the capacity building of local governance level do address local based challenges.

Although we consider that a certain level of harmonisation and European integration is needed, especially when addressing global issues and designing European level priorities for youth development, it is expected that those might be translated into different strategies of governance (Banjac, 2014) at national and regional level.

To understand how macro and meso level policies are dispersed and appropriated by border regions governance level is the main aim of this proposal, focusing on layers and echelons of appropriation and analysing the spectrum of object in which the appropriation is more visible: education, labour market, culture, participation.

Finally, we aim to understand if specific appropriations might be inspiring to macro level policies, both at national and EU level. Our assumption is grounded in the idea that border regions, by its ambiguity (as barriers, corridors and gateways) may work as symbolic case of bridge building and cooperation through youth policies (O’Dowd, 2003).

This paper reports on a small piece of a larger study, by focusing on youth policies analysis. The goal of the larger study is to thoroughly understand young people educational, social and cultural experiences and pathways in border regions, considering analytical dimensions as resilience, sense of belonging and engagement ((Grow up in border regions in Portugal: young people, educational pathways and agendas; PTDC/CED-EDG/29943/2017). This paper is empirically grounded in data from policy analysis of international, national and regional level youth policies, by focusing on different levels of translation and appropriation that would make sense at local level and layers of appropriation that we may find in local documents (either from schools or municipalities) and at discourse level, by interviewing regional stakeholders as school principals and municipality mayors'. The script was developed taking into consideration knowledge gathered since 2010 and preliminary results from a questionnaire an focus on dimensions related to local development and priorities; youth policies levels of integration; local practices, projects and approaches towards youth; regional and local factors and bordering in youth policies definition. 38 municipalities’ mayors and 37 schools’ principals were interviews in their regions. Regarding youth policies and documents, aproximatelly 100 documents were selected and divided into 3 typologies, namely, (1) international, national, and local level (2) soft laws and effective laws (3) and recommendations and reports focused on youth. Each document was analysed through the process of content analysis (Bardin 2011; Krippendorff 2004) supported by NVivo software. The texts from these documents were codified and categorised. The unit senses/references were sentences, although in some circumstances entire paragraphs were also considered. In the coding process, the rule of mutual exclusivity of categories was not followed (L’Écuyer 1990).

The cartography of youth policies at European, national and regional/local level suffer in some cases a multilevel translation process. We have identified in stakeholders discourses as well as in local youth policies documentation the following exploratory results: (i) although rarely we may find a general alignment with macro and meso level understandings of youth priorities, that could be considered a more standardized vision what and how youth policies may address youth; (ii) other cases ignore or are unaware of macro and meso level youth policies orientations and develop minimalistic or functionalist to young people and youth policies; in other cases, there is an effective regional based appropriation of macro and/or meso level policies that might include or not civil society contribution; finally, we may find approaches that make the political option of “ignoring” macro and meso level referential documents and positioning by defending a political standpoint that considers that some border regions are ignored and not visible to the eyes of policy makers at State or EU level. We will discuss how in some cases local appropriation or the lack of it fails in effectively responding to young people needs by a systematic political unawareness on challenges that those regions bring to young people life prospects and decision making process regarding stay or leave the regions. Although there are regional level specificities that cause either for inequality of opportunities and constrains (lack of educational options, jobs etc.) rarely exists a grass rooted approach, which is needed to revamp recognition, redistribution and representation policies anchored on a solid regional based social justice. Finally, some cases demonstrate innovative approaches that seem to encourage local capacity building towards youth by developing policies to promote participation, engagement and by valuing idiosyncrasies. Those will need further research and deep attention. This will be our next step.

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