Youth Citizenship and the (In)tangible Legacies of the Olympic Games

This introductory chapter addresses and explores an important gap in the mega-events literature considered critical to understanding and advancing research on youth civic participation, citizenship and youth policy. It does so by exploring and critiquing existing scholarship on young people’s past, future and present perceptions of the Olympics taking place in their cities, particularly drawing on the two case studies used in the study—London 2012 and Rio 2016 Olympic Games. It develops from the view of youth as a target group, mainly by political and governmental bodies responsible for the planning of highly mediatised events such as the Olympic Games, and interrogates how political rhetoric is often constructed for the benefit of such entities instead of the young population. Such an approach is problematised and contested based on academic evidence that points to a lack of research on the topic, especially concerning youth policy within the Olympic Games scholarship regarding the intangible legacies of the Games. Furthermore, the chapter also explores important concepts in light of the Olympic Games, such as the importance of policy work, cultural policy and place-making, all areas that are reviewed and contemplated empirically in the context of the Olympics.