PACO, ISSN: 2035-6609 - Copyright © 2015 - University of Salento, SIBA: http://siba-ese.unisalento.it PArtecipazione e COnflitto * The Open Journal of Sociopolitical Studies http://siba-ese.unisalento.it/index.php/paco ISSN: 1972-7623 (print version) ISSN: 2035-6609 (electronic version) PACO, Issue 8(3) 2015: 761-769 DOI: 10.1285/i20356609v8i3p761 Published in November 15, 2015 Work licensed under a Creative Commons At- tribution-Non commercial-Share alike 3.0 Italian License SPECIAL SECTION - EDITORIAL POLITICAL PARTICIPATION BY THE DEPRIVED A Comparative Analysis in Political Behavior by Unemployed Young Adults Matteo Bassoli eCampus University, Italy Christian Lahusen University of Siegen, Germany Research within the social sciences has argued recurrently that unemployment has a negative impact on political participation, particularly long-term joblessness. One of the milestones of this research is the Marienthal-study by Jahoda, Lazarsfeld, and Zeisel (1933/1971) that has convincingly demonstrated that unemployment reduces rates of civic and political participation, amongst many other detrimental consequences. This finding has been corroborated in the following decades, because the unemployed ex- hibit strong levels of political disenchantment and disengagement. For instance, they tend to abstain from elections or support extreme-right or left-wing parties (Chabanet 2007; Coffé and Bolzendahl 2010; Verba and Nie 1972; Verba, Nie and Kim 1978; Brady, Verba and Schlozman 1995; Schur 2003). These findings seem to apply in particular to the young unemployed. Early studies have shown that long-term unemployment leads to political disengagement among youth (Breakwell 1986; Banks and Ullah 1987). Further research has corroborated this