Are We Equal before the “Injunction” to Participate?
In this paper, we analyze the factors that may influence the unequal access to participation, including social relationships and social contexts that change with age.We define social participation as a daily practice that is measured as a function of time that people spend volunteering, activism, political or deliberative in organizations and informal involvement that takes the form of mutual within personal networks. Using cross-sectional analyzes of data are the General Social Survey (GSS) on time use (1992, 1998, 2005, 2010), we analyze first the decline in the number of Canadians who spend time for formal and informal social participation at different times of life.In a second step, we use the Cycle 18 of the GSS on Social Engagement to analyze the factors that influence the unequal social participation and likely to be included in the activities of social participation.We show how the people for characteristics to be young, poorly educated immigrants or having undiversified networks do not have the same opportunities to participate in society than others.