Over the last few decades there has been growing interest in youth participation, at policy level and in research. Generally, this is attributed to growing public concern regarding the youth participatory deficit and youth dissatisfaction in European societies. In contemporary discourse young people are positioned as a problem associated with a lack of participation in economic, social and political processes, which in turn is seen as a threat to the very foundation of democracy. Taking into consideration the neoliberal transformation of Western European cities towards increasing socioeconomic and ethno-cultural segregation, the authors argue that there is a pressing need to analyse youth participation as it is shaped by structural order and unequal access to resources, which creates spatial, material and symbolic divisions between different categories of young people. By placing it within a framework of citizenship theory, the authors analyse the enigmatic concept of youth participation through the prism of social exclusion, arguing for an understanding of participation as embedded in the social landscape of unequal power relations and life opportunities which are essential characteristics of the neo-liberal city.