This paper introduces the symposium Active citizenship for whom? On democratic education in the upper secondary school, from a national Swedish project that set out to explore democratic education in various upper secondary school programmes. The aim of the paper is to provide a context for the empirical results from the project, by presenting central themes, concepts, discussions and results in the area of democratic education in upper secondary and secondary education. Citizenship and democracy in formal schooling and young people’s initiatives to influence and pursue these issues in school and also other settings are two central themes explored in the paper. In particular, we bring together research on the teaching of citizenship and democracy with research focussing on the attempts of young people to influence and make a difference in school and other parts of society. The paper also provides an overview to the design of the research project and the relations between the empirical papers that are to be presented at the symposium.