Many citizens have disengaged from participation in civic life with a resulting call for new initiatives in civic education. Many of these programs have had little research on citizens' prior conceptions of participation. In this article, we provide a map of the conceptions of civic participation, specifically voting, held by two groups: recent African immigrants to Canada and native-born Canadians. Youth understand voting as a key element of democratic governance, a hard won democratic right, and a duty of democratic citizenship yet most indicate they do not plan to vote because voting does not make a difference. (Contains 1 table and 1 endnote.)