Universal properties of group actions on locally compact spaces

We study universal properties of locally compact G-spaces for countable infinite groups G. In particular we consider open invariant subsets of the \beta-compactification of G (which is a G-space in a natural way), and their minimal closed invariant subspaces. These are locally compact free G-spaces, and the latter are also minimal. We examine the properies of these G-spaces with emphasis on their universal properties. As an example of our resuts, we use combinatorial methods to show that each countable infinite group admits a free minimal action on the locally compact non-compact Cantor set.