Testing Pathways of Committed Activist Participation After College

• In Event: 106 - Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 15. Social Movement Outcomes

Abstract

To date, nearly all of the scholarship on activist participation makes a major assumption: That the factors which lead to continued volunteer activism are the same as those which lead to paid activism. This study challenges this assumption by asking: Among former college activists, which demographic and educational factors predict continued volunteering, and which ones predict transitioning to activist employment? I derive a set of hypotheses about different activist pathways from research on social movements, life course sociology, the sociology of higher education, and research on volunteering, and follow a set of former college activists after they graduate from a four-year university and transition to paid employment or graduate school. The findings demonstrate that the factors that predict transitions into paid activism are completely different than those that predict continued volunteer activism. Future scholarship should not assume that activist volunteers have similar characteristics as paid volunteers, and should also examine the labor market characteristics of ideologically-oriented employment.

Author

• Jonathan Horowitz, Carolina Population Center