Youth activism: A comparative perspective across six countries

• In Event: Roundtable Session (Monday II)
  In Refereed Round-Table Session: Youth activism, engagement and the development of new civic learning spaces across six countries

Proposal

The levels, patterns and importance of youth participation have formed a key site of political and education discourse in most, if not all, democratic countries over the last three decades. While most educational systems include a commitment to educating for active citizenship within their core educational goals, there is frequently concern that, while laudable, such commitments (1) unfairly commence from a mistaken view that young people are not politically active; (2) are framed narrowly in terms of the scope of youth action; and, (3) all too often fail to translate into meaningful and effective opportunities for all young people to engage within their political communities. Bound up with these concerns is a desire on the part of some commentators to recognise and prioritise how young people themselves characterise, enact and experience their own forms of political action. A central, though perhaps at times oversimplified, tenet within such work is the idea that the last three decades has witnessed a shift in young peoples’ political action away from traditional, formal types of engagement towards “alternative” forms of action and activism.

Drawing on extensive literature reviews across the six countries involved in the project – Australia; Canada; Singapore; Hungary; Lebanon and the United Kingdom – in this paper we will examine different conceptualisations of youth activism as formed by each countries’ historical-political past and present contexts. In doing so the paper will address two research questions:

1. How do young people, their educators and policy-makers understand and construct their civic activism, including the different forms, spaces, expectations, aims, and learning and teaching processes?
2. What are the mobilizing factors and inhibitors of such engagement?

In responding to these two questions, the paper will explore different (though not unrelated) conceptions of youth (instrumental, vulnerable, deficient, apathetic etc.) and activism (engagement, social, radical, illiberal etc.) across the six countries. Drawing in particular on instances from Hungary and Lebanon, examples of youth activism will be used to illustrate how these concepts have been both operationalised in both policy and practice. Examples will include the Beta Generation in Hungary and responses to trash issues and domestic violence in Lebanon. It will be argued (i) that youth should be considered in broad terms and as informed and shaped by socio-political contexts; and (ii) that notions of youth as deficient and/or apathetic need challenging in ways which recognise the agency of young people whilst also being aware of key issues and trends (such as trends in illiberal forms of activism).

Authors

• Marta Fulop, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and Psychology of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences / Eötvös Loránd University

• Dina Kiwan, University of Birmingham