The methodological and discursive approaches to studying middle-class youth participation in social activism: A systematic review of the literature

• In Event: Power of Media: Representation, Literacy, and Democracy

Proposal

In light of the intensifying global challenges the world faces, young people continue to engage in protests to highlight issues on environmental justice, human rights, global inequality, among other related topics. Linked to this, youth engagement and activism is increasingly gaining traction in social movement scholarship. However, young people’s participation in social and political activism is not a new phenomenon, as youth political engagement is an historical feature of democratic developments around the world. Some theorists have gone so far as to suggest that, youth political participation in contemporary times is on the decline, compared to political participation in the 1970s and 1980s (Delli Carpini, 2000). Other theorists however note that, youth political engagement is taking on new forms rather than declining (Dalton, 2009), owing to the emergence of new technologies which are altering how young people participate in social movements. The proliferation of social media, for example, is causing many young people to engage politically through online mobilisation and activism as opposed to direct political engagement (Earl et al, 2017). This is making it easier for the youth to engage in political and social actions that transcend national boundaries, often within the framework of state, non-state and supra-national actors. Young people are also now able to identify with transnational forms of citizenship (global citizenship), which disrupts traditional notions of citizenship with its nationally-constricted definitions of rights and responsibilities.
Participation in social activism and engagement is not however homogenous for youth across all social classes. Depending on their economic, social and cultural capital, young people are positioned differently to participate and engage in social and political action. Whiles the current proliferation of new technologies might mean young people of all social classes have increased opportunities to engage in online activism, inequality in digital participation is known to impact negatively on the ability of lower social classes to participate in online collective action (Schradie, 2018). There is also the question of how existing political and economic arrangements favour different social classes and how this might incentivise particular classes to engage in activism as a form of protestation. Beyond broader social and political conditions, there is the question of whether young people from privileged backgrounds have any altruistic motivations to engage in social activism, especially if they are not impacted negatively by existing political and economic arrangements in pronounced ways. A further question pertains to how middle-class youth navigate their relative positionality of privilege, if they engage in social activism. These questions point to seeming tensions and contradictions that characterise middle-class youth participation in political and social activism.
To make sense of these seeming contradictions, social movement scholars have advanced a number of theories to explain the dynamics that underpin participation in social and political action among different social classes. Studies have shown that, in many industrialised countries, the middle social strata of societies are more likely to participate in activism than the lower and upper classes; a phenomenon characterised as middle-class activism. This phenomenon is traced to the ‘third wave’ of democratisation that occurred between the 1970s and the early 1990s, in which the most active participants were said to be the middle class, while the elite class at the top, and the working class at the bottom end, were relatively passive (Chen and Suen, 2015).
To explicate the attachment of the middle-class to social and political activism, different social movement theories have been proffered. Whiles the Resource Mobilisation theory posits that, the middle-class lead and engage more with social movement activities because they have the relevant social and cultural capital to do so, the New Social Movement theory attributes to the new middle-class a post-modernising consciousness that is requisite for driving social and political action (Cleveland, 2003). Yet, other theories point to the unequal distribution of wealth and income, as the basis for middle-class social activism, linked to the growing disenfranchisement that sections of this class face. Some scholars also locate the motivation to participate in social activism in the personal attributes and changing cultural values of individuals who constitute the middle-class (Siza, 2022) . Though the preceding discursive frameworks are typically applied to adult social movement organisations, they also apply to youth activism. This is because activist parents are known to pass on their activist aspirations and identities to their young ones as a way of perpetuating their social movement agendas (Simi et al, 2016).
Based on the critical role the middle-class have historically played in the formation and activities of social movements, it is important to understand the role middle class youth play in today’s youth activism, their motivations for doing so, and how they leverage their economic and social capital to advance such activist causes. To contribute to this understanding, this paper will highlight key findings from a systematic literature review that synthesised and analysed both old and new literature on middle-class youth activism, paying particular attention to the key theoretical, methodological and analytical frameworks that underpin such studies. In line with this, the paper will address the following questions:
• What are the key theoretical and methodological approaches to studying the participation of middle class youth in social activism?
• How do existing discursive frameworks on social movements account for the impact of social media technologies on middle-class youth activism?
• What are the new and emerging dynamics in middle-class youth activism in light of social media proliferation?
Among other findings, the review show there are continuities, complementarities and disjunctures between old and emerging social movement theories that take cognisance of, and are shaping an evolving narrative on the role of new media technologies in promoting youth social mobilisation and activism. The paper makes a case for more theorising to shed light on and bridge the theoretical gap between old forms of youth civic engagement and political participation which were often direct, and on the other hand, new youth social activism that are inspired and mobilised around social media technologies and often transpire in transnational spaces.

Author

• Simon Eten, University College London UCL