Youth civic engagement in the digital age: exploring opportunities and barriers in conflict-affected global South contexts

• In Event: The Landscape of Youth Political Engagement: Lessons and Implications for Educational Research and Practice

Proposal

Civic engagement takes many forms beyond formal political channels, with the internet playing a significant role in broadening young people’s opportunities for engaging with politics. Young people’s civic engagement is increasingly framed as a driving force for development in the global South, with connections made between the building of young people’s human and social capital, their swift transitions from education into work, and their constructive participation in public life (UNDESA 2016). However, the research on youth civic engagement that drives global policy agendas is still largely undertaken in the global North - despite recognition of the importance of context for understanding the factors that shape young people’s political identities and practices (Sherrod et al 2010). The ‘youth studies of the global South’ literature draws attention to the ways that growing global inequalities and economic precarity—including in particular exclusion from formal and non-formal education opportunities—shape young people’s identities, cultures and in turn their political practices (Isin, 2002; Swartz et al. 2021; Wood, 2022). Yet research on young people’s social movements and collective action in the global South, especially in its consideration of online spaces, tends to present an uncritical and often romanticized view of youth civic engagement that fails to address how it may reflect and reproduce inequalities. The intersections of online political participation and offline civic engagement in middle- and especially low-income country contexts are also underexamined. Existing research suggests that online spaces have become increasingly important in shaping and polarising political debates in global contexts, but the specific role of different groups of youth in such activism has received little attention.

In this paper, we present evidence on young people’s civic engagement from Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Lebanon: three countries involved in the Gender and Adolescence: Global Evidence (GAGE) study (a longitudinal mixed methods research programme following 20,000 adolescents in the global South over the second decade of life) which have seen significant youth involvement in recent political change processes. Adolescent and young people’s individual exercise of voice, agency and civic participation is analysed in relation to contextual factors including spatial and temporal locations, structural economic conditions, access to formal and non-formal education opportunities, and the impact of shocks such as conflict and governance crises. We find that these dynamics intersect to shape youth opportunities for civic engagement and the forms that this engagement takes, with important implications for promoting safe and inclusive spaces and platforms for young people as they forge civic identities in conflict-affected contexts.

Authors

• Nicola Jones, ODI

• Khadija Mitu

• Workneh Yadete