Promoting peace: The impact of cross-community activities on youth civic engagement and voting intentions

• In Event: 2-115 - Youth Civic Engagement Across Cultural, Social, and Political Contexts

Integrative Statement

In post-conflict settings, interventions aiming to improve intergroup relations often use cross-community contact. Based in contact theory (Allport, 1954), it is hypothesized that bringing conflicting groups together, under certain conditions, will help to improve intergroup relations (Pettigrew & Tropp, 2005). For youth (Beelman & Heineman, 2014), this strategy is often employed with the hope of inspiring a future generation of peacebuilders and engaged citizens (McKeown & Taylor, 2017). Particularly in post-conflict settings, youth must be willing to engage in civic life (Taylor et al, 2017) and participate in non-violent forms of political action, such as voting (McEvoy-Levy, 2006). These constructive ways to resolve group differences provide the building blocks for consolidating the peace efforts (Taylor & McKeown, 2017).
The current study investigates the impact of youth participation in cross-community projects, on their subsequent support for the peace process, civic engagement and voting intentions in Northern Ireland. Participants (N=590; M = 16.83, SD = 1.99 years old; 49% male, 51% female; 62% Catholic, 38% Protestant) were part of a larger longitudinal study, conducted 20 years after the peace process, on the impact of political violence on children and families conducted in marginalized communities in Belfast; thus, youth were part of the post-accord generation. In these analyses, all measures were adapted from the Northern Ireland Young Life and Times Survey (YLT, 2008).
Controlling for gender and community background, two moderated mediation models were conducted to examine if support for the peace process mediated the link from participation in cross-community projects (i.e., bringing together Catholic and Protestant youth) on civic engagement (i.e., social and political forms of participation) and intention to vote when old enough. To assess how these relations may change with age, it was entered as a moderator of all paths in the model. Although girls and Catholic youth were more likely to support peace, compared to boys and Protestant youth, respectively, there were not significant effects of the demographic controls on civic engagement. In terms mediation, the direct effects in the path model were not significant; however, the indirect effects suggested that support for peace mediated the impact of past cross-community participation on current civic engagement; moreover, the link from cross-community activity to civic engagement was stronger for older youth. For voting, there were no differences by gender, but Catholic youth did report higher intentions compared to Protestant youth. In this model, there was no moderation by age, but the indirect effects suggested that peace mediated the impact of cross-community activity on later intentions to vote. Overall, the results suggest that among vulnerable youth in Northern Ireland, cross-community activities were successful in promoting greater support for the peace process, which in turn, was related to constructive forms of engagement in community and political life.
These findings have implications for interventions in Northern Ireland, and other settings of political violence, and suggest that the development of cross-community projects with youth may be a fruitful avenue for promoting civic engagement peacebuilding in a post-accord generation.

Authors

• Laura K Taylor, Queen's University Belfast
  Presenting Author

• Christine Merrilees, State University of New York at Geneseo
  Non-Presenting Author

• Marcie Goeke-Morey, The Catholic University of America
  Non-Presenting Author

• Peter Shirlow, University of Liverpool
  Non-Presenting Author

• E. Mark Cummings, University of Notre Dame
  Non-Presenting Author