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Democratic societies are currently experiencing significant changes due to the intersecting crises that persist, including insecurity, climate crisis, COVID-19, and cost of living crises (Ang 2021; Moore et al 2021). As a result, there is concern in public discourse and academic literature regarding the health of democratic societies and particularly the role of young people. In light of these issues, we use this editorial to turn our attention to the topics of young people’s citizenship and political participation, which is explored broadly in the articles included in this issue. We also use this editorial to outline four key debates in the literature on young people’s citizenship, framed by our newly appointed book review editor, Janina Suppers, whose research focuses on young people’s citizenship in changing democratic societies (see Suppers 2022a; b). In addition, we highlight themes we encourage authors working in the area of youth citizenship to examine in future issues of the Journal of Applied Youth Studies.
A first key theme in current youth citizenship research is the emergent challenge to the prevailing youth disengagement narrative of a “crisis of democracy” (Foa et al. 2020). The work in this area proposes that instead of a decline in youth participation, democratic processes are changing from traditional, institutionalized forms of participation to widening repertoires of action, which include issues-based, lifestyle, doing-it-ourselves (DIO), private, and activist forms of citizenship that often go unnoticed in citizenship research (Bennett 2003; Bowman & Pickard 2021; Flinders et al. 2020; Pickard 2019; Norris 2004). These shifts in citizens’ participation repertoires call for research attention towards youth citizenship and how it is being enacted in late modernity. Specifically, there is a need for research that explores young people’s emerging citizenship practices including issues-based, lifestyle, DIO, private and activist citizenship activities, and how these emerging citizenship practices can be recognized in political decisions, as well as how such practices engage across digital/offline and by extension local/transnational spaces. Research should also examine the barriers young people experience when they participate as citizens in changing democracies and the potential role of intergenerational relationships in bridging these barriers.
Second, there is a need to examine young people’s citizenship in connection to their social worlds, and the intersectional spaces they live within. This counters prevailing assumptions that citizenship experiences are universal. Instead, we need to situate citizenship as a socio-cultural construct, embedded in young people’s social worlds (Akar 2017; Swartz 2022). Contextual factors that shape young people’s experiences of citizenship are manifold, and experienced and practiced intersectionally. These factors, for example, include Global South versus Global North contexts, with global north frameworks often applied to young people from the Global South whose social worlds differ significantly (Swartz et al. 2021). This is also a point that Bronwyn Wood (2023) makes in this issue in the form of a commentary that argues that we need to “mind the gap” in youth citizenship studies. Wood suggests we need to respond to gaps in knowledge, which stem from a primary research focus on “Global North, elite, White and well resourced” young people. Further still, young people’s experiences of citizenship may differ in relation to place, which enables or restricts access to particular causes, determines what are accepted citizenship activities, influences which issues young people care about, and shapes young people’s citizenship repertoire (Panelli et al. 2007). For example, protests, a common measure of youth citizenship, are often difficult to access for remote, rural young people (Gensicke 2014). In addition, much research on young people’s citizenship is carried out in urban areas, often without acknowledging place “and subsequently applying conclusions to all young people, thereby making urban youth the norm and rendering the experiences of youth in other places invisible” (Adolfsson & Coe 2022, p. 2). Additional intersectional factors we invite authors to engage with in future issues to expand our understanding of young people’s complex experience of citizenship include gender, ethnicity/race, and sexuality, as well as culture, economic inequality, and socio-political contexts.
Third, there is a need to both reconsider and broaden the concept of young people’s citizenship and our methodological approaches to it. This is critical in light of changing democratic participation repertoires (e.g., issues-based, lifestyle, DIO, private and activist citizenship) (O’Toole 2010). This will allow research to capture dynamic emerging citizenship practices such as TikTok activism, arts-based activism, community service, student clubs, and climate activism (Lee & Abidin 2023; Fu and Li 2022; Suppers 2022b). In future issues, we are interested in emergent research that is applying flexible, youth-centered, and contextualized measures that examine young people’s citizenship. We are also seeking contributions that aim to increase young people’s agency in research and critically engage with the implications of forming research partnerships with young people. In relation to this latter focus, we are interested in how research partnerships are formed and the doing of them in practice—how they, for instance, navigate ethical decision making, power-relationships, research timelines, reciprocity, and co-authorship (Kidman 2014; Nunn et al. 2021). Including young people as active participants in research is particularly important for citizenship research as young people are often already marginalized in political processes, thus making research a key avenue for amplifying young people’s voices.
A fourth emerging research theme related to youth citizenship in the literature is concerned with the debate on what constitutes a “good citizen” and the role of education in shaping, replicating, restricting, and/or counteracting prevailing citizenship models (Westheimer and Kahne 2004; Bennett 2003; Amnå & Ekman 2014). While citizenship education is often suggested in the literature as a solution to young people’s (dis)engagement in “democracies in crisis” and/or “changing democracies,” many current citizenship education approaches are disconnected from young people’s experiences of citizenship, which promote dutiful citizens, characterized by traditional, adult-centric citizen ideals such as institutionalized participation and voting (Westheimer 2015). In future issues, we are interested in contributing to this dialogue by critically examining citizenship education both at school and in other settings such as local communities or online, that are or have the capacity to support young people to become critical and active citizens.
As an interdisciplinary journal, we welcome approaches that explore these emergent themes in the literature across interdisciplinary lenses. Research on young people’s citizenship is currently carried out across a range of disciplines, predominantly in education, politics, sociology, and geography which can lead to a siloing of interconnected issues. The field of youth studies can (and should) be a critical space to foster dialogue between these disciplines.
The current issue offers critical work specifically about, and/or informing our understanding of young people’s lives and the spaces where citizenship takes place. Aligned with the themes of citizenship, the current issue features Fung et al.'s (2023) work. The authors begin with protests in Hong Kong, exploring how intersecting crises, including geopolitical shifts and COVID-19, have impacted the future quality of life imagined by young people in Hong Kong. Also in this issue we have research exploring institutional contexts and spaces young people inhabit, arguably spaces where they are enacting citizenship, and the support available to them in those spaces. Lateef and Balakrishnan (2023) argue, for instance, for afrocentrism as an approach for making sense of and supporting the development of Black youth during adolescence. This sits alongside Välimäki and Husu's (2023) discussion of how young people in Finland engage with and experience targeted youth work and gain recognition in such spaces. Similarly, Berman (2023) explores how young people in Japanese higher education find meaning and attachment, which was particularly the case during COVID-19.
Together, the research in this issue, alongside this editorial, highlights emerging themes in youth citizenship research and points to the ways we must be attuned to the social worlds in which young people are spending their time and enacting citizenship. We hope to see more research that explores these emerging themes and specifically the complexities of youth citizenship to support young people in critically engaging in and shaping democratic societies amidst intersecting crises. The Journal of Applied Youth Studies is dedicated to providing a platform for this critical work to emerge.
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Suppers, J., Hanckel, B., Cook, J. et al. Young citizens in intersecting crises: Key debates in youth citizenship research. JAYS 6, 95–99 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s43151-023-00103-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s43151-023-00103-0