De Gruyter Handbook of Youth Activism

This is the first handbook to focus exclusively on youth activism, to outline the current state of research and identify promising emerging areas, and to forecast what new developments one might anticipate in the future. It provides a comprehensive introduction to theoretical and methodological approaches, as well as insights into the directions of both the scholarly field and the phenomenon of youth activism itself within the context of global power relations.

Youth political socialization, civic engagement, and citizenship attributes have frequently been highlighted as arenas of global concern, often by pundits and politicians declaiming the supposed ‘democratic deficit’ amongst more recent generations. Youth activism scholarship has often engaged with these debates, providing critical responses to more mainstream analyses of young people as apathetic, apolitical, or unconcerned about the society in which they live. In its place, youth activism scholarship provides more nuanced accounts of the possibilities and potentials for meaningful youth engagement in political social change, and, conversely, the barriers and proscriptions that prevent some young people from taking up a place within the polity.