Engaging with the much-contested concept of âactive citizenshipâ, this volume attempts to elucidate the positions and experiences of diverse communities of young people who are called or define themselves as active citizens and activists. It does so at a unique moment in European political history: when a resurgent populist political right is deploying the rhetorics of racial superiority and privatisation using a range of old and new digital media to fuel xenophobic nationalism. The economic neoliberalism that has been the backdrop to multiple financial crises and austerity measures for many countries in Europe seems, ironically, to escape unscathed from much of this rhetoric. Meanwhile, ethnic and racial minorities, migrants and refugees bear the brunt when rhetorics spill over into violence. In some key cases such as Portugal and the UK, many young peopleâs justified scepticism of elite political institutions and decision-making has seen them abandoning the expected political cynicism to volunteer, vote and mobilise. They do so in the hope of combatting climate change, and sustaining or bringing socialist parties to power. In other key cases, such as the Czech Republic and Italy, pro- and anti-EU and pro- and anti-migrant sentiments are more divisive even among young people: some join the Sardines; others join the neo-fascists. Yet, more widely across Europe, the stigma of inexperience, apathy and assumed alienation from politics continues to dog young peopleâs pro-democratic actions. Their contributions to a range of causes are belittled in the media, mocked by adult commentators with opposing political views or co-opted through different disciplinary regimes. In this context, and for those coming of age in this historical moment, this volume asks, what is life like for an active citizen with an interest in the civic and political sphere? How do these young activists think and feel as they go about their everyday lives? Which types of young people become activists and what conditions enable them to thrive individually and collectively in this political atmosphere? And what practices, relationships and motivations characterise their participatory movements, organisations, initiatives and groups?
Contrasting the kinds of insights available to political scientists and sociological researchers of youth participation through ethnography with those more commonly delivered via large-scale surveys, this introductory chapter outlines the methodological and theoretical underpinnings of the ethnographic studies undertaken. Data were gathered across eight countriesâthe Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Sweden and the UKâbetween December 2016 and January 2018 for the CATCH-EyoU Horizon 2020 project. The implications of normative and critical ways of conceptualising youth participation, political versus civic life, and the concept of active citizenship (AmnĂ„ & Ekman, 2014; Biesta, 2009; Milana, 2008) will be unpacked. This will be supported, in part, by drawing selectively on the projectâs extended, systematic literature review which covers more than 700 key texts on youth civic and political participation, political socialisation, citizenship, active citizenship and European citizenship (cf. Banaji et al., 2018).
The book departs from an approach that has, in recent years, centred media, technologies and mediation in an unspecified, benign and pro-social civic sphere. Several chapters work with different disciplinary theories from community psychology, development psychology, political science, policy studies, education, media and communications and sociology to examine the practical consequences of the acceptance or rejection of contrasting normative definitions of citizenship and civic participation. Contributors from six of our projectâs partner countriesâthe Czech Republic, Estonia, Italy, Germany, Portugal and the UKâexamine the psychological development and the social contexts of a collective orientation to civic action as it unfolds in our ethnographic cases. Some chapters examine the significance of emotion and affect in developing or maintaining activist commitment. Others offer a fresh analytical vocabulary and theoretical lenses for understanding the significance of optimism, self-care and burnout among young civic and political activists. These chapters and the theoretical debates and tensions therein are contextualised and summarised in the remainder of this introduction. Alongside this, the strengths and weaknesses of the overall approach as well as the connections between the cases will be drawn out in a synoptic concluding chapter.
Active CitizenshipâA Troubled Concept
At the outset of our project, and resonating throughout this volume, our consortium of more than forty researchers debated institutional and normative definitions of citizenship. Some definitions appeared to encourage an implicitly contractual relationship between (national) citizens and a boundaried and bordered state in terms of rights and responsibilities; some positioned young people as apprentices developing acceptable normative civic skills and capabilities, modelled on adult citizenship. Yet other definitionsâthat we will write about as both more inclusive and more criticalâframed active citizenship in relation to histories of injustice, struggles for rights, equity and solidarity as well as in relation to less benign and more authoritarian regimes. Some discussions encountered in the literature simply inserted the word âactiveâ preceding âcitizenshipâ with little attempt to unpack the kinds of acts or behaviours considered to constitute such activity; yet others appeared to suggestâat least implicitly, by virtue of the actions centred by survey instrumentsâthat getting educated, being employed and paying taxes are components of active citizenship. Further sets of definitions insist that active citizenship is comprised of âdemocratic knowledge and valuesâ1 and full participation in the electoral and civic life of communities and nations by reflexive and motivated individuals. Few of these definitions deal with the tension between the legal (citizenship as status) and psychosocial (citizenship as identity) domains. Almost no writer denies, for instance, that those who are not or not yet legally citizensâfor instance, refugees, asylum seekers, visitors, residentsâmay yet perform acts of citizenship. However, few make explicit reference to this fuzzinessâacting as a citizen without holding citizenship. Most assume a component of loyalty to and/or trust of nation and government within the parameters of their definitions. Additionally, most of these definitions fail to deal with the following possibilities: that political and civic action may be intermittent rather than sustained; that such actions might be anti-democratic; that voluntary action requires resources of time and capital; and that citizenship itself might be a contested âtechnology of controlâ (Amaya, 2013).
While it is unnecessary to recapitulate in full the arguments we make in our 2018 paper on the literature about active
citizenship (Banaji et al.,
2018), I do wish to draw attention to the key insights we developed there, and to their relevance for this volume. In summary, we found that
on probing the language of texts that use the terms active citizenship further ⊠a preponderance of literature assumes a shared normative understanding of active citizenship as a more active version of âgoodâ, responsible civic and political action, that respects rules and boundaries set by government[s] and nation state[s]. However, when we analysed them comparatively, we found that these terms consistently mean different things to different scholars and practitioners in different epistemological and ideological traditions across disciplines⊠[Meanwhile], the critical, inclusive and also anti-democratic dimensions of active citizenship as both status and practice remain on the periphery of theory and literature reviews on young people, citizenship and Europe. Further, there is a tension between the significant minority of critical reflexive empirical studies that question the assumptions and power structures underpinning normative views of citizenship and the majority of informative but somewhat unreflexive empirical studies. (Banaji et al., 2018, p. 263)
Many scholars in the social, political and psychological sciences have had a lasting impact on how we think about young peopleâs interventions in political, social and educational contexts (Hoskins & Villalba, 2015; Prior, 2010; Torney-Purta & Amadeo, 2011). In a paper entitled âA Europe of Active Citizensâ, The Council of Europe suggests that â[a]ctive citizenship [i]s a value-based concept: a European perspective on active citizenship always should refer to democracy and human rights as founding elementsâ (DARE, 2010). In accordance with this injunction, Hoskins et al. (2006) define Active Citizenship as: â[p]articipation in civil society, community and/or political life, characterised by mutual respect and non-violence and in a...
