Precarious membership through the lens of ecological responsibilisation

Abstract

ABSTRACT From its very beginning in 2018, the Fridays for Future movement has been known for youth-led climate activism. This article examines the young activists’ activities in Germany between 2019 and 2021. 13 problem-centred interviews were conducted with activists aged between 14 and 23, along with approximately 50 h of participant observation on strikes and meetings of local FFF groups. Based on this data, this article focuses on the young activists’ perceptions, demands and practices with regard to individual responsibility taken on via an ecological lifestyle. Taking an ethnographic, praxeological perspective, interaction situations are discussed to examine how the young activists are made responsible for ecological transformation on an individual level, and how this relates to legitimate participation in the movement. The results comprise three types of practices: the embodiment of individual responsibility, coherence checks and the maintaining of ambivalence. Overall, the study finds that the climate activists create and are confronted with certain normative demands concerning their lifestyle. This phenomenon is expressed as a paradoxical ambivalence between dissociation from and affirmation of those demands. The analysis thus enables insights into movement-related lifestyle practices and uncovers contradictions resulting from the individualisation of responsibility that have received little attention so far.