Abstract
Drawing on data from students, higher education staff and policymakers from six European countries, this article argues that it remains a relatively common assumption that students should be politically engaged. However, while students articulated a strong interest in a wide range of political issues, those working in higher education and influencing higher education policy tended to believe that students were considerably less politically active than their predecessors. Moreover, while staff and policy influencers typically conceived of political engagement in terms of collective action, articulated through common reference to the absence of a ‘student movement’ or unified student voice, students’ narratives tended not to valorise ‘student movements’ in the same way and many categorised as ‘political’ action they had taken alone and/or with a small number of other students. Alongside these broad commonalities across Europe, the article also evidences some key differences between nation‐states, institutions and disciplines. In this way, it contributes to the comparative literature on young people’s political engagement specifically, as well as wider debates about the ways in which higher education students are understood.
Highlights
It is often assumed that students should be key political actors in society, protesting against what they perceive to be social inequalities and driving forward social change
The project was intended to examine the constructions of higher education students across Europe, in general—and as part of this, we were interested in the extent to which students were seen as political actors
As we discussed at the start of this article, it has been a common expectation amongst social commentators and other social actors from the 1960s onwards that students should be politically engaged
Summary
It is often assumed that students should be key political actors in society, protesting against what they perceive to be social inequalities and driving forward social change In part, such assumptions are related to the relatively young age of the ‘traditional’ student and the associated belief that they are moving through a idealistic phase of life, in which they are not afraid to challenge social conventions. Often compared to this stereotype, and frequently criticised for their supposed apathy and lack of political engagement (Sukarieh and Tannock, 2015) Taking these assumptions as a point of departure, this article considers the extent to which contemporary higher education students across Europe see themselves as political actors. We discuss briefly the literature on European homogenisation in higher education, as this is relevant to debates about how students across the continent are conceptualised
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