The politics of youthful antipolitics: representing the ‘issue’ of youth participation in politics

Abstract

Young people's relationship with contemporary politics is complex and often problematized. They are often chastised as the apolitical harbingers of an incipient ‘crisis of democracy’ while simultaneously heralded as the authors of sophisticated new forms of politics, most notably within electronic realms. Previous literature examining young people's political participation falls into either extreme of this binary; either a disengaged paradigm – which sees young people as passive and devoid of political interest – or engaged paradigm – which sees young people as actively political in new forms. Both models are limited because they fail to comprehensively explain youthful political participation. Instead, this paper argues that a more helpful conceptualization requires moving beyond the claim that young people are either politically engaged or disengaged, to acknowledge that both engagement and disengagement are simultaneously occurring. Reframing young people's political participation this way would empower young people's aversion to politics without condemnation – it would see them as radically unpolitical. The current response to the ‘problem of youth participation’ – which typically entails enticing and assimilating young people into stale political processes and/or translating these stale processes into interactive websites – is inadequate for unpolitical young people. Rather a change in the very substance of the political agenda, its spheres and forms, is required. This article explores the disengaged and engaged paradigm and the policy responses, and explores the proposed radically unpolitical model.