Youth activism in Poland: Perceptions, participation and diverging perspectives from young people and activists

Youth activism has become an increasingly influential force in driving social change across the globe, with young people actively challenging social, political, and environmental injustices. This movement is fueled by the passion, energy, and idealism of young individuals who seek to address issues such as climate change, racial and gender inequality, economic disparity, and political corruption. In the digital age, youth activism has expanded beyond traditional forms of protest, leveraging social media and digital platforms to amplify voices, mobilize communities, and hold governments and corporations accountable.This paper examines the significant role that young people play in social change movements, focusing on how they use collective action, advocacy, and innovative strategies to confront societal challenges. By exploring various examples of youth-led movements, such as global climate strikes, racial justice campaigns, and feminist movements, the paper highlights the diverse ways in which youth are shaping public discourse and influencing policy decisions. Young activists often challenge entrenched power structures, push for progressive reforms, and demand action on pressing global issues. The paper also discusses the empowerment of youth through education, leadership development, and grassroots organizing, which equip them to lead movements that generate lasting social and political impact. It underscores how youth activism serves not only as a tool for addressing contemporary issues but also as a catalyst for fostering solidarity across generations and borders. By examining the intersection of youth engagement, activism, and social change, the paper demonstrates the essential role of young people in creating a more just, inclusive, and sustainable world. Ultimately, youth activism is not only about advocating for present-day issues but ensuring a better future for all.

Children, Youth and Environments Vol. 16 No. 2 (2006) ISSN: 1546-2250 Beyond Resistance! Youth Activism and Community Change: New Democratic Possibilities for Practice and Policy Ginwright, Shawn and Noguera, Pedro and Cammarota, Julio (2006). New York: Routledge Press; 336 pages. $34.95. ISBN 0415952514. Beyond Resistance! Youth Activism and Community Change: New Democratic Possibilities for Practice and Policy for America’s Youth offers an inspiring account of the ways young people are “agents of social change,” as well as a sobering evaluation of what stands in the way of young people achieving full citizenship in the United States. Youth activism has exploded over the last decade in cities across the United States as young people have struggled against neoliberal policies that have eviscerated youth rights, expanded the penal state, and exacerbated racial and class inequalities. This book provides a timely exploration of civic engagement among youth of color, how youth participation can improve public policies, and how youth activism affects the youth development process. At its broadest, the editors look to youth activism for a model of how to reinvigorate a truly inclusive American democracy. Beyond Resistance is an important resource for policy-makers, youth advocates and inter-disciplinary scholars interested in youth activism and civic engagement. This collection is unique in the way it combines theoretical and practical concerns, and in the way it grounds an understanding of civic engagement in fundamentally political questions of race, inequality and power (c.f. Flanagan and Sherrod 1998; Sherrod 2006). This collection builds on earlier efforts to document, advocate for, and network among youth activist groups in the U.S. (Cervone 2002; Young Wisdom Project 2004; the Freechild Project; and the Funders’ Collaborative on Youth Organizing). But this collection has more theoretical ambitions. It combines a critique and revision of youth development 379 models with a theoretically rich – if unevenly developed – account of youth agency and political identity. The editors (and many authors) demonstrate the virtues of walking across the lines between research and practice. Shawn Ginwright is a professor of education at San Francisco State and co-founder of Leadership Excellence, a model African-American social justice youth development agency in Oakland, California. Julio Cammarota is an anthropology professor who directs an action-research project at the University of Arizona. Pedro Noguera is an education professor at NYU who has served as an advisor to urban school districts. Ginwright and Cammarota’s brief introduction develops a conceptual frame for understanding youth agency and democratic participation. They lay out four guiding principles: 1) young people should be conceptualized in relationship to specific economic, political and social conditions; 2) youth development should be understood as a collective response to social marginalization; 3) young people are agents of change, not simple subjects of change; 4) young people have basic civic and human rights, including the right to real political power. These principles sketch out a compelling revision of youth development models and a new approach to the study of civic engagement (contra Putnam 2000). But the collection would benefit from a longer introduction that more fully elaborated these theoretical contributions. The first section of the book builds on these principles to develop a compelling, if fragmented, theoretical foundation for the study of youth activism. Hosang’s analysis of youth activism in New York and Los Angeles offers a powerful argument for the importance of combining short-term policy reform with broader ideological challenges to dominant images that frame youth of color as problems. Watts and Guessous document the importance of sociopolitical development, arguing that youth development for marginalized youth must include developing a critical consciousness of the social forces that affect their lives and communities. Akom offers a significant critique of theories of social capital that ignore the significance of racial identity in shaping political networks, civic 380 engagement and activism. And Lewis-Charp and colleagues’ national study of youth activist organizations documents the importance of identity in facilitating collective action among marginalized youth. This focus on race and political identity serves as a vital correction to literature on youth development and civic engagement, which has generally failed to adequately attend to race, power and the radically unequal social and political contexts of...

The purpose of this systematic review was to explore whether birth weight, early growth and motor development act as determinants of physical activity in children and youth. We performed a systematic literature search on the possible early life determinants. A meta-analysis was performed on the association between birthweight and objectively measured physical activity. We identified 9 studies examining birth weight, in which none of the studies with objectively measured physical activity observed an association between birth weight and physical activity. The meta-analysis confirmed this result (b=-3.08, 95% CI -10.20, 4.04). The 3 studies examining early growth and physical activity in youth differ in methodology and the results are inconsistent. Two studies suggest an association between earlier motor development and physical activity and sport participation in youth. This was not confirmed in a third study. Our meta-analysis suggests that birth weight is not an important determinant of physical activity in youth. Available data does not allow firm conclusions whether early growth and motor development act as determinants of physical activity in youth.

This article examines youth participation the school climate strikes of 2018 and 2019 (also known as #Fridays4Future), through an exploratory study conducted in seven diverse cities. Despite the international nature of the climate strikes, we know little about the factors that influenced youth participation in these protests beyond the global North. This matters because youth of the global South are disproportionately impacted by climate change and there is growing concern that the climate movement is dominated by narratives that marginalize the voices and priorities of Indigenous communities and people of color. In this context, the exploratory research reported here aimed to compare the attitudes of climate protesters (n= 314) and their non-protester peers (n= 1,217), in diverse city samples drawn from a wider study of children and youth aged 12–24 years, living in Christchurch (New Zealand); Dhaka (Bangladesh); Lambeth, London (United Kingdom); Makhanda (South Africa); New Delhi (India); São Paulo (Brazil); and Yokohama (Japan). Using cross-sectional data (N= 1,531) and binary logistic regression models, researchers examined three common explanations for youth participation in protest: availability (biographical and structural), political engagement (reported individual and collective efficacy of strikers and non-strikers), and self-reported biospheric values amongst participants. Results indicate that even in diverse city samples, structural availability (civic skills and organizational membership) predicted strike participation across city samples, but not political engagement (self-efficacy and collective efficacy). Youth who reported that ‘living in harmony with nature and animals’ was important for their wellbeing, were also more likely to strike than their peers. Descriptive statistics indicated that the majority (85 percent) of all protestors in this study agreed climate change was a serious issue and a startling 65 percent said that they think about climate change “all the time”. Reported rates of youth climate protest participation varied across city samples as did the extent to which participants reported having friends take part or expecting climate change to have a personal impact. While the study is exploratory, it points to the need for more extensive research to understand the diversity of youth participation in ‘global climate strikes’.

Prior social movement research has focused on the role that axes of inequality – particularly race, class, gender, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) status – play for who participates and how they do so. Age is another important axis of inequality. The pervasiveness of a youth deficit model, which casts young people as deficient and requiring benevolent adult tutelage, is of particular concern for youth. This chapter assesses whether the internalization of the deficit model influences young people's activism and how they perceive their engagement. Drawing on interviews with 40 high school and college students from a southwestern US city, we find that many young people have internalized deficit-model assumptions, affecting when and how they participated. This was most evident among high school students, who limited their participation because they were “not old enough” or gravitated toward more “age-appropriate” forms of activism. Interestingly, we found college students were more willing to engage in online activism but also felt compelled to do significant research on issues before participating, thereby distancing themselves from the deficit model's assumptions of their political naivety. Finally, some participants felt discouraged by the perceived ineffectiveness of protest, which resonated with deficit model narratives of the futility of youth engagement. These findings highlight the importance of understanding the impacts of an internalized deficit model as well as considering age as an axis of inequality in activism. Youth engagement is best supported by seeing young people as capable actors with unique interests, capacities, and points of view.

Abstract. The article addresses different forms of youth environmental activism, starting from the phenomenon of the ambivalent position held by young people in environmental activism where on one hand they stand up for structural and radical change and, on the other, they cooperate with the authorities or at least make demands of them, thereby giving them legitimacy. The paper focuses on the relationship of young resisting subjectivities towards power and their interplay with strategies and practices and power mechanisms in the field of environmental regulation. The paper addresses various forms of youth environmental activism, especially looking at young dissenting subjectivities’ relationship to power and their intertwining with governing strategies and practices in the environmental field. Focus is given to the ways in which young activists are implicated in, constituted within, and respond to power relations and the exercise of governing, particularly when it comes to environmental issues. It draws on the Foucauldian approach of eco-governmentality and the analytical concept of counter-conduct as an analytical concept to examine how young activists address, co-constitute and potentially subvert or undermine power structures. Using this approach, we reflect on the diversity of agency found in youth activism, which includes an examination of the different forms, actions, strategies and practices associated with this activism. Keywords: youth, environmental activism, political ecology, eco-governmentality, counter-conduct.

Nowadays a lot of research describes most young people as barely interested in politics, expressing little trust in political institutions and far from any forms of institutional political participation. Moreover, most of the engaged youth are involved in forms of participation described as more civic and social than political, weakly ideological, more and more often digital and developed in virtual space, and usually experienced as one among several components of everyday personal lives. The article explores youth activism in political squats because it is a form of participation which, in countertendency, is political and radical in its aims and strategies, explicitly ideologically inspired, strongly rooted in physical places, and often quite central in everyday personal lives. The text is based on research conducted in the city of Turin (Italy) by means of qualitative interviews, participant observation and document analysis. Four main interconnected thematic dimensions are considered: Individuals’ biographical paths and meanings of activism; distinctive lifestyles and cultural sensitivities among the activists; collective narratives about contemporary society and possibilities of social change; patterns of intervention and forms of organization. On the basis of these analyses, the article maintains that this form of activism can be usefully interpreted as a real lifestyle, which has an explicit and intense political sense, but which young activists also connect with a much wider, more differentiated set of meanings.

During national crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic, government approval tends to surge. In Poland, however, there was a pronounced resistance to the government’s management of the pandemic in a context of the ongoing democratic backsliding. As part of the crisis response, the Polish right-wing government adopted measures that not only tried to contain the virus but also encroached on civil liberties. This paper sets out to understand the significance of the civic activism that flourished among young people, who took diverse grievances to the streets. An analysis of focus group discussions in two contrasting Polish cities allows us to examine perspectives on the resurgence of civic activism. Under the right-wing government, conservative youth groups received governmental support and refrained from protests, while liberals mobilized to defend democratic values. A Constitutional Tribunal ruling which imposed further restrictions on abortion served as a catalyst for protests. Irrespective of their political orientation, young Poles valued protest as a means of individual expression and as a manifestation of lived democracy. Our findings show that government opponents saw protest as an opportunity to advocate for cultural-liberal issues, while government supporters perceived it as a tipping point, signaling government failure. Despite political divisions, Polish youth stressed the importance of freedoms and human rights. The government’s exploitation of the pandemic to limit human rights led to a rallying in their defense.

Children, Youth and Environments 17(1), 2007 Performance, Responsibility and Political Decision-Making: Child and Youth Participation in Southeast Asia, East Asia and the Pacific Joachim Theis UNICEF Regional Office for East Asia and the Pacific Bangkok, Thailand Citation: Theis, Joachim (2007). “Performance, Responsibility and Political Decision-Making: Child and Youth Participation in Southeast Asia, East Asia and the Pacific.” Children, Youth and Environments 17(1): 1-13. Regional Context for Child and Youth Participation Close to one third of the world’s children and young people live in East Asia, Southeast Asia and the Pacific. The region is diverse in terms of languages, cultures, religions and political systems. The economies of many countries in East and Southeast Asia are growing rapidly, while other countries, especially those in the Pacific, are seeing very limited investments. Among the main factors that shape the context for child and youth participation in the region are the economic situation of a locality; the political system; social relationships, including gender relations and attitudes towards children; and the nature of the education system. The following paragraphs explore these contexts. China and Vietnam are states with restrictions on media freedom and political expression, limited space for civil society, and no independent human rights organizations (Young 2003). Both countries are paternalistic states that strongly emphasize the responsibilities of citizens towards the state. The state, represented by the government, in turn earns its legitimacy by providing political stability and the structural conditions for economic prosperity. This hierarchical and authoritarian relationship between state and citizen is mirrored in the relationships between parents and children and between teachers and students (Salazar-Volkmann 2005). As a result of rapid economic growth in Vietnam and China, young people’s participation in the labor market is generally high, compared to other parts of the world. Children are under pressure to acquire a good education in order to take full advantage of existing economic opportunities. Primary and secondary school students, especially those in urban areas, have limited free time to spend on social activities that are not directly relevant for passing their academic examinations. Levels of political activity and politicization among young people tend to be low. Performance, Responsibility and Political Decision-Making... 2 The globalizing economies in East Asia are creating demands for a new type of workforce. In order to capture new markets and to move beyond low-cost and low-tech jobs, the Chinese education system, for example, is moving away from rote learning and is beginning to encourage students to think critically and autonomously, and develop their creativity. This requires significant changes in the relationships between teachers and students and more room for students’ individual expression. The new Chinese education system supports some of the values underlying children’s participation, and to some extent this makes it easier to promote children’s expression and decision making in school and at home. West et al.’s article, “From Performance to Practice: Changing the Meaning of Child Participation in China” analyzes how children’s participation and children’s roles are changing in the context of the broader changes happening in China’s economy, social relations and education system. These political, social, economic and cultural forces provide the context for child and youth participation in China and Vietnam and in other countries with similar political and social characteristics. These are, of course, generalizations; there are wide variations between countries and significant differences within each country. Some of these factors support, while others hinder, child and youth participation. The articles in this issue of Children, Youth and Environments explore these topics in greater depth. The situation is very different in a country such as the Philippines, which has a multi-party democracy, press freedom, a diverse and vibrant civil society, and independent human rights institutions. Democratic spaces for political action and social activism are much greater there than in China or Vietnam. The Philippines is also offering some of the greatest opportunities for exploring and experimenting with children’s and young people’s participation in the region. (Cambodia is another country in the region where children’s participation has benefited from expanded democratic spaces.) Protacio-de Castro et al.’s “Walking the Road Together: Issues...

There has been an ongoing interest in youth activism in recent decades, especially in western countries where youth organizations and associations are very common in schools and colleges. Heather Lewis-Charp et al. confirm that although there is an increasing interest in youth political engagement, there are very few empirical studies on the subject matter (Shawn Ginwright 2006, 22). This lack of research applies to the issue of youth activism and political engagement not just in Morocco, but across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). In the wake of the so-called Arab spring, the focus on youth political engagement and activism grew, given the important role of youth and other marginalized communities – especially women – in protests around the region. In Morocco, a large number of the protesters in the February 20th movement were young people; of these, many were actively associated with feminist organizations and work. This is in contrast to the continued association between feminist activism in Morocco and older generations. This chapter will start by sketching a history of feminist movements and organizations in Morocco and will follow with a discussion of recent activist work by two prominent activists, Zineb Fasiki and Youssef Gherradi.

The aim of this chapter is to explore the paradoxes of participation for young people in relation to their engagement in politics and the political process in Australia. To do so, the chapter discusses a series of issues pertaining to youth activism and political involvement (including lack thereof), with a view to exposing the apparent contradictions in societal perception and response to young people's behaviour. The chapter builds upon ideas presented elsewhere dealing with issues of youth agency and youth activism (White, 2005). Topics to be discussed include the variable nature of youth political engagement; activism that occurs outside of approved political forums; youth participation inside approved forums; and the relationship of young people to the vote. A core thematic concern of the chapter is that of 'knowing one's mind'. Time and again, the issues of making up their mind, not knowing their mind, or being competent enough to make up their mind, surface in discussion of youth in politics. Knowing who they are as autonomous, self-interested human beings, and having the capacity to be decision-makers in their own right. are, it appears, essential to how young people are seen within the political sphere.

which unique insights can be gained from the investigations of the physiology of the growing child? Are there pragmatic outcomes to research in children's exercise science that bear specific utility to this age group or to their future life? What importance do exercise responses in youth bear to our

Growing interest in the use of digital technologies and a Putnam-inspired debate about youth engagement has drawn researchers from outside of the study of social movements into research on the topic. This interest in youth protest participation has, in turn, developed into a substantial area of research of its own. While offering important research contributions, we argue that these areas of scholarship are often not well grounded in classic social movement theory and research, instead focusing on new media and/or the relationship between activism and other forms of youth engagement. This chapter seeks to correct this by drawing on interviews with 40 high school and college students from a moderately sized southwestern city to examine whether traditional paths to youth activism (i.e., family, friends, and institutions) have changed or eroded as online technology use and extra-institutional engagement among youth has risen. We find that youth continue to be mobilized by supportive family, friends, and institutional opportunities, and that the students who were least engaged are missing these vital support networks. Thus, it is not so much that the process driving youth activism has changed, but that some youth are not receiving support that has been traditionally necessary to spur activism. This offers an important reminder for scholars studying youth and digital activism and youth participation more broadly that existing theory and research about traditional pathways to activism needs to be evaluated in contemporary research.

Book Reviews 208 Studies Minor at Illinois State University. She received her doctorate from the University of Southern California in Sociology in 2001. She created and teaches a course called Children in Global Perspective, as well as courses about family relationships and research methods. Her research explores what the currently available, global data about children reveal about children’s inequality worldwide. Her publications have focused on marginalized children from a global perspective, extended families and kinship, and adult children in stepfamilies. Youth Activism in an Era of Education Inequality Ben Kirshner (2015). New York: NYU Press, 240. $27.00 (paperback); ISBN: 978-1479898053. In Ben Kirshner’s book, Youth Activism in an Era of Education Inequality, the reader is presented with theoretical scope and lived detail of youth activism. Kirshner describes social contexts in dire need of transformation and provides nuanced analysis of complicated attempts to alter these contexts. Kirshner sets out to, and largely succeeds, in providing a comprehensive examination of what it means—and what else it could mean—to consider youth activism as precisely the push for social transformation so sorely needed in this “age of impunity” (King 2015) in education. Perhaps there is no more quintessential phrase from this book that captures its ethos and approach than Kirshner’s position that “youth should not be treated as ‘citizens of the future’; they should be treated as citizens now” (6). Readers are provided an excellent grounding in the frames of “youth” that run across much research on young people, youth engagement, and social change. Throughout, Kirshner draws on participatory approaches, analysis of distal movements, and theory on youth and social change. He weaves up-close details that address the pragmatic question of “how did they do that?” with exploration of the obstacles, tensions, and difficulties that come with doing anti-authoritative work in various settings. Throughout, Kirshner maintains a strong stance that youth activism should be provided more ground, support, and space not because youth need to be “given” voice or valued for their youth but because social change is facilitated by virtue of the societal spaces that youth choose to and are forced to occupy. Kirshner consistently spells out what possibilities are made available if adults understand themselves as intergenerational collaborators and resources, rather than guides for youth development. For example, in chapter 5, “Schools as Sites of Struggle,” Kirshner provides description and discussion of several school-based participatory youth research projects that exposed various forms of institutionalized discriminatory practices. We read about the ways that youth and adults must tangle with the politics and constraints of advocating for change within hierarchical structures. As we should Book Reviews 209 expect, the institutions pushed back, passively and not so passively with expressions of discomfort, concern for image, and adultist explanations of what the youth might not have understood. I wondered how these instances of resistance to students’ activism could be further explained by situating them within a time when schools have become, if anything, even less hospitable locales for critical inquiry and research precisely because of the neoliberal agendas that have conflated test score achievement and public image with learning and growth. If you are remotely interested in how youth activism has been taking shape over the past few decades and how it draws from and is defining social change, you should get this book. The writing is a rare combination of rigor and accessibility, much in keeping with the focus and ethos of youth activism. Coming at an opportune time where much as has been written to highlight youth participatory research projects but not as much that explores them as a collective, necessarily wonderful and fraught loosely set of actions, Kirshner analyzes within and across. He asks refreshingly necessary questions, including how we can learn from the areas of failure and struggle, arguably more than we can from the successes and desired impacts. If I were sitting down with Kirshner to talk about his book, there are two areas of discussion I’d bring up. I don’t offer these as criticisms of the book. No single text can address all things, but at their best, they deepen understanding that then naturally lifts up more questions...

Despite a growing body of research on youth activism, few studies examine how this intersects with gender. Our study aimed to explore whether and how young activists themselves perceived gender hierarchies as needing to be addressed through their collective action on sexual health in Peru and Ecuador. Using Grounded Theory (GT), qualitative data were collected and analyzed from young activists across four cases. Cases ranged in complexity from a single youth organization operating at the district level to numerous youth organizations articulating at the national level. We linked the GT analysis to a conceptual framework based on contemporary theorizing of gender and social movements. Accordingly, young activists perceived gender, and even class, ‘race’ and age, as salient to their collective actions. These actions corresponded to the social movement concept of mobilizing structures that consist of preexisting structures, tactics, and organizations. Young activists understood gender and other social categories as imbued by power differentials and, therefore, as social hierarchies, within which their activism was embedded. The study thereby demonstrates the need for an enhanced conceptual framework for the study of youth activism and its intersection with gender hierarchies.