Abstract
In this commentary I respond to Benjamin Bowman’s Fennia paper by extending upon his central thesis that argues that the prevailing methodological tools and framings used to research youth political participation perpetuate unhelpful and inadequate dichotomies about youth. Advancing upon this, I suggest that the youth climate strikes in 2019 highlight three prevalent discourses in youth research relating to climate change: (i) the tendency to view youth as isolated individuals, neglecting the role of adults and communities; (ii) the tendency to focus on individual behavioural change rather than recognise the need for systemic and societal responses to climate change, and (iii) the tendency to overlook structural characteristics of youth such as race, gender and social class. The resulting discourses of youth autonomy, individualism and homogeneity lead to a distorted picture of young activists and perpetuate harmful narratives which lead to stigma, despair and cynicism. The paper concludes by advocating for greater care in the research methodologies and critical frameworks we use to report on youth at public events, such as climate strikes, in order to allow for the complexity of the young political agent, the ambiguity of some of their actions and for opportunities that enable young people themselves to articulate their own participation.
Highlights
The scale of youth-led and youth participation in the protests for climate action in 2019 (variously known as StudentStrike4Climate (SS4C), FridaysForFuture or Youth Strike4Climate) warranted considerable attention with the final global strike amassing more than six million people in countries as diverse as Ghana, Brazil, Samoa and the Philippines (Taylor et al 2019)
The 2019 climate strikes about how young people are represented, researched and discussed? In this commentary I take a lead from Bowman’s (2019) paper recently published in Fennia to examine the 2019 climate strikes and consider some of the opportunities and challenges they present to researchers of children and young people
Bowman (2019) proposes that such narratives overlook the significant work by researchers in youth politics which have pointed to the importance of understanding Do-It-Ourselves forms of political participation (Pickard 2019) and the lived, ‘everyday politics’ of young people how these inform our understanding of young citizens (O'Toole et al 2003; Bang 2004; Harris et al 2010; Wood 2012, 2014; Kallio & Häkli 2013)
Summary
E. (2020) Youth-led climate strikes: fresh opportunities and enduring challenges for youth research – commentary to Bowman. In this commentary I respond to Benjamin Bowman’s Fennia paper by extending upon his central thesis that argues that the prevailing methodological tools and framings used to research youth political participation perpetuate unhelpful and inadequate dichotomies about youth. The resulting discourses of youth autonomy, individualism and homogeneity lead to a distorted picture of young activists and perpetuate harmful narratives which lead to stigma, despair and cynicism. The paper concludes by advocating for greater care in the research methodologies and critical frameworks we use to report on youth at public events, such as climate strikes, in order to allow for the complexity of the young political agent, the ambiguity of some of their actions and for opportunities that enable young people themselves to articulate their own participation
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