Forms Of Political Engagement Research Articles

Political interest, political ideology, and attitudes toward immigration

Although much research has been devoted to how political interest is related to different political outcomes, little is known about its influence on attitudes toward immigration. In line with deliberative theory, political interest should facilitate greater exposure to various perspectives via political discussions and other forms of political engagement that, in turn, should contribute to more positive attitude toward those with differing views or backgrounds. Using data from the European Social Survey, including 39 countries across 10 survey rounds 2002–2021, this study shows that political interest is positively related to immigrant acceptance. However, there is moderation effect of conservative values. Being politically interested is associated with a higher probability of holding pro-immigrant attitudes among weak conservatives, while there is no significant association among strong conservatives. This finding can be explained by the motivated cognition theory, which states that individuals tend to seek out and pay more attention to information that supports their strong pre-existing ideologies. For individuals with ideologies that predispose them to adopt very negative attitudes toward immigration (strong conservatives), being politically interested might entail a greater exposure and attention to ideology-congruent perspectives and, as a result, confirmation of initial predispositions.

From the closet to spotlight: the rising tide of lesbian, gay and bisexual political candidacies

ABSTRACT Is there a positive sexuality gap in access to political candidacy and elected office, similar to those found in other forms of political engagement? We utilise validated data on same- and different-sex families from the Swedish administrative registry to descriptively examine long-term trends in access to political candidacy and elected office among Swedish lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) persons. With data covering twenty-four elections and a sample size of nearly seventy million individuals, our findings reveal a gradually emerging positive sexuality gap in access to political candidacy and a declining share of ‘sacrificial lambs’ among LGB candidates. We verify the robustness of these findings with the help of two original representative samples from the Swedish population. By shedding light on the existence and durability of a positive lavender gap in access to political candidacy, this study contributes to existing debates concerning the obstacles to minority political participation and descriptive representation and how they might be overcome.

Differential gains from news use in Kenya, Nigeria, Ethiopia, and Zimbabwe: Variations in the moderating influence of political talk on engagement

A limited but growing body of research has explored the role of media and communication in cultivating engaged citizens in the new and established democracies in Sub-Saharan Africa. Using representative data from the World Values Survey, this study advances the existing research by examining the differential gains model across four countries that differ in terms of democratization, including Kenya, Nigeria, Ethiopia, and Zimbabwe. Findings suggest that the moderating effect of political talk on the association between news use and political engagement likely varies across countries that differ in terms of democratization. Specifically, we find support for the differential gains model across all forms of political engagement in Kenya, limited support in Nigeria and Ethiopia, and no support for the model in Zimbabwe. Implications for theory and suggestions for future inquiry are discussed.

Political participation among deaf youth in Great Britain.

Variations in political participation are linked to demographic factors, socioeconomic disparities, and cultural-ethnic diversity. Existing research has primarily explored reduced political involvement among individuals with disabilities, particularly in electoral politics. However, little research has attended the involvement of deaf people specifically. This is of interest because deaf youth are at an intersection of disability, language and cultural identity with their language affiliations and rejection or acceptance of disability evolving through childhood. This study draws from original data collected via an online survey, comprising 163 deaf young respondents aged 16-19 in Great Britain. We compare their levels of political participation with those of general population peers to explore how sociodemographic factors, alongside variations in self-identification as deaf, and meaningful interactions with other deaf people contribute to explain their political engagement. The results challenge conventional wisdom by demonstrating that deaf youth participate more actively in politics than their hearing peers in various forms of political involvement, including collective, contact, and institutional activism. We also recognize differences among deaf youth and propose that social aspects of identity formation, particularly embracing a deaf identity and having deaf friends, can boost certain forms of political engagement. In summary, this study underscores the importance of acknowledging the diversity of deaf youth in terms of affiliation with various forms of deaf identity, rendering their experience different from both disabled and hearing youth. By identifying the factors driving heightened political participation, policymakers and advocates can develop strategies to enhance political engagement among all young people, regardless of their hearing status.

Beyond ‘Lulz' and ‘Keyboard warriors': exploring the relationship between trolling and radicalization

ABSTRACT Despite the similar psychological profiles of internet trolls and radicalized political actors, as well as the historical connections between trolling and the alt-right, little research has studied how trolling corresponds with the process of radicalization. Our study examines this relationship between trolling and radicalization by interrogating two pieces of folk wisdom about internet trolls, that they only care about ‘the lulz’ and that they are merely ‘keyboard warriors.’ Using the issue of racial inequality in the United States as a case study, we ask whether someone’s enjoyment of trolling is affected by their attitudes about racial inequality as well as whether those who enjoy trolling are more likely to engage in politically motivated activist and radical activities related to their views about race. Based on a nationally representative survey (N = 739), our study finds that those who enjoy the discursive act of trolling also intend to participate in other forms of political engagement, including both activist and radical activities. Overall, our findings reveal significant overlaps between trolling, activism, and radical activities when it comes to the topic of racial inequality, demonstrating the value of considering discursive acts like trolling within the broader context of studying the adoption of extremist ideologies and actions.

The Location of Migrants’ Political Culture: A Large-Scale Survey-Based Study of the Japanese Community in Contemporary Australia

Drawing on data from a large-scale sample survey conducted in 2016 within the contemporary ethnic Japanese migrant community in Sydney, Australia, this article focuses on demographics and the political culture of this community to determine the context for Japanese migrants’ attitudes, with a focus on gender. Findings suggest that the Japanese community is statistically less politically involved than the wider Australian population, possibly reflecting general attitudes towards politics in Japan, and unique social profiles within the Australian community. Superficially, the lack of interest in political commitment appeared to signify less integration into Australian society. However, our triangulation of the data, combined with follow-up interviews found a new form of political engagement within the Japanese community in contemporary Australia. This article contributes to a deeper understanding of the Japanese ethnic community in Australia and overseas, as well as broadening scholarship about the political awareness and activities of ethnic communities in settler societies.

How COVID-19 and Racial Justice Protests Influenced Social Workers’ Perceptions of Policy and Political Participation

Abstract Drawing on political opportunity theory, this study examined how the political context created by the COVID-19 pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests influenced social workers’ perceptions about social welfare policy and political participation in the summer of 2020. Authors conducted a thematic analysis of the open-ended survey responses of 120 social work practitioners. Regarding perceptions of policy, respondents reported that they experienced new awareness about the breadth and depth of structural racism in the United States; that they held pessimistic views of the government’s ability to mitigate harm associated with the pandemic or racial injustice; and that structural change, including the expansion of the social safety net, was needed. Regarding participation, respondents described how they used new forms of political engagement in part because of social distancing, but even more so because they were motivated by highly visible acts of racial injustice. At the same time, they experienced barriers to participation including a fear that they were not adequately prepared and asked for additional support from social work professional organizations. Respondents believed that more education is needed about racial justice and political action. These findings have important implications for social work education and practice, especially work to promote social justice.

Exploring the Affective and Spatial Politics of Choral Music Performance through Focus Groups with Singers

This paper builds on focus groups with singers from a chamber choir that rehearses and performs in Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario. It explores the spatial politics of performance and singers’ understandings of the impact of choral music, in particular in music with social justice themes. Discussion centers on two compositions about forced migration. Singers reflected on their experiences rehearsing and performing these and other works, exploring the function of choral music, the politics of performance, and race and whiteness in choral singing. We argue that focusing on singers’ experiences allows musical geographies to further explore an affective politics of performance. Participants described singing as a form of political engagement—though one different from electoral or activist politics—but one that they navigate ambivalently, through affects that include hopefulness and (sometimes productive) forms of anxiety and discomfort. We contribute to discussions in cultural geographies and geohumanities around race and musical geographies, the affective (geo)politics of performance, and art-geography collaboration.

Care commons: Infrastructural (re)compositions for life sustenance through yet against regimes of chronic crisis

Infrastructures constitute key sites in the contemporary crisis regime. Emerging infrastructural configurations, particularly in the urban setting, are raising questions about the possibilities and challenges that these transformations may bring regarding more just and sustainable modes of social provision. Attention is being drawn to the grassroots, where experiments with novel forms of organisation are bringing about new collective contexts and political conceptions. In this context, infrastructure has been proposed as a concept to both examine contemporary crises and devise ways to cope with breakdown that can gesture towards living alternatives at the service of life. In this article, I engage this debate through an ethnographic study of two grassroots initiatives in Athens (Greece) intervening in the realm of life sustenance. I will show that these people-driven initiatives (re)compose networked infrastructures in ways that advance organisational modes of social provision different to institutions, and forms of political engagement and possibility. They do so by infrastructuring care through commoning. I will argue that infrastructural systems of care commons contribute to an infrastructural imagination that moves away from modern ideals towards values of relationality, conductivity, care and repair, which may nurture a transformative politics for a world in crisis, yet against crisis regimes.

“My guitar is my rifle”: Mexican migrants mobilising unconventionally through arts

Diasporas can create, transform, and exploit transnational networks to engage in political movements in their homeland and in their hostland, engaging in both electoral and non-electoral politics through political parties, political campaigns, and hometown organisations. However, the individual processes of subjectivation and its relationship with arts as a form of political engagement have been under-explored especially in contexts of violence and insecurity. This ethnographic paper sheds light on the micro-level of diaspora mobilisation by introducing the concept of “subjectivity” as a key term to analyse the transnational and unconventional political practices organised by migrants. As a result, this research aims to answer the following questions: (1) How are Mexican migrants becoming diasporic political subjects and creating spaces of transnational political activism in reaction to the context of violence in their homeland? (2) What makes them resort to art as a repertoire of contention against violence in their home towns? The paper introduces empirical examples collected in Brussels during 19 months of fieldwork with members of the Mexican diaspora, including semi-structured interviews with key informants and participant observation at political demonstrations, music rehearsals, charity concerts, gastronomic and artistic festivals, and political debates.

Dreams from the Trap: Trap music as a site of liberation

AbstractObjectiveThis article makes a case for trap music as a form of political engagement and political mobilization for young Black folks. I use the concept of Fanonian freedom to unpack the complex politics of recognition that trap music holds for Black liberation.MethodsUsing a case study of Lil Baby's (2020) “The Bigger Picture” as emblematic of the political possibilities of trap music, I demonstrate how trap music functions as a mode of liberation when seen through Fanon's framework.ResultsLike Black spiritual and political anthems before it, trap music represents a powerful but often dismissed political tool of Black liberation. I suggest that social scientists who study social movements and politics must recognize aurality—in this case, Black Southern aurality—as a communal well of liberatory pursuit and infrapolitical realities.ConclusionMainstream social scientific definitions of “politics” as state‐centered must be expanded to recognize the power of cultural representation and everyday acts, especially by the most dispossessed groups in society, such as young Black folk in the urban South. Such inaccurate social scientific conceptualizations uphold exclusionary logics that can alienate the dispossessed from political engagement and, ultimately, further blame them for this alienation.

Against struggle and hustle: form of the queer travel narrative in Kate O’Brien’s Farewell Spain

ABSTRACT The interwar was a period of emergent travel narratives by women, though masculinity still permeated the genre: books like Isherwood and Auden’s Journey to a War (1939) or Evelyn Waugh’s Waugh in Abyssinia (1936) were met by books like Rebecca West’s Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1941), as increasingly mobile women writers met men in a field from which they had been excluded. The self-othering of the travel experience also enabled new ways of allegorizing the experiences of otherness experienced by queer writers amidst social and political repression. This essay argues Kate O’Brien, the author of Farewell Spain (1937), wields the form of a collaborative travel narrative to challenge heteronormative patriarchy’s control over both queer bodies and identities, but also to inspire new forms of political engagement. While so much of interwar prose was motivated by political commitment and activism, in Farewell Spain O’Brien advocates for an alternative form of political intervention distinct from the “struggle and hustle” promoted by the era’s most prolific writers, aligning instead with a philosophy of pleasure and “easy” to counter the rhetorical. Farewell Spain presents us with a queer approach to the travel narrative that bolsters and embodies anti-fascism, even if the methods themselves are, purposefully and self-consciously, nonproductive.

Politically Excluded, Undocu-Engaged: The Perceived Effect of Hostile Immigration Policies on Undocumented Student Political Engagement

ABSTRACT Prior research suggests that hostile immigration policies can motivate undocumented immigrants’ political engagement, but may also create unique risks that limit their willingness to participate. We examine how perceptions of the immigration policy context may help or hinder undocumented college students’ political engagement. Using data from an online survey of 1,277 undocumented college students attending California 4-year public universities, we conducted regression analyses to examine the extent to which perceived discrimination, social exclusion, and threat to the family due to current immigration policy affects three forms of political engagement: political voice, collective action, and individual action. We then examined potential factors that may facilitate engagement, including participation in campus and community-based organizations and legal protections. Results show that perceived discrimination and threat to family due to the immigration policy context are positively associated with all forms of political engagement, while social exclusion is negatively associated. Campus and community engagement weakly moderate these relationships. Comparisons across immigration status suggest that many of these relationships are unique to students who have legal protections like DACA. Ultimately, we argue that undocumented students’ political engagement is shaped by nuanced manifestations of a hostile immigration policy context.

Conservative politics and Whig colonial government, 1830–41

Abstract This article explores Conservative critiques of Whig colonial rule in the 1830s. Its case is that imperial administrative and constitutional issues occupied a more prominent place in the Tories’ politics of opposition during the ‘decade of Reform’ than historians have assumed. Conservative writers and politicians styled themselves as vigorous defenders of imperial integrity, colonial constitutions, and the colonial church, against the incoherent centralizing and liberalizing innovations of the Whigs. These arguments rested on wider assumptions about the inherent failings of Whiggism, Reformed government and the pernicious global consequences of ‘liberalism’. The article asks how these claims affect our understanding of Conservative politics after the Reform crisis, and reflects on the emergence of new forms of political engagement with issues of colonial government in early nineteenth-century Britain.

Counter-protest: young people’s political engagement

Based on The International Civic and Citizenship Education Study as well as a qualitative study of Danish young people born in the early 00s, the article explores and discusses their political engagement both empirically and theoretically. The two studies show that Danish youths possess an extensive political interest and knowledge of the democratic society, but at the same time, they articulate a prevalent reservation about protesting and participating in public political activities. The argument of the article is that their form of political engagement can analytically be reflected as a counter-protest. The term counter-protest captures an increasing political engagement, but an engagement that counteracts protest as a relevant form of political action and, furthermore, supports the conventional political system.

Can Sustainable Consumption Trigger Political Activism? An Empirical Investigation of the Crowding-in Hypothesis

In this article, we address the question whether political activism can be triggered by sustainable consumption. Specific attention is given to the crowding-out and crowding-in hypotheses. The first hypothesis is driven by a conflict view as it assumes that sustainable consumerism displaces the willingness to act collectively. In contrast, the latter hypothesis—crowding-in—frames conscious consumption as a potential political act whereby individual sustainable consumption may trigger political acts such as signing a petition, demonstrating, and voting. To address this issue, German survey data were analyzed (n = 936). Our analysis appears to confirm the crowding-in hypothesis. However, the results of multiple logistic regression analyses also show that the relation between sustainable consumption and political activism depends on the type of political action. Particularly, sustainable consumption does not relate to traditional political actions such as voting, but it does relate positively to less conventional (e.g., attending a demonstration) and online forms of political engagement (e.g., social media activism). Our findings also indicate that the positive association between sustainable consumption and less conventional politics may be moderated by educational attainment, suggesting that it is weakest among less educated groups. The paper ends with the empirical and theoretical conclusions that can be drawn from this study, and indicates some directions for future research.

Beyond Ethnic Enclave: Social Integration of Chinese Immigrants in Paris’s “Little Asia”

This paper studies the integration of Chinese immigrants in the Triangle de Choisy neighborhood in Paris, which is known for being an exotic hub of Chinese commercial and cultural activities. Based on Serge Paugam’s model, we investigated the social integration of Chinese residents in the neighborhood. Our ndings show that while dense social bonds allowed for better connection, our respondents are generally reluctant to address political engagement, which Paugam (2017) considers as one of the four key aspects of social integration. The apparent result seems to con rm the so-called Chinese ethics of diligent work and political indi erence. However, after closer examination, we found diverse forms of participation that have not been captured by the conventional ethnic- centric understanding of political engagement. First, universalistic welfare policies reduced incentives for community-based mobilization. Second, a high level of internal heterogeneity within the community and exclusion of ethnic-particularistic experience in mainstream politics both led to individualized, subtle forms of participation. By situating individual political choice within their particular memories and life histories and reconceptualizing minorities’ political engagement beyond ethnicity, more forms of political engagement can be understood and appreciated. Finally, we argue that the conventional ethnic-centred understanding of minority political participation needs to be challenged.

“A Not-so-silent Form of Activism”: Intentional Community as Collective Action Reservoir

Recent scholarship on social movement groups has increasingly focused on the relationships between lifestyle and politics. As walls of classical social movement theories holding up the false dichotomy of personal and political spheres continue to crumble, I seek in this article to fill some of the space connecting personal and political work by expanding on the concept of collective action reservoirs. Based on an ethnographic case study of an intentional community named Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage, I demonstrate how participation in a shared lifestyle can be the basis for a politicized account of everyday life. The members of this village have developed a unique lifestyle that they consider to be a form of political engagement, in which I show that they have different orientations to the definition of activism and to being in a “reserve guard” for direct action. They have developed and adopted an approach where lifestyle is the primary means of seeking change while direct action is held in reserve. I conclude by theorizing that the collective action reservoir represents a long-term stable base for social movement mobilizations.

Developing contemporary factors of political participation

ABSTRACT Drawing from research in communication and political science, this study identifies five factors of political participation that address both traditional and more contemporary forms of political engagement. To begin, a questionnaire was developed and tested with respondents from two nationwide surveys who answered questions about their political participation (N = 476 in Sample 1, N = 490 in Sample 2). Next, exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was conducted with responses from the first sample, and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted with responses from the second. Both datasets yielded five distinct factors of political participation: (1) traditional political participation, (2) interpersonal political talk, (3) voting, (4) social media engagement, and (5) online information seeking. Testing convergent and discriminant validity, each factor of political participation was positively related to political efficacy and political interest. Only traditional political participation was (negatively) related to political cynicism. These results suggest that forms of political participation have become more diversified and individualized following the development of communication technologies. Therefore, each of these five factors of political participation is recommended for use in future research.

Urban fallism

In March 2015, an activist movement ‘Rhodes must fall’ from the University of Cape Town initiated a new form of global socio-political protest, which spread in cities worldwide and was characterized by spatial practices of occupying, modifying and pulling down monuments in public space. Presenting key theoretic points of this special feature in City, this introduction explores the phenomenon of ‘urban fallism’–the ways in which the action of contesting, transforming and/or removing a monument from urban space operates as a means of political struggle and as a form of political engagement in urban contexts. It outlines and integrates the contributions to this special feature, which covers a range of historic and contemporary cases in different urban, geographic and socio-political contexts, including: post-colonialism in Africa and the Americas; post-communism and post-imperialism in Europe and Asia; and wars in the Middle East. Drawing on original research and analyses from the fields of archaeology, history, art history, heritage studies, architecture, urban design, and sociology, the papers in this special feature highlight how the fall of monuments operates as a tool for political resistance against marginalization, discrimination and exclusion, a catalyst for democracy and social justice, and a means of dealing with contested heritage. As such, contributions of this special feature speak about the urban politics of race and identity and raise questions about the role of collective memory in the struggle of opposing and/or marginalized social groups for their right to the city and their place and recognition in society.