On the political economy of youth: a comment

This article is written as a brief comment on a recent discussion that has taken place in the pages of the Journal of Youth Studies on the question of youth, youth studies and political economy, in a series of articles by Côté [2014. “Towards a New Political Economy of Youth.” Journal of Youth Studies 17 (4): 527–543; Côté, J. 2016. “A New Political Economy of Youth Reprised: Rejoinder to France and Threadgold.” Journal of Youth Studies. doi:10.1080/13676261.2015.1136058] and France and Threadgold [2015. “Youth and Political Economy: Towards a Bourdieusian Approach.” Journal of Youth Studies. doi:10.1080/13676261.2015.1098779]. It argues for the value of embracing a broad understanding of the term political economy, and for the importance of increasing the attention paid to political economy in the field of youth studies. The comment draws on a simple review of articles published in the Journal of Youth Studies over a five-year period between 2011 and 2015 in order to clarify the different approaches that can be taken by youth studies researchers with respect to the question of political economy.     

Youth mobilisations and political generations: young activists in political change movements during and since the twentieth century

This paper uses political generations theory to examine the main youth mobilisations during and since the twentieth century: pre-1939 fascist and communist movements; the student movements of the 1960s and 70s; movements that challenged colonial and neo-colonial rulers in less developed countries and young people's involvement in the revolutions that saw the end of communism in East-Central and South-East Europe in 1989. Conclusions from this review of the past are used in considering the likely significance of subsequent outbursts of political activism among young people: the ‘colour revolutions’ and other instances of youth mobilisation in former Soviet republics and other ex-communist countries; the Arab Spring and the series of movements that have challenged neo-liberalism – Anti-Globalisation, the Indignados and the Occupy movements. The paper notes that youth mobilisations that have led to the formation of new political generations that have changed their countries' politics then transformed the countries have typically extended over several decades, that initially youthful leaders have sometimes been middle-aged or older before achieving political power and that many of their actions on achieving power have been at variance with their youthful ideals. In conclusion, it is argued that it is still too early to tell whether any of the recent youth mobilisations signal the formation of new political generations.     

Identity processes in the global era: the case of young immigrants living in Italy

The paper explores processes of identity construction in young people of foreign origin living in Italy. The aim was to understand how youth construct their selves in the global era, characterized by an increase in the possibility of choosing but also in the perception of uncertainty; how they perceive this uncertainty, whether as a chance to construct multifaceted and continually changing identities or as a source of insecurity and loss for their identity. Drawing on 46 in-depth interviews, the research reveals that young people of foreign origin are continually shaping their identities mixing different cultural repertories related to their – or their parents’ – homeland, to the host country, global cultures and youth cultures. Several patterns of identity emerge and they are linked to different perception of uncertainty. A typology of these patterns was developed: young people construct flexible identities or hyphenated identities, or move from a fixed identity to an undefined identity. These types of identity are respectively associated with the perception of uncertainty as a resource, as a constraint, finally with a strategy of reducing or eliminating uncertainty.     

Three notes on a political economy of youth

The paper seeks to makes a contribution to a recent debate in the Journal about what a political economy of youth might look like. The paper will take up aspects of Sukarieh and Tannock’s [2016. ‘On the political economy of youth: a comment.’ Journal of Youth Studies 19 (9): 1281–1289] response to the initial contributions by Côté [2014. ‘Towards a New Political Economy of Youth.’ Journal of Youth Studies 17 (4): 527–543, 2016. ‘A New Political Economy of Youth Reprised: Rejoinder to France and Threadgold.’ Journal of Youth Studies.] And France and Threadgold [2015. ‘Youth and Political Economy: Towards a Bourdieusian Approach.’ Journal of Youth Studies], and will take the form of three ‘notes’: Capitalism: From the first industrial revolution to the third industrial revolution; Youth as an artefact of governmentalised expertise; The agency/structure problem in youth studies: Foucault’s dispositif and post-human exceptionalism.

These notes will suggest that twenty-first century capitalism is globalising, is largely neo-Liberal, and is being reconfigured in profound ways by the Anthropocene, bio-genetics, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and the Internet of Things (IoT). A political economy of twenty-first century capitalism, let alone a political economy of young people, must be able to account for a capitalism that in many ways looks like the capitalism of the First and Second Industrial Revolutions, but which is at the same time profoundly different as it enters what has often been described as the Third Industrial Revolution. It is these profound emergences that pose the greatest challenges for engaging with a political economy of youth.     

Indifference and repetition: occupation testimonies and left-wing despair

As despair is increasingly seeping into leftist politics in many parts of the world, its long-held image as a hindrance to political activism still prevents the thriving literature on the politics of feeling from adequately theorizing this collective posture. This article seeks to probe the public manifestations of left-wing despair by looking at the despairing dispositions that have evolved in the Israeli Left in response to its failure to undermine Israel’s regime of occupation, using the coping modes this failure has sparked as a conduit for complicating the negative image of despair in politics. The analysis draws on two documentaries that showcase soldiers’ testimonies – Z32 and Censored Voices – in which the compulsive but fruitless repetition of witnessing is brought to the fore and serves as a platform for the enactment of despair as a distinctively public disposition. In dialogue with Wendy Brown’s notion of left melancholy and Lauren Berlant’s notion of cruel optimism, the article propounds despair – understood not as an affect, a feeling, or an emotion, but as a recursively performed posture – as an alternative analytic grid for grasping the contemporary agonies of the Left. Drawing on the Israeli documentaries, it demonstrates that despair may be propelled and perpetuated by two kinds of crises – a crisis of movement and a crisis of belonging. Taking both modalities as evidence that despair does not necessarily involve a withdrawal into the self and may transpire through public acts of care, the article claims, using Bonnie Honig’s work on public things, that the ground for the assessment of despair should be shifted from its presumed impact on political actors to the tangible imprints it leaves in the public settings in which action takes place.     

Protests as critical junctures: some reflections towards a momentous approach to social movements

ABSTRACT

Recent times have been defined as momentous: great transformation, great recession as well as great regression have been frequently used short-cut terms to characterize the period following the financial breakdown of 2008. As for contentious politics in these times, we frequently hear references to crisis as well as eventful protests, as calls for what was expected to be routine protest triggered portentous waves of contentious politics. Reference to moments of change can be found in different approaches addressing social movements from the macro, meso, and micro levels. While neoinstitutional approaches have looked at extraordinary times from a macro perspective, the Chicago School adopted a micro perspective, looking at the sudden breaking of established paths, the reproduction of ruptures, and their stabilization. An emerging concern in social movement studies with ‘great transformations’ that triggered big mobilizations can also be seen at the meso level Drawing on these perspectives, I argue that some eventful protests trigger critical junctures, producing abrupt changes which develop contingently and become path dependent. While routinized protests proliferate in normal times, under some political opportunities, some protests – or moments of protest – act as exogenous shocks, catalyzing intense and massive waves of contention. Referring to the debate on critical junctures, and bridging it with social movement studies, I thematize a sequence of processes of cracking, as the production of sudden ruptures; vibrating, as contingently reproducing those ruptures; and sedimenting, as the stabilization of the legacy of the rupture. With the aim of mapping some relevant questions, rather than providing answers, I refer for illustration to research I carried out on movements in democratic transitions during economic, political, and social crises, as well as their legacy and memory.     

A new political economy of youth reprised: rejoinder to France and Threadgold

In a previous issue of this journal, France and Threadgold [2015. “Youth and Political Economy: Towards a Bourdieusian Approach.” Journal of Youth Studies doi:10.1080/13676261.2015.1098779] claim that they ‘strongly believe that a political economy perspective remains vital for understanding macro-structural power’ (8), yet they reject key aspects of the version I recommended in an earlier issue of this journal [Côté. J. E. 2014a.“Towards a New Political Economy of Youth.” Journal of Youth Studies 17 (4): 527–543]. They also present a Bourdieusian framework, asserting that it provides a better understanding of the effects of political and the economic forces on the lives of young people. In this article, I show how their rejection of the political-economy-of-youth perspective is based on their misunderstandings of some of the fundamental concepts of that perspective, as well as their misrepresentations of what I recommend to the youth studies community concerning that perspective. Consequently, although their Bourdieusian framework may be useful in illuminating certain aspects of the problem, their attempt to promote their framework as a better approach to the political economy of youth is based on unfounded claims. I use their errors to illustrate several metatheoretical principles that can help researchers to be less imperialistic in their claims, and I offer an analysis of how this dispute reflects the current fragmented nature of the field of youth studies.     

‘The outraged young’: young Europeans,civic engagement and the new media in a time of crisis

Public involvement in traditional political institutions has declined significantly over the past few decades, leading to what some have seen as a crisis in citizenship. This trend is most striking amongst young people, who have become increasingly alienated from mainstream electoral politics in Europe. Nevertheless, there is overwhelming evidence to show that younger citizens are not apathetic about ‘politics’ – they have their own views and engage in democracy in a wide variety of ways that seem relevant to their everyday lives. In the aftermath of the global financial crisis, young Europeans have borne the brunt of austerity in public spending: from spiralling youth unemployment, to cuts in youth services, to increased university tuition fees. In this context, the rise and proliferation of youth protest in Europe is hardly surprising. Indeed, youth activism has become a major feature of the European political landscape: from mass demonstrations of the ‘outraged young’ against political corruption and youth unemployment, to the Occupy movement against the excesses of global capitalism, to the emergence of new political parties. This article examines the role that the new media has played in the development of these protest movements across the continent. It argues that ‘digitally networked action’ has enabled a ‘quickening’ of youth participation – an intensification of political participation amongst young, highly educated citizens in search of a mouthpiece for their ‘indignation’.     

Watching The Daily Show in Kenya

Global distribution of a popular American television programme – Jon Stewart's Daily Show – offers a rare opportunity to examine transnational contingencies of meaning in political satire. Drawing on focus group discussions in Kenya, this analysis shows how some East Africans appropriated and reinterpreted – indeed unexpectedly subverted – The Daily Show's political content, deriving from it insights that Stewart himself might have found surprising. Kenyan viewers perceived in The Daily Show gaps between the rhetoric and reality of empire and pointed to limitations of Stewart's dissident satire as they rejected its depictions of non-wealthy nations and marginalized peoples. They reconfigured Daily Show episodes as commentaries on global power relations; reflected critically on Kenyan politics, media and their own political subjectivities; and revised their own earlier assumptions about the gap between Africa and supposedly ‘mature’ democracies such as the United States. Thus, American political satire such as The Daily Show can activate in foreign audiences new perceptions of differences between the ‘West’ and the rest and new forms of political imagination.     

民主视角下青年网络政治参与的效应与政策选择

公民政治参与是现代民主的核心要素。青年政治参与是公民政治参与的重要组成部分,关系着中国民主建设状况与政治发展方向。青年政治参与先后出现过计划经济时代的政治动员型参与、市场经济时代的利益趋动型参与、网络时代的自我表达型参与三种类型。青年是网络政治参与的重要主体,由于网络自身的适时性、便捷性、交互性,再加之现实政治参与渠道的狭窄,在网络空间的青年政治参与表现出迥异于物质世界青年政治参与的活跃性。网络政治参与是青年政治参与新的增长点,不过其自身也存在着非理性、失范性、网络民粹主义、网络谣言等负面效应。为此,构建引导青年网络政治参与的政策与制度势在必行。     

Mapping the terrain of strategic politics among social change-oriented youth

This paper explores the ‘everyday’ politics of social change-oriented (SCO) youth. We apply an everyday network of youth politics approach in order to explore the lived experience of politics for SCO youth, accessing how they understand, negotiate, and actualize youth politics. Our study demonstrates that SCO youth negotiate politics through everyday, localized, and relational networks. Utilizing a youth-led participatory action research model, we present qualitative findings drawn from interviews conducted by SCO youth-researchers among their SCO youth peers.     

Commodities in action: measuring embeddedness and imposing values

Recent approaches in political economy look at the effects of technology and social values on economic action. Combining these approaches with those of economic anthropologists, this article poses that the way the economy is instituted can be understood by looking at reasons actors have for participating in actor‐networks of production, distribution and consumption. Using the author's research on American recycling, this article first shows that much of the‘making’or instituting of the economy happens outside the market, through political machinations, contracts and standards. Second, it suggests that these relationships impose value upon goods differently than do market relations. The details of the recycling‘chain’show the ways actors shape the network and demonstrate that the social values that add‘economic value’to goods are not uniform, but are highly contextual. Starting from Mark Granovetter's notion of 'social embeddedness', the article explains that the measure of social embeddedness is not as important as the values imposed upon other actors through social structure in the economy. It calls for a close observation of economic action in the locales within which production takes place to understand better the‘actions‐at‐a‐distance’where the politics of technology, social movements and power create the empirical, instituted economy.     

Postnational acts of citizenship: how an anti-border politics is shaping feminist spaces of service provision in Toronto,Canada

Postnationalism has seen a modest resurgence in recent years as both a theory of citizenship and as a set of claims frequently articulated by anti-border movements. Yet the implications of postnationalism for feminist politics remain relatively under-theorized. Using interviews with feminist advocates in Toronto, Canada, this research examines how postnational challenges to state power are being mobilized in spaces of service provision addressing gender-based violence. I show how, for some advocates, a postnational politics deeply informed their critiques of state borders and restrictive immigration controls as fundamental sources of gendered and racialized violence. However, postnational approaches were also limited in offering few concrete alternatives to state protection from domestic or interpersonal violence, particularly for women with precarious immigration status. Significantly, it was through advocates’ everyday practices of service provision that they blueprinted an alternative feminist ethics of solidarity. I argue that these practices constitute postnational acts of citizenship, in so far as they attempt – albeit imperfectly – to de-border institutional spaces from within.     

‘Cruel and unusual punishment’: an inter-jurisdictional study of the criminalisation of young people with complex support needs

Although several criminologists and social scientists have drawn attention to the high rates of mental and cognitive disability amongst populations of young people embroiled in youth justice systems, less attention has been paid to the ways in which young people with disability are disproportionately exposed to processes of criminalisation and how the same processes serve to further disable them. In this paper, we aim to make a contribution towards filling this gap by drawing upon qualitative findings from the Comparative Youth Penality Project – an empirical inter-jurisdictional study of youth justice and penality in England and Wales and in four Australian states. We build on, integrate and extend theoretical perspectives from critical disability studies and from critical criminology to examine the presence of, and responses to, socio-economically disadvantaged young people with multiple disabilities (complex support needs) in youth justice systems in our selected jurisdictions. Four key findings emerge from our research pertaining to: (i) the criminalisation of disability and disadvantage; (ii) the management of children and young people with disabilities by youth justice agencies; (iii) the significance of early and holistic responses for children and young people with complex support needs; and (iv) the inadequate nature of community based support.     

Tagging Walls and Planting Seeds: Creating Spaces for Youth Civic Action

Youth civic spaces are environments in which youth participation in civic action is fostered—the pathways, structures, and vehicles that provide opportunities for young people to engage in critical discussion, dialogue, and action. The concept of youth civic space includes the formal and informal places in which youth civic engagement can occur and how the lived experience of those places contributes to young people's development as civic actors. It extends discussions regarding the physical locations of youth civic engagement to include the activities, perceptions, and interactions within them. Drawing on archival materials from 2 multiyear projects, this article explores the role of community-based organizations in mediating youth civic action and understanding the characteristics and qualities of the organizations that facilitate youth engagement in community action and social change. We use this analysis of empirical examples to develop a conceptual framework for strengthening practice.     

Laughing otherwise: comic-critical approaches in alternative comedy

Abstract

The origins of ‘alternative comedy’ are difficult to pinpoint, though it coincided with the rise of Thatcher as Prime Minister in 1979 – that year saw the appearance of something called ‘alternative cabaret’, a term usually associated with Tony Allen, who combined activism and comedy. The acts this article will focus on are those which took a critical approach to comedy and/or politics – ‘alternative’ comedy (or altcom), therefore, as seeming to promise change through critical awareness. This paper will discuss parody as a means of critical (dis)engagement and transformation, in relation to context, and to influences such as punk. Altcom demonstrates an apparent eschewal of approaches which rely on irony and ambiguity, in favour of more ‘direct’ political engagement. It will be argued however that such ‘direct’ approach does not cancel out critical distance, but rather seeks alternative routes to establish it – namely comic and parodic overstatement, and the problematisation of ‘trust’. This entails the key questions of whether parody may take up critical distance without irony, as well as of the political implications of an approach which seeks to eliminate ambiguity. This more ‘direct’ approach however still depends on a balance of engagement and disengagement, requiring distancing from pre-established codes.     

From democratic participation to civic resistance: the loss of institutional trust as an outcome of activism in the refugee solidarity movement

Adding to the literature on non‐institutional political action and trust, this article argues that the loss of institutional trust is not only a cause but also an outcome of political activism. Studying the Danish refugee solidarity movement in a mixed‐methods research design including survey and qualitative interview data, the article shows that three kinds of activism – political activism, humanitarian activity, and civil disobedience – relate differently to the loss of trust in the institutions of the Parliament, the legal system, and the police. Political activism primarily affects a loss of trust in the Parliament due to low external efficacy and a closed political opportunity structure. Civil disobedience affects a loss of trust in the legal system and the police due to a perceived lack of procedural justice. Humanitarian activity does not affect a loss of institutional trust because it does not imply interaction with the institutions to the same extent as the other kinds of activism. The consequence of losing trust in the political institutions is not an abandonment of democratic values, nor political apathy, but rather a change in civic engagement from a mode of democratically legitimizing participation in the institutions to a mode of contending and questioning the legitimacy of the political institutions. This finding indicates that in turn loss of institutional trust may cause an increase in extra‐institutional political action which is consistent with the commonly assumed causality in the literature. This leads to a final integrating argument for conceptualizing activism and loss of institutional trust as reinforcing factors in a process where, in line with the main finding of this study, activism may cause a loss of institutional trust which, in turn, may cause additional activism, as argued in the existing literature.     

Student union ‘political anti-politics’ in post-conflict Nepal

In contrast to rhizomatic youth movements that inspired the ‘Arab spring’ uprisings and the ‘Occupy’ movements, youth political activism in Nepal was orchestrated by hierarchical political parties in part through political student unions. The ability of parties to deploy youth into the streets to enforce general strikes and force election participation has been critical to their success, but focus groups conducted with Nepali students in the spring of 2013 suggest that many youth are withdrawing from party activism. Youth disengagement in Nepal is the product of years of political instability and conflict that has impeded peace and development, rather than a globalizing individualism that is fragmenting traditional institutions. In this paper, I argue that the ability of political parties to mobilize youth in post-conflict Nepal is being challenged by two related conditions. First, the demands of political parties on students for personal sacrifice are weighed by students against their own personal aspirations and, secondly, the inability of the party hierarchies to sacrifice their priorities for greater political stability, development and peace – exemplified by the repeated failure to resolve constitutional issues – made this commitment to personal sacrifice harder to justify.     

Who Protests in America: An Analysis of Three Political Alternatives—Inaction,Institutionalized Politics,or Protest

Theories of social movements and collective action typically present social protest as one of three alternatives available to the individual: inaction, institutionalized political action, or protest. These political alternatives are rarely considered simultaneously nor are they modeled explicitly. In this paper we make use of survey data from a representative sample of the United States population. We employ multinomial logistic regression to determine what differentiates those who protest from those who engage only in institutionalized politics and from those who engage in no political action. We find that those who engage in social protest are similar in many respects to those who engage actively in institutionalized politics, yet education on social and political issues, participation in community organizations, and frequent church attendance increases the likelihood that individuals will engage in protest relative to institutionalized politics.     

“Wish you were here”? Geographies of exclusion: young people,coastal towns and marginality

ABSTRACT

Within youth studies there is a growing body of research that pays attention to the importance of place in shaping young people’s identities, life opportunities and intergenerational relationships [Cuervo, H., and J. Wyn. 2014. “Reflections on the Use of Spatial and Relational Metaphors in Youth Studies.” Journal of Youth Studies 17 (7): 901–915; Farrugia, D. 2014. “Towards a Spatialised Youth Sociology: the Rural and the Urban in Times of Change.” Journal of Youth Studies 17 (3): 293–307; Woodman, D., and J. Wyn. 2015. Youth and Generation: Rethinking Change and Inequality in the Lives of Young People. Sage Publications]. Of critical importance to these discussions is the need to explore notions of ‘belonging’ and social citizenship, interrogating the extent to which differing perceptions and experiences contribute towards variations in the outcomes and life chances of disadvantaged young people. This article draws upon ethnography, participatory arts-based research, and semi-structured interviews (n31) with young people (15–25) who live in a deprived coastal town in the North of England. The research investigated processes of marginalisation and disconnection from the perspectives of young people who were deemed as disengaged, or ‘at risk’ of disengagement, from education, employment or training. The research took place during a time of rapid change and uncertainty as Britain voted to leave the EU. The findings of this study will ‘throw light’ on the how contemporary classed subjectivities are formed, how experiences of inequality and austerity are made sense of, and how, within a turbulent political context, young people negotiate complex transitions to adulthood.