Young people and politics

Young people’s relationship to democracy is a dynamic one. Over time, how youth, participation and citizenship are defined has changed, reflecting the persistent and changing norms and conventions of Australian society and politics. As suggested by Scott Morrison’s response to the student-led ‘School Strike 4 Climate’, there are both firm and contested ideas about who young citizens are and their role in Australian democracy. These reflect how ‘youth’, as a life stage, is conceptualised, how citizenship is defined, how people develop and express political views and behaviours and create, share and consume political media, what constitutes participation and how people exercise their rights and responsibilities in Australian democracy and shape its ongoing evolution. This chapter looks at how young people’s relationships to politics have changed and diversified over time. It first considers how young people’s citizenship and their role in democracy can be conceptualised. The second section looks at young people’s status in Australian politics – in formal processes, policy and advocacy. The final section discusses how young people’s political interests and participation in democracy are evolving in relation to the constraints and opportunities of Australian democracy

Young people and politics

Young people’s relationship to democracy is a dynamic one. Over time, how youth, participation and citizenship are defined has changed, reflecting the persistent and changing norms and conventions of Australian society and politics. As suggested by Scott Morrison’s response to the student-led ‘School Strike 4 Climate’, there are both firm and contested ideas about who young citizens are and their role in Australian democracy. These reflect how ‘youth’, as a life stage, is conceptualised, how citizenship is defined, how people develop and express political views and behaviours and create, share and consume political media, what constitutes participation and how people exercise their rights and responsibilities in Australian democracy and shape its ongoing evolution. This chapter looks at how young people’s relationships to politics have changed and diversified over time. It first considers how young people’s citizenship and their role in democracy can be conceptualised. The second section looks at young people’s status in Australian politics – in formal processes, policy and advocacy. The final section discusses how young people’s political interests and participation in democracy are evolving in relation to the constraints and opportunities of Australian democracy

Australia

The contemporary mass mobilisation of school students in Australia is unprecedented but also reflects the growing numbers of young people participating in the past 15 years in Australian youth-led organisations for climate and social justice (Collin, 2015). Among these, the youth-led Australian Youth Climate Coalition (AYCC) has been particularly significant: running high profile participatory campaigns, delivering climate campaigning workshops, training for school-age students and developing an extensive and decentralised model of community organising and action. With more than 150,000 members, the AYCC enables personalisable collective action: AYCC followers choose their own level of engagement and organise localised and networked actions, online and offline - hallmarks of the current climate protests

Child-centred Indicators for Violence Prevention: Summary Report on a Living Lab in the City of Valenzuela, Philippines

In 2015, world leaders made a commitment to end all forms of violence against children by 2030, as part of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). To achieve the aspirations of the SDG global targets, Governments set targets, taking into account national circumstances, to reduce children’s risk and be responsive to local contexts. Prevention and response efforts need to be grounded in the best available evidence to achieve measurable reductions in violence, and if the needs of children are to be foregrounded, strategies to end violence must respect not only children’s protection rights but also their participation rights. Moreover, it is critical that the processes for monitoring and measuring impacts centre children’s needs, aspirations and experiences. If children themselves report that violence is reducing in their personal lives, in their communities and in their countries, we will know that efforts to address violence, abuse and neglect are succeeding. This report describes a project undertaken in collaboration with End Violence, the City of Valenzuela, the Young and Resilient Research Centre and other partners to develop child-centred indicators for violence prevention in the City of Valenzuela in greater Manila, Philippines. Child and adult stakeholders worked together in a series of 14 participatory workshops to creatively explore children’s experiences and perceptions of violence, to map their aspirations for change, to ideate strategies for addressing violence in their communities, and to develop child-centred indicators against which violence reduction can be measured. This project found that children’s perspectives are a vital resource for efforts to localise INSPIRE strategies and that the deployment of child-centred indicators usefully augments and complements the INSPIRE measurement framework. Beyond the City of Valenzuela, there is opportunity to scale the use of these child-centred indicators to other parts of the Philippines and globally. The report also offers reflections on the key strengths and limitations of the Living Lab process for engaging a wide range of stakeholders, including children themselves, in the project of ending violence against children

Building and connecting to online communities for action : young people, ICT and everyday politics

Young people are using information communication technologies (ICT) for new forms of political participation. At the same time, government and non-government organisations are looking to the internet to implement policies designed to engage young people in democracy. This raises the question of what forms of e-citizenship are being imposed on young people and are these same forms being pursued by young people themselves? Coleman (2008) has suggested that programs tend to promote autonomous or managed forms and argues for a ‘productive convergence’ that can facilitate democratic e-citizenship. Using original research, this article presents two case studies of such a ‘productive convergence’ and argues that what is particularly powerful in such e-citizenship programs is that they facilitate young people’s connection to existing networks as well as the building of new communities for action. This article presents a critical analysis of how organisations and young people in Australia and the United Kingdom view and use the internet for participation and considers the extent to which there is increased democratising potential in these e-citizenship programs

Digitally enhanced? : mediated migration and ‘fourth wave’ Chileans in Australia

This paper examines the contemporary experience of migration for Chileans arriving in Australia in the last two decades. It specifically explores the increasing role of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) and its mediating effects on experiences of departure, arrival, ‘being’ and ‘belonging’. In doing so, the paper considers some of the tensions between ‘hyper-digital’ transnationalism and dominant discourses of nationalism. The findings indicate diversity of experience, but highlight that these recent Chilean migrants utilise ICT to suspend and manage physical relocation and to engage both on and offline with wide and shallow networks of Chileans and non-Chileans in local and transnational spaces. At the same time, they reflect a more cultural, issues-based orientation towards the structural and discursive dimensions of migration in both ‘home’ and ‘host’ countries suggesting that ICT is imbricated in wider processes of distancing the ‘migrant’ from the national core. This highlights some of the possibilities and limitations of ‘hyper-digital’ transnationalism

Young Citizens and Political Participation in a Digital Society: Addressing the Democratic Disconnect

We are living in an era of democratic disconnect. A gap exists between institutional understandings and expectations of young citizens and the nature and substance of youthful forms of political action. In recent times youth participation policies have become a popular strategy to address a range of perceived 'issues' related to young people: either problems of youth disengagement from democracy or their exclusion from democratic processes. Drawing on the accounts of young people in Australia and the United Kingdom, this book examines questions of youth citizenship and participation by exploring their meanings in policy, practice and youth experience. With reference to recent theoretical work from the New Sociology of Youth, Political Sociology and Media and Communications it examines young people's perspectives on participation in non-government and youth-led organisations. In doing so, it focuses on what young people think and do – and what can be done to bridge the democratic disconnect

Learning from the political theories of the young

While recent years have seen a burgeoning interest in situated and comparative analysis of youth civic engagement and political participation, questions of political socialisation have received relatively less attention. This is in part the product of a branching of scholarship in youth political participation underpinned theoretically by either a developmental or a social model of childhood and youth. Despite moving away from the classic theories of stage-based development, such as those offered by Piaget and Freud, towards a life-course perspective, developmental approaches have nonetheless often positioned young people as “becoming citizens”. In contrast, studies adopting a social model have argued for a difference-based conception of children and young people (Lister, 2008) “as citizens” whose political opinions and actions are obscured by adult-centric discourses and social structures. Consequently, though much of the research and collaboration in the field has been interdisciplinary, these two strands have developed in distinct trajectories. Yet both have tended to focus on what can be identified, measured, or qualified regarding what young people “know” and “do”, failing in the process to sufficiently explain how political socialisation is achieved (Frazer & Emler, 1997; Henn, Weinstein, & Wring, 2002; Coleman & Rowe, 2005)

Young People and Democracy: A Review

The Whitlam Government had a significant impact on the lives of young people in Australia and their relationship to democracy. In addition to lowering the voting age from 21 years to 18 years, Whitlam Government reforms led to the expansion of the social, political, economic and cultural citizenship of diverse young Australians. Forty years later the need to consider and strengthen the citizenship rights and relationship of young people to Australian democracy is no less important. While many young people today are engaged with politics – even leading movements such as the Global Climate Strikes – a 2019 Report Card on Children’s Rights in Australia found that Australians under the age of 18 feel they have no voice in this society (Australian Human Rights Commission, 2019). In the context of significant change, complexity and uncertainty in the ecology, economy and politics of Australia and the world, understanding and promoting the participation of young people in democracy is more critical to our future than ever. This review synthesises Australian and international research published between 2009 and 2019 on young people, democracy, citizenship and participation. Considering the way globalisation shapes youthful politics and citizenship, the review first looks at the international context and then considers the literature on the Australian experience. The review has adopted a broad approach: understanding democracy as constituted through institutions and procedures as well as civic cultures and practices that breach national boundaries. Moreover, as the experience of ‘youth’ is different among young people, in different settings and country contexts, and transitions from ‘childhood’ to ‘adulthood’ are becoming more complex, non-linear and drawn out, the review is inclusive of published research on the political views and practices of people aged 12 – 30

Australian-Chilean / Chilean-Australian... where to host the hyphen? : a post-national reading of identity for the travelling subject

This paper questions the concept of national identity in an increasingly transient world where human flows, the impact of technology, discourses of 'belonging' and the myriad relationships between states and their expatriate communities have changed the way we navigate and position ourselves in the world. Juxtaposing the Chilean-Australian experiences of identity formation, and the response of the Australian Spanish-language press to the 2001 'Tampa Crisis', this paper investigates how migrant communities negotiate ideas of home and host, belonging and exclusion, and the performance of freedom of movement, both physical and conceptual. Theoretical frameworks are drawn from migration theory, namely diaspora and transnational studies in order to critically engage with the ways in which Australian identity is discussed in relation to, and by, migrants from Chile