This volume engages with the contested concept of ‘active citizenship’. It analyses the use and understanding of active citizenship in youth civic and political initiatives in the Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, Italy, Portugal and the UK. Using ethnographic data and insights from the cross-European project CATCH-Eyo U, the contributors to this collection illuminate the experiences of young people taking action for social change. It does so at a unique moment when a resurgent populist political right is deploying racial prejudice and neoliberal protectionism in both established media and new digital media to fuel xenophobic nationalism. The book asks a range of questions, including: What is life like for active young citizens with an interest in the civic and political spheres? What practices, relationships and motivations characterise their participatory movements, organisations, initiatives and groups? The chapters use casestudies to analyse how friendship and emotion, social media, diversity-work, racism, precarity and burnout feed into motivating and developing or curtailing sustained pro-democratic activism.
Youth Active Citizenship in Europe will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of disciplines including politics, sociology, education and cultural studies.
Table of Content
1. Introduction; Shakuntala Banaji.- 2. Motivations for active citizenship in youth organisations in the Italian context; Antonella Guarino, Elvira Cicognani and Bruna Zani.- 3. Youth organisations as a developmental context: A developmental psychological perspective; Clara Mikolajczyk, Katharina Eckstein and Peter Noack.- 4. Between emotion and reason: The role of affective networks and events in sustaining the daily experience of environmental activism; Joana P. Cruz, Carla Malafaia, José Eduardo Silva and Isabel Menezes.- 5. Preaching to the choir: Patterns of non/diversity in youth citizenship movements; Sam Mejias and Shakuntala Banaji.- 6. When Facebook is (not) enough: Hybridity in the media and political strategies of leftist youth organisations; Alena Mackova, Sam Mejias and Jakub Macek.- 7. The cost of intensive civic participation: Young activists on the edge of burnout; Mai Beilmann.- 8. Conclusion: Rhetorics and Realities of Active Young Citizens Across the European Union; Shakuntala Banaji.
About the author
Shakuntala Banaji is Professor of Media, Culture and Social Change, and Director of Graduate Studies, LSE, UK.
Sam Mejias is Research Fellow in the Department of Media and Communications, LSE, UK.
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