Young People, Everyday Civic Life and the Limits of Social Cohesion

Abstract

In recent times, many Western governments have shifted focus from multiculturalism to social cohesion in their efforts to address the impact of increased cultural diversity within communities. One of the many and complex triggers for this change has been concern about the marginalisation of young people of minority backgrounds from mainstream culture, in turn prompted by acts of civil unrest, violence, and even terrorism by youth. In this article I focus not so much on why the social cohesion ideal of integration is problematic for young people (although it clearly is), but on the implicit assumptions about what constitutes good participation in community that underlie any cohesion-driven emphasis on integration into civic life in the first place. In doing so, I consider how many young Australians’ modes of imagining, forging, and engaging in community, which are very much a product of growing up in times of super-diversity, globalisation, and individualisation, sit uneasily with mainstream communitarian notions of civic life that are founded on twentieth-century forms of community and participation that are no longer evident or sustainable in contemporary societies. I suggest that a social cohesion agenda may not adequately account for the particular circumstances and experiences of young people because of its assumptions about community and civic engagement that take both adult and modern life as its reference points.

Keywords:

• Social Cohesion
• Youth
• Community
• Civic Engagement
• Multiculturalism

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Melissa Butcher, Fergus Grealy, Samid Suliman, and the anonymous referees.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Anita Harris

Anita Harris is a mid-career research fellow at the Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies at the University of Queensland. Her research interests include youth identities and cultures; citizenship, participation and new politics, and globalisation and multiculturalism. She is currently researching how young people create everyday forms of living with difference, and has recently completed an ARC-funded project on young people's definitions and practices of political engagement and civic connection (with Johanna Wyn, University of Melbourne). She is the author of a forthcoming book entitled Young People and Multicultural Living (Routledge, New York) and her recent books include Next Wave Cultures: Feminism, Subcultures, Activism (edited, Routledge, 2008); Young Femininity: Girlhood, Power and Social Change (with Sinikka Aapola and Marnina Gonick, Palgrave, 2005); Future Girl: Young Women in the Twenty First Century, (Routledge, 2004); and All About the Girl: Culture, Power and Identity (edited, Routledge, 2004)