Young People's Politics and the Micro-Territories of the Local

Abstract

In spite of the late modern interpellation of youth as mobile and globally oriented, and a perception of social and political issues as increasingly playing out in a transnational arena, young Australians exhibit strong local and individualised tendencies in expressing politics. They are bounded by the ‘micro-territories of the local’; that is, their political thinking and acting takes place within the spaces of home, friendship groups, school and neighbourhood. This paper draws on an ARC project with nearly 1000 mainly 15–17-year-old Victorians to examine the relationship between young people's embeddedness in their local worlds and their views of themselves as efficacious political actors. It considers how their competency within such micro-territories opens up neglected sites and strategies for political expression and engagement while limiting their sense of sense of political efficacy, and it asserts the significance of considering this age group, not for what these young people will become in the future, but for their particular location, socially, physically and politically in the present.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to project manager Salem Younes, research assistants Lesley Pruitt and Josh Roose, and the schools, youth services and young people who participated in the project.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Anita Harris

Associate Professor Anita Harris is a Mid-Career Research Fellow in the Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies at the University of Queensland. Her current research is on youth, politics, citizenship and multiculturalism, and she has also published widely in the area of girls' studies. Professor Johanna Wyn is Director of the Youth Research Centre in the Graduate School of Education at the University of Melbourne. Her interests are in youth studies, focusing on the interrelated fields of education, health and gender studies.