Ukrainian youth and civic engagement: unconventional participation in local spaces

Abstract

This article builds upon the literature examining the relationship of contemporary youth with politics and youth civic participation through a study exploring youth citizenship in post-socialist Ukraine. Specifically, drawing upon qualitative research undertaken during 2005–2006 with young people (aged 15–18) from two contrasting regions in East and West Ukraine, this paper uses three examples to highlight (and contrast across regions, where applicable) the potential of young Ukrainians to engage in various forms of democratic participation. In particular, this paper will use the following examples both to examine and illustrate youth participation: (1) youth and the political upheavals known as the Orange Revolution; (2) models of private/community-focused citizenship articulated by youth; and (3) school citizenship education practices. In relation to these examples, the article suggests that young people's positions and practices are reminiscent of those citizenship perspectives which embrace the informal and contextual nature of civic participation focused on unconventional acts of citizenship. Connected to this, it argues that locality and schools may provide youth with an important space for civic engagement and for exercising democratic citizenship. Implications for educational practice are also explored with respect to the possibilities for place-based active citizenship education.

Keywords:

• young people
• civic participation
• Ukraine
• citizenship education

Acknowledgements

Very special thanks to all schools and the young people who participated in this research. I would also like to thank the editors of this special issue and an anonymous reviewer who helped to improve this paper.

Notes

1. Pseudonyms are used throughout.

2. The result of Soviet-era russification policies is for language to crosscut ethnicity in Ukraine (so that ethnic Ukrainians often speak Russian). Although Russians form the largest minority group in both regions, I did not treat them as such in the Donbas where the difference between Ukrainians and Russians is blurred, primarily due to the high levels of inter-ethnic marriages and where the majority of the population uses the Russian language in everyday communication, with almost all urban schools also teaching in Russian. I assigned Ukrainian, Russian and mixed Russo-Ukrainian local students to the category of mainstream population. Although ethnic minorities in the Donbas use Russian as the language of communication and assimilate into it, they are aware of their ethno-cultural roots. Such students are assigned to the category of minority ethnic youth in Table 1. In contrast, the categories of native language and ethnicity largely coincided in the student sample in Galicia.