Mapping the terrain of strategic politics among social change-oriented youth

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the ‘everyday’ politics of social change-oriented (SCO) youth. We apply an everyday network of youth politics approach in order to explore the lived experience of politics for SCO youth, accessing how they understand, negotiate, and actualize youth politics. Our study demonstrates that SCO youth negotiate politics through everyday, localized, and relational networks. Utilizing a youth-led participatory action research model, we present qualitative findings drawn from interviews conducted by SCO youth-researchers among their SCO youth peers.

KEYWORDS:

• Youth politics
• social change-oriented youth
• participatory action research
• Canada

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Giddens (1989, 1984) argues that structures of power do not exist outside of human action. Rather, structures are reproduced by human action. Both consciousness and structure are produced by repeated practices of action.

2. Bill C-51 extended Canada's anti-terror laws to broaden the authorities of Canadian governmental agencies to share information.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [grant number 890-2013-0019]; University of Windsor [grant number 813354].