Nurturing the political agency of young people in Aotearoa New Zealand
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.11157/anzswj-vol35iss3id999Keywords:
political participation, political agency, social and political activism, young peopleAbstract
INTRODUCTION: Young people’s voices are often coloured by past experiences with significant others in their lives, such as parents, friends, peers, and teachers. These experiences can have long-lasting effects on their beliefs about their capabilities, place, value, and identity in society. This qualitative-exploratory research explored the development of young people’s political agency through social and political activism to provide further understanding around how and why young people politically engage to better nurture their political agency.
METHOD: A small, qualitative-exploratory Master’s research project explored young peoples’ experiences of political participation and how these affected their political agency. Data were collected through in-depth interviews with six politically active young people and analysed thematically to identify four key themes.
FINDINGS: The research found that young people’s understandings of the political world were inconsistent with widespread beliefs about their ability to contribute. The participants in this study were actively engaged in activities within broad civic and political contexts around issues of significance to them. The research also found that social contexts, access to political experiences, and connection to social and political issues were critical in nurturing their political agency.
CONCLUSION: The findings suggest formal political institutions frame young people’s participation differently. They also advocate a cultural shift in civic and political settings to consistently provide genuine space for young people’s active participation.
References
Allen, J. (2011). Making space for topology. Dialogues in Human Geography, 1(3), 316–318. https://doi. org/10.1177/2043820611421551
Barbar, T. (2009). Participation, citizenship, and well- being: Engaging with young people, making a difference. Young, 17(1), 25–40. https://doi. org/10.1177/1103308801700103
Beaumont, E. (2011). Promoting political agency, addressing political inequality: A multilevel model of internal political efficacy. The Journal of Politics, 73(1), 216–231. https:// doi.org/10.1017/s0022381610000976
Boulianne, S. (2019). Building faith in democracy: Deliberative events, political trust and efficacy. Political Studies, 67(1), 4–30. https://doi. org/10.1177/0032321718761466
Bowman, B. (2019). Imagining future worlds alongside young climate activists: A new framework for research. Fennia, 197(2), 295–305. https://doi.org/10.11143/fennia.85151
Breeze, M., Gorringe, H., Jamieson, L., & Rosie, M. (2017). Becoming independent: Political participation and youth transitions in the Scottish referendum. The British Journal of Sociology, 68(4), 754–774. https://doi. org/10.1111/1468-4446.12288
Diemer, M.A., & Rapa, L.J. (2016). Unraveling the complexity of critical consciousness, political efficacy, and
political action among marginalised adolescents. Child Development, 87(1), 221–238. https://doi.org/10.1111/ cdev.12446
Eckstein, K., Noack, P., & Gniewosz, B. (2012). Attitudes toward political engagement and willingness to participate in politics: Trajectories throughout adolescence. Journal of Adolescence, 35(3), 485–495. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.adolescence.2011.07.002
Finlay, S. (2010). Carving out meaningful spaces for youth participation and engagement in decision-making. Youth Studies Australia, 29(4), 53–59.
Flanagan, C. A. (2013). Teenage citizens: The political theories of the young. Harvard University Press.
Häkli, J., & Kallio, K. P. (2018). Theorizing children’s political agency. In T. Skelton & S. C. Aitken (Eds.), Establishing geographies of children and young people (pp. 1–23). Springer Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-4585- 88-0_1-1
Harris, A., Wyn, J., & Younes, S. (2010). Beyond apathetic or activist youth: “Ordinary” young people and contemporary forms of participation. Young, 18(1), 9–32. https://doi.org/10.1177/110330880901800103
Henn, M., & Foard, N. (2014). Social differentiation in young people’s political participation: The impact of social and educational factors on youth political engagement in Britain. Journal of Youth Studies, 17(3), 360–380. http://doi.org/10.1080/13676261.2013.830704
Kahne, J., & Maddaugh, E. (2008). Democracy for some: The civic opportunity gap in high school. (Circle Working Paper 59). Centre for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE).
Lietz, C. A., & Zayas, L. E. (2010). Evaluating qualitative research for social work practitioners. Advances in Social Work, 11(2), 188–202. https://doi.org/10.18060/589
Lister, R. (2007). Why citizenship: Where, when and how children? Theoretical Inquiries in Law, 8(2), 693–718. https://doi.org/10.2202/1565-3404.1165
Lister, R. (2008). Unpacking children’s citizenship. In A. Invernizzi & J. Williams (Eds.), Children and citizenship (pp. 9–19). Sage.
Loader, B. D., Vromen, A., & Xenos, M. A. (2014). The networked young citizen: Social media, political participation and civic engagement (pp. 1–14). Routledge.
Mahatmya, D., & Lohman, B. J. (2012). Predictors and pathways to civic involvement in emerging adulthood: Neighbourhood, family and school influences. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 41(9), 1168–1183. http://dx.doi. org/10.1007/s10964-012-9777-4
Mycock, A., & Tonge, J. (2012). The party politics of youth citizenship and democratic engagement. Parliamentary Affairs, 65(1), 138–161. https://doi.org/10.1093/pa/ gsr053
Nissen, S. (2019). Student political action in New Zealand. Bridget Williams Books.
Nolas, S.M., Varvantakis, C., & Aruldoss, V. (2017). Talking politics in everyday lives. Contemporary Social Science, 12 (1–2), 68–83. https://doi.org/10.1080/21582041.201 7.1330965
O’Leary, Z. (2017). The essential guide to doing your research project (3rd ed.). Sage.
Patton, M.Q. (2015). Qualitative research and evaluation methods: Integrating theory and practice (4th ed.). Sage.
Phillips, L. G., Ritchie, J., & Perales, F. (2019). Surveying support for child and youth political participation in Australia and New Zealand. Citizenship Studies, 23(5), 460–485. https://doi.org/10.1080/13621025.2019.1620 687
Pontes, A. I., Henn, M., Griffiths, M. D. (2019). Youth political (dis)engagement and the need for citizenship education: Encouraging young people’s civic and political participation through the curriculum. Education, Citizenship and Social Justice, 14(1), 3–21. https://doi. org/10.1177/1746197917734542
Quintelier, E. (2015). Engaging adolescents in politics: The longitudinal effect of political socialization agents. Youth & Society, 47(1), 51–69. https://doi. org/10.1177/0044118x13507295
Seider, S., & Graves, D. (2020). Raise their voices. Educational Leadership, 77(6), 36–40. http://www.ascd. org/publications/educational-leadership/mar20/vol77/ num06/Raise-Their-Voices.aspx
Sotkasiira, T., Haikkola, L., & Horelli, L. (2010). Building towards effective participation: A learning-based network approach to youth participation. In B. Percy-Smith & N. Smith (Eds.), A handbook of children and young people’s participation: Perspectives from theory and practice (pp. 174–183). Routledge.
Valenzeula, S., Arriagada, A., & Scherman, A. (2014). Facebook, Twitter, and youth engagement: A quasi-experimental study of social media use and protest behavior using propensity score matching. International Journal of Communication, 8(1), 2046–2070.
Wood, B. E. (2011). Citizenship in our place: Exploring New Zealand young people’s everyday, place-based perspectives on participation in society [Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Victoria University]. ResearchArchive. https://researcharchive.vuw.ac.nz/ xmlui/handle/10063/1671
Wray-Lake, L. (2019). How do young people become politically engaged? Child Development Perspectives, 13(2), 127–132. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/cdep.12324
Xenos, M., Vromen, A., & Loader, B. D. (2014). The great equalizer? Patterns of social media use and youth political engagement in three advanced democracies. Information, Communication & Society, 17(2), 151–167. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118x.2013.871318
Zaff, J. F., Kawashima-Ginsberg, K., Lin, E. S., Lamb, M., Balsano, A., & Lerner, R. M. (2011). Developmental trajectories of civic engagement across adolescence: Disaggregation of an integrated construct. Journal of Adolescence, 34(6), 1207–1220. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.adolescence.2011.07.005
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2023 Aotearoa New Zealand Association of Social Workers
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
By completing the online submission process, you confirm you accept this agreement. The following is the entire agreement between you and the Aotearoa New Zealand Association of Social Workers (ANZASW) and it may be modified only in writing.
You and any co-authors
If you are completing this agreement on behalf of co-authors, you confirm that you are acting on their behalf with their knowledge.
First publication
By submitting the work you are:
- granting the ANZASW the right of first publication of this work;
- confirming that the work is original; and
- confirming that the work has not been published in any other form.
Once published, you are free to use the final, accepted version in any way, as outlined below under Copyright.
Copyright
You assign copyright in the final, accepted version of your article to the ANZASW. You and any co-authors of the article retain the right to be identified as authors of the work.
The ANZASW will publish the final, accepted manuscript under a Creative Commons Attribution licence (CC BY 4.0). This licence allows anyone – including you – to share, copy, distribute, transmit, adapt and make commercial use of the work without needing additional permission, provided appropriate attribution is made to the original author or source.
A human-readable summary of the licence is available from http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0, which includes a link to the full licence text.
Under this licence you can use the final, published version of the article freely – such as depositing a copy in your institutional research repository, uploading a copy to your profile on an academic networking site or including it in a different publication, such as a collection of articles on a topic or in conference proceedings – provided that original publication in Aotearoa New Zealand Social Work is acknowledged.
This agreement has no effect on any pre-publication versions or elements, which remain entirely yours, and to which we claim no right.
Reviewers hold copyright in their own comments and should not be further copied in any way without their permission.
The copyright of others
If your article includes the copyright material of others (e.g. graphs, diagrams etc.), you confirm that your use either:
- falls within the limits of fair dealing for the purposes of criticism and review or fair use; OR
- that you have gained permission from the rights holder for publication in an open access journal.
