Young people, politics and citizenship

This chapter addresses young people’s engagement with the state, their communities, and with social and political issues, and how they enact their rights and duties as citizens. Over time, what is meant by youth politics and citizenship has come to include an increasingly wide range of practices, but these fundamentally still relate to how they participate in the polity, the public sphere and civil society, including voting habits, civic knowledge, involvement in party politics, activism, consumption and production of political media, creation of community, and relationship to rights. This chapter looks at a range of predominantly Western approaches to youth, politics and citizenship by discussing the evolution of key concepts in the field, considering the special status held by youth as political actors, and by exploring the current challenges to theories and practice of youth participation and citizenship brought about by recent socioeconomic change.