Youth-led climate strikes: fresh opportunities and enduring challenges for youth research - commentary to Bowman

Abstract

In this commentary I respond to Benjamin Bowman’s Fennia paper by extending upon his central thesis that argues that the prevailing methodological tools and framings used to research youth political participation perpetuate unhelpful and inadequate dichotomies about youth. Advancing upon this, I suggest that the youth climate strikes in 2019 highlight three prevalent discourses in youth research relating to climate change: (i) the tendency to view youth as isolated individuals, neglecting the role of adults and communities; (ii) the tendency to focus on individual behavioural change rather than recognise the need for systemic and societal responses to climate change, and (iii) the tendency to overlook structural characteristics of youth such as race, gender and social class. The resulting discourses of youth autonomy, individualism and homogeneity lead to a distorted picture of young activists and perpetuate harmful narratives which lead to stigma, despair and cynicism. The paper concludes by advocating for greater care in the research methodologies and critical frameworks we use to report on youth at public events, such as climate strikes, in order to allow for the complexity of the young political agent, the ambiguity of some of their actions and for opportunities that enable young people themselves to articulate their own participation.

The Interplay between Social and Ecological Determinants of Mental Health for Children and Youth in the Climate Crisis

“…Resilience building in youth is important as it allows them to be active agents and protagonists for change [ 37 ]. Focusing on the negative impacts of climate change is a ‘narrow framework’ and can limit discourse about, and possibility for, resilient and creative approaches to solutions [ 39 , 40 ]. Similarly, focusing on only individualistic approaches weakens the importance of community and educator’s roles in supporting young people [ 39 , 40 ].…”

“…Focusing on the negative impacts of climate change is a ‘narrow framework’ and can limit discourse about, and possibility for, resilient and creative approaches to solutions [ 39 , 40 ]. Similarly, focusing on only individualistic approaches weakens the importance of community and educator’s roles in supporting young people [ 39 , 40 ]. In contrast, strength-based community and participatory approaches shift away from deficit-based concepts and provide a stronger mental health ecosystem to reduce the burden for future generations [ 23 , 36 ].…”

“…In addition, young people have an opportunity to learn practical skills through climate initiatives and engagement with nature which can also foster positive adaptive coping behaviors [ 36 ]. Impressively, the global climate strikes have shown young people’s ability to organize quickly and effectively as engaged citizens in a world they are growing up into and will eventually govern [ 40 ].…”

Bessant, J.: Making-up People: Youth, Truth and Politics

“…In 2018 and 2019, mass numbers of school-aged students walked out of school to protest against governmental inaction on climate change—in a movement known variously as Fridays for Future, Youth Strike for Climate and School Strike 4 Climate. Sociologists of youth were caught ‘on the backfoot’ (Wood 2020 , p. 2) by this movement’s rapid transnational affective contagiousness. In many ways, the School Strikes provided a large-scale example of young people’s re-invention of political participation (Vromen et al 2015 ) ‘by any media necessary’ on foot and online (Jenkins et al 2016 ).…”