Youth Perspectives on Community Activism: From the Personal to the Political

Abstract

This chapter presents findings from the Toronto Tikkun Youth Project participants about their community and civic engagement activities. Data was gathered through interviews with sixteen participants who were between 16 and 24 years old and were of varied ethnic and racial backgrounds. The chapter contributes to literature that challenges notions of youth apathy and shows the varied ways in which youth contribute to the development of their communities and to civic society, generally. Data from the project show the different ways that youth define community and civic engagement, as well as the divergent forms and motivation for participating in these activities. Notions of belonging to their community, desire to contribute, challenge stereotypes, and create meaningful futures for themselves, were mentioned as some of the reasons youth chose to engage in community life. The youth voices echoed in this chapter can be used to combat the ongoing notions about youth apathy and the decreasing level of youth community engagement. The data also shows the need for a more systematic mapping of youth engagement and their contribution to society. In this chapter, we present findings from data collected with youth in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), as part of the broader Tikkun Youth Project (2014-2017), with sites in Canada, Kosovo, and South Africa. The discussion presented herein is part of ongoing public and scholarly debates about youth civic engagement or lack thereof. In this chapter, we offer narratives that 189 | Youth Perspectives on Community Activism describe youth community activities alongside youth discussions of empowerment, advocacy, and their growing career/academic pathways through and because of their activities in community spaces. We define community engagement as activities that “engage youth in the civic life of their communities” (Zeldin, 2004, p. 632) and as “how an active citizen participates in the life of a community in order to improve conditions for others or to help shape the community’s future” (Adler & Goggin, 2005, p. 242). We also work with Berger’s (2009) categories of engagement, while acknowledging his stance that the notion of “civic engagement” per se is muddled and lacks scholarly clarity. Berger retains the notion of “engagement,” whilst distinguishing between political, social, and moral engagements and between engagement in (activity without attention); engagement by (attention without activity); and engagement with (attention and activity). We find these categories helpful in discussing the ways or levels of engagement that youth referred to as part of their community life. Cammaerts, Bruter, Banaji, Harrison, and Anstead (2014) reported that a significant portion of youth channel their political activities towards their social movement and civil organizing; therefore, any discussion about youth community engagement must intersect discussion on political participation. By including discussions on Tikkun youth’s political engagement, we also strengthen the debates about the divergent ways in which youth participate in and lead community engagement projects. Examining youth civic engagement is important because the past two decades have been marked by growing concerns about the lack of Canadian youth involvement in community and political activities. Some community activists, researchers, and politicians see youth’s apathy as the key reason for youth disengagement in political spheres (Wattenberg, 2006; Wring, Henn, & Weinstein, 2007). This concern has been amplified because of statistics indicating that Canada has already arrived at a “tipping point,” where the number of people reaching retirement age is higher than the number of young people entering working age – a dynamic that is projected to increase over the years (Public Safety Canada, 2012). Further, diminishing the diversity of those involved in civic life and suggesting a risk for Canada’s civic future, the 2015 report, Social Capital in Action, indicates that a mere 6% of adults are responsible for 35%–42% of all civic activities (Siemiatycki, 2011). In addition to the age-based differences in civic participation (CP), research show some correlation between areas with low voter turnout rates and areas with high populations of immigrant and/or racialized groups Youth Perspectives on Community Activism | 190 (MacKinnon, Pitre, Sonia, & Watling, 2007; Siemiatycki, 2011). Overall, when compared to their white Canadian peers, the participation of traditionally marginalized youth in formal political structures is generally low. For instance, while about 84% and 83% of young white Canadians report voting in the 2015 elections at federal and provincial levels respectively, youth from visible minority groups’ report only 68% and 65% (Bilodeau, Turgeon, White, & Henderson, 2015). Given that the country’s largest metropolises are comprised of rapidly growing racial and ethnic minority groups (e.g., 40% of the population across the Greater Toronto Area; Siemiatycki, 2011), there is a critical need to focus on supporting and building civic capacity among racial and ethnic minority youth. Taken together, these civic participation patterns and demographic shifts point to a governance and economic risk: if things continue along this vein, Canada will not have a sufficient base to carry on the civic activities upon which it currently depends. Lamentably, literature also indicates that the rise in Aboriginal and immigrant populations has had little bearing on the Canadian political landscape in terms of political representation of racialized minorities. Elected public office continues to be predominantly occupied by white, male, middle-class, educated, and Christian members (Andrew, Biles, Siemiatycki, & Tolley, 2008; Andrew, Biles, Siemiatycki, & Tolley, 2011), while Canadian visible minorities and Indigenous peoples remain underrepresented – both as candidates and as MPs (Black, 2011). In Canada, Indigenous people refers to First Nation, Metis, and Inuit (FNMI) – the three distinct indigenous groups who have been lumped in to this government term. Andrew et al. (2008) indicate that some progress has been made towards equal representation, particularly for those with Italian and Jewish backgrounds, as well as South Asian, Filipino, and Chinese populations in Vancouver, Winnipeg, and Toronto. For instance, between the 2008 and 2011 federal elections, the number of racialized MPs increased from 21 to 28 (Black, 2017). Notable, however, is that this development in the ratio of minority MPs to the population remains uneven; between 1993 and 2011, the ratio of ethnic minority MPs to their respective population fluctuated between 0.39 and 0.56 (Black, 2017). On a municipal level, Bird (2004) states that the proportional representations of visible minorities in the local government of Canada’s three largest cities remain uneven with 0.37 in Vancouver, 0.32 in Toronto, and 0.39 in Montreal (with 1.00 indicating a perfectly proportional representation). This uneven representation of racial minorities and Indigenous peoples means that they become voiceless, endowed with 191 | Youth Perspectives on Community Activism minimum power and hence, redlined from shaping the course of the nation (see for example, Andrew, et al., 2008; Siemiatycki, 2011). The data in this paper indicates that the uneven representation of racialized groups in civic structures is not because of their lack of activity. In fact, data in this chapter follows those scholars who challenge notions of youth apathy, claiming that youth might lack interest in or feel excluded from mainstream civic activity; however, they do participate in alternative spaces, such as the Internet (Bennett, 2008; Brooks & Hodkinson, 2008; Marsh, O ́Toole, & Jones, 2007; Norris, 2011). These scholars also urge us to think more about what we mean by civic engagement, which is a concept used in our study regardless of its unclear and sometimes contested definitions (for a full discussion, see for example, Berger, 2009). Review of Youth Civic Engagement1 There are vast amounts of works that are insightful in deepening our understanding of the value of youth civic engagement among advanced democracies. For instance, writing about the value of social capital, Stolle and Cruz (2005) indicate that citizens’ involvement in political life positively affects the efficiency of democracy, individual well-being, and economic development. They also state that an individual’s democratic attitude and behavior is inculcated at an early age through family experiences, civic education, and social relationships. Interestingly, these attitudes and behaviors are said to not change considerably within a person’s lifetime; therefore, the said low pattern in youth democratic participation could have grave long-term adverse public policy outcomes (Stolle & Cruz, 2005). Research has also given us a glimpse of popular forms of youth community engagement which include their roles on advisory boards for various nonprofit organizations (Ho, Clarke, & Dougherty, 2015), participation in school clubs (Voight & Torney-Puta, 2013), and participating in informal activities (Andolina, Jenkins, Keeter, & Zukin, 2002). In reference to these informal activities, Andolina and colleagues (2002) also noted that youth had looser notions of community engagement. Hence, young people may view carrying the groceries for their neighbours or helping someone to cross the road as community engagement. In other studies, youth also listed participating and organizing a protest as a form of community participation (Gordon, 2008). Youth Perspectives on Community Activism | 192 Although an increase in age is positively associated with increases in social and political activities (Tiernan, Lysack, Neufeld, Goldberg, & Lichtenberg, 2014), most of the participants in our study displayed “adult forms” of community and political participation that distinguished t