Young people’s everyday citizenship and understandings of feminism

Abstract

Contemporary youth citizenship research is challenged with capturing the complexity of young people’s engagement with politics, especially considering the current prevalence of social media. In this article, we address young people’s understandings of political engagement in relation to feminism by drawing on contemporary feminist scholarship. This is combined with qualitative research undertaken in 2016 and 2017 with five focus groups comprising young people from different secondary schools across four New Zealand cities. Exploring this through the lens of everyday citizenship means dealing with the ambiguities around terms and concepts, both for researchers and young people themselves, as well as acknowledging the nuances and tensions concerning what counts as political involvement. The research findings suggest that how educators and youth workers connect and empower diverse groups of young people when navigating the potentially contentious terrain of political positioning, identification and social action requires further investigation.