Social Mobility, Political Legitimacy and Social Movements: A Survey of Youth Participation in the 2014 Social Movements in Hong Kong and Macao

Abstract:The legitimacy of the Hong Kong and Macao governments was challenged by large-scale, youth-led social movements in 2014. The authors conducted a cross-sectional survey targeting young people aged 18 to 35 in these two Chinese cities simultaneously and they found that the determinants of young people’s participation in these two movements were not exactly the same. Although young people in both cities evaluated their government’s performance according to perceived upward mobility opportunities for youth as a whole, the correlation between this perception and participation in the movement of young people applies in Hong Kong, but not in Macao.