Are today's young people active citizens? A study of their sensitivity to socio-political issues and their social participation

Abstract

This article focuses on two facets of young people's active citizenship: their experience of being impacted by socio-political events and their participation behaviour. The idea that underlies the study is that to better understand the relationship between young people's perception of socio-political reality and their multiple ways of exercising active citizenship, we need to conceptualize more broadly what constitutes "the political". Since today's youth engagement includes many different forms, research should focus on what young citizens themselves experience as impacting, going beyond traditional measures of political interest. We conducted a survey among university students (N = 969, 72.7% female) in Spain that included an open-ended question about events that had particularly impacted them in the past year and measures of their experience and willingness to engage in conventional and unconventional political and civic participation. The content analysis established four categories of impacting events: "national politics" and "international politics", which correlated with conventional political participation; events categorized as "social life" and "social justice" were associated with unconventional/civic participation. The results also suggest that most of the participants are, in fact, active citizens, which challenges the view of young people as "disaffected citizens". We conclude that the analysis of their specific socio-political sensitivities helps to understand the intensity and concrete orientation of their actions.