Youth agency in public diplomacy: Australian youth participation in outbound mobility and connection building between Australia and the Indo-Pacific region

ABSTRACT The Australian government has considered youth mobility to the Indo-Pacific to be crucial in building Australia’s connection with the region. Despite a growing trend of Australian student mobility to the Indo-Pacific, there has been a dearth of research on mobility youth’s agency in public diplomacy. This article makes an original contribution to the literature by elucidating the four main forms of youth agency in public diplomacy in which Australian students have engaged: fostering regional understandings, people-to-people connections, people-to-opportunity connections and country-to-country connections with the Indo-Pacific. It shows that these understandings and connections were created not only during the students’ in-country experiences but also upon their return, and the youth-led connections are not limited within the host and home countries. The article suggests a critical need to have a systemic approach to supporting mobility youth’s capacity for regional engagement, beyond the traditional student experience in learning abroad, which is concerned largely with academic outcomes, cultural enhancement and employability development.