Young people’s everyday climate crisis activism: new terrains for research, analysis and action

Abstract

The growing climate crisis has shown how children and young people can be a political force to be reckoned with. While Greta Thunberg and many other young climate activists from around the world personify this force, there is anotherlargely hiddenstory to be told about the everyday practices that young people adopt, in our homes, in our schools and in local communities to respond to environmental concerns. This issue brings together leading commentators to advance the future direction of research into young people's everyday climate crisis activism. In this editorial introduction, we outline some of the new terrains for research, analysis and action that these articles collectively open up. The journal Children's Geographies invites scholars to consider it as a place for the publication of articles that respond to the agenda-setting outlined in this collection and further advance work on young people's everyday climate crisis activism.

“The Ice is Melting and I Don’t Want Santa to Drown!”: Reflections on Childhood, Climate Action, and Futurity

“…Adultism offers a way of conceptualizing specifically the normalization of relations of adult power and children's incapacity and the attendant disempowerment that accompanies this; here I follow Biswas and Mattheis (2022) to unpack adultist responses to children's climate action in the Australian context that draw on dominant discourses of childhood in order to constrain and delimit the power and credibility of children's climate activism. In doing so I come-alongside other theorists and scholars of childhood, time, and activism (Biswas & Mattheis, 2022;Holmberg & Alvinius, 2020;Millei, 2021;Spyrou 2020)-to the limits of such discourses, which beseech us to turn to children's framing of their subjectivities, activist selves, and conceptualizations of childhood (Bowman, 2020;Prabha, 2020;Skovdal & Benwell, 2021).…”

Conscientisation and Radical Habitus: Expanding Bourdieu’s Theory of Practice in Youth Activism Studies

“…Studies of young people's activism needs to account for global inequalities in access to capital, and studies of climate activism needs to be particularly alert to the unequal effects of climate change across the globe [26]. The ability to participate in activism, and to participate in research about activism, depends on access to that capital [48], and thus researchers in the field of young people's climate activism must take care to avoid amplifying existing inequalities [49,50]. Just as in the case of the DREAMers, where those with greater capital were consciously aware of their capacity for heightened action, many young climate activists are also making efforts to act on behalf of their peers with less ability to do so.…”

Crafting futures with hope: Young climate activists’ imaginaries in an age of crisis and uncertainty

“…The emerging literature on young climate activists’ own perspectives on, and responses to the climate change crisis signals a desire to move beyond notions of children and young people as passive victims of climate change (Skovdal & Benwell, 2021; Trajber et al, 2019:88). In the absence of child‐centred approaches to research which can highlight children's and young people's own contributions to climate action, their role as ‘agents of change’ is often ignored in favour of victimhood narratives which highlight their vulnerability and the need for adult protectionism (Tanner, 2010: 339–340).…”