Politics, Protest and Young People: Political Participation and Dissent in 21st Century Britain

By Sarah Pickard

Sarah Pickard offers a detailed and wide-ranging assessment of electoral and non-electoral political participation of young people in contemporary Britain, drawing on perspectives and insights from youth studies, political science and political sociology.  

This comprehensive book enquires into the approaches used by the social sciences to understand young people’s politics and documents youth-led evolutions in political behaviour. After unpicking key concepts including ‘political participation,’ ‘generations,’ the ‘political life-cycle,’ and the ‘youth vote,’ Pickard draws on a combination of quantitative and qualitative research to trace the dynamics operating in electoral political participation since the 1960s. This includes the relationship between political parties, politicians and young people, youth and student wings of political parties, electoral behaviour and the lowering of the voting age to 16. Pickard goes on to discuss personalised engagement through what she calls young people’s (DIO) Do-It-Ourselves political participation in online and offline connected collectives. The book then explores young people’s political dissent as part of a global youth-led wave of protest.

This holistic book will appeal to anyone with an interest in young people, politics, protest and political change.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Release date: Jun 7, 2019
• ISBN: 9781137577887

Book preview

© The Author(s) 2019

Sarah PickardPolitics, Protest and Young Peoplehttps://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57788-7_1

1. Introduction: From ‘Apathetic Youth’ to DIO Politics and the ‘Youthquake’

Sarah Pickard¹  

(1)

Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris, France

Sarah Pickard

Email: [e-mail]

Young people’s political participation and protest is an exciting and compelling subject. It is a hot topic in political circles, in the media and in academia, in Britain and around the world, but discussions are often couched in stereotypes, labels, melodrama and inaccuracies. This book documents and analyses the political participation of young people using an interdisciplinary approach and providing historical contexts, in order to provide a more measured and comprehensive understanding of the subject.

In Britain, the already burgeoning interest in young people’s political participation grew with the so-called ‘youthquake’, that is to say the surge in political awareness, engagement, activism and electoral turnout of young people in the 2017 General Election. It came on the heels of high levels of political involvement of young people in the 2016 European Union membership referendum and the 2014 Scottish independence referendum (when 16- and 17-year-olds could vote), as well as an increase since 2015 in the number of supporters and members of political parties, including youth wings, student wings and networks such as Momentum (Pickard 2017a, b; Avril 2018). Britain has also been experiencing a growth and diversification of youth-led protest actions. In 2010, the country witnessed the biggest youth-led demonstrations in a generation with young people adopting traditional and innovative means of protest, primarily in reaction to neoliberal policies and austerity measures (Olcese and Saunders 2014; Pickard 2014a, b), which have deeply affected young people as pupils, students and workers in Britain and elsewhere around the world (Pickard and Bessant 2017, 2018), leading to other ongoing protests actions that are part of a youth-led global wave of protest , notably about social injustices and increasingly about environmental degradation, for example, on climate change with the #FridaysForFuture #ClimateStrike movement inspired by Swedish school pupil Greta Thunberg and direct action by Extinction Rebellion. At the same time, successive British governments have legislated to monitor, repress and criminalise protest actions (della Porta 1997; Grasso and Bessant 2018; Pickard 2018a, d, 2019) as part of a securitisation process. The political environment of the early twenty-first century has also been marked, to a lesser extent, by urban riots in 2011 (Bloom 2012; Mycock and Tonge 2012), as well as concerns about the religious and political radicalisation of young people (Coppock et al. 2018). This all comes within the context of the rapid growth in the use of digital technologies and especially social media in political communications among young people and aimed at young people (Theocharis 2012; Vromen 2017; Boulianne and Theocharis 2018).

Not only have young people been voting more and protesting more, they have also been at the vanguard of expanding the political repertoire with creative forms of collective citizenship that stretch our political imagination. From youth-led campaigns against the ‘tampon tax’, knife crime, plastic waste and climate change to environment-friendly lifestyle choices, online and offline young people are doing and living politics, as what I call DIO political participation (Do-It-Ourselves). Thus, Britain has been the crucible of fundamental events and evolutions regarding politics, protest and young people.

This book offers a holistic and up-to-date study of young people’s political participation at the start of the twenty-first century in Britain with historical background and references to other advanced democracies around the world. It is based on my long-term research project that links up academic and more popular discussions on political engagement and disengagement among young people. When referring to young people, I mostly mean 14- to 24-year-olds who have reached a point in their lives where they are usually paying attention to discussions about politics within their family, in peer settings, in education and in the work environment, but they have not necessarily ‘settled down’, in terms of relationships, employment and housing. Knowingly or unknowingly, these young people are being exposed to politics and are being politically socialised. They are citizens with values and opinions. I embrace an interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary approach by referring to studies in Sociology, Political Science, Political Sociology and Youth Studies on young people’s political participation. I seek to go beyond the ambivalent media stereotypes of politically apathetic or politically manipulated young people. I argue that many young people in Britain are interested in political issues and are politically active. In this book, I explain why and how.

In Politics, Protest and Young People, I pay particular attention to dominant scholarly concepts and theories about young people, in relation to citizenship, political generations, electoral participation, non-electoral forms of political participation and protest. My analysis covers themes central to young people and political participation, including the role of citizenship studies and political literacy, the voting age and enfranchisement, barriers to electoral registration and voting, generational effects, relations between political parties and young people, and the ‘youthquake’. I also explore the use of digital technologies in political participation, issue-based political interest and fresh creative forms of political participation and dissent, including DIO politics. This is political participation instigated and navigated by young people themselves, involving lifestyle choices and/or campaigning, through informal collective actions. These usually operate outside formal political institutions and are often enabled by digital technologies that create a sense of belonging, which is important to young people’s sense of identity. I analyse the wide variety of ways young people are renewing politics and the political environment, as they expand the repertoire of possible political actions (Pickard and Bessant 2017; Theocharis and van Deth 2018) through opportunities created by the internet and social media, as well as a shift away from electoral participation (Norris 2002, 2005; Vromen 2017). Moreover, I challenge subjective binary labels about political participation that are often employed when describing the political participation of young people based on outdated and often subjective notions, such as ‘conventional’ and ‘unconventional’ forms of action (for example, being a paid-up member of a political party versus going on a demonstration). With this book, I aim to provide a well-rounded study based on qualitative and quantitative analyses of young people and their political participation. The 2010 student-led protests, ongoing climate change protests, the referendums of 2014 and 2016, as well as the 2015 and 2017 General Elections are used as case studies to demonstrate how many young people are politically engaged, energised and inventive.

The research for this book is based on work I have been doing on young people and political participation in Britain for the past three decades. For the overwhelming majority of that time, the dominant discourse in the mainstream media and in some sections of academia regarding young people and politics was negative and pessimistic (for example, Parry et al. 1992; Mulgan and Wilkinson 1997; Pirie and Worcester 1998; Park 2000; Kimberlee 2002; Russell et al. 2002). Two contradictory stereotypes stood out and for both the ‘blame’ were placed squarely on the shoulders of young citizens themselves.

First, young people were portrayed primarily as politically disengaged and/or disinterested, summed up by terms such as the ‘apathetic generation’, implying that young people were immature and could not be bothered to get involved in politics and civism (for a summary, see Stoker 2006; Hay 2007). The arrival of the internet and especially social media with young people as early adopters and then enthusiastic experts seemed to exacerbate this pessimistic stereotype, producing terms such as the ‘selfie generation’ and the ‘generation me’ (Twenge 2006). The pejorative message was clear: young people were too self-absorbed, superficial, distracted or selfish to take part in collective actions of citizenship and most notably voting.

Second, young people were portrayed as self-centred and immature protesters, only interested in idealistic or unrealistic goals, such as ‘the right’ to free higher education, peace, environmental protection, relative social equality and policies that were not informed by neoliberal ‘austerity’. The media spotlight also turned on peripheral violent episodes during demonstrations and acts of civil disobedience, including occupations and riots (Bloom 2012; Pickard 2014a, b).

Moreover, the umbrella term ‘Millennial generation’ and ‘Millennials’ initially used in marketing, came to be equated with such generalisations about contemporary young people and they have contributed to the negative stereotyping. In relation to political participation and citizenship, the ‘Millennial’ label was and remains prominent not only in the mainstream media, but also in certain parts of academia and within various think tanks. The year after Tony Blair became the ‘New Labour’ Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Madsen Pirie and Robert Worcester produced a thirty-page document for the British Adam Smith Institute entitled The Millennial Generation (Pirie and Worcester 1998). In it, they argue that the fall in young people’s institutional political participation and commitment to citizenship (i.e. voting) would have a dramatically adverse effect on the future legitimacy of political institutions. That is, if young adults continued being ‘politically apathetic’ into their middle-age without ever getting into the habit of voting, there would be profound consequences for democracy. The representations of young people as apolitical or even anti-politics was devastatingly bad and the ‘fear for the future’ narrative took hold, along with ‘crisis narratives’ (for discussion, see O’Toole 2015). These negative representations of young people were aligned with the ‘Bowling Alone’ metaphor devised by Robert Putnam to describe the apparent fall in social capital and resulting rise of individualism with important consequences for the future of democracy in the United States (Putnam 1995a, b, 2000) (significantly, the American author would be invited to Downing Street during the New Labour years). But little reference was made to the role of politicians, polity and policies, or to the opinions of young people about politics and politicians, i.e. supply-side explanations (Hay 2007) for the political alienation of young citizens.

All this came against the backdrop of successive Labour politicians (superficially) attempting to reach out to young members of the electorate by trying to look modern, ‘cool’, and in touch with ‘youth culture’ via what I call ‘youth gloss’. For example, Neil Kinnock, the Labour Leader of the Opposition in the 1980s (when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister) started the ‘modernisation’ of the Labour Party and developed contacts with celebrities in pop and rock music. Similarly, Tony Blair undertook ‘cool hunting’ (Farthing 2010, p. 184) by engaging enthusiastically with young celebrities, fraternising with various Britpop stars when Leader of the Opposition from 1994 onwards and then famously inviting them to 10 Downing Street once he became Prime Minister in 1997 (Harris 2003, 2004; Pickard 2008). However, the ‘Cool Britannia’ period was very short-lived, and Blair’s ‘youth-bait’ did not provide the electoral ‘youth boost’ he hoped for in the 2001 General Election. Although around 40% of young people on the electoral register did vote Labour, the electoral turnout of 18- to 24-year-olds plummeted to below 40% (see Tables 6.​2 and 8.​2).

Consequently, at the start of Tony Blair’s second term of office as Prime Minister, the Labour government introduced Citizenship Education onto the school National Curriculum in its effort to address ‘the problem’ of young people’s apparent political disengagement. The aim was twofold: to increase the falling voter turnout rate among young people (that in fact mirrored the especially low participation of older citizens at the time) and to decrease ‘anti-social behaviour’ (ASB) among young people (Andrews and Mycock 2007, 2008; Pickard 2014c). The thinking behind Citizenship Education was that if young people knew the mechanics of political institutions and citizenship (through studying political literacy at school), they would become active citizens, i.e. ‘good citizens’ or ‘dutiful citizens’ (Dalton 2008) who would vote (for politicians) and this would address the democratic deficit and the perceived impending delegitimisation of Parliament.

At the same time, New Labour launched and piloted various pragmatic measures to facilitate the logistics of voting, by making voter registration and the voting process easier for young people (Pickard 2006; Henn and Oldfield 2016). However, neither the structural barriers to young people’s electoral participation, nor the role of politicians and institutional politics in disengaging young people from electoral participation were considered in any depth by the government, i.e. supply-side reasons (Hay 2007) for falling turnout rates since the early 1970s were sidelined. The turnout rate of 18- to 24-year-olds reached an all-time low in the 2005 General Election, which served to perpetuate fears about the aggregated long-term consequences of non-voting among the young generation (Pickard 2005; Sloam 2007; O’Toole 2015).

At the start of the twenty-first century, the alienation concept gathered traction in qualitative studies of political participation in Political Science and Political Sociology, whereby young people are concerned about political issues, but they feel disengaged from institutional politics, mainly due to politicians. Notably, the political scientists, Henn et al. (2002) used panel surveys and focus groups, finding many young people are interested in political matters, but they are also ‘distrustful of those who are elected to positions of power and charged with running the political state’ (pp. 21–22) and this effects electoral turnout. Similarly, the sociologists Marsh et al. (2007) used interviews and discussion groups to let young people express their own understandings of politics and political participation and explain the ways they live politics, finding many feel their interests and concerns are not addressed by politicians. In both studies, rather than imposing on young participants a restrictive and normalised list of designated items, young people’s voices and views were listened to attentively and analysed. I recognise the great value of this methodology that provides a more representative and optimistic account of young people’s political participation and attitudes to politics in all its diversity.

The ensuing 2007–2008 global financial crisis catapulted Britain into economic recession; concomitantly, numerous politicians were found in 2009 to be involved in the serious (and in some cases criminal) misuse of MPs ’ expenses (Bell 2009; Pickard 2013). This revelation seemed to affirm the view held by some young people that politicians are untrustworthy and not worth voting for in elections.

On coming to power in June 2010, the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition Government led by David Cameron introduced wide-ranging austerity measures that saw major cuts to public spending, which have affected adversely a sizable proportion of young people from various backgrounds and in different contexts. Austerity measures included major cuts to the funding of further and higher education, youth services, mental health care and social housing. Consequently, the cap on annual university tuition fees was tripled (the Lib Dems reneged on their manifesto pledge to scrap fees), the Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA) was withdrawn in England, youth services were closed and mental health services for young people were reduced. As a result, many young people are deprived of vital youth services and health services. Many young people are paying a substantial amount for higher education and many will be burdened with education debt well into their middle-age (Bolton 2019). Many young people are finding it difficult or impossible to get a decent job due to high rates of un/underemployment and the casualisation of the labour market. Many young people are also unable to access affordable accommodation, be it for renting or buying. They are living in precarious circumstances characterised by longer and less linear transitions to independent adulthood.

Today, a majority of young people in Britain have fewer opportunities and endure a poorer quality of life than their parents and grandparents. The traditional markers of entry into adulthood have been largely dissolved and seem unobtainable to a substantial proportion of young people in contemporary advanced democracies. Rather than climbing the social ladder, numerous young people are sliding down it into precarity, insecurity and debt, i.e. undergoing a ‘downgrading’ of their social situation and downward social mobility compared to the upward mobility of older generations (Jones 2017; Bessant et al. 2017). This has created stark intergenerational differences in terms of wealth, aspirations and outlooks about important issues.

For some young people, these difficult circumstances have acted as a trigger to both more non-electoral and electoral participation political participation. First, it has meant young people have been protesting more. Indeed, the end of 2010 was marked by a series of demonstrations and direct action against the increase in university tuition fees, the ending of the EMA, cuts to higher education funding and austerity policies generally. At the same time, numerous horizontal informal protest networks have emerged that have been enabled by social media and connectivity, leading to online and offline campaigns, such as UK Uncut that carries out direct action protests, including flash mobs against corporate tax avoidance and cuts to welfare spending. Increasingly, protest movements in Britain form part of a global youth-led cycle of protest moving from one country to another with shared struggles, values and repertoires of action. From the Occupy London movement during the Winter of 2011–2012 to wider concerns about social injustice, poverty, ‘Brexit’ and environmental degradation (notably fracking, climate change and global warming), materialist and post-materialist values are combined issues of importance for this new young Precariat that has emerged around the world in the twenty-first century.

Second, the precarity experienced by many young people and notably the disappointment and/or distrust in the politicians that brought about austerity, as well as other issues of concern has meant they are also increasingly acting politically without politicians. Many young people are taking political initiatives through reflexive acts in their everyday lives, such as recycling, avoiding plastic and volunteering, etc. These young people are not politically apathetic, they are living their politics on their owns terms in accordance with their ethical, environmental and political values, whereby politics is everywhere, not just for elections. By circumnavigating and/or avoiding institutional politics, this DIO politics is personalised and collective, whereby traditional political structures centred on political parties are replaced by another form of collectivity centred on issues, values and concerns, which is made possible by digital technologies and a willingness to participate and make the world a better place.

Third, young people’s specific circumstances in combination with issues of special salience to them and voting campaigns aimed at them have all led to greater electoral participation since 2014. For the 2014 referendum on the independence of Scotland, the Scottish Parliament very deliberately enfranchised 16- and 17-year-olds, an unprecedented measure in the United Kingdom and indeed a rarity in most of the world. There was a dynamic and youth-focused referendum campaign that contributed to a particularly high registration rate and participation rate of 16- and 17-year-olds, as well as among 18- to 24-year-olds. This illustrates that when political debate is inclusive and young people are recognised as citizens, most engage in institutional politics. For detractors of lowering the voting age, there is a condescending and disingenuous reason: the increased turnout of young people was due to the ‘simple’ single-issue nature of the referendum.

After the Conservative Party led by David Cameron obtained a small majority in the 2015 General Election, the House of Commons in Westminster decided against enfranchising 16- and 17-year-olds in the June 2016 referendum on the membership of the United Kingdom in the European Union (EU). Turnout among young voters was higher than in recent general elections, although critics argued that if young people were really interested and committed they would have turned out in a higher proportion. Criticisms were also fuelled by highly mediatised laments from some young people that ‘the older generation’ had ‘stolen their future’. Strikingly, the younger the voter the more likely he/she was to vote ‘remain’, and the older the voter the more likely he/she was to vote to ‘leave’ the European Union. These arresting intergenerational differences highlighted in the voting patterns in the EU membership referendum added a further layer to the multiple intergenerational political differences operating in Britain. These now include young/old, ‘youth vote’/‘grey vote’, left/right, new/old forms of political participation, social liberalism/social conservatism, cosmopolitan/nationalistic, remain/leave and open/closed. However, there were also important intragenerational differences in the 2016 ‘Brexit’ referendum: young people with a university degree, students and young women were much more likely to have voted ‘Remain’; these socially liberals are whom Henn and Sloam (2018) call the ‘young cosmopolitans’.

When polling stations closed at 10 p.m. on 8 June 2017 and broadcasters announced the predicted outcome of the snap general election, attention immediately focused on the seemingly vital role played by young people. As the results trickled in, it emerged that the electoral participation of young people had been decisive in certain constituencies with a sizeable proportion of further and higher education students (for example, Canterbury that elected a Labour MP for the first time in a hundred years). Moreover, the turnout of 18- to 24-year-olds in the 2017 General Election was much greater than in 2015 and reached a level not witnessed since the 1990s. The electoral participation rate increased especially among young. Labour led by Jeremy Corbyn was the main beneficiary, due to a huge swing to the party from just two years earlier among young voters of all ages, particularly younger women and young people from disadvantaged backgrounds (see Table 10.​1). The ‘youthquake’ narrative soon arose to reflect the apparently surprising seismic change in political interest, activism and electoral participation among young people (see Sloam 2017; Sloam et al. 2018; Pickard 2018b, c; Henn and Sloam 2018).

Subsequently, young people’s political participation has been under the spotlight like never before. Never has there been so much discussion in the media and academia about young people, political participation and youth policy. There are two dominant narratives that are both vast generalisations. On the one hand, it is argued that naïve and narcissistic young people were hoodwinked or bribed by the Labour Party, especially its leader Jeremy Corbyn, during the 2017 election campaign with uncosted and unrealistic policies in favour of young people. It was pointed out by critics that even with these sweeteners, the turnout rate of young people remained lower than the rest of the population, thus allegedly proving (many) young people remain politically disengaged; this is an extension of the ongoing notion of ‘apathetic youth’. On the other hand, it is argued that inspired and committed young people were enthused by the values and authenticity of Jeremy Corbyn and the traditional socialist manifesto largely due to social media, marking an advance for democracy and hope for the future health of political institutions. These hypotheses about young people and the 2017 General Election are inevitably simplistic and reductive, as discussed in the chapters of this book.

Following the weak support for the Conservative Party among young people in the 2017 General Election, nearly twenty years after The Millennial Generation (Pirie and Worcester 1998), Madsen Pirie authored another report for the same neoliberal think tank (of which he is the founder and president) called The Millennial Manifesto. In it, he revisits the notion of the ‘Millennial’ and his revised definition includes people born around the turn of the century (not just those coming of age then). He formulates ‘twelve ideas to help government win over young voters’, i.e. how the Conservative Government could echo the success of the Labour Party among young people in the 2017 General Election. Proposals include exempting under-thirties from Air Passenger Duty (APD) tax, so as to have cheaper air flights for ‘brief visits to other countries with friends’ (Pirie 2017, pp. 5–6). This underlines the profound disconnect between certain thinking on the political engagement of young people and the stark reality that many of them would not even be able to afford to get to the airport, let alone enjoy a few days in Barcelona or Brussels. Similarly, in a bid to attract young voters, Theresa May declared on the eve of the Conservative’s annual conference, in September 2017, plans to overhaul the annual university tuition fees and to freeze them at £9250, which was deemed ‘a revolution’ in the headline hyperbole of the Daily Telegraph (Riley-Smith 2017). It is unlikely that most students viewed it the same way. A real revolution in governmental policies would be to take into account the precarious situation of many young people, to listen to young people and to act in favour of all young people as full citizens.

But the focus in academia and the media remains on the electoral participation of young people, even though no really reliable statistics exist on voting by age group and those that are produced on voter turnout (for example, by the 2017 British Election Study, Prosser et al. 2018a, b) are highly contested (for example, by Stewart et al. 2018; Sturgis and Jennings 2018) and with good reason. Young people’s political participation, however, cannot and should not be reduced to putting a cross in a box on a ballot paper from time to time. There has been a diversification and multiplication of non-electoral forms of political participation and protest led by young people, which is enabled and aided by digital technologies. Many of these practices can be summed up as DIO politics (Do-It-Ourselves) political participation. In this book, I attempt to unpack and give a more nuanced analysis of the exciting subject of young people, political participation and protest in Britain in the twenty-first century.

Summary of Book Chapters

This book is divided into three parts that together attempt to provide the reader with a robust theoretical and practical understanding of the nature of young people’s involvement in politics and protest within historical contextualisations. The first part discusses key concepts and theoretical frameworks in the study of young people and political participation. The second part examines young people and political participation in relation to elections and political parties. The third part deals with young people, political participation and protest beyond electoral behaviour. Each chapter deals with a specific aspect of young people’s political participation and protest in the twenty-first century in Britain. Most issues apply to all advanced democracies and examples are given from around the world.

The first part of the book examines the significant but also often nebulous language, terms, concepts and debates that are prominent in studies about young people and politics. I offer an interdisciplinary approach in an effort to provide an insightful and well-rounded account of the scholarly tools that are employed within different theoretical frameworks.

Chapter 2 discusses ‘young people’, the main protagonists of this book for whom there is no clear-cut or absolute definition. The ambiguity is first due to differing scientific approaches to the study of young people in Youth Studies, Sociology and Political Science, as well as in Education Studies, Psychology and Health Studies. The situation is further complicated by the extension of the ‘transition’ from childhood to adulthood. Difficulties also stem from the contradictory age boundaries from legal, sociological and political perspectives about when someone is a child, a young person or an adult. This chapter lays out the importance of language, terminology and concepts when writing about young people generally and concerning their political participation more specifically. First, I explain whom I mean when talking about young people underlining the importance of avoiding essentialism and taking into account intragenerational differences. The chapter then discusses the inconsistent legislative boundaries surrounding young people. I provide a detailed account of legal thresholds, rights and responsibilities according to age in the United Kingdom. I then track the development of words, expressions and labels used to denominate young people, such as adolescents, teenagers, youngsters, youths, followed by generational labels, such as Millennials and Generation Z. I argue that it is preferable to avoid these types of stereotypes when referring to young people within the context of political participation because it is simplistic language, which is often associated with essentialism and negative portrayals of young people in the media and unhelpful generalisations that can increase intergenerational divisions. However, some generational terms can be used in meaningful ways to describe socio-economic contexts imposed on young people or when referring to political generations. I then explain why it is vital not to lump all young people together into a homogeneous block or age group. I underline that it is important to consider intragenerational differences based on sociological variables, which all have an impact on life experiences, life chances and political participation. While young people are exposed to certain historic events at the same age (as a cohort) they live them differently. Last the chapter looks at the inconsistent range of age brackets used to define young people in opinion polls and studies. The chapter concludes by emphasising the importance of using neutral language when discussing young people and not viewing them as a homogeneous group or generation.

Chapter 3 focuses on the nebulous term ‘political participation’, in order to provide a holistic understanding of what is involved in theory and in practice. The way political participation is defined, measured and analysed informs interpretations of young people’s engagement in politics and how young citizens are considered. The chapter takes into account differing academic approaches to understanding political participation especially in relation to young people. First, the chapter provides definitions of political participation in general since the 1960s and then explanations of the different quantitative and qualitative theoretical frameworks in Political Science and Political Sociology regarding the study of young people and political participation. I argue that definitions of political participation are both ‘period sensitive’ and ‘beholder sensitive’. The chapter goes on to provide a substantial literature review and critical assessment of definitions of political participation and I suggest an inclusive definition that encompasses the wide variety of ways young people are acting politically. Next, I list and discuss the numerous binary classifications of political participation. I advocate going beyond the most subjective oppositional ways of thinking about political participation, such as ‘conventional’/‘unconventional’ and ‘traditional’/‘untraditional’. While convenient, some of these binary descriptions are anachronistic in the twenty-first century. It can be more useful to employ more objective terms, such as electoral and non-electoral repertoires of political participation, which are used in this book. The chapter finishes by documenting how political participation has expanded over the past decades, through creative and imaginative means instigated by young people, especially with the advent of social media. I argue that increasingly, young people’s political participation takes the form of what I call DIO politics (Do-It-Ourselves political participation), whereby young people are collectively rejuvenating political participation and the repertoire of political action outside formal political institutions.

Chapter 4 explores four key enduring notions frequently employed in discussions about the political participation of young people: the life cycle effect, the period effect, the generational effect (also called the cohort effect) and the ‘youth vote’. The life cycle effect refers to the evolution of political concerns and behaviour, as a person goes through ‘life stages’. ‘The period effect’ is described as the impact of the specific socio-economic and political milieu during one’s political socialisation (generally youth and early adulthood). An extension of the period effect is the generational effect, where members of a cohort are affected by the ambient environment in which they are politically socialised, and this is carried forward as they age and is reinforced by collective memory and rituals. The slippery term the ‘youth vote’ is frequently employed when referring to young people’s electoral participation in opposition to the ‘grey vote’. I argue that it is certainly convenient to talk about the ‘youth vote’, however, such handy labels are generalisations that lump together all different kinds of young people and suggest they all have the same political interests and behaviour, which is certainly not the case (nor is it the case for older citizens). The chapter first provides definitions and detailed explanations of the life cycle effect, the period effect and the generational effect. I then discuss these three notions in relation to political awareness and political interest. I go on to examine critically their validity regarding political party identification and affiliation, membership of political parties and networks, electoral registration and electoral participation. I argue these concepts can be helpful and they have some heuristic value, but they are also rather deterministic by suggesting young people passively experience or undergo events rather than being actors with agency. The notion of a ‘youth vote’ is then examined and discussed pertaining to policy issues and manifesto pledges. Last, I study the potential roles of the political life cycle effect, the period effect, the generational effect and the so-called ‘youth vote’ in the 2016 referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU and the 2017 General Election, as well as implications for the future political participation of young people.

Chapter 5 addresses important questions about young people as citizens, citizenship and Citizenship Education that are fundamental to the study of political participation. It first identifies the various definitions of citizenship and the main theories of citizenship. I argue that people are born citizens and that they do not become citizens at an arbitrary age, such as 10, 16 or 18 or 21 as dictated by legislation. The chapter goes on to trace the history of lobbying for ‘civics education’, the attempts to bring about greater ‘political literacy’ of young people and the promotion of ‘active citizenship’ in British schools, in an effort to create ‘good citizens’ who vote. I contend these raise crucial sociological, political and philosophical questions about how young people are regarded by those working in political institutions. The chapter then documents the introduction of Citizenship Education by the Labour government in 2002, in response to the all-time low in electoral turnout among young people the previous year, related fears of an impending democratic deficit, as well as a perceived rise in ‘anti-social behaviour’ among young people. I go on to identify and analyse criticisms levelled at Citizenship Education, including the lack of funding and governmental commitment, the normative and prescriptive nature of the school curriculum, and the political will to change young people rather than change politics.

The second part of the book focuses on the theme that tends to dominate studies on young people and political participation, i.e. electoral behaviour, in relation to engagement (or not) with political parties, voter registration, voting behaviour, lowering the voting age, elections and referendums, as well as youth wings and student wings of political parties. It provides both historical and up-to-date statistics and analysis of young people and elections in Britain.

Chapter 6 examines the relationship between young people and political parties. It starts with an analysis of political party identification, affiliation, partisanship, attachment and membership among young people by referring to the available data. The effect of Britain’s two-party system, where smaller parties that gain a higher proportion of their votes from young people (such as the Green Party) are penalised is also considered. The voting behaviour of young people from 1997 to 2017 is shown through a series of tables. The chapter then explores the declining reputation of traditional politicians and the betrayal of trust many young people feel in respect to politics and politicians. This was especially the case after the MPs’ expenses scandal in 2009, which was quickly followed by the Liberal Democrat U-turn on scrapping annual university tuition fees in 2010 and the introduction of several ‘youth-unfriendly’ policies within the context of austerity implemented by the Coalition and Conservative Governments. I ask to what extent political parties and politicians aim to appeal to young people as a specific demographic group via inauthentic attempts to look modern, youthful and in touch with them by association with celebrities, i.e. ‘youth gloss’ and through deliberate ‘youth-friendly’ policies to improve young citizens’ circumstances.

Chapter 7 gives comprehensive analysis of youth wings and student wings of mainstream political parties that are generally overlooked in the study of young people and politics. Youth wings are intended to cater for young people who identify with a particular political party, but who are too young to join the ‘parent party’, or who cannot afford to join it, or who prefer to be a member of an organisation for young people (for social and/or political reasons). The current incarnations of youth and student wings of the main political parties in Britain are Independent Youth, Labour Students, Plaid Ifanc, SNP Students, UKIP Students, Young Conservatives, Young Greens, Young Labour, Young Liberals and Young Scots. The chapter traces the creation and historical background to the youth and student wings of each of the main parties, in order to better comprehend their different origins and traditions. Changes to names and structures have usually occurred when the parent party has wanted to transform the image of the youth wing and/or the relationship between the youth sections and the parent party. I then analyse the numerous social and political roles fulfilled by youth wings and student wings within the political landscape, especially at election time. I argue that political parties tend to keep their youth wings at arm’s length and deny them any real input or power, thereby depriving political parties of an important political critical mass of young activists with vital implications in the short and long term. The chapter closes with an analysis of often uncoordinated and underfinanced political communication methods employed by youth wings and student wings in general elections through social media.

Chapter 8 deals with the much-scrutinised issue of young people and voting; it provides a substantial amount of data on their electoral behaviour. The chapter presents the contested data on electoral participation emanating from different sources. I argue that much of the available data is very problematic and I reveal the main weaknesses, in relation to sampling and analysing. The chapter documents through a series of tables how the electoral participation rate for young people steadily declined from the early 1970s onwards, reaching particularly low levels in the 2001 and 2005 General Elections, especially among marginalised young people from deprived BME backgrounds. Turnout subsequently increased, most notably in the 2017 General Election associated with the so-called ‘youthquake’. The chapter then addresses the apathy and alienation explanations for lower turnout rates among young people. Next, I point out the numerous reasons why the registration rates and electoral participation rates of young people tend to be lower than older members of the electorate. I argue that many structural, supply-side, practical and administrative barriers operate to exclude young people from participating in elections, in relation to voter registration, the voting process and the wider political environment. Attempts to increase registration and turnout of young people are then documented before seventy-five potential ways to boost participation in elections are mentioned, in order to prevent their exclusion and underrepresentation. This is followed by data on young people’s participation in the 2016 ‘Brexit’ referendum.

Chapter 9 explores the vibrant debate around the voting age and the enfranchisement of 16- and 17-year-olds. This encompasses fundamental questions concerning citizenship and the ambivalent social status of young people and how they are viewed by politicians, by the mainstream media and by the population more generally. I note how in 2014 the Scottish Parliament enfranchised 16- and 17-year-olds for the independence of Scotland referendum and in 2018 the National Assembly for Wales decided to lower the voting age for Welsh elections. But the House of Commons in Westminster did not enfranchise 16- and 17-year-olds for the 2016 referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU, or for the 2017 General Election. This chapter examines both sides of the highly topical argument about enfranchising 16- and 17-year-olds in all public elections and referendums. I explore the fundamental questions surrounding young people, enfranchisement, candidacy age, voting age and debates about lowering the voting age to 16. The chapter first documents evolutions in enfranchisement through the centuries in the UK (see Table 9.​1) and draws comparisons with other nations. Next, it details the main arguments expressed for and against reducing the voting age both inside and outside Parliament. These include recommendations from the Electoral Commission, the Votes at 16 campaign and academic analyses. Last, the chapter summarises the main points of contention in respect to lowering the voting in recent years, with reference to the Scottish independence referendum, the 2016 ‘Brexit’ referendum and the growing focus on lowering the voting age following the 2017 General Election.

Chapter 10 offers an in-depth analysis of the 2017 General Election and the ‘youthquake’ narrative that emerged in a bid to describe increased political interest, participation, engagement and activism of young people in Britain. This chapter explains why the 2017 General Election was propitious to engage young people in electoral politics and it underlines important intragenerational differences based on gender, level of education and social grade or class. The chapter starts by outlining the background to the 2017 vote and I argue that the seeds of the shift towards increased electoral participation and engagement in politics among young people were sown in 2014 with the referendum on independence of Scotland when the Scottish Parliament allowed 16 and 17 to vote and the EU membership referendum in 2016 on an issue close to many young people’s hearts. I then provide quantitative and qualitative explanations for the increase in political participation of young people in the 2017 General Election in terms of ‘push and pull factors’ related to people, policies, political parties and political communication. In this way, I analyse the general election campaign, the performance of the leaders of the two main parties (Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn) in an increasingly presidential environment. I provide a detailed analysis of the party manifestos ‘youth-friendly’ and ‘youth-unfriendly’ pledges. Then I discuss the political communication strategies that were employed. Last, the chapter addresses in more detail the contested statistics on electoral turnout and the ‘youthquake’ that did indeed occur in young people’s political participation.

The third and last part of the book opens the door to the subject of non-electoral forms of political participation and protest, which mostly bypass formal political institutions and constitute frequently what I call ‘DIO politics’ (Do-It-Ourselves).

Chapter 11 deals with the relationship between young people and trade unions within the workplace, which is frequently omitted in studies of political participation. In twenty-first century Britain, the labour market and the work environment are particularly difficult for young people experiencing precarity. However, young workers have by far lower rates of unionism than older workers (see Table 11.​1). I argue that due to deindustrialisation, anti-union legislation and a lack of focus, trade unions are underperforming in their potential to engage and support young workers and are thus disserving young workers. This chapter examines the paradox of lower union membership rates among young people. The chapter first provides the background to falling rates of union membership and the available data. I then proffer explanations for the decline of young workers joining a trade union in recent years in relation to unfavourable structural factors, often ineffective trade unions and the lived experiences of young people. Lastly, I suggest some changes trade unions could make in order to be in a better position to protect young workers and encourage them to participate in intergenerational unionism.

Chapter 12 documents and explains how the political participation of young people has evolved and is increasingly operating outside the realms of traditional organisations, such as political parties. Many young people are turning to non-electoral forms of political participation because they are disaffected with electoral politics. I argue that many of these practices carried out by young political entrepreneurs can be summed up by what I call ‘DIO politics’ (Do-It-Ourselves), i.e. political participation that operates outside the electoral politics at the instigation of young people often through social media. In this way, participants bypass electorally focused political structures and take initiatives on a community, local, national or global scale. New forms of political collectives have been created that attempt to be inclusive and non-hierarchical. These typically leaderless political networks tend to function horizontally rather than vertically in a bid for internal democracy; they can spread globally via word of mouth and digital technologies. The chapter first explores the key concepts that are helpful to understand young people and non-electoral political participation, such as post-materialist values, everyday makers, standby citizens, lifestyle politics, political consumerism, boycotting and buycotting (see Table 12.​1), issue-based politics, identity politics and personalised political participation. I then define DIO politics and provide illustrations of how young people as part of connected communities and networks are reinventing non-electoral collective political participatory practices through creative and mindful means facilitated by digital technologies, which can have an impact on governmental policies.

Chapter 13 examines young people’s political protest, in order to provide a clear account of the place of dissent in the British political landscape. Most political protest and dissent in twenty-first-century Britain has been youth-led and young people have also been active participants in many of the protest actions that are growing in number in Britain. Increasingly, protests are no longer being organised through traditional structures and channels of expression; instead new, leaderless and fluid networks operating horizontally offline and online are mobilising young people who have been at the forefront of attempts to achieve social progress. I note how the arrival of digital technologies has facilitated the organisation, mobilisation and participation in such structures, as well as the tactics used in the repertoire of political protest. I argue that the internet has democratised dissent, but at the same time, young people’s political participation can be repressed through new media due to surveillance tactics and this has important implications for democratic practises. The chapter offers an overview of youth-led protests in Britain since the 1950s, thereby providing a historical context for recent protest actions with a summary of the main protest marches (see Table 13.​1). I then document how young people as a new precariat and environmentally aware citizens have been energetic participants in the century twenty-first century, contesting local, national and international issues, such as environmental degradation, social injustices and austerity as part of a global youth-led wave of protest.

Chapter 14 deals with developments in State mechanisms to repress dissent in Britain. Successive governments have sought to prevent and criminalise young people’s dissent as part of a securitisation process that involves restrictive legislation, forceful policing and increased monitoring of protesters. This has created legislative, physical, psychological and electronic barriers to protest. The chapter documents the growth in the political repression of dissent in Britain involving the implementation of authoritarian legislation (see Table 14.​1) and the use of certain policing practices that seeks to quieten young voices. I first provide a synopsis of changes to the legislative framework regarding protests. I then document the militarisation of policing tools, methods and strategies. This is followed by a discussion on the impact of repressive measures on public protest and mainstream media representations of young protesters that inevitably affect the mobilisation of young people in their democratic right to protest.

In brief, through the chapters in this book, I try to loop the loop by linking up youth policy, young people’s political participation, youth-led protests and political reactions to young citizen’s engagement in its various electoral and non-electoral forms. I advocate a nuanced and interdisciplinary approach to the study of young people and political participation, which acknowledges that ‘not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted’ (Cameron 1963, p. 13). Young people are citizens with political agency expressed in diverse forms and this needs to be acknowledged by the political elite. It is also important to take into account intragenerational differences and not to make generalisations about young people. We need to understand and remove barriers to political participation that starts by paying attention to the language we use, listening to young people and recognising their specific circumstances. All this comes at a crossroads in the political landscape of contemporary Britain, which has revealed that when young people are taken seriously and are considered citizens and are included in formal political debate, they do vote and take part in the vital democratic process of elections. Young people can be engaged electorally, but they are also engaged outside the boundaries of institutional politics in creative and collective new ways, which are embedded in their lives, requiring engagement and commitment. Together they form a virtuous circle of citizenship, political participation and engagement, including avoiding plastic, going vegan, volunteering and voting, These varied youthful political actions need to be acknowledged and understood, which is what this book is all about.

This book is aimed at students, academics and researchers within the areas of Youth Studies, Sociology, Political Sociology and Political Science, as well as Education and Psychology and Social Policy. Politicians may also benefit from reading it.

***

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