Democratically Engaged Youth: Countering the Framing and Containing of Youth in Popular Discourses

Abstract

Youth is an unstable demographic encompassing an increasing age range, and popularly imbued with innate negative characteristics. Youth are often negatively portrayed and youth status invoked to suggest an inability to responsibly engage as citizens in order to undermine the impact of youths’ positive political participation. They are constructed as violent, lacking positive coping skills, and apathetic. These negative constructions reinforce youth as on the margins of society, unable to responsibly participate as citizens. Despite popular negative portrayals some researchers have demonstrated the many ways youth are politically and socially engaged. Youth are engaged where they find meaning and feel they can have an impact. From organized activism through transformational resistance, and participatory action research projects youth are engaging in creative ways to shape the world they live in.