An ideal activist in a privileged society

This presentation explores how narratives about privilege shapes both the aims and the modes participation of young Danish activists. Based on a qualitative study about motivations for youth activism, this study gives the backseat to the political agendas of the studied organizations. Inspired by researchers who argue that everyday micro actions and political agency should be seen as much more interwoven, introducing conceptualisations such as ‘everyday makers’ (Bang & Sørensen, 1999) and ‘lived citizenship’ (Lister, 2007; Walsh et al., 2018; Wood, 2014), this study focus on the underlying crosscutting normative ideals that guides how the activists internally negotiate and practice being activists.
The chapters draw on 14 group and 5 single interviews with 85 young people in their early or mid-twenties who can be defined as ‘very engaged’ at the time of the interview. They represent in 19 youth organizations selected to represent a variety in aims, forms and sizes. To identify modes of participation and motivations guiding the activist internal practices and negotiations, a cross-cutting abductive analysis of the whole empirical dataset was performed inspired by hermeneutics (Gilje, 2017) and thematic analysis (Schreier, 2012).
Findings indicate that, amidst a times of global crisis, the young danes still has strong perceptions of having privilege, which is defining for the ideals that guide how they negotiate and practice being a good activist. Three guiding ideals were identified: Firstly, activism should be motivated by using your privilege to make a difference for somebody or something outside yourself. Secondly, activists should be fully inclusive towards other young people’s possibility to join. Thirdly, collaboration and dialogue, also with adults, are an acceptable and pragmatic way to accomplish goals. The presentation will discuss how these ideals both reproduce societal discourses of being privileged and seems to form a new political agenda of equality and solidarity.