Are Young People Engaged in New and DIY Citizenship Activities? - Preliminary Results of Original Research with Year 8-10 Students from a German Secondary School

This paper focuses on the research questions: (1) How do Year 8-10 students perceive citizenship?, (2a) Which citizenship activities at school and in communities are Year 8-10 students part of? and (2b) Can these activities be characterised as new and DIY? By exploring these questions, the paper contributes to the debate on changing citizenship activities and provides insights into modes and contexts of new and DIY citizenship activities and whether the young people in this sample are engaged in them. Based on a review of current theories, models and empirical research from Germany and beyond, seven contexts for young people’s citizenship were identified to guide data collection. These contexts are private, individual, online, issues based, system-critical, infrequent and ‘glocal’. Original data was collected at a German secondary school from Year 8-10 students and teachers in form of 11 student focus groups, 150 student questionnaire responses and 10 teacher interviews. Strategies to achieve validity included using a combination of data analysis instruments, such as open coding, concept-driven coding and constant comparison analysis as well as triangulating data from focus groups, questionnaire and interviews. In addition, results are reported by means of thick description to increase transparency. This paper extends previously conducted research by focussing on new contexts for citizenship, using a wide definition of citizenship activities as well as using qualitative data collection instruments, designed to understand participants’ perceptions via open questions and analysing narratives. Preliminary findings suggest that in terms of good citizenship, participants particularly value obeying rules, voluntary work, protecting the environment and being critical towards politicians. The empirical data also suggests that participants identify with Westheimer and Kahne’s personally responsible and participatory citizen as well as Bennett’s self-actualising citizen. Evidence suggests participants engage in a range of DIY citizenship activities, characterised by being individual, situated in their everyday lives and with the purpose to fill a gap in their communities or at school. Participants’ citizenship activities can also be described as private, online, related to arts, infrequent, and issues based. Volunteering, particularly with children and in sports, music and church clubs was also an important aspect of participants’ citizenship activities, while similarly formal organisational involvement in political parties was not taken up by participants. Analyses are continuing to consider the nature of engagement in relation to forms of political activism that are referred to in some published work.