Search results

In this chapter, we explore a form of young people’s activism taking place in a central societal institution and a central forum in the lives of young people – school – that we conceptualise as ‘active equity’. We present three cases from northern Finland: reindeer herders smashing potatoes, immigrant youth requesting a key and young people lying on sofas during breaks between lessons. We suggest that these acts, in the contexts in which they took place, were an unrecognised form of social action for equity undertaken by young people. We argue that the concept of active equity helps examine the assertion of rights and claims for justice by children and young people. In each case we present, young people make visible an inequity in their contexts: the reindeer herding way of life was overlooked in school, asylum-seeking or refugee immigrants were excluded from the main school building, and non-high-performing young people were excluded from comfortable areas during lessons. These, in turn, linked to broader societal inequities in Finland, a country commonly known for its equality. In school, young people are commonly viewed through intersecting discourses of democracy and education. In both discourses, they are commonly positioned as learners rather than speakers. Through active equity, young people subtly imprint themselves on the scene of education in new ways. For this reason, their acts of active equity remain typically either unrecognised or seen as oppositional in school.

This opening chapter of the edited volume, Childhood, Youth and Activism: Demands for Rights and Justice from Young People and Their Advocates, explores activism and advocacy – by and for children and young people. It begins by considering how activism has been understood in the scholarly literature, before making a case for a broad and inclusive conceptualisation of what counts as this particular form of social action. Relatedly, it examines the contours of the relationship between activism and advocacy, drawing attention to the ways in which these concepts converge, an issue that is particularly salient when applied to the categories of child and youth. Themes that emerge in research on child and youth activism are then drawn out and we identify some of the key issues that animate this work across various disciplines. These include observations that young people have long been central to social movements, the role of social media in youth activism, the nature of child and adult relationships in social movement organisations, and some of the issues that arise for young activists in relation to intersectional identities. To this we add debates regarding the politics of recognition, questions of voice and agency, and responsibility and their temporal registers. This discussion also foreshadows themes that emerge in the chapters across this volume. Finally, we offer a reflection on some of the conceptual issues raised when considering the book in its entirety, including those of voice, responsibility for the future, the politics of possibility and hope, and the many different forms and practices that activism and advocacy for and by young people take.

This chapter traces the rise of narrative research as a method and form of inquiry in the field of education. While the work mainly focuses on the increased use of narrative in Finland, the fact of the matter is that the interpretative turn, which some call the narrative turn, has spread throughout the world and into almost every disciplinary area of study (medicine, law, religion, etc.). ISATT members internationally have played a key role in its development. The authors of this chapter claim that narrative not only instantiates people’s knowledge, experiences, and situations but also changes their lives. They aver that this constitutes the transformational power of narrative research and forms the essence of why it is being drawn in from the margins and gaining acceptance in mainstream discourse and society.