Changing Political Participation

Abstract

In the last chapter, we pointed to gaps in the literature on political participation and electoral engagement in relation to ethnic minority young people. We referred to the often cited view that ethnic minority young people are less likely to be engaged in electoral politics than other young people or ethnic minority groups generally. We suggested, however, that the data on this are rather inconclusive — particularly in relation to the intersections between age and ethnicity and religion in analyses of electoral turnouts. We also noted that running alongside such perceptions, there has been a series of highly pathologising crisis narratives on ethnic minority young people focused on criminalisation, educational attainment, urban disorders, failed integration, generational conflicts or more recently political radicalisation. In this chapter, we argue that there is a need for more direct engagement with the political perspectives of ethnic minority young people themselves, that our view of political participation should extend beyond electoral turnouts, and look wider than conventional, or violent extremist, forms of politics to take account of the range of forms of activism in which young people engage and the issues and concerns that animate their political activism. We argue that these issues stand in particular need of empirical investigation.