Political Socialisation of Contemporary Citizenship

What is citizenship? The question appears to have no simple solution. An agreement in political science is that there is not only one meaning of citizenship in our society. At least, literature recognizes three difference significance of citizenship; the citizen based on duty that is engaged with more institutional forms of political participation; the engaged citizen or critical citizen that tends to participate more in less institutional forms and political participation; and finally the skeptical citizens that are further removed from politics. Contemporary research observes growth of a critical citizen that is engaged with democratic values. But how these different meanings of citizenship could be observed in the same society? One possible theory is that different meanings of citizenship depend on political socialization of some key actors like family, pairs, school, media and social organizations. Particular attention will be paid to the individual background to explain their political engagement. The aim of this paper is to analyze political socialization of young adults with different levels of political engagement. The paper will be at the crossroad of social psychology and political science theory. In doing so, one hundred and ten interviews with young adults between 18 and 29 years old have been carried out in three South American countries. These countries have been characterized by an increase in the less institutional forms of political participation since the recovered democracy in the 1990 to date: Argentina, Chile and Uruguay. The interviews were conducted by the author of this paper and were focused on three groups of people citizens engaged in political parties, citizens engaged in social movements and social organizations, and citizens not politically engaged. First results show that different levels of political participation are related to different meanings of citizenship. Related to political socialization, a family politically engaged and a good civic education is important common factors present in based on duty citizens discourse. In opposition, skeptical citizens’ discourses have in common the fact of not having a politically engaged family and pairs or even have a family with a bad experience in politics. The analysis also shows that these skeptical citizens tend more to use the internet as a political reference. Finally, critical citizens seem to be more encouraged to challenge their social reality by someone who had illuminated their path at a decisive moment. Regardless the type of key actor (family, pair, professor or other), youth political engagement is related to being challenged by a significant person. This paper argues that some particular context has a higher and stronger tendency to educate a specific meaning of citizenship.