Rethinking Youth Activism: An Introduction to Contemporary Transformations in Repertoires, Democracy, and Methods of Engagement

Youth have long been at the forefront of social protest, from the student uprisings of the 1960s to today's climate strikes. Throughout the last years, as well as in the last decades, young generations have pushed democratization struggles worldwide, yet in some cases a shrinking attachment to democratic values may also contribute to decreasing democratic resilience. Understanding how young cohorts view democracy and whether they become active are crucial questions for the survival of democratic societies. However, the very meaning of youth activism, as well as its methods, repertoires, and visibility, is undergoing rapid transformation. Contemporary generations approach activism not only as street mobilization, but also as digital performance, lifestyle choice, and transnational solidarity practice. These changing repertoires challenge traditional understandings of what it means to be politically engaged and of how democracies integrate their citizens. This paper, which lays the conceptual ground for a special issue on youth participation in democratic as well as non-democratic societies, advances a novel perspective: We reconceptualize youth activism not as a question of rising or declining participation, but as the reconfiguration of democratic agency under conditions of temporal uncertainty, affective polarization, and authoritarian pressure. Rather than focusing on whether young people participate, we examine how they relocate, transform, and sustain democratic agency when institutional trust erodes, political futures become uncertain, and repression reshapes the risks of visibility. In our contribution, we address four interrelated questions, hierarchically organized to move from subjective meaning-making to methodological innovation. First, how do young people themselves understand activism today? We explore the interpretive frameworks through which youth define political engagement across different regime contexts, examining how generational self-understanding shapes activist identities. Second, what new methods of engagement characterize their participation? We analyze emerging repertoires that blend physical and digital spaces, from leaderless horizontal movements to hybrid protest platforms that enable both mobilization and protection in repressive contexts. Third, in which way does contemporary youth activism relate to democracy and established frameworks of democratic institutions? We interrogate whether new forms of engagement signal democratic renewal or disengagement, and how they challenge or reinforce institutional participation. Fourth, how can scholarship reconceptualize and measure youth activism in light of these transformations? We address the pressing methodological challenge that established indicators of political participation fail to capture emerging forms of expression, organization, and dissent. Our framework draws on insights from network theory, affective politics, and comparative democratization to theorize youth activism as a dynamic process of agency reconfiguration rather than a static set of practices. By centering young people's own understandings of activism, the collection reveals how contemporary youth are not simply declining (or increasing) in political participation but are fundamentally redefining what democratic agency means in an era of global crisis, technological transformation, and authoritarian resurgence. The paper thus contributes both conceptual and methodological innovations to the study of youth politics, offering new analytical tools for scholars examining democratic engagement under conditions of uncertainty and repression.