Unruly kids? Conceptualizing and defending youth disobedience

Taking the ‘Fridays for Future’ movement as its starting point, this article conceptualizes and defends youth disobedience, understood as principled disobedience by legal minors. The article first argues that the school strike for climate can be viewed as civil disobedience. Then, the article distin...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inEuropean journal of political theory Vol. 21; no. 3; pp. 466 - 490
Main Author Mattheis, Nikolas
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published London, England SAGE Publications 01.07.2022
Sage Publications Ltd
Subjects
Adults
Children
Civil disobedience
Political participation
Youth
school strikes
civil disobedience
Fridays for Future
Children
democratic participation
resistance
youth
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Summary:Taking the ‘Fridays for Future’ movement as its starting point, this article conceptualizes and defends youth disobedience, understood as principled disobedience by legal minors. The article first argues that the school strike for climate can be viewed as civil disobedience. Then, the article distinguishes between various forms of youth disobedience (according to whether they involve child-specific issues or actions). Building on the democratic rationale for civil disobedience, the remainder of the article argues that there is a special justification for youth disobedience. To show this, it argues that children are wrongfully excluded from political participation and that principled law-breaking can be an important remedy to this exclusion. The upshot is that adults should engage seriously and leniently with youth disobedience.
ISSN:1474-8851
1741-2730
DOI:10.1177/1474885120918371