“So Much of My Very Soul”: How Youth Organizers’ Identity Projects Pave Agentive Pathways for Civic Engagement

Abstract

Neoliberal market logic positions youth as either commodities produced and marketed by private institutions or consumers for whose business those institutions are competing, a paradigm that narrows pathways for youth participation in civic and political institutions by restricting youth agency to participation in markets. However, youth organizing groups recast what we imagine as the public domain, how public institutions are governed, and who takes part in this governance. In this life histories study of youth organizers, the participants’ organizer identities occupied intellectual, emotional, social, and temporal space in their life worlds, mediating their agentive participation in an increasingly neoliberalized world. This article considers the implications of how youth involvement in social movements shapes identity and agency in a neoliberal sociopolitical context.