"Change is Coming": Imagined Futures, Optimism and Pessimism Among Youth Climate Protesters

Abstract

In recent years, two unrelated developments have opened up new opportunities for examining how young people relate to climate change and participate in climate politics. First, there is a fast-growing literature in sociology and youth studies concerned with the roles of imagined futures in social action. Second, and more recent, is an explosion of youth-based climate activism, particularly the Fridays For Future movement. In this paper, I draw from in-depth interviews with participants in the Fridays For Future protests in London in Spring 2019, arguing that in this case of youth mobilization, protesters relied on shared, overarching narratives about the future of climate change, albeit ones that allow room for some divergence in opinion. In particular, I examine how regular involvement in the movement influenced participants’ imagined futures. Drawing from studies of similar issues by Kleres and Wettergren (2017) and Threadgold (2012), and from the phenomenological concept of “orientation” (Ahmed, 2005; Carabelli and Lyon, 2016), I argue that regular and repeated participation in climate activism engenders optimism among youth. This opens new ways of thinking about the relationship between political action and young people’s anticipations of climate change, with implications for scholarship of imagined futures, youth politics and climate politics.