Marginalized (non)citizens: migrant youth political engagement, volunteering and performative citizenship in the context of Brexit

Abstract

Migrants’ opportunities for civic and political participation are often restricted by their legal rights. This paper reports on a study which included a survey with 1,120 young people aged 12–18 originally from Central and Eastern Europe, living in the UK, and follow-up focus groups with 122 participants. We examine young people’s views on political and non-political participation and their engagement in everyday performative citizenship. We found connections between civic participation and political participation, and both are conditioned by one’s sense of belonging to place and recognition of individual agency. Young people were interested and wanted to be involved in politics, yet they did not feel they could shape political decisions, unlike other forms of participation, such as volunteering and social activism. The study progresses existing knowledge on young people's exclusions from everyday performative citizenship, in the context of current public debates on youth engagement and young migrants’ integration.