Upper-Class Youth Activism: A Systematic Mapping Review of the Literature

Abstract

The socioeconomic status (SES) of youths is known to have a significant bearing on their political subjectivities, including their motivations, approaches, and strategies around engaging in political activities. This makes high-SES youth activism a unique subfield of inquiry within the broader field of youth social movement. To document the state of the art, considering both the dominant theoretical and methodological approaches as well as topical issues in the field, we undertook a structured review of relevant extant literature. The results show, though the field is underpinned by a wide array of theories and methods, that there are still few theoretical or methodological innovations that exist to address the specificities of high-SES youth activism. The review also uncovers a growing research interest in understanding the pedagogical implications of the participation of high-SES youth in social and political action aimed at effectively addressing social inequities more widely and examining class reproduction in such activism.