Call for Papers - A New Wave of Youth and Student Activism in Asia

Organizer: University at Albany, SUNY

Description:

For youth, especially undergraduate students, to play an important role in politics is not new across Asia. However, the character, modes, focus, and constituencies of such activism shift over time, and appear to have entered a new phase in recent years, across much of the region. Evolving political conditions have raised new challenges and opportunities for activists; rising rates of higher education, including through private rather than public institutions, have shifted the nature of the undergraduate student body; new platforms, media, and messages have engaged a wider range of youths and allowed new forms of domestic and cross-border collaboration; and both domestic and global crises have spurred mobilization. In many countries, such as Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand, new waves of student and youth activism have seized national and international political attention—in many cases after years and even decades of relative youth political quiescence and anemic participation in formal politics. We aim collaboratively to explore this new wave of student/youth activism, as it manifests within and across countries in the region, through a workshop and edited volume. 

The key questions that animate our inquiry, which all chapters should address, include:  

• What is distinctive about the current wave of youth and student activism, and what motivates it?

• To what extent are the new movements shaped by changes in political context, including regime change and democratic regression, as well as by broader economic, cultural, and educational shifts?

• What continuities and discontinuities do we see with past movements and traditions of student and youth activism?

• What tensions have emerged within movement sectors—for instance, over issues of sexual harassment or disparagement, competition for attention or resources, or ideological divides?

• How do youth and student movements, or segments thereof, align with other movements (labor, environmental, nationalist, etc.) and identities (ethnoreligious, queer, feminist, etc.), as well as with broadly left- or right-wing politics?

• What new or changed tropes carry especial weight in contemporary youth activism—for instance, related to issues of feminism, environmental justice, or sexuality

• What level of attention, and with what frames, has Asian youth and student activism garnered on social media and in domestic and international media outlets?

• How, and how well, do segments among young people coordinate, including tertiary and, in some cases, secondary students?

• What innovations have we seen in terms of the performative dimensions of youth and student activism, cultural expressions, or deployment of novel technologies for mobilization and voice? In particular, how have online forms of mobilization and meme culture shaped and been shaped by new forms of youth activism?

• What regional solidarity or linkages have developed—for instance, the Milk Tea Alliance or Islamist networks—and with what consequences?

• How have state and societal responses to youth and student activism evolved?

Application due by: April 30, 2023

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