Young People Shaping Democratic Politics: Interrogating Inclusion, Mobilising Education 3031293770, 9783031293771

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Young People Shaping Democratic Politics Interrogating Inclusion, Mobilising Education Edited by Ian Rivers · C. Laura Lovin

Young People Shaping Democratic Politics

Ian Rivers · C. Laura Lovin Editors

Young People Shaping Democratic Politics Interrogating Inclusion, Mobilising Education

Editors Ian Rivers University of Strathclyde Glasgow, UK

C. Laura Lovin Independent Scholar Glasgow, UK

Dr C. Laura Lovin’s work on this volume was funded by a Leverhulme Trust Research Project Grant (ECF-2017-175) ISBN 978-3-031-29377-1 ISBN 978-3-031-29378-8 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29378-8 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to all the contributors of this collection of works who have given so generously of their time in drafting their chapters. The chapters demonstrate the diversity of scholarship in the field of political movements of young people and demonstrate how narratives that suggest youth apathy when it comes to politics are misplaced. We would also like to thank Rob Wannerton for assisting us with the final drafts of the chapters, ensuring that references were in order. There is always a great deal to do in preparing final drafts for submission and this has been a collective effort on the part of the chapter authors and those who have provided us with additional support.

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Contents

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Introduction Ian Rivers and C. Laura Lovin

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Black Youth Activism Was Pivotal to the Civil Right Movement: How Black Lives Matter Is Inspiring Education Activists of Today Wanda J. Blanchett and Shelley D. Zion

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Political Participation of Young People in Serbia: Activities, Values, and Capability Dragan Stanojevi´c, Jelisaveta Vukeli´c, and Aleksandar Tomaševi´c The 2018 Road Safety Protest in Bangladesh: How a Student Crowd Challenged (or Could not Challenge) the Repressive State Nafisa Tanjeem and Rawshan E. Fatima From the Streets to the Campus: The Institutionalization of Youth Anti-Sexual Harassment Activism in Post-Coup Egypt Susana Galán and Angie Abdelmonem

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When David Defeats Goliath. The Case of MeToo University: The Solidarity Network of Victims of Gender-Based Violence in Universities Gemma Geis, Patricia Melgar, and Ana Vidu

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Practising Sectarianism: Lebanese Youth Politics and the Complexity of Youth Political Engagement Elinor Bray-Collins Interrogating Vulnerability Within the University: A Case Study of Undocumented/DACAmented Students at a Jesuit Institution Anna Sampaio and Jesica Siham Fernández Making Visible Intersectional Black Pain: Embodied Activism and Affective Communities in Recent South African Youth Movements Grant Andrews

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Existential Activism: The Complex Contestations of Trans Youth Mary Hawkesworth

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Critical Literacies and the Conditions of Decolonial Possibility Navan Govender

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Conclusion: International Perspectives on Youth Political Mobilisations Ian Rivers and C. Laura Lovin

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Index

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List of Contributors

Angie Abdelmonem Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA Grant Andrews University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa Wanda J. Blanchett Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA Elinor Bray-Collins Humber College, Toronto, ON, Canada Rawshan E. Fatima Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA Jesica Siham Fernández Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, CA, USA Susana Galán Dimmons Research Group, IN3, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain Gemma Geis University of Girona, Girona, Catalonia, Spain Navan Govender University of Strathclyde, GLASGOW, UK Mary Hawkesworth Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA C. Laura Lovin Independent Scholar, GLASGOW, Scotland, UK Patricia Melgar University of Girona, Girona, Catalonia, Spain Ian Rivers University of Strathclyde, GLASGOW, Scotland, UK Anna Sampaio Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, CA, USA

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LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

Dragan Stanojevi´c University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia Nafisa Tanjeem Worcester State University, Worcester, MA, USA Aleksandar Tomaševi´c University of Novi Sad, Novi Sad, Serbia Ana Vidu University of California, Berkeley, USA; University of Deusto, Basque Country, Spain Jelisaveta Vukeli´c University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia Shelley D. Zion Rowan University, Glassboro, NJ, USA

List of Figures

Fig. 3.1 Fig. 9.1

Fig. 11.1

Conventional and unconventional participation for two age groups (Source ESS, IX round Serbian population) Chumani Maxwele throwing excrement at a statue of Rhodes Image: © David Ritchie/African News Agency (2018) Visual components in the multimodal grammar of power

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List of Tables

Table 3.1 Table 3.2 Table 3.3 Table 11.1

Theoretical scales—Descriptive statistics Logistic regression models for conventional politics (young people 15–30 years old) Logistic regression models for non-conventional politics (young people 15–30 years old) A multimodal grammar of power

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction Ian Rivers and C. Laura Lovin

For several years, there were suggestions that children and young people were disinterested in politics because of numerous studies linked to voter turnout. Voter apathy among younger age groups was assumed to represent a greater ambivalence toward politics among children and young people. Yet, for nearly fifty years, researchers have shown that children and young people engage with political messages, sometimes from a very early age. The contributors of this volume go beyond theorizing what is wrong with the exclusion of youth politics from the scholarly and public debate in order to explore ways that disrupt these exclusions. In this process, they drew on feminism, anti-racist thought and critical race theory, legal theory, anti-colonial and decolonial theories and methodologies, critical pedagogy, trans* theories and critiques of heteronormativity, feminist theory, and transnational methodologies. This

I. Rivers University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland, UK e-mail: [email protected] C. L. Lovin (B) Independent Scholar, Glasgow, UK e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 I. Rivers and C. L. Lovin (eds.), Young People Shaping Democratic Politics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29378-8_1

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diverse scope is intentional and necessary. Through innovative analytical approaches that span the continuum of qualitative and quantitative research, the volume calls for the recognition of grievances, tactics, strategies, politics, and visions for change that are not readily legible. In doing so, our volume simultaneously attends to the material-discursive conditions that lead to the depoliticization of youth or their incorporation in status-quo politics in order to set the scene for engaging with young people’s political thought, actions, and visions for social change. We sought to expand our own engagement with inclusion beyond educational institutions by situating young people at the center of our inquiry, as agents of political processes that promote, problematize, and re-imagine inclusive societies. Together with our contributors, we have been motivated by our conviction that young people’s political worlds are essential yet often neglected when theorizing power, agency, ideology, inequality, citizenship, democracy, social movements, and transformation. Last but not least, the theoretical and methodological diversity of the volume is intricately connected to the volume’s geographical scope and the development of individual movements endemic to particular socio-cultural spaces, even when traversed by global discursive currents, geopolitical vectors, and global political economies. The most important themes of this book include racism, patriarchy, colonialism, cis-genderism, heteronormativity, classism, nationalism, neoliberal capitalism and/or old and new colonialisms—and the ways they intersect with ageism, thus interweaving dynamic assemblages of forces that shape young people’s life realities. During 2015 and 2016, the editor of this volume (Ian Rivers), along with colleagues in the US, undertook a cross-cultural study of children’s and young people’s engagement with political narratives during the 2015 UK general election and the 2016 US presidential election (see Rivers et al., 2018). Rivers et al. (2018) found that discussions among children and young people in primary/elementary school and junior high/high school in both countries focused on three core themes: the trustworthiness of political candidates, the promotion of equal rights, and narratives surrounding immigration. In both UK and US schools, children and young people were able to recall a great many negative campaign messages and only a few positive ones. Issues relating to immigration were often confused with racism and there was little in the way of curricula space at school to unpack these meaningfully. Ultimately, Rivers and his colleagues argued that it was important for children and young people to have spaces where they could explore and interrogate political

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messages in meaningful ways, but they also suggested that a corollary of this was the acceptance by educators (and the institutions to which they belong) that their own political positions would, at times, be challenged. This book explores the ways some of those challenges have been made— both in educational institutions and in wider society—by young people, often student activists, seeking affirmation and change. A key innovation in this volume is the inclusion of a section for key terms and a pedagogical feature at the end of each chapter. Each pedagogical feature is presented in a way that can be used in the classroom to better understand how young people make decisions, mobilize and participate politically. It also enables readers to develop comparative observations among the young people’s political interventions profiled, which span a variety of arenas across the globe. In Chapter 2 of this edited volume, Wanda J. Blanchett and Shelley Zion consider how the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement in the United States (US) is inspiring education activists today. They argue that, while there has been progress over the last seven decades in terms of Civil Rights, the road toward educational and social justice and equity has been challenging. Following the deaths of several unarmed young Black people either by law enforcement officers or by local White vigilantes, the BLM movement became a clarion call to resist law enforcement and state racial oppression and discrimination. Blanchett and Zion discuss the challenges that Black and other students of color experience in their pursuit of educational and societal access in the US and illustrate how schools can be part of the problem, reproducing inequity and injustice. They offer an overview of the impact of student activism in seeking social justice in the US and discuss how the BLM movement has become a form of political and societal resistance for young people nationally. Finally, they discuss the transformation needed at university, school, and community levels to support young people realizing their political participation in democracy. In Chapter 3, Dragan Stanojevi´c, Jelisaveta Vukeli´c, and Aleksandar Tomaševi´c offer an insight into levels of young people’s political activism in Serbia, focusing specifically on the practices of young people in a postsocialist context. They ask questions related to forms of political engagement, issues of trust in political actors, and young people’s personal capabilities to participate in political life. In a context of prolonged social crisis, limited economic opportunity, low institutional and social trust, they find that youth participation is shaped by instrumental goals, clientelism, and authoritarianism. While the traditional political party structure

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still mobilizes a relatively large number of young people in Serbia, this activity is only partly inspired by political and ideological goals: the dominant strategy is one of getting a job and social promotion. However, they also describe a counterpoint to the conventional political activities in which the maintenance of a semi-authoritarian regime also creates space for self-organizing and alternative protest politics grounded in the traditions of the 1990s. In Chapter 4, Nafisa Tanjeem and Rawshan E. Fatima explore the mass student protests demanding road safety in Bangladesh in July and August 2018 following a terrible “accident” where two young people died. They ask the question, what does it mean when middle and high school students reject the mainstream development narratives of the state and associated claims of structural transformation of a severely unregulated and accident-prone traffic system in Bangladesh? Additionally, they consider how student protests pose an existential threat to an autocratic state raising questions about state accountability, surveillance, inequity, and democratic citizenship. The authors draw upon social movement studies, critical cultural studies, and transnational and postcolonial feminist frameworks to explore how the student movement in Dhaka not only demonstrates ways in which repressive regimes adopt strategies that subsume grassroots protests but also reveals the possibilities for radical coalition building. In Chapter 5, attention focuses on Egypt where, in 2012 and 2013, young people, inspired by the January 25th Revolution, organized against sexual harassment and assault in Tahrir Square and on the streets. This chapter examines one of the few remaining anti-sexual harassment initiatives that persisted until 2020 under Egypt’s authoritarian political climate, HarassMap, and its Safe Schools and Universities program. Drawing upon interviews with members of HarassMap and other antisexual harassment activists between 2013 and 2015 and again in 2019, Susana Galán and Angie Abdelmonen explore the civil and political context that gave rise to the institutionalization of anti-sexual harassment activism in Egypt. Focusing on Cairo University, they examine the formation of multiple alliances between activists, students, and faculty, and discuss the transformative potential such initiatives had during the state’s attempt to co-opt anti-sexual harassment efforts. In Chapter 6, focus shifts to the university campus and an initiative to end Gender-Based Violence (GBV) in educational contexts. Here, Gemma Geis, Patricia Melgar, and Ana Vidu describe how silence

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surrounding GBV has been a feature of Spanish university campuses for decades. In this chapter, Geis and her colleagues consider how the Solidarity Network of victims of gender violence (which was driven by university students) brought together those people who had been victims and those who support them. They show the barriers that were imposed by some representatives of the institution and how those barriers were overcome through alliances with other parts of the university community, other universities, and other young people across the globe. They show how this approach, where action focuses on promoting the intervention of everyone in a community, not only has social impact but reduces violence and protects victims. A key feature of Elinor Bray-Collins’ chapter (Chapter 7) is her analysis of the challenges of student activism on a campus in a complex and divided country, namely Lebanon. She describes how Lebanese youth and students have protested to end political sectarianism and corruption and achieve greater democratic accountability. Through an examination of student political activity at the American University in Beirut, Elinor explores the diverse motivations that drive young people’s politics, and the attempts of partisan and secular youth activists to challenge political elites. She shows us how educational spaces enable youth political participation and how their political activities reproduce the dynamic that constrains them. By way of contrast, in Chapter 8 Anna Sampaio and Jesica Siham Fernández explore the issue of undocumented/DACAmented student activists. They show how race, gender, class, and status impact the mobilization and inclusion of immigrant and undocumented youth on college campuses. Through an ethnographic case study of undocumented/DACAmented student organizing at a Jesuit institution, they interrogate narratives of inclusion, along with supporting policies and practices that both enable and disempower student mobilization. Their examination highlights the various states of vulnerability that students face, from the state as well as the university, and how those students navigate this terrain to form their own spaces and places of resistance. In Chapter 9, Grant Andrews provides an account of three student movements in South Africa—#RhodesMustFall, #FeesMustFall, and the #EndRapeCulture. Grant shows us how embodied activism was central to these movements: this is where bodies were strategically used to visibilize Black pain and to occupy spaces that excluded and oppressed Black people. This chapter explores these various embodied forms of

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student activism and argues that the inclusion of the body can unsettle discourses of “appropriateness” and disembodiment in higher education as well as foreground communities of affect and experience and highlight intersectionality among different movements. From embodied activism we move to existential activism in Mary Hawkesworth’s chapter (Chapter 10) on trans youth. Here we see how trans students in the US have launched innovative campaigns to educate their peers, teachers, school administrators, elected officials, and the public by responding to questions, giving presentations at school assemblies, meeting with teachers and administrators, explaining trans issues, creating “diversity clubs” at school, testifying before school boards and legislative committees, and creating social media sites interacting with larger audiences. In this chapter, Hawkesworth introduces us to existential activism—a mode of transformative action that debunks the notion that there are only two configurations of human bodies (male/female) and the belief that sex is fixed from birth. She demonstrates that, for many people, gender identity and gender expression do not conform to those dichotomous constructions of sex and gender championed by science, medicine, religion, and the state. By analyzing the complex ways that trans youth challenge “common sense,” Hawkesworth shows how trans students illuminate multiple forms of injustice that are routinely ignored in contemporary society. She argues that “through their daring existential activism, trans students make a compelling case for sex, gender, and sexual variation as creative diversities essential for wise, flourishing, and socially just societies.” In Chapter 11, we move from the existential to the literary and consider how critical literacies offer decolonial possibility. In this chapter, Navan Govender explores how his own scholar-activist position influenced the design of a project run with student-teachers at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland. Using multimodal critical discourse analysis, Navan and a group of student-teachers critically engaged with a local artifact in the City of Glasgow through a process of talking, seeing, reading, writing, and (re)designing. Issues of coloniality, empire, class, heteronormativity, heterosexism and cisnormativity, human relationships to the environment, language variety, and multimodality, among others, were imprinted in the texts student-teachers produced. Navan’s analysis of these texts reveals a host of possibilities for critical literacies as a means to create conditions of decolonial possibility in the form of political-pedagogical action in schools, colleges, and universities.

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Finally, in Chapter 12, the learning from each of the chapters is synthesized and offers a perspective on the challenges to inclusion, integration, affirmation, and equity as a result of institutionalization, often by those who see young people as “incapacitated” rather than agents of positive change. In this chapter, we discusses the roles of allies in promoting visibility and eradicating silence and how political activism by young people is often complex and full of contradictions—some from within movements and some from outside. Ultimately this collection brings together educators, activists, and educator-activists, to better understand why, how, and where young people mobilize to challenge political leadership and shape their futures.

Reference Rivers, I., Carragher, D. J., Couzens, J., Hechler, R. C., & Fini, G. B. (2018, December). A cross-national study of school students’ perceptions of political messages in two election campaigns. International Journal of Educational Research, 92, 10–19.

CHAPTER 2

Black Youth Activism Was Pivotal to the Civil Right Movement: How Black Lives Matter Is Inspiring Education Activists of Today Wanda J. Blanchett and Shelley D. Zion

Key Terms Systemic and Structural Racism—is used to refer to any system whether education, social, health, economic, laws, policies, or procedures or other phenomena that negatively impacts Black and other people of color on the basis of race.

W. J. Blanchett (B) Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA e-mail: [email protected] S. D. Zion Rowan University, Glassboro, NJ, USA e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 I. Rivers and C. L. Lovin (eds.), Young People Shaping Democratic Politics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29378-8_2

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Youth Activism—is used to describe formal and informal social, political, educational, and other forms of activism aimed at improving the human conditions with a specific focus on historically underserved and underrepresented communities. Transformative Student Voice—is the creation of sustained and systemic opportunities for minoritized students to 1) inquire about the root causes of problems in their schools and communities, and 2) take action to address them by working with adult allies to develop and implement better policies and practices that redesign/transform.

Introduction I am not sharing these experiences for any other reason than to help educate and better this town because I love and care about the people who live here and its future. The only way we can make positive and effective change is to go back, look at the history, relearn the truth, reckon with the past, and make sure things like this never happen again on any level…I’m not talking about the racist acts, I’m talking about the racist lack of action-- let’s make sure that never happens again. Hope, 22-year-old Township alumna

More than 200 people enter the zoom meeting, for a first of its kind townhall meeting, focused on conversations about how race and racism are impacting the local school and community. This meeting is hosted by a coalition of local mothers and educators who came together to raise awareness and address racial issues in the school district and town, prompted by a petition created by high school students and recent grads, demanding a more racially inclusive curriculum, a more racially diverse teaching staff, and diversity training for the school and community. The petition was signed by 1609 community members. The facilitator opened the conversation: We are not here because something new is happening. We are here because events that have continued to happen in the history of our country are now occurring in a sequence and a way that has attracted our focus. The context of COVID-19 has magnified our attention to these issues, but the murders of George Floyd and Ahmad Aubry and Breonna Taylor and incidents such as those that were publicly captured on video between Amy

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Cooper and Christian Cooper are common to those of us who are part of the Black or Brown or People of Color communities. These are not new experiences. The combination of the historical and current instances of interpersonal and institutional racism are just now getting the attention of a broader audience and that is powerful, and it creates an opportunity to address and redress these issues by listening to the stories of people who are impacted, by learning together, and by committing to action.

It is the summer of 2020, halfway through a year that, through the onset of a global pandemic, and series of highly visible murders of Black men and women at the hands of police, the Black Lives Matter Movement was re-ignited culminating in calls for racial reckonings, alongside daily protests, marches, demonstrations, and riots. Young people, in high schools and in college, began to come together, to demand changes— to hold their schools accountable for the current and past histories that contribute to the systemic racism that pervades our systems and Country. Often, it is only the national protest movements and marches that capture the attention of our nation, where young people in these communities have organized and participated in those as well. But, in this chapter, we focus on the work of young people who are working locally, engaging with school and community leaders, and working to make immediate and concrete changes in their local schools and communities. We present the stories of the young people across numerous small towns in a state on the eastern seaboard, where communities are racially homogenous, local control looms large, and thus young people of color are frequently one of very few in their schools. In these communities, White students often attend elementary and middle school with students who look like them—then, arrive at regional high schools where students from multiple local townships come together for the first time. Janae, a 17-year-old and Township Senior explained: Racism is present and prevalent to those it effects… the worst form of racism stems from the institutionalized perception of certain races based on demeaning stereotypes that somehow seep into my peers’ minds, and into my education.

To fully grasp the significance of the events described above, and further explored later in this paper, we need to understand a bit about the history of institutionalized racism and the range of responses, resistances, and reactions to it.

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Since being brought to this country over 400 years ago literally bound in chains as enslaved people, Black Americans “have had to fight” for their human, civil, and constitutional rights (i.e., right to education, right to be fully counted, right to vote) while these same rights were granted originally to White men, and subsequently to White women, and children at birth just by being white. Although the Emancipation Proclamations abolished legal enslavement in 1865, the legal, structural, and systemic racism that gave birth to slavery would continue to deny Black Americans their constitutional rights through “Jim Crow Laws” and White Only signs legally and visibly posted in the south. Together these practices prevented Black and other students of color from attending schools attended by their White peers and denied them other basic rights and privileges afforded to White Americans (Blanchett, 2013). While “Jim Crow Laws” were legal and practiced throughout the southern United States, make no mistake about it, regardless of where Blacks lived in America, they encountered some form of systemic and structural racism (Blanchett, 2013), that to this day, still contributes to significant economic, educational, and health disparities in Black communities (American Psychological Association, 2012). The dismantling of “Jim Crow Laws” and other legally sanctioned forms of discrimination and bias inherently built into American systems and structures, including the American education system, was achieved in large part through national, state, and local communities organizing protests and other forms of resistance such as legal actions, which all culminated into what is now known as the Civil Rights Movement, which began in the 1950s. The Civil Rights Movement represented a carefully crafted and coordinated set of activities aimed at “challenging segregation and discrimination through the 1960s” (Britannica, 2021). While there were many groups that supported and contributed to the Civil Rights Movement, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) (Ling, 2000) along with “the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)…, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)” are credited with being responsible for organizing “nonviolent demonstrations to call attention to specific inequalities, while individuals also challenged unjust laws independently” (Britannica, 2021). However, an important and often overlooked aspect of this movement is the fact that young people were at the center of this work and were on the frontlines on the ground engaged in the local work of the movement (Ling, 2000). Though there were many

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significant victories and achievements coupled with tremendous pain and loss during the Civil Rights Movement, one of the first major victories was the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954. Brown is so significant because, the decision in this historic case declared that “separate but equal” schools were indeed unconstitutional and cleared the way for American schools to be integrated (Blanchett et al., 2005). Although the Governor of Arkansas deployed the National Guard to stop them, another notable milestone was achieved when President Eisenhower deployed U.S. soldiers to protect “The Little Rock Nine” as they integrated a then all-White historic Central High School. The year of 1960 marked yet another sign of progress in education as then, six-yearold Ruby Bridges integrated a then all-White New Orleans William Frantz Elementary School protected by U.S. Marshals (Britannica, 2021). Given that Black Americans and other communities of color have “had to fight” for all of the progress we have made, to date, toward access to a more equitable education, it is not surprising that after years of witnessing violence, cruelty, brutality, and even murder of Black women, men, and children at the hands of law enforcement and White vigilantes that young Black people would lead this new movement toward racial reckoning in the fight for social justice. Founded in 2014, following the acquittal of the Florida man who killed an unarmed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin (Morris, 2021; Rim, 2020), the Black Lives Matter Movement (BLM) was young people’s response to the injustice of Black people being murdered by police as if Black Lives were worthless and simply did not matter or certainly were not as valuable as White lives. Though the BLM movement was indeed started by young Black people who had had enough and were, as Fannie Lou Hammer stated back in 1964, “Sick and tired of being sick and tired,1 ” they were able to galvanize young people of all races, ages, and backgrounds literally all over the country and globally. The twin pandemics of COVID-19 and its disproportionate impact on Black and other communities of color in the United States, coupled with the reality that almost everyone was working and/or going to school from home, created the perfect storm for a nation to watch the 9-minute video of the murder of George Floyd at the hands of then Minneapolis police officer Chauvin and to call for national, and eventually, global, racial reckoning. Like the activism of the 1950s and 1960s that called attention to 1 https://awpc.cattcenter.iastate.edu/2019/08/09/im-sick-and-tired-of-being-sickand-tired-dec-20-1964/.

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segregation and discrimination, while the primary purpose of BLM was to stop the killing of unarmed Black people by police, the movement also has both a national and local component that is focused on speaking truth to power regarding a wide range of social injustices perpetrated against Black people that contributes to education, health, and economic disparities, among others.

Black Lives Matter Movement as a Current Form of Political and Societal Resistance for Today’s Young People …17-year-old Trayvon Martin was walking through a Florida neighborhood with candy and iced tea when a vigilante pursued him and ultimately shot him dead…in July 2013, on learning about the acquittal of Martin’s killer, Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi invented the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter, a rallying cry for numerous local struggles for racial justice that sprang up across the U.S. (Morris, 2021)

Morris (2021) reminds us that, for decades when local Black and other people of color, when faced with undeniable injustice that has been perpetrated against Black and Brown people, local people have summoned the courage to start a movement to appeal to the conscious of America and the world by calling attention to the injustice. Following his murder in 1955, at the hands of White Supremacists, Emmett Till’s mother insisted that America and the world see the badly beaten, bruised, and shot body of her child Emmett. Morris notes that it was in fact a lack of justice for Till that prompted Rosa Parks to refuse to follow Jim Crow bus riding rules. Likewise, as noted above, the founders of the hashtag #Black Live Matter started a movement to call attention to the injustice of Trayvon’s killer not being held accountable for his murder. BLM has been primarily focused on police and vigilante killings of unarmed Black children, women, and men. However, it has also sought to call attention to a plethora of societal injustices and violence committed by individuals and the state against Black people such as racial, gender, economic, and health inequalities, inequities, and disparities while also attacking attempts to suppress and/or limit Black and other people of color’s participation in our democracy (Morris, 2021). In their own words, BLM’s mission is to “…eradicate White supremacy and build local

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power to intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities by the state and vigilante” (Black Lives Matter, 2021). To this end, recently, BLM have launched campaigns focused on demilitarizing Black neighborhoods and defunding the police by investing in Black communities and neighborhoods. Though Joseph (2017) describes BLM as “still unfolding” and “not fitting easily into existing categories” of social justice movements, and Morris (2021) surmises that, “it is not yet clear what social and political transformations it will engender,” these same scholars also conclude that the BLM Movement “…has taken the baton from the Civil Rights era” (Morris, 2021) and “[f]ew grassroots uprisings have done as much, in such a short period of time” (Joseph, 2017). Following the murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in New York City, we saw something that we had theretofore not seen, effective local organizing and activism bringing together scores of young primarily through social media to march and protest waving signs and yelling BLM in their own local communities with some also traveling to “hot spots” (Ferguson, New York City) across the country. They even shutdown major highways in Los Angeles and New York City. Thus, it was no surprise that when George Floyd’s murder was captured on video by a teenaged eyewitness, in the midst of the COVID-19 Pandemic that had hit Black and Brown communities extremely hard, and with a U.S. President in the White House who at best was a White supremacist sympathizer, and at worst an unapologetic racist, that this movement would be more reignited and more effective than ever before in demanding justice. While BLM was already a global movement, in the days and weeks following Floyd’s murder, a large number of Black and other young people of color, coupled with White young people and some of their parents, took to the streets in outrage across the United States and the world. George’s murder seemed to be another “Emmett Till” moment in terms of raising the consciousness of “Unwoke White People” regarding the insidious and vicious nature of racism in America. But many of us were unsure if the American legal system would work this time to convict a police officer who we all watched murder George, as we had seen so many grand juries not even indict, let alone convict, police officers, and in the few instances when they were indicted and charged, few were held accountable. Of course, much of what has been written in the professional literature and in the media regarding the BLM movement was written prior to the culmination of what we would call BLM’s two largest victories to date, which include the significant role that BLM played in turning out young

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people to vote in the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election and Georgia Senate Runoff Election, in the midst of the COVID-19 Pandemic. The second most significant, and, in some’s mind, the most significant victory thus far, came on Tuesday, April 20, 2021 when former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin, who murdered George Floyd, was found guilty on all three charges of second-degree murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter. It is worth noting that while the global BLM movement has been focused on eradicating systemic racism and White Supremacy, like with the Civil Rights Movement, there has simultaneously been a local component to BLM focused on youth activism in local communities.

The Origins of American Public Education and the Role of Schools in Reproducing Inequity and Injustice Black and other students of color’s long struggle to gain equal access to public education has yet to be achieved, is also often distorted, and not presented in its proper historical context. To address this shortcoming, we will provide a historical overview of Black students and their quest for educational access and equity in the American public education system. As Blanchett (2013) noted previously, the American public education system in its original conceptualization was never designed or intended to serve ALL students, and certainly not, Black and other students of color. Consequently, it does not surprise some of us that a system that was designed from its very conception to be exclusionary and discriminatory would, in fact, do just that, exclude Black and other students of color, women, and students with disabilities (Blanchett, 2006). Afterall, the American public education system was conceived and designed to educate White men to become better citizens. Not only was our American public education system designed to be exclusionary and discriminatory, but our laws protected this system of privilege and access for a few. This resulted in two American public education systems: (a) a public education system for White students and (b) a public education system for Black and other students of color (Blanchett, 2006, 2009, 2010). To start to understand why the American public educational system seems to only work well for a few privileged children and families, we must more fully understand its original purpose and intent (Zion & Blanchett,

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2011). American public schools historically were designed to control and sort children deemed problematic or undesirable by society (Applied Research Center, 2006). In Thomas Jefferson’s words, by “raking a few geniuses from the rubbish,” this system allowed a very small number to advance from lower to upper classes (Applied Research Center, 2006). In 1851, the first compulsory education law was passed, with the goal of “ensuring that the children of poor immigrants get ‘civilized’ and learn obedience and restraint, so they make good workers and don’t contribute to social upheaval” (Applied Research Center, 2006). Our public schools have long been used as an instrument of segregation and forced assimilation, beginning with laws that forbade slaves to learn to read, removed Native American students from their homes and placed them in boarding schools, outlawed the use of languages other than English in public school classrooms, and criminalized children who did not attend school (Gatto, 2005). It is possible to argue that schools have come a long way since their initial establishment. For example, Brown v. Board of Education eliminated segregation based on race; the school choice movement created an array of charter school choices for families who have access to them; and the disability rights movement, which ensured a free and appropriate education for students with disabilities in American public school settings—and yet, we seem to be no closer to closing the racial equity gaps in our education system (Berlak, 2007). Our American public education system was developed with a set of purposes, explicitly stated in law and public policy, to control and sort students according to the needs of the state (Zion & Blanchett, 2011). Although current policies have moved from the notion of control and sorting into rhetoric about the provision of equitable opportunities and outcomes for all, as these students in South Jersey’s experiences illustrate, our schools are not working well for many Black and students of color, poor children, students with disabilities, and students in urban settings. We contend that the BLM Movement has inspired former and current student activism that is playing a critically important role in forcing American public schools to reckon with the institutionalized racism, marginalization, and oppression experienced by Black and other students of color in their quest for an equitable education. While the student body in American public schools is more diverse today than at any other point in American history, 41% of Black and Hispanic, and 41% American Indian/Alaska Native students attended high poverty schools compared to 15% Asian and only 8% of White students (Institute of Education Sciences, 2020). The Condition of

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Education Report also illustrated that Black and other students of color largely attend segregated schools where the school enrollment is 75% or more students of color, who are still labeled as “minority” students by the U.S. Department of Education (n.d.). For example, in 2017, 60% of Hispanic, 58% Black/African American, 53% Pacific Islander, and 39% each American Indian/Alaska Native and Asian, compared to only 6% of White, students were attending schools with at least 75% students of color (Condition of Education, 2020). We find ourselves in a despicable education dilemma where many Black and other students of color are still being denied the promise of Brown. Although we no longer have “Jim Crow Laws” and White Only signs blocking Black and other students of color from attending schools attended by their White peers, we still have unexplained educational disparities, on the basis of race, social class, and perceived ability and segregated schools in twenty-first-century America (Blanchett, 2013). In many respects, today’s American public schools are remarkably different in terms of the student demographics from Jim Crow and court-ordered desegregation era schools, but, yet they still bear some undeniable similarities in terms of equity and access. For example, in stark contrast to American public school data trends where White students have historically comprised the overwhelming majority of U.S. public school students, in 2017 White students comprised only 48% of enrollment compared to 61% in 2000 (Condition of Education, 2020). Most importantly, during this period of time, Latinx students’ enrollment in American public schools increased from 16 to 27% and Black student enrollment declined from 17 to 15% (Condition of Education, 2020). Additionally, in 10 states (i.e., AK, CA, CO, FL, IL, KS, NV, NM, TX, and WA) and the District of Columbia, English Language Learners comprised 10% or greater of the student enrollment with the largest percentage in urban schools (The Condition of Education Report, 2020). Despite enrollment of students of color at an all-time high, the teaching force is still overwhelmingly White and female. Specifically, 76% and 24%, respectively, of U.S. teachers are female and male (Condition of Education, 2020). White teachers comprise 79% of the teaching force, followed by 9% Hispanic, 7% Black, 2% Asian, 2% two or more races, 1% American Indian/Alaska Native and Pacific Islander was less than 1% (The Condition of Education Report, 2020). More importantly, the American educational system seems to lack the will and courage to appropriately educate these diverse students. Failure to design and deliver instruction

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that meets the educational needs of students of color in general education is directly related to the problem of disproportionate representation of students of color in special education. Research has shown that when students do not perform well academically, do not behave according to teachers’ cultural expectations, when teachers do not know what to do with students due to cultural mismatch, and if they are Black students, teachers are more likely to refer them for special education (Williams, 2008). Some Black students and other students of color also graduate from high school unprepared to be successful in postsecondary education, have meaningful employment, and prosper in life, not because of their ability, but due to the poor-quality education they received (Blanchett, 2013). As a result of not preparing an overwhelmingly White teaching force to serve all children well and, especially, Black students and other students of color, the American public education system, and its schools, perpetuates racial and social inequities. Also, as the student activists will share in their own words in this chapter, the lack of careful and intentional attention given to teaching ALL educators and students, especially White educators and students, the truth about American History, Black History, racism, White privilege, and White Supremacy and how it has seeped into all American systems, structures, and policies, is still, to this day, causing great injury to Black students and other students of color in our schools. Just like with the Civil Rights Movement, change will likely only come through student activism and resistance.

A Brief Historical Overview of Student Activism and Resistance in the United States As mentioned earlier, young people have held key roles in pushing social change in our society. In this section, we will provide a brief overview of some of the ways in which young people have stepped up and shown us our failings. Beginning in the 1950s, young people were instrumental in the various actions of desegregation, even as their participation has been neglected in our national dialogue. Let us take for example, Claudette Colvin, who at 15 refused to move to the back of the bus, 9 months before Rosa Parks, in 1955, or the Little Rock Nine, who in 1957 were barred by the national guard from entering a segregated high school, or Ruby Bridges, who at 6 years old was the first Black child to integrate a previously segregated southern school (Women in the Modern Civil Rights Movement, 2021). Youth were the “backbone of the civil

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rights movement” leading sit-ins, protests, marches, and voter registration drives. This tradition of youth activism continues today, as young people lead the BLM protests and marches, turn out in high numbers to vote, and engage in their local communities as activists and organizers to end harmful practices. Building on the history of youth activism for civil rights in the 50s and 60s, young people on college campuses made explicit demands for ethnic studies to see themselves and their peers represented in college curriculums, to have the opportunity to study the works of people who looked like them, and to see their histories represented. In recent years, the ethnic studies movement has found a foothold in middle and high schools, where young people, often in partnership with their teachers, demand that the curriculum be both a window and a mirror to see themselves, and to see the breadth of diversity in the world around them. The actions of young people have led to the creation of ethnic studies programs and departments at colleges and universities, and of topically focused courses at high schools. It has not yet resulted in large-scale changes to the curriculum of the P-12 school system, nor of college curriculum writ large. In the 80s, zero tolerance policies became common practices in K12 schools and created an atmosphere of policing in schools which predictably targeted Black and Brown children and created the school to prison pipeline. Young people, often in conjunction with educators and community organizers, have challenged these policies, and been part of the shift away from zero tolerance toward a restorative approach in some schools and communities. These changes, however, are contested and dependent on the parties in power, at any given moment, to be maintained. In 2014, the Department of Education released a new set of policy and practice guidelines aimed explicitly at reducing the school to prison pipeline, but following the 2016 Presidential election, new leadership in the Department of Education rolled back previous guidelines and endorsed a return to more stringent enforcement, including more police in schools (Advancement Project, 2018). More recently, youth have been central in organizing and campaigning to address issues of gun violence and school shootings, following the Parkland shooting in 2018. Young people at schools across the nation organized walkouts at their own schools, and the Parkland students influenced legislation and increased funding at local, state, and national levels (Belle, 2020). This movement has evolved and expanded to address the

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disproportionate impact of gun violence on Black and Brown communities and to highlight its connection to other forms of violence. Youth have also, both globally and locally, led the conversation on the impact of climate change. Young people, from elementary through college, can rely on their “moral authority” as children, and on their social media skills, to focus adult attention on issues that matter to them (thinking, doing, changing, 2020). The focus on drawing attention to youth activism is not only visible in the media but has increasingly become the focus of researchers who seek to understand its origins and impacts, and to further our understanding of how to build the capacity of young people to do this work. These researchers focus on the development of critical consciousness across different settings based on the understanding of youth as potential change agents in their schools and communities (Caraballo et al., 2017; Kirshner et al., 2015; Lac & Baxley, 2019; Sung, 2015). Much of this research occurs in out of school settings in urban communities including in youth and community organizing groups that “push in” to the conversations about public education (Allen-Handy & Thomas-EL, 2018; Rosen, 2019). This work takes many forms, but one key movement is toward the idea of transformative student voice (Zion, 2020). In the following section, we will transition to a discussion of some local outcomes of transformative student voices from South Jersey, United States.

What’s Happening in an Eastern Seaboard State and What Is Transformative Student Voice? As mentioned in the opening, we are focusing on some unique opportunities for youth activism connected to BLM movements in an eastern seaboard state and a region of the country that includes over 200 school districts. Many of these districts consist of only one or two schools, especially at the elementary and middle school level with students in these communities attending larger regional high schools that support multiple smaller districts. This results in a setting in which students attend schools that are highly segregated, and schools only become more racially diverse as students progress into high school. Local news outlets frequently cover overt instances of racism, often when competing athletic teams and racialized language is used by White students to taunt Black and Brown players. Black students, and recent alumni, in these communities

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are coming together to raise their concerns, hold their districts accountable, and advocate for change. Students have organized marches and protests, circulated petitions, and participated in town hall meetings to share their experiences and expectations. The power of their words and testimonies is palpable, as the adults who listen to their stories, many for the first time, are forced to grapple with a reality that is very different than they had previously perceived. In the words of the young people, they convey the complexity of navigating their identities, of balancing who they are against the majority, of dealing with daily microaggressions, biases, and assumptions. They name their emerging awareness of these tensions, often through experiences in college, but they also name the potential and possibility they see, in the allies, friends, and teachers with whom they interacted. To be a person of color in this township is to be an anomaly at its finest. When I walk through the halls of my school, I see zero teachers who bear the same skin complexion as me. I see very few students who look the same as me and even fewer who embrace their beauty for what it is. They ignore and degrade themselves to fit in with their White counterparts or they swing the other way and are then ostracized by their peers. To be a student of color in this township is to walk a fine line of being too Black or not Black enough. Harmony, 19, alumnae To be a Black middle schooler in this township is to be told that you should be good at dancing and basketball because it’s in your genes. Latriece, 17, Junior To be a Black child in this township is to never have any books in your 5th grade classroom that resemble you. Overall, to be a person of color in this township is to want to dilute your culture and heritage to a tolerable amount so you don’t further give into the already negative narrative that most students and staff have already embedded in their minds. But just like I learned in physics class there’s always an equal opposite reaction, so to be a person of color in this township is to live in two worlds at once. To have genuine friendships and peers who want to be allies, in spite of generational biases, and to attend safe schools with rigorous curriculum despite microaggressions. To be a Black student in this township is to be able to talk and have your peers listen while slowly dismantling classmates already preconceived notions about Black people. Shanae, 17, Senior

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You wouldn’t have known it if you knew me back then, but growing up in this town with the skin, this hair taught me to hate my Blackness. I was taught that my Blackness was less than and I had to actively fight that narrative every day. When I went to college and I was exposed to a couple of people who looked like me only, then, was I able to embrace the beauty that was the skin and this hair and this body as a whole. Brittany, 23, alumnae I wish you knew that I laughed at the racial jokes to make you feel comfortable. I wish you knew that I devalue who I am in every situation to make it more comfortable for you. I wish you know how disrespectful it is when you use the n-word with the hard “R”. I wish you knew that because I was trying so hard to make you comfortable, I lost myself. I wish you knew that my skin color is not going to hurt you. I wish you knew what it feels like to wear a skin color that in one glance identifies you as other to many and less than to some, without any way of knowing who thinks what. I wish you knew the pain behind my smile. I wish you knew how you taught me to hate my curls, my hips, my melanin skin, that I was born in. I wish you knew how hard it was to get up every day in a place that hated, or simply tolerated my existence, strictly based on the color of my skin. Oh, how I wish you knew the pain behind my smile. Harmony, 19, alumnae

Transformative student voice (Zion, 2020) is the creation of sustained and systemic opportunities for minoritized students to (1) inquire about the root causes of problems in their schools and communities, (2) take action to address them by working with adult allies to develop and implement better policies and practices that redesign/transform systems. It is built on key concepts from community organizing and social movements, learning sciences and youth development, identity and empowerment, and critical pedagogies that center the development of critical consciousness in youth and adults. The development of critical consciousness requires an intersectional approach to both adult and youth development to start with an understanding of our own social identities, and how those privilege or marginalize us, then to explore the ways that systems (legal, educational, social) institutionalize and reinforce that privilege and marginality. Further, we ground our work in frameworks developed by the Combahee River Collective, and by Kimberley Crenshaw (2017), that explicate the importance of working at the intersections-where race and gender, class and sexuality, and all other social positioning inform

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who we are and how we experience the world. This requires an understanding and acknowledgment of the complexity of identity and systems, and a commitment to eradicating all the forms of oppression that exist in our social systems. This approach is designed to address marginalization by centering the life experiences, funds of knowledge, and aspirations of youth of color from low-income communities, while also creating opportunities that expand their knowledge and skills as leaders and change agents of change (Paris & Alim, 2014). Transformative student voice work is built on four core values: 1. A conception of communication as dialogue (in which a climate of trust and openness exists and is characterized by all participants working with each other). 2. The requirement for participation and democratic inclusivity (as such that no voice is excluded—particularly those who have been silenced, are critical or conflicting, or speak in ways outside of the dominant forms of conversation). 3. The recognition that power relations are unequal and problematic (requires that not only are we aware of who we listen to, but how and what we listen about, and the relative power and privilege accorded to particular experiences). 4. The possibility for change and transformation (must act upon the input of students, and ongoing engagement of students as agents of change) (Robinson & Taylor, 2007, p. 8). In our research, since 2007, we have seen young people in middle school take up questions of property tax allocation, immigrant rights, school climate, and curriculum (Zion et al., 2015, 2017). We have worked with high school aged youth-based community organizing groups in Denver and Philadelphia to take on issues of gentrification and school policing. We have engaged high school students in New Jersey in a focus on school climate, resulting in an ongoing youth-adult partnership to expand social studies and language arts curriculum to be more inclusive of the history of all demographic groups, and to present training on implicit bias and microaggressions to teachers and students (Zion, 2020). We have shown the potential of engaging the power of young people, in and out of school, to make change toward goals of equity and justice, and now

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call on educators to engage youth in re-imagining the purpose of public schools (Zion et al., 2021). These examples show a small segment of the long history of youth activism in civil rights issues, in community and school reform, and the transformative student voice framework, and suggest the potential for adults to create contexts in which young people build the skills to engage even more purposefully in their local, national, and global communities. In the following sections, we will discuss youth leadership in the BLM movement, and then transition to a discussion of some local outcomes of that work.

Pedagogical Feature In all of this work is the hope that young people, who have their words and work, will make a difference in their communities, for their friends and siblings, and most of all, for themselves. What follows is a listing of the recommendations and actions they identify as necessary to get us to some sort of reconciliation and repair. What they want most is to be heard, to be seen, to be valued, and they have clear expectations for what schools, communities, and adults can do to make that happen. Young people are clear that: Once we create the educated and accepting environment within our schools, it will then work its way outwards to the parents and families, thus creating an educated and accepting community. That is why the township needs to teach kids about the true history of America and give kids [all students, and especially, White students] teachers to learn from that aren’t exactly like them. Brittany, 23, alumane

During a period of national and global racial reckoning, what are local education activists asking of their schools and communities to create more inclusive and equitable schools and learning environments? The young education activists, who were participants in the focus group discussions in an Eastern Seaboard state, ask that their schools and communities do the following: 1. Talk and teach about race and racism from an early age. Teach tolerance, acceptance, learn about other cultures, learn about the

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injustices of our country, “dive into the touchy subjects until they are no longer touchy.” It’s not enough to frown on racist behaviors, students must be taught what is right and wrong. 2. Combat internal biases by expecting adults, and students, to actively learn, listen, and evolve. 3. Hire more diverse teachers, so that students see themselves, and see a representation of teachers who are not like them. 4. Change the curriculum at the township high school to make our schools more inclusive. 5. Teach students how to not be racist, why they should not be racist, and help them to learn the appropriate language to use. 6. Develop protocols for racist acts, with clear consequences, and repair for harm caused and ensure that victims of racism have resources. Use these incidents as teaching opportunities. What areas of improvement did community members identify after hearing the lived experiences of student activists? Though these student activists spoke with incredible clarity and conviction as they spoke their truth and lived experiences to “power,” hearing the reactions of the community members, in response to these young people and the panels, as the community members identified areas they wanted to work on was also powerful. The areas of improvement they cited included the following: 1. Expand the curriculum to make sure that our children in the township are exposed to a wide range of viewpoints to the hard history, to the facing history, to broader literature bases, and to multiple perspectives. 2. Diversify the faculty in such a way to be representative of the various groups of people in the United States. 3. Question police presence in schools. 4. Develop mentoring and support for students, faculty, community members, and families who are Black or people of color—to create spaces for people to support each other. 5. Hold students and each other accountable for any kind of hateful or divisive or oppressive rhetoric or actions.

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6. Understand the history of the township both from the perspective of the historical pieces that were about segregation and racism and antiBlack violence, but also, about abolition and the history of smaller or small portions of the community that were really integral to that kind of work. 7. Take on White privilege and determine how does this become a long-term change and not just little curricular bits or little addons or little one-time things, but really, fundamentally, changing the direction that the district is oriented to. We conclude our chapter with the final thoughts and charge of the facilitator of the session that generated the response above and the second author of this chapter, Professor Shelley Zion. Realizing that the hard work of dismantling racism, White Privilege, and White Supremacy in American public education will only get done when those who benefit from it work diligently every day to become anti-racist and to eradicate it: There aren’t any easy answers to any of this. We have spent 400 years in this country, screwing it up, so we are not going to fix it based on one phone call, one curricular change, or one series of meetings. What I’m challenging you to do, as we end, this conversation tonight, is to each, individually, think about your personal role in it. In my view, the only way we affect these changes is, when individual people, choose to take up their privilege, and use it, to dismantle oppressive systems. Use it, to become actively anti-racist. Make that long-term commitment to not stepping away from and turn away from the challenges because, there will be challenges. Because it will be difficult and it will make some people mad, and they will be mean to you, and they will cut you out, and they will say all kinds of things. There will be drama and trauma and problems. Welcome to the America that black and people of color live in every day! So, my challenge is, there are a hundred and sixty plus people in this conversation today, what are you all going to do? That’s my question.

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Gatto, J. (2005). Dumbing us down: The hidden curriculum of compulsory schooling. New Society Publishers. Institute of Education Sciences. (2020). Condition of education (2020). U.S. Department of Education. https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2020/2020144.pdf Joseph, P. (2017). Why black lives still matters. New Republic, 248(5), 16–19. Kirshner, B., Hipolito-Delgado, C., & Zion, S. (Eds.). (2015). Sociopolitical development in educational systems: From margins to center [Special Issue]. Urban Review, 47 (5), 914–933. Lac, V. T., & Baxley, G. S. (2019). Race and racism: How does an aspiring social justice principal support Black student leaders for racial equity among a resistant White staff. Journal of Cases in Educational Leadership, 22(1), 29–42. Ling, P. (2000). Racism for lunch. History Today, 50(2), 36–38. Morris, A. (2021). The power of social justice movements. Scientific American, 324(3), 24–37. Paris, D., & Alim, H. (2014). What are we seeking to sustain through culturally sustaining pedagogy? A loving critique forward. Harvard Educational Review, 84(1), 85–100. Rim, C. (2020). How student activism shaped the Black Lives Matter Movement. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherrim/2020/06/04/ how-student-activism-shaped-the-black-lives-matter-movement/?sh=678d22 cb4414 Robinson, C., & Taylor, C. (2007). Theorizing student voice: Values and perspectives. Improving Schools, 10(1), 5–17. Rosen, S. M. (2019). “So much of my very soul”: How youth organizers’ identity projects pave agentive pathways for civic engagement. American Educational Research Journal, 56(3), 1033–1063. Sung, K. (2015). Hella ghetto!: (Dis)Locating race and class consciousness in youth discourses of ghetto spaces, subjects and schools. Race Ethnicity and Education, 18(3), 363–395. thinking, doing, changing. (2020). Learning, from the tide of youth activism. https://thinkingdoingchanging.com/2020/01/13/learning-fromthe-tide-of-youth-activism/ U.S. Department of Education. (n.d.). National Center for Education Statistics. https://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2020144. Williams, E. R. (2008). Unnecessary and unjustified: African American parental perceptions of special education. Educational Forum, 71(3), 250–261. Women in the modern civil rights movement. (2021). National Museum of African American History. https://nmaahc.si.edu/sites/default/files/images/black_ women_civil_rights_movement_1.pdf Zion, S. (2020). Transformative student voice: Extending the role of youth in addressing systemic marginalization in U.S. schools. Multiple Voices for Ethnically Diverse Exceptional Learners , 20(1): 32–43.

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Zion, S., Allen, C., & Jean, C. (2015). Enacting a critical pedagogy, influencing teachers’ sociopolitical development. Urban Review, 47 (5), 914–933. Zion, S., & Blanchett, W. J. (2011). [Re]Conceptualizing inclusion: Can critical race theory and interest convergence be utilized to achieve inclusion and equity for African American students? Teachers College Record, 113(10), 2186–2205. Zion, S., Kirshner, B., Sung, K., & Ventura, J. (2021). Student movements, participatory action research, and urban education. In H. R. Milner & K. Lomotey (Eds.), Handbook of urban education (2nd ed., pp. 507–522). Routledge. Zion, S., York, A., & Stickney, D. (2017). Bound together: White teachers/Latinx students revising resistance. In R. Elmesky, C., Yeakery, & O. Marucci (Eds.), The power of resistance: Culture, ideology and social reproduction in global contexts (pp. 429–458). Emerald Press.

CHAPTER 3

Political Participation of Young People in Serbia: Activities, Values, and Capability Dragan Stanojevi´c, Jelisaveta Vukeli´c, and Aleksandar Tomaševi´c

Key Terms Authoritarianism—represents an ideological construct of social cognition which views the world as inherently dangerous, and that person’s social group (nation, ethnicity, race) is in need of protection. In that case, protection requires conformity to different forms of political authority and submission to existing social hierarchies.

D. Stanojevi´c (B) · J. Vukeli´c University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia e-mail: [email protected] A. Tomaševi´c University of Novi Sad, Novi Sad, Serbia e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 I. Rivers and C. L. Lovin (eds.), Young People Shaping Democratic Politics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29378-8_3

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Stabilitocracy—represents a political regime that, despite undemocratic characteristics, enjoys external legitimacy (e.g., from the EU) by promising political stability. The paradox is that while those regimes pretend to offer stability by regulating certain regional issues (e.g., bilateral relations, migration flows) the very lack of democracy is a main source of instability. Political atomization—refers to a situation in which citizens are alienated from both political processes and each other, which creates fertile ground for the growth of authoritarian and anti-democratic tendencies.

Introduction Focusing on the case of Serbia, in this chapter we explore conventional and unconventional political participation of young people, and point out several factors (values, socio-economic status, age, gender, interest in politics, sense of political efficiency) that shape their formation. Political circumstances in post-socialist Serbia are fertile ground for very diverse forms of political participation driven by various motives, and therefore a good place to start exploring the impact of this particular context (legacies of state socialism and post-socialism) on youth political engagement. As we shall demonstrate, conventional politics, with its informal rules of the game, developed clientelism, the still traditional structure of political parties, mobilizes a relatively large number of young people compared to other European countries. However, this type of political engagement is only partly motivated by political and/or ideological goals. The prevailing motivation stems from job opportunities available in the public sector and social promotion through political parties. On the other hand, semi-authoritarian regimes (such is the case with Serbia) can induce selforganizing and various alternative forms of youth engagement, which are grounded in the traditions of the 1990s and the opposition to the Milosevic regime. Besides a close look at the Serbian case, this chapter provides an overview of the current debate on the transformation of political activism in the twenty-first century, with special emphasis on the practices of young people in the post-socialist context. Political participation is considered one of the basic preconditions for the development of modern democratic institutions. However, in the past few decades, there has been a noticeable trend of declining participation in most developed countries. Along

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with the decline in trust in political institutions, these processes have resulted in the creation of a “democratic deficit” (Norris, 2011; Putnam, 2000; Stoker, 2006). In this regard, young people are particularly disadvantaged, with research showing that they are least involved through conventional channels of political participation (Grasso, 2014; Kimberlee, 2002; Sloam & Henn, 2019; Wattenberg, 2006). However, research also indicates that this does not necessarily mean that young people are disengaged and apathetic but that they choose alternative forms of political engagement such as protest, membership in civil society organizations, online activism, political spending, etc., mainly because they feel excluded from formal policies governed by “old people” (Norris, 2002; Sloam, 2013, 2016; Stockemer, 2014). Such observed trends of political participation of young people, their disengagement from conventional forms of politics, and the growing democratic deficit open the question of the future of democracy and thus represent one of the most important topics in contemporary political sociology (Elison et al., 2020; Kitanova, 2020; Pilkington & Pollock, 2015). The situation is particularly unfavorable in young European democracies, where the building of democratic institutions and practices is slow and difficult. Namely, research indicates generally lower levels of political participation in post-socialist countries (Howard, 2003; Rose & Munro, 2003) and a relatively low engagement of youth in politics (Haerpfer et al., 2002; Vukeli´c & Stanojevi´c, 2012). Another question is who are the young people who are engaged, what are their sociological profiles, with what ideas and motives do they enter the political field? Several studies have already detected some authoritarian diversions of young people in Southeast Europe (Lavriˇc et al., 2019). Thus, it would be interesting to check whether there are consequences for political engagement, i.e., whether, in addition to young people being more authoritarian, those among them who are more authoritarian are also more active. This chapter is structured as follows. First, we start with presentations of the conceptual and contextual frameworks of the research, followed by a note on the data and methods used in our analysis. Our methodological approach is based on the use of logistic regression, a subtype of regression in which the outcome (dependent) variable is a binary event. We then transition to the presentation and discussion of the result, then conclude with final remarks.

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Conceptual Framework: Conventional and Unconventional Forms of Young People’s Political Participation and Determining Factors Political participation is defined in the literature in different ways (van Deth, 2001, 2014; Verba & Nie, 1972; Vromen, 2003), but in the broadest sense, it can be understood as a series of activities that seek to influence decision makers. Vromen (2003, p. 82) sees participation as “acts that can occur, either individually or collectively, that are intrinsically concerned with shaping the society that we want to live in”, while Kitanova (2020, p. 820) emphasizes the importance of respecting the existing legal framework and conceptualizes political participation “as any lawful activities undertaken by citizens that will or aim at influencing, changing or affecting the government, public policies, or how institutions are run”. The division into conventional and unconventional forms of political participation has become common in the literature (Ekman & Amna˚, 2012; Pilkington & Pollock, 2015; Stockemer, 2014; Teorell et al., 2007; van Deth, 2014). This distinction, nowadays somewhat outdated, stems from the historical development of political activism in the West. Today the political space has expanded significantly compared to the middle of the twentieth century and includes areas far beyond institutionalized politics (van Deth, 2001, 2014). In addition, there is a division into citizen-oriented actions, which somewhat coincide with traditional forms of participation in elections and membership in political parties, and cause-oriented repertoires, which focus on individual political issues and are closely related to “lifestyle” politics (Norris, 2002). As already mentioned in the introduction, research shows that young people in developed democracies most often choose to express themselves politically through the mechanisms of unconventional participation, in part because it allows them to maintain some independence from the ruling system and still influence it indirectly (Marien et al., 2010; Norris, 2002; Stolle et al., 2005). These forms of participation imply less commitment, are mostly individual in nature, and are easier to get out of than traditional forms such as membership in political parties (Bennett, 2012; Li & Marsh, 2008). The research questions we want to answer with this paper are: How are the values of young people related to the types of political engagement? How does trust in institutions and political actors affect involvement in

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the political field? Does a sense of capability to participate in political life also lead to real involvement? Is socio-economic status related, and in what way, to the forms of participation? Factors of Youth Political Participation Values are considered to be one of the factors significantly shaping political activism. Previous studies have shown that citizens holding authoritarian values favor orderly or conventional political action, while those holding libertarian values have preference toward unconventional and protest activities (Pirro & Portos, 2021). For citizens holding authoritarian values, this is sometimes expressed through the “paradox of the populist right” which tends to be critical of mechanisms of representative democracy, while at the same time relying on the electoral competition and party organization for mobilization of citizens for conventional political participation (Hutter & Borbáth, 2019). Similarly, social libertarian values, often coupled with postmaterialist values, have demonstrated a positive effect on both frequency and the intensity of extra-institutional political participation (Grasso & Giugni, 2019) which also manifests as a predisposition toward unconventional protest politics (Hutter & Borbáth, 2019). Therefore, authoritarianlibertarian dimension of social values emerges in cross-national studies as a predictor of both unconventional and non-electoral political participation. The socio-economic status of an individual is considered to be one of the key factors influencing their chances of getting involved in political life (Verba & Nie, 1972; Verba et al., 1995). Namely, individuals who have a higher income and a higher level of education will more often participate in the political life of the community. Better education provides opportunities to understand more complex aspects of the political process and the political system rules, while economic resources provide opportunities to engage in politics in the long run (Burns et al., 2001; Marien et al., 2010; Sloam, 2012; Verba et al., 1995; Touchton & Wampler, 2014). In addition to socio-economic status, in research on political participation, age has stood out as a significant demographic factor, in the sense that certain political practices are characteristic of a certain age. Young people are less involved in the activities of trade unions, political parties and go to the polls less often, while older people are less involved in informal political activities (Dalton, 2008; Ellison et al., 2020; Marsh et al., 2007). At the same time, age also appears as a barrier to formal

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participation in politics, as in most countries the legal voting age is 18 (Henn & Foard, 2014), which leads them to other forms of expressing political demands (Ellison et al., 2020; Stockemer, 2014). Gender is also recognized as a factor that can influence the characteristics of political participation. According to a lot of research findings, women participate less in politics (Burns et al., 2001; Inglehart et al., 2003; Karp & Banducci, 2008; Pfanzelt & Spies, 2019). Such findings are interpreted by a specific gender socialization that distances women from politics. Also, women are less engaged in more dangerous forms of activism, such as participating in violent protests (Burns et al., 2001; Ellison et al., 2020). Interest in politics and a sense of political efficiency have emerged as important factors in political literature (capability to participate) (Ellison et al., 2020; Hooghe & Marien, 2013; Verba et al., 1995). Henn and Foard (2014) distinguish between internal efficiency (knowledge, understanding of politics) and external efficiency which depends on the characteristics of the political system. Here, it is important to point out the influence of trust in political institutions. Namely, as the research findings show, citizens who have lower trust in official institutions are more inclined to participate through unconventional forms, while those who cultivate high trust in institutions are more inclined to participate through traditional channels of participation (Hooghe & Marien, 2013).

The Contextual Background Research shows that the characteristics of the wider social context in which young people grow up have a significant impact on the characteristics of their participation in politics (Fieldhouse et al., 2007; Grasso, 2014; Kitanova, 2020; Sloam, 2016). Findings from a number of comparative studies show that young people from developed democracies are more likely to participate in political life than young people from young democracies (Barnes, 2004; Bernhagen & Marsh, 2007; Nový & Katrnˇ ák, 2015; Vráblíková, 2013). Such findings are interpreted by bigger opportunities for participation in old democracies as well as the stability of these practices that are transmitted by the mechanisms of political socialization. On the other hand, in the former socialist countries, democratic political participation has only developed in the last three decades and is therefore not yet deeply embedded in the expectations and practices of the people of these countries, at least not in the same way as in the old

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democracies (Kitanova, 2020; Sloam, 2016). It should be noted that in former Yugoslavia, certain forms of self-governance and participation at the local level and within state-owned companies were present. However, these types of participation were mostly formal and did not give real voice to the people in the political sphere (Vukeli´c, 2009). Research on political participation in Serbia indicates a relatively low interest of citizens in this topic (Cveji´c, 2004; Vukeli´c, 2009; Vukeli´c & Stanojevi´c, 2012). As the key reasons for low participation, the research identified the underdeveloped participatory political culture, acceptance of authoritarian values, centralized political system, as well as low trust in political institutions (Beši´c, 2016; Petrovi´c & Stanojevi´c, 2020; Vukeli´c, 2009). Only membership in political parties is maintained at a relatively high level of about 10% of the population, which can be explained by the clientelism and control of political parties over employment opportunities in the public sector (Cveji´c, 2016; Petrovi´c & Stanojevi´c, 2020, p. 374). Namely, as in most other post-socialist countries, the relatively low level of economic development goes hand in hand with a high level of distribution by the state, which opens the door to clientelism (van Biezen, 2004). That young people in Serbia are aware of such properties of the system is confirmed by the research findings according to which young people recognize the dominant patterns of social promotion, and thus see personal and political ties as key factors of progress in Serbia (Moji´c, 2012; Petrovi´c & Stanojevi´c, 2019, 2020; Tomanovi´c & Stanojevi´c, 2015). Therefore, the decision to participate in political life is largely guided by the assessment of economic benefits from this type of activity (primarily securing a job in the public sector). In considering the political participation of young people in Serbia, widespread corruption should be taken into account, as well as new tendencies to weaken the democratic system and move toward “stabilitocracy”, i.e., the establishment of a hybrid regime that hinders participatory forms of action (Bieber, 2018; Pavlovi´c, 2019; Stojiljkovi´c, 2015). An aggravating circumstance is the presidentialization and development of internal leader tendencies in political parties in Serbia (Mladenovi´c, 2020). Also, the traditional, authoritarian, and patriarchal characteristics of Serbian society are seen as an unfavorable framework for the development of political participation practices (Peši´c, 2016; Petrovi´c & Radoman, 2016). However, recent research on civic participation in Serbia indicates certain positive changes, primarily in accepting and more frequent practice of alternative forms of action such as participation

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in protests, the activism of everyday life, political consumption, etc. (Petrovi´c & Petrovi´c, 2017; Petrovi´c & Stanojevi´c, 2020).

Our Study In order to analyze the relationship between two types of political engagement, values and socio-economic status of young people we used data from the IX round of the European Social Survey (ESS). The ESS framework includes the relevant set of indicators of conventional and unconventional participation. In our analyses we used sub-set of data for the population aged 15 to 29 for Serbia. Method For data analysis, we use logistic regression method, where we predict the probability of an individual being engaged in at least one activity in the last twelve months. The output of this method is the identification of statistically significant factors which influence the probability that an individual will be engaged in conventional or unconventional political activity. All theoretical scales are standardized for regression analysis. For each outcome variable we created two models. In the first model we included all variables of interest, while in the second model we added interactions between the level of capability to participate in political life and authoritarian values. Post-stratification weight involving design weights was employed to weigh the data. Outcome Variables Like in most of the research dealing with youth participation, we operationalized forms of political participation through two dimensions—conventional and unconventional participation. Under the forms of conventional political participation, we consider activities such as 1. “contacting politicians or government official”, 2. “working within party or similar action group”, and 3. “displaying campaign badge”; while we consider unconventional forms to be 1. “the signing of petitions”, 2. “worked in another organization or association”, 3. “taken part in a lawful public demonstration”, 4. “boycotted certain products”, and 5. “posted or shared anything about politics online, for example on blogs, via email or on social media such as Facebook or Twitter”. As outcome variables,

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we used two dichotomous variables (conventional and non-conventional participation) where 1 indicates that respondents participated at least in one activity in the last twelve months. Theoretical Indicators: Capability, Trust, Authoritarianism, and Self-Transcendence As independent variables, we used three main indicators. The first was the indicator about young people perception of own capability to participate in political life, which was measured by the question: “How able do you think you are to take an active role in a group involved with political issues?” on five-point scale. The second, trust in political actors, was measured over a scale consisted of five items (1) trust in country’s parliament, (2) trust in the legal system, (3) trust in politicians, (4) trust in political parties, and (5) trust in police. Each item was measured by eleven-point scale, where composite scale range is 0–50 and higher score expresses higher degree of trust. The third, scale of authoritarianism, was measured by classical Schwartz (2003) scale consisted of five items: (1). “Tradition is important to him. He tries to follow the customs handed down by his religion or his family”, (2) “It is important to him to live in secure surroundings. He avoids anything that might endanger his safety”, (3) “He believes that people should do what they’re told. He thinks people should follow rules at all times, even when no-one is watching”, (4) “It is important to him always to behave properly. He wants to avoid doing anything people would say is wrong”, and (5) “It is important to him that the government ensures his safety against all threats. He wants the state to be strong so it can defend its citizens”. Responses are given on six-point scales. The total range of the composite scale is from 5 to 30, and a lower score implies a more authoritarian attitude. The fourth, scale of self-transcendence was measured by Schwartz scale consisted of five items: (1) “He/she thinks it is important that every person in the world be treated equally. He/she believes everyone should have equal opportunities in life”, (2) “It’s very important to him/her to help the people around him/her. He/she wants to care for their well-being”, (3) “He/she thinks it is important that every person in the world be treated equally. He/she believes everyone should have equal opportunities in life”, (4) “ It is important to him/her to listen to people who are different from him/her. Even when he/she disagrees with them, he/she still wants to understand them”, and (5) “ He/she strongly believes that

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people should care for nature. Looking after the environment is important to him/her”. The total range of the composite scale is from 5 to 30, while a lower score implies a more self-transcendent attitude. Other Indicators As control variables, we used the following indicators: gender as a dichotomous variable where male gender is the reference category; education, where we distinguished those with secondary education, those who are on process of secondary education and those with tertiary education and students as combined reference group; and household monthly income which expresses the total household income.

Our Findings Descriptive Statistics Figure 3.1 shows the different ways of activism of young and older people, shows us several important things. First, young people are less willing than older ones to participate in most conventional political activities. Almost twice as many young people contacted a politician compared to older people, and the attitude toward participating in campaigns is similar. Participation in the work of political parties is at the same level in both age groups. This data is in line with previous research, which also detected in young people equal participation in the work of political parties as in older people, as well as relatively high participation compared to other European countries (Stanojevi´c & Petrovi´c, 2020). In summary, only every tenth young person is involved in some of the listed forms of conventional politics, while this is the case with every sixth adult. Unconventional politics is a more common form of involvement among both young and old, although it is present to a somewhat greater extent among younger people. Young people are more likely than older to choose any individual non-conventional form of participation other than boycotting certain goods for ideological or political reasons, most likely because their consumer choices are significantly limited by financial dependence on parents. Young people most often choose signing petitions, online activism, then engagement in one of the CSOs, while every eleventh young person participated in demonstrations.

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Fig. 3.1 Conventional and unconventional participation for two age groups (Source ESS, IX round Serbian population)

Table 3.1 indicates the average scale values used. In the first two scales, lower values express a higher degree of agreement with the construct, so young people are on average quite authoritarian, given that they are on average significantly below the theoretical mean (17.5). But, although they are quite authoritarian, young people are at the same time on average quite oriented toward others and nature, because, on average, they identify significantly with these values. These two scales also show a significant correlation (the degree of correlation is 0.441, p < 0.001). The scale of trust in political actors and institutions indicates a rather low level of trust, but also significant variations among young people. The last scale, selfassessment capability to participate in political life, indicates a rather low assessment of young people’s capability to act politically. Other scales do not correlate with each other. Analysis Table 3.2 shows two regression models. The first includes indicators of age, gender, total household income, educational level, self-assessment

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Table 3.1 Theoretical scales—Descriptive statistics

Authoritarianism Self-transcendence Trust in political institutions Capability to participate

Mean

SD

Range

13.2 10.2 16.7 4.0

3.9 3.5 10.4 2.1

5–30 5–30 0–50 2–10

scale about capability to participate in political life, political trust, and authoritarianism scale. In the second model, in addition to the existing indicators, the interaction between the scale capability to participate in political life and authoritarianism was added to see if these two traits interact and can predict participation. The first model shows that as household income declines, so does the likelihood of participating in political life. Table 3.2 Logistic regression models for conventional politics (young people 15–30 years old) Conventional I model

Age Female (ref. male) Household income Secondary In education (ref. tertiary/students) Capability to participate Trust in political actors Authoritarianism Self-transcendence Capability* authoritarianism Constant Nagelkerke R 2

II model

B

SE

Exp (B)

B

SE

Exp (B)

−0.074 −0.095 −0.128 −2.259*** −2.323**

0.064 0.447 0.090 0.546 0.705

0.928 0.910 0.880 0.104 0.098

−0.098 −0.207 −0.158 −2.634*** −2.795***

0.067 0.460 0.093 0.582 0.769

0.907 0.813 0.853 0.072 0.061

1.267*** −0.479* −1.004*** 0.711**

0.214 0.209 0.252 0.238

3.552 0.620 0.366 2.036

1.763 0.357

2.297

5.830

1.283*** −0.554** −0.650* 0.644** −0.397* 3.043 0.381

0.214 0.219 0.279 0.239 0.180 2.131

3.608 0.575 0.522 1.905 0.672 20.962

Source ESS 2020, Serbia youth (15–30), weighted by post-stratification weight *** p < 0.001; ** p < 0.01; * p < 0.05

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Those with lower education than university are less likely to be included, as are students compared to those who have completed tertiary education, or are still in university, pointing out that the experience of higher education is very important for involvement in political life. The capability to participate in political life is a very important predictor of participation, given that with the growth of this type of self-confidence, involvement in conventional politics grows. It is interesting that within the political field, in a narrower sense, there are more young people who have less trust in political institutions and political actors. This may be the result of their experience working within this field, disillusionment about the politics, or it may be precisely the reason for their involvement. Authoritarianism is positively associated with conventional politics, given that as youth authoritarianism grows, so does the likelihood that they will engage in politics in this way. Finally, self-transcendence is inversely associated with participation, because with the decline of this value orientation, the probability of conventional participation increases. This means that the less young people are oriented toward others, and the more toward themselves, the more inclined they are to get involved in politics. In the second model, after the introduction of an interaction that shows statistical significance, we also recognize certain changes. First, there appears to be a positive correlation between a greater degree of authoritarianism and a sense of capability to participate, and participation itself in conventional politics. With the growth of authoritarianism and with the growth of a sense of capability, the probability of engaging in the work of political parties, campaigns, and direct communication with politicians increases. The introduction of interaction lowers the direct effect of authoritarianism, while other indicators have more or less the same effects. Thus, conventional channels are more often used by young people who are authoritarian, and even more often by those who are authoritarian and confident in their political capabilities. In Table 3.3 we analyzed indicators associated with unconventional forms of participation. The strategy was the same as with conventional politics. The results show us that unconventional engagement is declining with age. Completion of education, entry into other adult roles (employment, starting a family) most likely lead to a reduction in civic engagement. Neither gender nor household income is related to activism, but there is a significant education link. No significance of gender as a predictor of both conventional and non-conventional youth participation in politics is also in line with recent

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Table 3.3 Logistic regression models for non-conventional politics (young people 15–30 years old) Non-conventional I model

Age Female (ref. male) Household income Secondary In education (ref. tertiary/students) Capability to participate Trust in political actors Authoritarianism Self-transcendence Capability* self-transcendence Constant Nagelkerke R 2

II model

B

SE

Exp (B) B

SE

Exp (B)

−0.080 0.020 0.001 −1.328** −1.202*

0.042 0.271 0.052 0.416 0.517

0.923 1.021 1.001 0.265 0.301

−0.080 0.021 0.001 −1.327** −1.201*

0.043 0.272 0.052 0.419 0.523

0.923 1.021 1.001 0.265 0.301

0.985*** −0.437** 0.032 0.033

0.148 0.137 0.142 0.149

2.677 0.646 1.032 1.034

0.985*** −0.437** 0.032 0.033 0.002 2.543 0.277

0.149 0.137 0.142 0.149 0.125 1.283

2.678 0.646 1.032 1.034 1.002 12.712

2.547 0.277

1.257 12.768

Source ESS 2020, Serbia youth (15–30), weighted by post-stratification weight *** p < 0.001; ** p < 0.01; * p < 0.05

studies and shows the lack of uniform impact of gender socialization on various forms of political activism of young people (Ellison et al., 2020; Kitanova, 2020), but also in unconventional political activism of general population. Previous studies have also shown the diminishing importance of income when it comes to different practices of unconventional politics, especially in terms of demonstrations and boycotts (Stockemer, 2014). Young people who have completed high school education or lower, as well as those who are still in high school, are less involved in some of these forms of activism compared to young people who have college experience (current students or graduates). The capability to participate in the political field is also associated with involvement in civic political activities, as those who have more self-confidence are more frequent and active. Here, too, a lower degree of trust in political institutions is associated with a higher degree of engagement. Authoritarianism (neither increase nor decrease) is not related to participation in the civic field, indicating that young people from different perspectives and with different values can find their place within that field and articulate their interests and views.

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Interestingly, and somewhat unexpectedly, even the self-transcendence set of values is not associated with an unconventional repertoire of engagements. This means that young people use “alternative” political repertoire regardless of value orientations. The second model, in which value interaction and the capability to participate are added, does not improve the model significantly and even lower their explanatory power compared to the previous model.

Discussion and Conclusions The analyses reveal the relationship between the values and modes of political involvement among young people in Serbia. The prolonged societal crisis, characterized by limited economic prospects, a lack of trust in institutions, and conflicting value orientations, has a discernible impact on the political participation of youth in the country. These results point to several important things. First of all, that traditional politics is associated with lower household incomes of young people, and that it can be a way to ensure the existence, or improve the economic and social position of the individual and family. This finding is in contrast with a recent study which found that young individuals from higher classes are as about half as likely to engage in any form of conventional political participation than their counterparts from lower social classes (Kitanova, 2020). However, this finding is based on EU countries, so our result may be specifically tied to conditions of Serbian politics. Studies have already recognized the extent of clientelism, which has become commonplace in the political orientations of young people, so they use traditional policy channels to find work and social promotion. In the current political conditions, this strategy is more pronounced among those with lower households’ income, probably without a job, i.e., those who are under greater financial pressure. Second, engagement is more common among those who have gone through the college experience, which shows that those with more cultural capital find it easier and potentially stay longer within this field, within which they can more easily pursue a career compared to those from lower social strata. Also, a sense of self-confidence and agency is a very important prerequisite for someone to enter this field. In cases where young people find this to be complicated, competitive, full of risks to which they cannot respond on their own, they are probably less likely

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to get involved. It is interesting that the experience of working with political parties is associated with lower trust in state institutions and political actors. This finding can be explained in three ways. One explanation is that young people involved in conventional politics develop a more critical attitude (with the idea of improving the situation), while the rest of the youth population retains a somewhat more idyllic view of this field. The second explanation is that only the experience of participation reveals lack of principles, clientelism, and corruption in this field; while the third implies that it is young people who are aware of how this field works that enter politics more often. There is ample evidence that all three explanations are valid. In the domestic context, authoritarian values are also associated with political participation, which can be explained by the structure of political parties dominated by authoritarian and leadership patterns of functioning, as well as the dominant authoritarian political culture and system of government in Serbia. The results also suggest that authoritarianism coupled with a sense of capability and adequacy leads to greater engagement and potential success within the political field. The values of self-transcendence are even inversely correlated with the political field, confirming that self-focus is an important motive for inclusion. These analyses raise the question of how it is possible to build trust, cooperation, and common goals, if the basis of participation is primarily personal interest, instrumental motivation, lack of trust in the field, and the authoritarian structure of both the person and the political field? Young people in Serbia are not excluded from conventional politics, nor is their involvement, especially in the work of political parties, at a lower level than the older population. However, their engagement within this field does not mean strengthening and securing the democratic potentials of society but is an expression of the specific logic of clientelism in conditions of scarce resources. They look for those channels that give greater chances to secure a livelihood, find a job, and after that, they most often opt out of these activities. When it comes to conventional participation, results indicate the following important things. Growing up leads to a slow exclusion from civic engagement, and this field may be primarily related to the education process and excess free time. It is likely that with the assumption of adult roles, there is less time and resources to commit to collective goals and activities. The process of education, and especially higher education, proves to be important for those involved in these forms of participation because it is part of the academic culture, it is connected with

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active patterns of leisure time and the mission of the university, which implies engagement. Engagement is related to the degree of confidence in one’s own capability to participate in political life, which can be the result of both the experiences of young people who spend some time in this field and the predisposition of those who believe in themselves to get involved in these activities. Finally, a higher degree of distrust in political institutions and actors is also associated with a higher engagement for which we can offer two explanations. A higher degree of civic engagement reveals a greater degree of clientelism and corruption within political institutions and generates a more critical attitude, or a number of young people who are otherwise more critical of the conventional political field choose unconventional channels and forms of participation to express their opinions, articulate interests, or benefit the community. Unconventional participation also points to the specifics of the social context that creates the conditions for specific types of engagement. First of all, young people can use the infrastructure of the civic sector for both ideological and instrumental motives, i.e., they can be part of the movement, various NGOs, and ad hoc activities as goal-oriented, but also for socializing, and often “CV-building”—creating references for future jobs (Petrovi´c & Stanojevi´c, 2019). This means that for some young people, entering this field is not primarily driven by ideology, but is perceived as a field of acquiring competencies, social and cultural capital. Furthermore, as the results show, overall, the repertoire of unconventional politics is not reserved for those young people who are value-oriented or non-authoritarian. In the domestic context, these types of activism have become part of the practice of young people who have different value orientations, and the differences could probably be found only in the type of activity. Perhaps that is why it is not surprising that there is an increasing number of organizations, movements, and activities within the civic sector that takes place on the right ideological spectrum, and which is often indirectly connected with certain political parties.

Pedagogical Feature Political circumstances in Serbia are fertile ground for very diverse forms of political participation with very different motives. On the one hand, conventional politics, with its informal rules of the game, developed clientelism, the still traditional structure of political parties advocating mass numbers and in which young people represent a significant resource,

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mobilizes a relatively large number of young people compared to other European countries. But this activity is only partly inspired by political and ideological goals, and the dominant strategy is getting a job and social promotion. On the other hand, the semi-authoritarian regime in which they live often leads to self-organizing and various alternative and protest policies of young people, which are grounded in the traditions of the 1990s and the opposition to the Milosevic regime. Transactional Political Participation? In a context in which the motives for participating in political life are very heterogeneous, and often instrumental, defining basic concepts is especially challenging. The question arises whether the sufficient criterion of participation is whether someone is a member of the organization, and even an active member, if his/her/their activity is led exclusively by a transaction (and when the transaction is completed, the engagement ends)? In such a context, political participation can replicate existing inequalities because those with more social and economic capital will have a better chance of profiting through their participation in these networks. Yet in times of populist ruling parties, there may be a chance for those from lower social strata to get some public resources through noninstitutional arrangements. In Serbia, it is currently possible to observe both mechanisms—the replication of one part of the elite and the reliance of the government on the lower social strata. University education and student life, which represent opportunities for connection, association, but also protests and blockades of institutions are the basic ways of political socialization of young people. Urban centers, and especially the capital, are key places in this tradition. In Serbia, as in most other European societies, the civic sector covers of a wide range of ideologies, while the last decade has been marked by an increased presence of right-wing, anti-immigrant, and conservative organizations. In the absence of opportunities to adequately express their interests and their voice, the most common strategy of young people is to withdraw into informal networks and family surroundings, which results in their political atomization. Institutions are often unresponsive, even when there are established institutional channels of communication. A number of young people are trying to get what is in their immediate interest according to the “rules of the game” in the political field, while a number

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are trying to point out institutional shortcomings by alternative means. The consequence of the first type of engagement is the perpetuation of informal rules of the game, while the second, although often frustrating, creates a basis for critical thinking of society and civic corrective of institutions.

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CHAPTER 4

The 2018 Road Safety Protest in Bangladesh: How a Student Crowd Challenged (or Could not Challenge) the Repressive State Nafisa Tanjeem and Rawshan E. Fatima

Key Terms Crowd—an anthropological framework that helps us understand the ways in which collective actions and mass politics are conceptualized in social and cultural contexts.

N. Tanjeem (B) Worcester State University, Worcester, MA, USA e-mail: [email protected] R. E. Fatima Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 I. Rivers and C. L. Lovin (eds.), Young People Shaping Democratic Politics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29378-8_4

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Student Activism—actions and protests undertaken by students to bring about political, environmental, social, or economic change. The Accidental —a framework to address the way the conventional meaning of “accident” does not take into account how accidents can be manufactured by structural failures.

Introduction From 29 July to 8 August 2018, what happened in Bangladesh was so much more than a debate and demonstration over road safety after two high school students were hit and killed by a speeding bus in Dhaka (BBC News, 2018). As an immediate reaction to the incident, Shajahan Khan, the then Bangladeshi Minister of Shipping who was also the Executive President of Bangladesh Road Transport Workers Federation, said at a press conference, “A road crash has claimed 33 lives in India’s Maharashtra; but do they talk about it like the way we do?” (The Daily Star, 2018b). The comment shook the nation—and specifically young students—to its core. The students from schools, colleges, and universities took over the streets of the capital city of Dhaka and other parts of the country demanding nationwide road safety measures, along with greater accountability from the state. Drawing on the historical tradition of student engagement in political and social movements in Bangladesh, as well as the contemporary youth-led social justice organizing, this chapter contributes to the scholarships on young people’s democratic participation in several ways. First, it deconstructs the conventional meaning of “accident” by unraveling how accidents can be manufactured by structural failures and why the state should take accountability for these failures. It also explores how “the accidental” can turn into a gateway for embodied political engagement of young people. Second, using the anthropological framework of “the crowd” (N. S. Chowdhury, 2019a, 2019b, 2020; Steffen, 2020), it elaborates on the immense political potentials of a student crowd that can nurture creative solidarities, develop grassroots, bottom-up, leaderless, and insurgent organizing, and demonstrate the indomitable courage of questioning not only the failing road and transportation system but also the legitimacy of the autocratic state. Along the way, it demonstrates the way a student crowd can disrupt a repressive regime and how a repressive regime surveils, regulates, and dissipates the student crowd. Third, it unravels how the student crowd on the streets is

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co-constituted by its virtual embodiment in digital organizing spaces and how the student crowd and the virtual crowd experience and negotiate state surveillance and state violence.

A Brief History of Student Activism in Bangladesh Bangladesh has a long tradition of student involvement in social movements. In 1952, students protested against the then ruling Pakistani government’s decision to make Urdu the only recognized state language of East Pakistan (which became “Bangladesh” through a bloody liberation war in 1971) (Jackman, 2019, pp. 5–6, 2020, p. 4). In 1962, students opposed a national education policy for being exclusionary and proposing to restrict access to education for all (Riyasad, 2018). In 1969, student organizations presented an eleven-point charter of demands and mobilized a massive uprising, appearing as a major political force for the independence struggle of the country. Due to the critical role student organizers played in the nationalist and liberation movement of Bangladesh, they were brutally targeted by the Pakistani army during the liberation war in 1971 (Banglapedia, 2021). After the liberation of Bangladesh, student organizing continued to play a significant role. In 1983, students at the University of Dhaka protested Hussain Muhammad Ershad’s military regime’s newly proposed education policy that required students to bear at least half of the educational expenses that used to be free in public schools. The new policy also introduced Arabic as a compulsory subject at the primary and secondary levels of education, which contrasted with the ethos of the language movement of 1952 and was perceived as a tactic of using religion to gather support for the autocratic military regime. Several thousand students marched against the government, leading to a violent clash with the police and injuring hundreds of people, and killing at least five (Dhaka Tribune, 2017; Rahman, 1984, pp. 240–241). The protest against Ershad, who declared himself as the President after a controversial Presidential election in 1986, continued. In 1987, all educational institutions were ordered to shut down, and residential students at universities were ordered to vacate their dorms in an effort to curtail students’ participation in the protests. Noor Hossain, an autorickshaw driver by profession, was shot dead by the police while demonstrating on the street with “Down with autocracy” [Shoirachar nipat jak] and “Let democracy be free” [Gonotontro mukti pak] written on his bare chest (BBC News,

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2020; New Age, 2021). Hossain became a symbol of youth resistance against the oppressive state for generations to come. In 1990, the opposition groups consisting of political parties, as well as students, intellectuals, and hundreds and thousands of common people organized a series of public demonstrations and strikes resisting the dictatorial regime (Kim, 2012). Students, and specifically campus wings of national-political parties, played a vital role in uniting political parties to push against the Ershad government. During one of the demonstrations in October, the police fired on students who were demonstrating, killing five people including students, which led to a series of strikes, demonstrations, and violent battles between government-supported armed goons and students. Eventually, intellectual and professional groups, as well as some sects of the army, allied themselves with students, and Ershad was finally forced to leave his office, opening a new pathway toward a parliamentary democracy in Bangladesh (Crossette, 1990). Interestingly, in most of the examples mentioned above, student politics alone did not bring structural changes in Bangladesh. The way students interacted with political parties and other actors shaped the trajectory of major national-political events and regime changes. Student organizing, in many cases, merged with organizing by political parties, paving the way for some political parties to gain prominence over others. Since the 1990s, the ruling party’s student wing started to control agenda setting and priorities of on-campus student organizing. Chhatra League (student wing of Awami League), Chhatra Dol (student wing of Bangladesh Nationalist Party), and Chhatra Shibir (student wing of Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh) monopolized university campuses when their affiliated political parties were running the government. Gradually, student politics moved away from its tradition of playing an active role in the struggles for independence and democracy and turned into a strategic means to attain the purpose of major political parties (Jackman, 2020). Perpetuating violence became a tool for mostly male student leaders to incorporate themselves into the political party networks and access state power and resources (Suykens, 2018).

Contemporary Urban Middle-Class Youth-Led Organizing Since the constitutional amendment that initiated the parliamentary system in Bangladesh in 1991, Awami League (AL) and Bangladesh

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Nationalist Party (BNP) alternatively won relatively fair elections until 2008. Even though a formal democratization process was in place, both political parties contributed to the gradual erosion of the fragile democratic institutions and democratic culture. In 2007, a series of actions undertaken by both AL and BNP created extreme political unrest. The military staged a coup, and a military-backed interim caretaker government took hold of the political power with the assurance of holding an election and restoring democracy. The caretaker government banished both former Prime Ministers Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia from politics and promised to address the mass-scale corruption. Nevertheless, due to external pressure, as well as the Asian economic crisis, the caretaker government handed the power over to AL through a general election in 2008 (Riaz, 2022, pp. 210–211). Since the AL government had a threefourths majority in the parliament, they started implementing a series of measures that suppressed the press, eroded the opposition parties, invalidated the elections, and promoted a culture of fear. Ali Riaz argues that the AL government implemented four steps that led Bangladesh to become a “de facto one-party state.” These steps were: “the removal of the CTG [Caretaker Government] provision from the Constitution, persecuting the opposition including Khaleda Zia and other BNP leaders with frivolous cases, adoption of legal and extra-legal measures to silence the critics, and curtailing the independence of the judiciary” (Riaz, 2022, p. 211). In 2014, the opposition BNP-led 18 party alliance boycotted the election, resulting in AL winning with two-thirds of the majority (Bhattacharjee, 2014). In the 2018 election, AL won 288 out of 300 seats of the parliament. There were concerns about threats, harassment, and even arrest of opposition candidates, vote tampering, and irregularities at polling stations. Winning 96% of seats in the parliament for a second time, accompanied by strong economic growth, allowed the AL government to legitimize its rule and repress voices of political dissent (Slater & Majumder, 2018). Against this backdrop, Chhatra League—the student wing of the ruling AL government, started exerting more and more muscle power and indulged in violence, extortion, and even killing (Shaikh, 2014). They dominated on-campus student political organizing to serve and access resources from the ruling government. Nevertheless, despite the independent student political organizing being suppressed by Chhatra League and Chhatra League’s recent history of using violence to attain political

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patronage and political protection, several contemporary student movements were able to disrupt this tradition. One such example was student organizing that challenged the military-backed interim caretaker government in 2007. After taking control of the political power in January 2007, the caretaker government imposed a series of emergency restrictions, including banning all political activities and mass protests. The first major defiance of the emergency restrictions came from the students at the University of Dhaka in August 2007. Students demanded the withdrawal of all army camps from the university campus. They launched protests that started at the University of Dhaka and later spread throughout the country. Violent clashes took place between police and student protesters. Police used tear gas and rubber bullets to dissipate protesters. Students responded by throwing stones and burning vehicles, including an army van. The clash injured at least 150 people. In the face of mass student protests, the government eventually apologized and addressed the students’ demands. Nevertheless, the government also filed 59 cases against 84,000 unnamed students on the charge of committing violence and arrested several university professors (Al Jazeera, 2007; Irish Times, 2007; Shovon, 2017; VoA, 2009). The Shahbag protest and the response to the Rana Plaza collapse in 2013 initiated a new era of integrating social media into student organizing. Starting on 5 February 2013, the Shahbag protest demanded capital publishment for Abdul Quader Mollah, who was convicted by the International Crimes Tribunal and sentenced to life imprisonment. Over time, the protest expanded its focus and included demands for banning Jamaat-e-Islami, a fundamentalist Islamist political party, and boycotting educational and financial institutions affiliated with and sponsored by this party. Young people—specifically urban, middle-class students who were not members of any specific political party—played a significant role in shaping campaigns through various social media platforms, such as blogs, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. Having significantly coordinated through various social media channels, the protest gathered approximately 100,000 people who congregated and organized candlelight vigils and other demonstrations at the Shahbag intersection in Dhaka (Jackman, 2019; Tanjeem, 2016). The Rana Plaza, a factory building that housed five garment factories, collapsed in the same year on 24 April 2013, killing more than 1134 people and injuring more than 2500. The rescue, relief, and rehabilitation initiatives for the victims and survivors of the collapse were mostly coordinated by volunteers, civil rescue workers,

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and friends and family members of the missing and stranded garment workers in the absence of an adequate emergency response by the government. Many urban, middle-class, young, educated student volunteers supported the rescue operation as secondary responders. Their service included transporting wounded workers to the hospital, counting dead bodies, recording their details, and distributing snacks and water to first responders. They also surveyed the emergency sites, used Facebook to disseminate information about what was needed at the sites, asked individuals, charitable organizations, and corporations to donate money and supplies, and coordinated and distributed the donations (Tanjeem, 2016). The quota reform movement in 2018 is another recent example of a mass student mobilization that demanded the reform of the quota system restricting access to the public service. Bangladesh Shadharan Chhatra Odhikar Shangrakkhan Parishad (Bangladesh General Students’ Rights Protection Forum)—a universal banner of students not aligned with major political parties—started protesting at the University of Dhaka in April 2018. The limited job opportunities for young university graduates, the rising cost of living, and 56% of public sector jobs being restricted for candidates coming from quotas created discontent among students who demanded the reduction of quotas from 56% to 10%. Student organizers acknowledged the need for some justified quotes. For example, 10% quotas were allocated to women, 10% for “backward districts,” 5% for ethnic minorities, and 1% for people with disabilities. The most controversial quota was the reserved 30% of all available spots for children and grandchildren of freedom fighters of the liberation war of Bangladesh against Pakistan in 1971, precisely because of the disproportionately high proportion of this quota and the wide prominence of fake certificates for freedom fighters. Student organizers across many public, as well as private universities all over the country, organized human chains, rallies, marches, mass blockages of highways, and boycotting of classes. They were attacked multiple times by the police and goons of Chhatra League, the student wing of the ruling political party. The protests ended when the Prime Minister announced the total abolishment of the quota system instead of reforming it (Jackman, 2020).

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The 2018 Road Safety Protest and the Framing of an “Accident” The road safety protest started on 29 July 2018 when a private bus lost control while racing with another private bus to get passengers and hit a group of students standing at the bus stand. The incident killed two high school students, 17-year-old Diya Khanam Mim and 18-year-old Abdul Karim Rajib, and injured many. Local students expressed their frustration by vandalizing vehicles on nearby roads, setting fire to buses, and blocking the highway in response to what the mainstream and social media narrated as a “road accident” (“Shorok durghotona” in Bangla). Interestingly, the Bangla word “durghotona” and its English translation “accident,” albeit similar, bear different connotations. According to the MerriamWebster dictionary, an accident is “an unforeseen and unplanned event or circumstance,” which might result from “carelessness and ignorance.” Sometimes, there is a “lack of intention or necessity” in an accident (Merriam-Webster, no date). However, the word “durghotona” literally means “bad incident” (Biswas, no date). The prefix “dur” in Bangla refers to something bad or harmful or embodying some kind of negative impression or experience (My Academy for Education and Research, no date). The unforeseen or unplanned connotation is not always an integral part of the Bangla translation of “accident.” Right after the killing of two students by a reckless driver, Shajahan Khan, the then Minister of Shipping, attended a press conference with journalists to discuss something else. The journalists brought up the incident of the death of two students and charged the Minister for indulging reckless drivers. The Minister, in response, said, “Is this related to today’s program? I just want to say people should be punished based on the exact crime they perpetuate.” He then made the igniting remark, “….but do they talk about it like the way we do?” comparing Bangladeshi students’ reaction to the public response to the recent bus crash in Maharastra, India, with a smiling face (Newsg24.com, 2018a). The journalists covered the conversations in the news, and the news agitated students even more as they got frustrated by the careless and insensitive comparison of an incident of a bus driver losing control while making a turn and the bus skidding off the road and rolling down a 500-feet gorge in India, killing 33 people, with the incident where two buses were racing against each other to get passengers and one of them ended up hitting students waiting at the bus stop. Shajahan Khan was the same person who issued 28,000

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driving licenses without appropriate road tests in 2011 and had a long history of supporting unskilled and reckless professional drivers (Jackman, 2020). For example, after the death of the renowned Bangladeshi filmmaker Tareq Masud and journalist Mishuk Monir in a car crash, in response to the public demand of requiring a minimum level of education for drivers and strengthening driving license requirements, Khan said, “The reality is there is a shortage of drivers in the country. Based on this reality, uneducated drivers should also be given licenses because they can identify signals, cows and goats, and human beings” (Dhaka Times, 2018; Hossain, 2018). The comment generated huge public backlash since the Minister, who had a long controversial career of unionizing road transportation workers and supporting drivers guilty of reckless driving and causing road accidents, injuries, and deaths (Hossain, 2018), himself denied the necessity of proper training and licensing requirements for drivers and claimed that identifying signals, animals, and human beings on the road should be enough of qualification. Khan’s continued significant role in making road transportation unsafe as well as the fact that 4284 people were killed and 9112 got injured from road accidents across Bangladesh in 2017 (Alam, 2018), most of which were caused by inexperienced, unlicensed, or reckless drivers, unsafe roads, and an inefficient traffic control system, convinced the student protestors that the road accident that took place on 29 July 2018 was not a mere unforeseen or unplanned event—as claimed by Shajahan Khan—but a manufactured accident. Their nine-point demands included not just an apology from Shajahan Khan, but also structural changes, such as instituting harsh punishment for reckless driving, constructing foot-over bridges or alternative arrangements for crossing roads, installing speed breakers on accident-prone roads, and making sure all vehicles on the road had fitness certificates, and all drivers had licenses and updated paperwork. They also demanded special facilities for students, such as discounted fares and convenient public transportation pick-up and drop-off points for students. Most notably, they demanded that the government must take responsibility for students killed and injured in road accidents (Dhaka Tribune, 2018). In this way, the student protestors challenged the unforeseen or unplanned constitutive nature of accidents, as indicated by the English word “accident” as opposed to the Bangla word “durghotona,” and revealed how these accidents were manufactured not only by structural forces but also by the state. The accident, in this case, served what

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Nusrat Chowdhury describes as a “portal from the neighborly to the state and the intimate to the political” (Chowdhury, 2019b, p. 96). It was a doorway that connected the very personal experience of losing a friend or fellow classmate to the large-scale demand for structural transformation and accountability from the state. The creative subversion of the conventional meaning of an accident shaped the framing of the road safety protest. Students rejected the familiar logic of an accident as proposed by the powerful state representatives, such as Minister Shajahan Khan, and generated and circulated their own logic. “The accidental,” in this case, played a significant role in determining the nature and extent of students’ embodied political engagement. Following Chowdhury’s framing (Chowdhury, 2019b, p. 99), it could be argued that, during the road safety protest, the accident served not only as a descriptor but also as an organizing principle. Students’ protests spread across Dhaka city and other parts of the country, where they took over the streets. Compared to other contemporary social justice organizing initiatives by students who did not serve the interests of specific political parties, the road safety protest was unique because it did not start with university-level students and on university campuses. It involved an overwhelming number of adolescent students from higher secondary and secondary levels (grade VI to XII) who occupied streets in school uniforms with school backpacks on their shoulders and carried school ID cards. They posed an unprecedented challenge to the state by taking over responsibilities from the ineffective and often corrupt traffic police and started checking driving licenses and registration records of every vehicle moving on the streets. They created separate lanes on the roads for slow-moving rickshaws, fast-moving cars, emergency vehicles and ambulances, and heavyweight trucks (Sadeque, 2018; Sadiq, 2021). They even checked the license and registration paperwork of police vans, and many police-employed drivers were found as underage and/or with expired or no licenses. They seized the keys of those police vans and made sure cases were filed against the drivers without proper documentation. In an interview with Bangla News 24.com, a student protester said, “We are here not just to tell how to run it. We are demonstrating how to do it” (Shiraj, 2018). Students were often cheered up by the common public, who were frustrated by how the police often thought of themselves as operating above the laws and took bribes and let perpetrators go (Prothom Alo, 2018). A 10th-grade student reported that they had heard a driver saying, “Bro, don’t use the emergency lane. They aren’t

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the police that you can bribe them with money. They are the students. They are working even though it isn’t their duty” (Chang, 2018). In this way, the accident on 29 July 2018 started its own political life and gave rise to a unique student protest culture. It paved the way to rethink the political possibilities of “the accidental.” It resulted in many unexpected, uncertain, and atypical convergences that questioned the authority of the autocratic regime and redefined the role of its young citizens.

Student Organizing and the Formation of the “Crowd” Nusrat Chowdhury asks, “What does an anthropological account of the crowd teach us about the simultaneously enduring and tenuous object of mass democracy – the people?” (Chowdhury, 2019b, p. 22). Examining the agency and the indeterminacy of the mass politics of the crowd, she proposes an evocative way of unraveling the relationship of people with democracy in protest movements. Her work demonstrates how exploring various configurations of the crowd in relation to the delineations of democracy paves the way to make sense of the local and global mass politics (N. S. Chowdhury, 2019a, 2019b, 2020). Following Chowdhury’s propositions, we suggest that conceptualizing the 2018 road safety protest of Bangladeshi students using the framework of the crowd can offer valuable insights into how a student crowd can disrupt a repressive regime and how a repressive regime surveils, regulates, and dissipates the student crowd. The crowd is a constructed category defined “not by who takes part in them but by how they behave” (Steffen, 2020, p. 1). Participation of students in social movements is not a new phenomenon in Bangladesh. What makes the road safety protest novel is the way young students who were not exposed to the politicized atmosphere of university campuses and not affiliated with any major party politics took over the streets to address a cause and posed a substantial threat to the autocratic regime. To further elaborate on the question of “how they behave,” we analyze various dynamics of the student crowd of the road safety protest. Crowd Solidarity Through their on-the-ground organizing, the student crowd nurtured innovative solidarities with the mass people who were not initially part

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of the protests. In response to a question about whether their demonstration on the streets was inconvenient for the public, a student said, “If anyone has the minimal conscience, they would understand that our movement is for them. We are their children” (Ahmed, 2019). Students tried to include everyone in their protests—from autorickshaw drivers to police to military forces—by asking them to get involved and by saying, “We are your children” (Ahmed, 2019). The reiterative evocation of the familial term “children” served unique purposes. On the one hand, it can be read as a creative subversion where the student crowd reclaimed the “children” status, especially when the Prime Minister, the Shipping Minister, along with other political leaders and civil society members, kept using terms, such as “adolescent” [Kishor] or “innocent” [Nishpap], in a patronizing and paternalistic way to indicate that the students were too young to have a holistic and practical understanding of how the state should run and they were easy to manipulate by “third parties” who were not concerned about the students’ cause and might use them as pawns (Ahmed, 2019). The student crowd opposed these paternalistic narratives and performed as responsible children who prioritized vehicles transporting children, senior people, people with special abilities, and sick people to go first. When they saw sick people stuck in the traffic, they arranged transportation for them. On the other hand, claiming the relationship with the public as “children” situated the student crowd as an ally and advocate for the common people whose usual way of living might have been somewhat disturbed by their organizing. It put the student crowd in solidarity with the mass people and even with critical arms of the government, such as the police and the army. The use of the familial dynamics took a powerful turn with narratives circulating around how mothers inspired the student crowd to go to the streets and resist. Sabiha Sultana, a protestor from Narayanganj, said, “My mom told me to go and protest, so I have come. Mom asked me to wear my uniform and gave me biscuits and a bottle of water for lunch” (Newsg24.com, 2018b). Addressing the student crowd, Selina Momen, a mother, said, “Let the movement continue. Close all the streets. Close down Dhaka. I don’t want this government if it can’t protect you [the children]” (BBC News Bangla, 2018).

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The Leaderless Crowd The student protestors formed a spontaneously choreographed leaderless crowd that wasn’t controlled by any hierarchical order. The student crowd also created a conscious distance from the conventional top-down political leadership. One of the protesters said, “We don’t have any leader, any committee. [And so] They would not be able to move us away from the streets. We will leave the streets when our demands are met” (Ahmed, 2019). Given the long history of cooption of students’ political leadership by powerful political parties for serving party interests since the 1990s, the student protesters strategically and consciously maintained their character as a spontaneous, leaderless crowd. Regarding the group-centered model of the leadership of Black Lives Matter—a decentralized movement that started with resisting police brutality against Black people in the United States—Alicia Garza, the co-founder of Black Lives Matter, says, “We can’t afford to just follow one voice. We have so many different experiences that are rich and complex” (Hall, 2016, p. 87). The student crowd seemed to rely on a similar bottom-up, grassroots insurgent model that did not allow a single person to speak for the group, making it extremely difficult for the state to target, coopt, or suppress the leadership. Crowd Questioning the State Legitimacy The student crowd was not narrowly focused on the nine-point demand to ensure road safety. Through their campaign’s placards and slogans, and the narratives they circulated in the mainstream and social media, they questioned the legitimacy of the autocratic one-party state and demanded greater accountability from the ruling government. For example, photographs of students detaining cars coming from the Prime Minister’s office transporting bureaucrats became viral. Students were seen holding protest signs, such as, “Prime Minister, where is your license?” [Prodhanmontri, apnar license koi?]. The sign not only pointed out the precarious transportation system and fragile road safety but also questioned the legality of an autocratic government that held onto the state power through questionable elections and by silencing voices of political dissent. Other signs said, “We don’t want 1 GB for 9 Tk. We want safe roads” [amra 9 takay 1 GB chai na, nirapod shorok chai] and “We don’t want digital Bangladesh. We want safe roads” [Digital Bangladesh chai na, nirapod shorok chai] (Amader Notun Shamoy,

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2018). The rhetoric of “Digital Bangladesh” first became popular as part of AL’s election manifesto in 2008, promising a futuristic Bangladesh with advanced access to information and communication technologies (A. Chowdhury, 2020). The student crowd questioned this rhetoric by implying, “We don’t want to be promised ambitious vision of a secure and developed future for Bangladesh if the most basic forms of everyday security and safety in the present are neglected and ignored” (Lacy & Mookherjee, 2020, p. 282). The sign, “Roads are closed. We are repairing the state. Apology for the temporary inconvenience,” [Rasta bondho. Rashtro meramoter kaj cholchhe. Shamoyik oshubidhar jonno dukkhito] indicated the willingness of the student crowd to repair not only the fragile transportation system but also the fragile democracy and the state. Signs like, “Where teachers are not allowed to beat students, why are the police officers carrying batons?,” [Shikkhoker beter bari nishedh je deshe, police-er hate lathi kano shey deshe?] questioned the criminal justice system that served the purpose of the autocratic regime and did not hesitate to obstruct, threaten, and take violent measures against the student protestors. The sign, “Let students take care of the roads for now. Send the ministers and the police officers to schools to get education,” [Chhatroder apatoto rasta shamlate din. Montri police-ke school-e pathan shikkhito korte] suggested that the student protestors were much more equipped to run the country than the self-serving powerful state actors who needed schooling more than the student protestors did (Amader Notun Shamoy, 2018; Deutsche Welle, 2018). Michael Kugelman points out, “The road safety issue is the straw that broke the camel’s back; these large protests are rooted in much deeper and complicated grievances” (Islam, 2018). Riaz also argues that the students’ protests reflected broader issues, including concerns about the absence of accountability in governance and the rule of law. He further says that one of the most popular slogans of the protests, “We want justice,” is suggestive of these concerns. (Islam, 2018). The Virtual Crowd During the road safety protest, the formation of a virtual crowd through a creative mediation using smartphones, social media, and other digital platforms and the interplay between this virtual crowd in digital spaces and the physical crowd on material streets demand critical scrutiny. Zeynep Gürsel conceptualizes how world events are visualized in the age of digital

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circulation and how the contemporary public is produced not just by the consumption of media but also by its collective production and circulation (Gürsel, 2017). Following Gürsel’s conceptualization, it can be argued that the photos and news of two students getting killed in a road accident, along with the photo of the smiling Shajahan Khan, the then Minister of Shipping, and the widespread media coverage of his insensitive remarks about the accident triggered a cumulative collective trauma not just about the failing road and transportation system but also about the severe lack of state accountability, which led students to take over the streets. The digital stories, photos, and videos of students protesting on the streets made their emotions, sensations, and moods viral, which in turn constituted the resisting image of the virtual student crowd and extended the much-needed solidarity from family members, celebrities, mass people, and the mainstream media to the physical crowd on streets. Mayeesha et al. conducted a text analysis of personal stories available on social media during the road safety protest using network analysis and emotion mining. The most common emotional tones prevalent in those personal stories were “anger” and “analytical,” followed by “sadness” and “confidence” (Mayeesha et al., 2018), which nicely captured the most common affective responses of the crowd. The virtual crowd curated and circulated stories, photos, and recorded and live-streamed videos of the physical crowd holding placards, chanting powerful slogans, occupying the roads and highways, controlling traffic, checking licenses and documentation of vehicles, and even stopping and questioning police, army, and government officials for not having proper registration certificates or driving licenses on social media. Thus, the virtual crowd played a critical role in not just portraying what was happening on the streets but also shaping narratives of the protest. In addition to shaping and circulating protest narratives, the virtual crowd used social media—and specifically Facebook—as an innovative digital organizing space to challenge surveillance and repressive structures of the state. Students widely utilized the options of creating and sharing events on Facebook to circulate action plans and invite participants. Those options also helped them recruit members for various Facebook groups where they chatted with each other and strategized about upcoming collective action (Akter, 2018). In this way, the virtual crowd and the physical crowd co-constructed and supported each other. They also co-determined the protest narratives, as well as organizing strategies, posing a unique threat to the power of the autocratic regime. Nevertheless, the enhanced digital networks made both

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the virtual crowd in digital organizing spaces and the material student crowd on streets subject to increased state surveillance and state violence, which is elaborated on in the following section.

Violent State Suppression of the Crowd The road safety protest was a partial success because the government immediately responded by approving the draft Road Transport Act 2018 that proposed a maximum of five years’ imprisonment for causing death by reckless driving, increased punishment for driving unregistered and unfit vehicles and driving without licenses and route permits, required a minimum level of education from drivers, set up the minimum age of 18 for getting a driving license and 21 for getting a professional driving license, instituted a point system for drivers where they would lose points for committing traffic offenses, introduced provisions for regulating the number of vehicles for owners, organizations, and certain areas or routes, and set up funds for providing treatments to victims of road accidents and compensation to victims’ families. This draft law had long been shelved because of the backlashes it received from influential owners of private buses and workers’ unions and federations who thought some of the provisions went against their interests (Haq, 2019; Liton & Adhikary, 2018). The guilty drivers who ran over students were arrested, and the registration of the company running the private buses involved in the accident was canceled. The government also announced a traffic week when traffic police became unusually vigilant about traffic violations and filed a record number of cases (Jackman, 2020, pp. 9–10; The Daily Star, 2018a). The Road Transport Act 2018 was passed in the national parliament in September 2018, and it came into effect in November 2018. As soon as the law came into effect, transport workers’ associations went on strikes, demanding certain amendments to the law. In response, the government put a hold on multiple sections of the act. In 2021, after a series of lobbying and pressure from transportation business owners and transportation workers’ federations, the government proposed an amendment to reduce various fines and sentences for traffic violations and relax requirements for getting driving licenses. The draft proposal amended 29 out of 126 sections of the existing act (Adhikary, 2021). After approving the draft Road Transport Act 2018 and enacting a few other measures, the government launched a robust media campaign highlighting that it had agreed to students’ demands and students should go

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back to school. It, directly and indirectly, recruited civil society members, celebrities, teachers, university professors, students, guardians, and even parents of the students whose death initiated the protest, who requested students to stop their protests because all demands were met (Bangladesh Journal, 2018; Bangla Insider, 2018). Reducing students’ organizing to mere nine-point demands and the repeated claim that the students won the campaign because their demands were met, whereas all demands were not really met to the full extent, was a conscious attempt on the part of the oppressive regime. This strategy moved attention away from the way students questioned the legitimacy of the state and the state-sponsored widely promoted progress narratives around “digital Bangladesh,” “development,” and “economic growth” and demanded greater accountability from the state. There was also a concerted effort to portray the student crowd as bereft of any political acumen and political agency. On 1 August 2018, during a meeting with student leaders of Chhatra League—the student wing of AL, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said, “The innocent students should not be incited by anyone. Chhatra League’s new leadership should take the responsibility of making them understand” (Rony, 2018). As soon as the ChhatraLeague members received the instruction from the Prime Minister to make students “understand,” they started attacking students who were peacefully protesting on the streets and journalists who were covering the protests. Instead of arresting the attackers, the police filed cases against several thousand youth protesters for obstructing police from performing their responsibilities, assaulting the police, and damaging government property. In response to a question from a journalist about why the police did not charge the Chhatra League or AL leaders, an anonymous police officer said, “Does any officer have the guts to file a case against ruling party activists unless a political decision comes to that end”? (The Daily Star, 2018c). Starting on 2 August 2018, the police, along with armed AL leaders and Chhatra League members, launched a series of attacks against students who mostly threw stones against them in resistance, injuring at least 150 students, journalists, and pedestrians. 3G and 4G services were slowed down to 2G for 24 hours to obstruct the uploading of photo and video contents to social media. Although the Chair of the Bangladesh Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (BTRC) did not clarify that the decision came from the government, an anonymous telecom source confirmed that BTRC slowed down the internet at the order of the government (France-Presse,

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2018a). The stance of the repressive state was affirmed by Mustafa Jabbar, the Minister of Posts and Telecommunications. He said that everything [every social media platform], including Facebook, would be blocked if it seemed unsafe or harmful to the state (Akter, 2018). Amidst the clashes, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina warned that the demonstrators could be sabotaged by a “third party.” She said, “That’s why I request all guardians and parents to keep their children at home. Whatever they have done is enough” (France-Presse, 2018b). The conviction of a “third party,” which mostly indicated Chhatra Dol (the student wing of Bangladesh Nationalist Party) and Chhatra Shibir (the student wing of Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh) leaders, infiltrating students’ independent grassroots mobilizing was a powerful ploy employed by the oppressive regime. This tactic delegitimized students’ collective organizing and portrayed the student crowd as an orchestrated crowd without any political conscience or agency. Sohul Ahmed points out that the construction of the “third party” confirms the oppositional existence of two other parties: the oppressive state as the first party and its citizens as the second party. He argues that the “third party” is a group that wants a share of the state power but cannot grab it for various reasons. On the one hand, the state—the first party—needs the existence of the third party to delegitimize the demands of the second party—the common people. On the other hand, the third party requires the presence of the first party— the state—as an oppositional entity, and it must use the second party as a pawn to pave its way to the state power (Ahmed, 2019). Therefore, the claim of a “third party” apparently sabotaging the students’ organizing eventually served to uphold the power of the state and the agents that wanted to be part of the state power in the future, invalidating the power of the student crowd. In response to the road safety protest and to control what Lacy and Mookherjee describe as “virtual streets,” the government arrested 86 people under the Information and Communication Technology Act (2005/2006–2018, amended in 2013). The renowned journalist and photographer Shahidul Alam, who live-streamed and tweeted the protest on social media and gave an interview to Al Jazeera about the repressive political situation in Bangladesh, was arrested and jailed, leading to widespread local and transnational condemnation and campaigns for his release (Lacy & Mookherjee, 2020). The government also passed the

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Digital Security Act, 20181 —a more draconian version of the 2006 Information and Communication Technology Act—on 8 October 2018. In the 2018 version, the government retained the power to remove or block digital content. It instituted punishment for making “any kind of propaganda or campaign against liberation war, spirit of liberation war, father of the nation, national anthem, or national flag.” It criminalized transmitting or publishing “offensive, false, or threatening data information” and publishing or broadcasting information that is defamatory or “that hurts religious values or sentiment” or that deteriorates law and order. It also allowed police officers to search, seize, and arrest without any warrant (Bangladesh Gazette, 2019). Amnesty International reported that at least 433 people, including journalists, cartoonists, musicians, activists, and students, were imprisoned under the act as of July 2021 (Mahmud, 2021).

Conclusion The 2018 road safety protest is a significant divergence from the historical and contemporary political party-affiliated student organizing that secured student leaders’ access to state resources and served the state power. In an era when Bangladesh has turned into a one-party state, voices of opposition have been eroded, and the logic of economic growth and the promise of a “Digital Bangladesh” have been widely used to justify the continuation of the oppressive regime, the road safety protest was an unanticipated and critical challenge to the autocratic state. On the one hand, the students’ protest deconstructed the conventional “unforeseen or unplanned” component of road accidents and demanded that the state recognized and addressed the structural factors that manufactured accidents and continued to make people’s lives unsafe. On the other hand, their protest demonstrated the immense political potential of the “student crowd” who could engage in creative solidarity with various state actors as well as mass people, who could effectively constitute bottom-up, grassroots, insurgent campaigns that made it difficult for the repressive state to target or attack a single leadership, and who could question the legitimacy of the state through their virtual embodiment in digital organizing spaces as well as physical demonstration on streets. 1 The full text of the Digital Security Act, 2018 is available at https://www.cirt.gov. bd/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Digital-Security-Act-2020.pdf.

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The Bangladesh state paid lip service to the student crowd and claimed to address their demands, whereas most of the demands urging for structural changes remained unmet. It also violently attacked the student crowd in digital and physical organizing spaces. Nevertheless, it could not suppress the afterlife of the road safety protest. Three years after the 2018 road safety protest, the student crowd took over the streets again in 2021 after Nayeem Hasan—a 17-year-old student—got hit by a garbage truck and died. Student protestors issued their eleven-point demands, most of which sounded similar to the nine-point demands issued in 2018. Many students who occupied the streets were frustrated about the lack of structural changes the government brought after the 2018 protest. A student organizer said, “The protests mainly resulted in performative and temporary crackdowns on minor to medium traffic violations based on existing rules without any systemic reforms. The movement achieved much engagement but failed to bring about meaningful or lasting reforms” (Jawad, 2021). Nevertheless, the road safety protest unraveled the immense complexity of the transportation sector, its multilayered actors with overlapping as well as competing interests and allegiance, and the need to go beyond tokenistic changes. It also exhibited the power of grassroots, bottom-up, collective organizing of a student crowd that can threaten the autocratic regime and demand greater accountability.

Pedagogical Feature From 29 July to 8 August 2018, what happened in Bangladesh was so much more than a debate and demonstration over road safety after two high school students were hit and killed by a speeding bus in Dhaka (BBC News, 2018). As an immediate reaction to the incident, Shajahan Khan, the then Bangladeshi Minister of Shipping who was also the Executive President of Bangladesh Road Transport Workers Federation, said at a press conference, “A road crash has claimed 33 lives in India’s Maharashtra; but do they talk about it like the way we do?” (The Daily Star, 2018b). The comment shook the nation—and specifically young students—to its core. The students from schools, colleges, and universities took over the streets of the capital city of Dhaka and other parts of the country demanding nationwide road safety measures, along with greater accountability from the state.

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The 2018 road safety protest is a significant divergence from the historical and contemporary political party-affiliated student organizing that secured student leaders’ access to state resources and served the state power. In an era when Bangladesh has turned into a one-party state, voices of opposition have been eroded, and the logic of economic growth and the promise of a “Digital Bangladesh” have been widely used to justify the continuation of the oppressive regime, the road safety protest was an unanticipated and critical challenge to the autocratic state. Drawing on the historical tradition of student engagement in political and social movements in Bangladesh, as well as the contemporary youth-led social justice organizing, this chapter contributes to the scholarships on young people’s democratic participation in several ways. First, it deconstructs the conventional meaning of “accident” by unraveling how accidents can be manufactured by structural failures and why the state should take accountability for these failures. It also explores how “the accidental” can turn into a gateway for embodied political engagement of young people. Second, using the anthropological framework of “the crowd” (N. S. Chowdhury, 2019a, 2019b, 2020; Steffen, 2020), it elaborates on the immense political potentials of a student crowd that can nurture creative solidarities, develop grassroots, bottom-up, leaderless, and insurgent organizing, and demonstrate the indomitable courage of questioning not only the failing road and transportation system but also the legitimacy of the autocratic state. Along the way, it demonstrates the way a student crowd can disrupt a repressive regime and how a repressive regime surveils, regulates, and dissipates the student crowd. Third, it unravels how the student crowd on the streets is co-constituted by its virtual embodiment in digital organizing spaces and how both the student crowd and the virtual crowd experience and negotiate state surveillance and state violence. Overall, the road safety protest unraveled the immense complexity of the transportation sector, its multilayered actors with overlapping as well as competing interests and allegiance, and the need to go beyond tokenistic changes. It also exhibited the power of grassroots, bottom-up, collective organizing of a student crowd that can threaten the autocratic regime and demand greater accountability.

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References Adhikary, T. S. (2021, August 31). Road Transport Act 2018: Efforts for its weakening intensify. The Daily Star. Retrieved from: https://www.thedai lystar.net/news/bangladesh/transport/news/road-transport-act-2018-movemake-it-more-lenient-2164711. Accessed 30 May 2022. Ahmed, S. (2019 August, 5). [“We haven’t come here to be leaders”: The road safety protest and the Retrieved from: https://www.auraj.net/ new language of resistance], Akter, S. (2018, August 10). [The road safety movement: Mustafa Jabbar, the Bangladesh Minister, Said, “Everything, including Facebook, will be shut down if they seem harmful for the State”], BBC News Bangla. Retrieved from: https://www.bbc.com/bengali/news-45148081. Al Jazeera. (2007, August 22). Bangladesh army moves off campus. Al Jazeera. Retrieved from: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2007/8/22/bangladesharmy-moves-off-campus Alam, A. B. M. K. (2018). Road traffic accidents in Bangladesh. Journal of Bangladesh College of Physicians and Surgeons, 36(4), 137–138. Amader Notun Shamoy. (2018). [Remarkable slogans of the teen revolution]. Amader Notun Shemoy. Retrieved from: https://www.amadernotunshomoy.com/newsite/2018/08/ 03/ Bangla Insider. (2018, August 6). [Students of 421 educational institutions announced to return to classes], Bangla Insider. Retrieved from: https://www.banglainsider.com/inside-bangladesh/23691/ Bangladesh Gazette. (2019). Digital Security Act, 2018. Bangladesh Gazette. Retrieved from: https://www.cirt.gov.bd/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/ Digital-Security-Act-2020.pdf Bangladesh Journal. (2018, August 2). [“Go Back Home”: Family of Dia Karim]. Bangladesh Journal Online. Retrieved from: https://www.bd-journal.com/bangladesh/39534/ Banglapedia. (n.d.). Student politics. National Encyclopedia of Bangladesh. Retrieved from: https://en.banglapedia.org/index.php?title=Student_Politics. BBC News. (2018, August 6). Bangladesh protests: How a traffic accident stopped a city of 18 Million. BBC News. Retrieved from: https://www.bbc.com/ news/world-asia-45080129 BBC News. (2020, December 6). Noor Hossain and the image that helped bring down a dictator. BBC News. Retrieved from: https://www.bbc.com/news/ world-asia-55177686

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BBC News Bangla. (2018, August 1). [Students got their mothers on their sides in their continuing protest against road accident in Dhaka]. BBC News Bangla. Retrieved from: https://www.bbc.com/bengali/news-45029612. Bhattacharjee, J. (2014). Bangladesh: Election-2014, an assessment. Observer Research Foundation. Retrieved from: https://www.orfonline.org/research/ bangladesh-election-2014-an-assessment/ Biswas, S. (n.d.). Samsad Bangla to Bangla Dictionary (7th ed.). Retrieved from: https://www.freebanglafont.com/bangla-to-bangla.php. Accessed 28 May 2022. Chang, P. (2018, August 9). #WeWantJustice: Bangladeshi students protest for road safety amidst violence. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved from: https://hig hschool.latimes.com/california-school-of-the-arts/wewantjustice-bangladeshistudents-protest-for-road-safety-amidst-violence/ Chowdhury, A. (2020, December 12). OP-ED: Digital Bangladesh: What it is and what it isn’t. Dhaka Tribune. Retrieved from: https://archive.dhakatrib une.com/opinion/op-ed/2020/12/12/op-ed-digital-bangladesh-what-it-isand-what-it-isn-t Chowdhury, N. S. (2019a). Death, despair and democracy in Bangladesh. In A. Blom & S.T. Lama-Rewal (Eds.), Emotions, mobilisations and South Asian politics (pp. 263–280). Routledge. Chowdhury, N. S. (2019b). Paradoxes of the popular: Crowd politics in Bangladesh. Stanford University Press. Chowdhury, N. S. (2020). The ethics of the digital: Crowds and popular justice in Bangladesh. In M. Steffen (Ed.), Crowds: Ethnogrpahic encounters (pp 133– 150). Routledge. Crossette, B. (1990, December 9). Revolution brings Bangladesh hope. The New York Times. Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/1990/12/09/ world/revolution-brings-bangladesh-hope.html. Accessed 25 May 2022. Deutsche Welle. (2018). [Viral slogans of young students] DW. Retrieved from: https://www.dw.com/bn/ Dhaka Times. (2018, July 30). [Death from road accident: The smiling response of the minister received sharp critiques]. Dhaka Times. Retrieved from: https://www.dhakatimes24. com/2018/07/29/90869/ Dhaka Tribune. (2017, February 14). Valentine’s day Overshadows antiautocracy martyrs. Dhaka Tribune. Retrieved from: https://archive.dhakatrib une.com/bangladesh/politics/2017/02/14/valentines-day-1983-martyrs Dhaka Tribune. (2018, August 3). The Nine demands of the students. Dhaka Tribune. Retrieved from: https://archive.dhakatribune.com/bangla desh/2018/08/03/the-nine-demands-of-the-students

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France-Presse, A. (2018a). Bangladesh cuts mobile internet to quell road safety protests. VOA. Retrieved from: https://www.voanews.com/a/bangladeshcuts-mobile-internet-to-quell-road-safety-protests/4514296.html France-Presse, A. (2018b, August 5). Unrest in Bangladesh as student road safety protests turn violent. The Guardian. Retrieved from: https://www.the guardian.com/world/2018b/aug/05/bangladesh-pm-urges-teen-protestersto-go-home-amid-violence Gürsel, Z. D. (2017). Visualizing publics: Digital crowd shots and the 2015 unity rally in Paris. Current Anthropology, 58(S15), S135–S148. Hall, K. M. Q. (2016). A transnational Black feminist framework: Rooting in feminist scholarship, framing contemporary Black activism. Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism, 15(1), 86–104. Haq, R. A. (2019, November 6). Road Transport Act 2018—Details, repercussions, reactions. The Daily Star. Retrieved from: https://www.thedailystar. net/shift/news/road-transport-act-2018-details-repurcussions-reactions-182 3818 [How long will Hossain, S. (2018, August 3). Shajahan Khan persist?]. Prothom Alo. Retrieved from: https://www.protho malo.com/opinion/column/ Irish Times. (2007). Bangladesh students riot in army protest. The Irish Times. Retrieved from: https://www.irishtimes.com/news/bangladesh-students-riotin-army-protest-1.811099 Islam, A. (2018, August 8). Why Bangladesh student protests are not just about road safety. DW. Retrieved from: https://www.dw.com/en/why-bangladeshstudent-protests-are-not-just-about-road-safety/a-45007297. Jackman, D. (2019). The threat of student movements in Bangladesh: Injustice, infiltrators and regime change. Social Science Research Network. Retrieved from: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3437772 Jackman, D. (2020). Students, movements, and the threat to authoritarianism in Bangladesh. Contemporary South Asia, 29(2), 181–197. Jawad, R. S. (2021, November 27). Road deaths and protests: A cycle doomed to repeat itself. The Business Standard. Retrieved from: https://www.tbs news.net/features/panorama/road-deaths-and-protests-cycle-doomed-repeatitself-335329 Kim, R. (2012). Bangladeshis bring down Ershad regime, 1987–1990. Global Nonviolent Action Database. Retrieved from: https://nvdatabase.swarth more.edu/content/bangladeshis-bring-down-ershad-regime-1987-1990 Lacy, M., & Mookherjee, N. (2020). “Firing cannons to kill mosquitoes”: Controlling “virtual streets” and the “image of the state” in Bangladesh. Contributions to Indian Sociology, 54(2), 280–305. Liton, S., & Adhikary, T. S. (2018, August 7). Causing death by rash driving: Maximum 5 years’ jail. The Daily Star. Retrieved

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from: https://www.thedailystar.net/country/government-okays-new-road-tra nsport-act-2018-maximum-five-years-jail-1616659 Mahmud, F. (2021). How Bangladesh uses its Digital Security Act to limit the right to free speech online. Scroll. Retrieved from: https://scroll.in/article/ 1001178/how-bangladesh-uses-its-digital-security-act-to-limit-the-right-tofree-speech-online Mayeesha, T., Tasnim, Z., Jones, J., & Ahmed, N. (2018). Applying text mining to protest stories as voice against media censorship (Unpublished Manuscript). Retrieved from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/330035223_App lying_Text_Mining_to_Protest_Stories_as_Voice_against_Media_Censorship Merriam-Webster. (n.d.). Definition of ACCIDENT . Retrieved from: https:// www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/accident My Academy for Education and Research. (n.d.). 11th and 12th grade: Bangla II paper (Ruptotto and Uposhorgo). Retrieved from: https://www.myacad emybd.com/?module=basic&page=digital-book&subId=251&chapId=681& subTopic=4367. Accessed: 28 May 2022. New Age. (2021, May 24). Noor Hossain Day today. New Age. Retrieved from: https://www.newagebd.net/article/154205/noor-hossain-day-today Newsg24.com. (2018a, July 29). [Whoever commits a crime should be punished: Shajahan Khan]. Newsg24.com. Retrieved from: https://www.newsg24.com/bangladeshnews/31191/ Newsg24.com. (2018b). [Students’ protest has spread across the country]. Newsg24.com. Retrieved from: https://www.newsg24.com/bangladesh-news/31428/ [Students are also on Prothom Alo. (2018). streets outside of Dhaka]. Prothom Alo. Retrieved from: https://www.protho malo.com/bangladesh/ Rahman, M. A. (1984). Bangladesh in 1983: A turning point for the military. Asian Survey, 24(2), 240–249. Riaz, A. (2022). Bangladesh: In pursuit of a one-party state? In S. Widmalm (Ed.), Routledge handbook of Autocratization in South Asia (pp. 209–219). Routledge. Riyasad, N. (2018). Education Movement 1962: Unresolved question of inequality in education. New Age. Retrieved from: https://www.newagebd.net/article/ 51214/education-movement-1962-unresolved-question-of-inequality-in-edu cation Rony, R. I. (2018). [The Prime Minister assigned Chhatra League the responsibility of “making protesting students understand.”]. Bangladesh Protidin. Retrieved from: https://www.bd-pratidin.com/national/2018/08/01/349802

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Sadeque, S. (2018, August 7). Angered by traffic deaths, students began to direct traffic in Bangladesh. NPR. Retrieved from: https://www.npr.org/sections/ goatsandsoda/2018/08/07/635981133/angered-by-traffic-deaths-studentsbegan-to-direct-traffic-in-bangladesh Sadiq, G. K. (2021). [The state vs. The adolescent revolution: Three years after the road safety movement]. People’s Reporter. Retrieved from: https://www.peoplesrepor ter.in/opinion/state-vs-juvenile-rebellion-three-years-of-safe-road-movementin-bangladesh Shaikh, E. H. (2014, March 2). Chhatra League goes back to violent past. Dhaka Tribune. Retrieved from: https://archive.dhakatribune.com/uncategorized/ 2014/03/02/chhatra-league-goes-back-to-violent-past Shiraj, S. I. (2018). [Students are checking driving licenses of police cars as well!]. banglanews24.com. Retrieved from: https://www.banglanews24.com/nat ional/news/bd/667571.details Shovon, F. R. (2017). Dhaka University to observe black day on Wednesday. Dhaka Tribune. Retrieved from: https://archive.dhakatribune.com/bangla desh/2017/08/22/dhaka-university-black-day Slater, J., & Majumder, A. (2018, December 31). Why Bangladesh’s landslide election result is bad for its democracy. Washington Post. Retrieved from: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2018/12/31/ why-bangladeshs-landslide-election-result-is-bad-its-democracy/ Steffen, M. (2020). Introduction. In M. Steffen (Ed.), Crowds: Ethnographic encounters (pp. 1–21). Routledge. Suykens, B. (2018). “A hundred per cent good man cannot do politics”: Violent self-sacrifice, student authority, and party-state integration in Bangladesh. Modern Asian Studies, 52(3), 883–916. Tanjeem, N. (2016). Social media and conforming voluntarism in the neoliberal era: The case of Rana Plaza collapse in Savar, Bangladesh. In N. Mahtab, S. Parker, F. Kabir, T. Haque, A. Sabur, & A. S. M. Sowad (Eds.), Revealing gender inequalities and perceptions in South Asian countries through discourse analysis (pp. 57–79). IGI Global. The Daily Star. (2018a, August 7). 25,882 more cases filed on 2nd day. The Daily Star. Retrieved from: https://www.thedailystar.net/news/country/ban gladesh-traffic-week-2018a-25882-more-cases-filed-on-2nd-day-1617142 The Daily Star. (2018b, July 31). Outrage over Shajahan’s smile, remarks. The Daily Star. Retrieved from: https://www.thedailystar.net/backpage/outrageover-shajahans-smile-remarks-1613785 The Daily Star. (2018c, August 8). Students sued, not attackers. The Daily Star. Retrieved from: https://www.thedailystar.net/news/city/22-private-uni versity-students-remanded-for-vandalism-attacks-on-police-1617301

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VOA. (2009, August 21). Dozens injured in violence at Dhaka University. VOA. Retrieved from: https://www.voanews.com/a/a-13-2007-08-21voa19/352411

CHAPTER 5

From the Streets to the Campus: The Institutionalization of Youth Anti-Sexual Harassment Activism in Post-Coup Egypt Susana Galán and Angie Abdelmonem

Key Terms Organizational habitat —first coined by political scientist Mary Fainsod Katzenstein in 1998, this concept refers to the carving out of spaces in mainstream institutions from within which feminist activists can challenge existing hierarchies and practices, and initiate processes of institutional

S. Galán (B) Dimmons Research Group, IN3, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain e-mail: [email protected] A. Abdelmonem Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 I. Rivers and C. L. Lovin (eds.), Young People Shaping Democratic Politics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29378-8_5

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transformation. While Katzenstein’s original contribution focuses on the Catholic Church and the US military for her analysis of organizational habitats, she also mentions universities, notably women’s studies programs and women’s student and staff organizations on campus, as spaces where demands and organizing for institutional change can originate. Bystander intervention—this concept first appeared in the writing of psychologists John M. Darley and Bibb Latané, who, reflecting on the murder of Kitty Genovese in the middle of a New York City street, argued in 1968 that the greater the number of bystanders to an emergency, the smaller their likelihood to intervene. Later studies showed that what became known as the “bystander effect” disappeared when individuals felt personally implicated or compelled to intervene. This work influenced research on sexual violence prevention, which focused on developing effective ways of promoting bystander intervention by raising awareness about the prevalence and consequences of sexual violence, countering victim-blaming discourses and encouraging empathy, and teaching skills to facilitate intervention at the community level. Anti-sexual harassment activism—activism against sexual harassment dates back to the 1970s in the United States and predates feminist scholars’ definition of this phenomenon first in the workplace and in educational institutions, and later in public space. Emerging from and following on the heels of the Civil Rights movement and widespread sociopolitical changes that marked the 1960s, early examples of organizing included the filing of lawsuits alleging that sexual harassment was a form of sex discrimination in employment and the organization of Take Back the Night marches in major US cities in the mid- and late 1970s. Throughout time, anti-sexual harassment activism has taken many forms, from protests to advocacy efforts to shape anti-sexual harassment legislation and public policy.

Introduction Early characterizations described the January 25th Revolution that led to the ouster of Egypt’s president Hosni Mubarak in February 2011 after almost 30 years in power as a “youth revolution” (Ezbawy, 2012, pp. 33– 34; Khalidi, 2011; Shahine, 2011). More recent analyses problematize the

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belief that the overwhelming majority of protesters were young, deconstructing notions of “youth” and “revolution” in relation to the Egyptian uprisings in particular, and the so-called Arab Spring more generally (Beissinger et al., 2013; El-Mahdi, 2011; Murphy, 2012; Rennick, 2018). This debate notwithstanding, youth activism was a significant element of the revolution, articulating the “dream of a democratic state respectful of human dignity, freedom and social justice” (Abdalla, 2016, p. 48). These demands were spelled out in September 2013 by the Revolutionary Front, a loose coalition of activists that had participated in the January 25th Revolution. As Abdalla notes, these included “abolishing authoritarianism and restoring participatory democracy through the decentralization of both the decision-making process and governance; achieving social justice through the redistribution of wealth”; and “transitional justice” (2016, pp. 48–49). Concomitant with this, public sexual violence, particularly in the context of revolutionary protest but also beyond, became a flash point for youth activists around the nature of gendered citizenship and women’s participation in the public sphere. The increase and exacerbation of instances of sexual violence in public places in the aftermath of Mubarak’s ouster, and notably the multiplication of collective sexual assaults on Tahrir Square, the epicenter of the January 25th Revolution, provided the political opportunity for youth activists to address the pervasive problem of sexual harassment and assault by connecting, more or less explicitly, the success of the revolutionary process with women’s right to political participation through their occupation of public space (Langohr, 2013, 2014; Skalli, 2014). In this chapter, we examine this form of youth activism and consider its transition from the streets to educational institutions following the military coup of General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in July 2013 as part of a process of institutionalization aimed at circumventing the state’s crackdown on activists, increased restrictions to the right of assembly and association, and the closure of public space. With a focus on the youth initiative HarassMap, we argue that its collaboration with educational institutions through its Safe Schools and Universities (SSU) program represented a strategic approach that was parallel to, but should be differentiated from, the demobilization of anti-sexual harassment activism and its cooptation by the authorities in the post-coup political climate. Drawing upon Katzenstein’s (1998) “institutionalization as habitats,” we maintain that university campuses became one of the few spaces where youth activism against sexual harassment was able to continue under the military regime.

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We see this organizational habitat as extending the revolutionary project by articulating cross-gender, -class, -generational, and -sectoral alliances aimed at sustaining bottom-up forms of action, including mobilization through institutions, disrupting prevailing gender norms, and enacting social change. This chapter is based on data from dissertation fieldwork conducted in Cairo by Abdelmonem from 2013 to 2014 and Galán from 2014 to 2015, with additional interviews co-conducted by the authors in 2019. While the authors’ previous research focused on HarassMap and other initiatives’ work against sexual harassment in public space (see, e.g., Abdelmonem, 2015a, 2015b; Galán, 2016a, 2016b; Abdelmonem & Galán, 2017), this essay engages with HarassMap’s activities in institutional settings, more specifically with campus activism against sexual harassment in Egypt.

Organizational Habitats: The Challenges and Opportunities of Institutionalization in Egyptian Youth Anti-Sexual Harassment Activism Social movement theorists have long associated processes of institutionalization with demobilization (Katzenstein, 1998, p. 195). Institutionalization, or “a process that involves a shift towards more standardized, nonthreatening forms of collective action that entail less mobilization and less disruption” (Hipsher, 1998, p. 157), is often understood as following or existing in opposition to radicalization, or “a shift in ideological commitments toward extremes and/or the adoption of more disruptive and violent forms of contention” (Tarrow, 1998, 207). Institutionalization is, as Tarrow notes, a phase many—but not all—movements enter into gradually, as tactics become routinized and/or authorities are better able to contain their activities (1998, p. 115). Since institutionalization often occurs as radicalization diminishes and goals become more “moderate” (Tarrow, 1998, p. 115), many scholars equate institutionalization with “demobilization, moderation, cooptation, professionalization, or bureaucratization” (Kim, 2016, p. 4) rather than as a shift in organizational and mobilizational tactics. However, Katzenstein (1998) cautions against this equivalence, which often assumes that all movements that institutionalize follow the same process and all institutional climates are the same. She

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further questions the idea that institutions cannot be spaces of confrontation or defiance, or that confrontation is always defiant (Katzenstein, 1998, p. 198). Similarly, Kim suggests the possibility of “multiple institutionalizations,” in which different patterns of institutionalization coexist (2016, p. 8). These may include the possibility of a “defiant institutionalization,” whereby social movements participate in organized politics without being co-opted by it (Kim, 2016, p. 3). Katzenstein’s (1998) “institutionalization as habitats” is useful for understanding youth anti-sexual harassment activism within educational institutions in Egypt. Much has been published on the repressive and corporatized climate in which the Egyptian state has sought to establish controls over associational life under the Mubarak regime, and beyond.1 Concomitant with this has been the growing NGOization of activism, not only in Egypt but in the Arab region more generally, since the 1994 UN Conference on Population in Cairo (Al-Ali, 2000; Jad, 2007). Prior to the January 25th Revolution, much women’s rights and sexual/gender-based violence work was conducted by advocacy-based NGOs and unfolded within a certain institutionalized framework. These NGOs formed largely as hierarchically structured and development-oriented professional organizations with entrenched leadership and a reliance on foreign funding.2 Tadros (2016) notes their work was heavily policy-oriented, in which they engaged with or targeted the state in their endeavors. Youth initiatives against sexual harassment in the revolutionary period emerged in reaction to this process of institutionalization and to the constraints imposed on NGOized work in the country, notably under Law 84/2002 on Non-Governmental Societies and Organizations, which allowed the Ministry of Social Affairs to reject the creation of an NGO that threatened public order or morality and to dissolve it without a court order, and required governmental approval to receive foreign funding and to present candidates to the board (El-Ghobashy, 2002; Moustafa, 2004).3 In this context, youth initiatives opted for collaborating with institutions across a range of sectors, educational to corporate, while 1 See Bianchi (1989) for the loose or “unruly” nature of Egyptian corporatism, which is flexible enough to allow for some degree of pluralism. 2 See Abdelrahman (2004) for a detailed discussion of NGO typologies and work in Egypt. 3 On May 29, 2017, Law 84/2002 was replaced by an even harsher legal rule, Law 70/2017.

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also seeking to remain autonomous from NGOized civil society. Katzenstein’s approach is instructive here, situating the institutionalization of feminist activism in the military and the Catholic Church as a process leading to the production of spaces “where women advocates of equality can assemble, where discussions can occur, and where the organizing for institutional change can originate” (Katzenstein, 1998, p. 197). In Egypt’s post-coup political climate, as the streets became increasingly securitized and militarized, universities provided one of the few spaces where organizational habitats of anti-sexual harassment activism were able to flourish.

Youth Anti-Sexual Harassment Activism: Transitioning from the Streets to Institutions Under the Military Regime Student and youth activism have been “major driving forces of change and regime opposition” in Egypt, most notably the Kefaya movement in the early 2000s and the April 6th movement in the period that led to the January 25th Revolution (Zayed et al., 2016, p. 6; see also Sika, 2017a, 2017b). With the exception of the short-lived initiative Al-sh¯ ari ⊂ lin¯ a (The Street is Ours), spearheaded by Kefaya activists Nora Younis and Alia Mossallam in response to the events of Black Wednesday in 2005, these groups did not explicitly address gender issues.4 In parallel to this activism, efforts against gender-based violence championed by the Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights (ECWR) and the Task Force to Combat Sexual Violence focused mainly on awareness-raising and advocacy work.5 Contrasting with this state-oriented approach, the youth 4 This self-described as “women-for-democracy movement” connected for the first time

state-sponsored sexual violence and everyday forms of sexual harassment on the streets, in public transportation, and in the workplace (Hassan & El-Fattah, 2005), though its focus was politically motivated sexual violence by the regime (El-Mahdi, 2010) rather than the everyday sexual harassment that concerned HarassMap and other similar initiatives in the revolutionary period. For more information about Black Wednesday, see EIPR (2013). 5 ECWR was founded in 1996 and has been a registered NGO with the Ministry

of Social Affairs (now Social Solidarity) since 2004. As part of their campaign “Making our streets safer for everyone,” launched in 2005, ECWR organized activities to raise awareness about the pervasiveness of public sexual harassment, lobbied the Ministries of Tourism and Interior for institutional change, and drafted a law to criminalize sexual harassment (Hassan et al., 2008, p. 20; Rizzo et al., 2012, p. 473; Langohr, 2015,

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initiative HarassMap was created in October 2010 to address sexual harassment through community outreach work. Unlike the organizations comprising the Task Force, and to some extent ECWR, HarassMap relied on young women and men volunteers to tackle on the ground what they perceived to be a widespread social problem. The revolutionary moment brought youth activism against sexual violence to the streets. Instances of extreme sexual violence became a “moral shock” that galvanized youth from a broad social spectrum against sexual harassment and assault (Jasper, 1998, p. 409).6 Throughout 2012, the initiatives Harakat Bassma (Imprint Movement), Dedd el-Taharrush (Anti-Sexual Harassment Movement), and Shoft Ta7rosh (I Saw Harassment) arose to combat what their founders—like HarassMap—viewed to be a larger societal problem of sexual harassment. In late 2012, the initiatives Operation Anti-Sexual Harassment/Assault—popularly known as OpAntiSH—and Tahrir Bodyguard were created to prevent and stop the collective sexual assaults that proliferated in protests. All of these groups operated informally, which allowed them—at least temporarily— to eschew official registration with the Ministry of Social Solidarity and supervision by the state. Their formation as mub¯ adar¯ at (initiatives, sing. mub¯ adara) and not gam ⊂iy¯ at ghir h.ukumiyah (NGOs, sing. gam ⊂iya ghir h.ukumiyah) was a critical distinction in their identity formation that signaled some of their members’ criticism of NGOized activism. This identity was likewise constructed in opposition to the older generation of women’s rights activists, which young activists perceived as cliquish and ineffective. HarassMap’s co-founder Rebecca Chiao noted in an interview that “[o]ne of the reasons why … networks [against public sexual violence prior to the Revolution] [we]re never very successful … is that people ha[d] different opinions and they spen[t] a lot of time arguing about whose opinion is right.”7 Harakat Bassma’s co-founder Nihal Saad

p. 132). The Task Force Against Sexual Violence (2008–2012) was created by sixteen NGOs under the coordination of the New Woman Foundation. Its goal was to advocate for a unified law against sexual violence, including sexual harassment, assault, and rape. Its draft law was sent to Parliament in 2012 (Abdelmonem interview with Mona Ezzat, April 2019; FIDH et al., 2014, pp. 67–68). 6 For more information on collective sexual assaults following Mubarak’s ouster, see Amnesty International (2012), Nazra for Feminist Studies (2012), and El-Nadeem et al. (2013). 7 Galán interview with Chiao, May 2015.

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Zaghloul similarly highlighted what she saw as young activists’ “new strategy of working together.”8 As she stated, “[a]ll of the old organizations … never worked together, and we grew up with that, but then we realized … that this is not productive.”9 While the different initiatives established their own organizational frameworks, most adopted non-hierarchical and horizontal structures and relied not on paid staff but on a corps of volunteers. The revolutionary impetus prompted a shift from a “politics of demand” oriented toward the state in search of reform to a “politics of the act” that favored experimentation with alternative forms of mobilization and projects for sociopolitical change (Day, 2004, pp. 733–734). As Chiao noted, this transformation was also reflected in HarassMap volunteers’ narratives. In this regard, she recalled that, while at the beginning volunteers only envisioned the possibility of change through state action or legal change, after Mubarak’s ouster they “didn’t ask for someone to change [things] for them,” but they took affairs into their own hands to reach their goals.10 The withdrawal of the police from the streets during that period enabled activist-led initiatives to experiment with novel forms of intervention that crossed gender, class, sexuality, and age boundaries and to engage in more transformative forms of activism. Recalling that moment, HarassMap’s Community Outreach director Hussein el-Shafei (2012–2015) noted that the initiative brought together a broad mix of citizens from across class and urban contexts as well as different sexual orientations, including “those middle-aged conservative women from the countryside” who trained and worked alongside “people who are gay or lesbian,” thus enabling the exchange of stories and the broadening of sympathies in unexpected ways.11 In addition, HarassMap sought to “creat[e] a safe space for [all] people to express themselves” and made sure that activists had room to engage in “controversial” conversations on gender and sexuality: “We very gently tapped the topic of the gender binary and … this

8 Galán interview with Saad Zaghloul, May 2015. 9 Galán interview with Saad Zaghloul, May 2015. Saad Zaghloul’s comment, however,

obscures how women’s rights NGOs worked together prior to the revolution through issue-specific coalitions (see Tadros, 2016). 10 Galán interview with Chiao, May 2015. 11 Abdelmonem interview with El Shafei, October 2015.

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theory in itself is something that I like[d] to start my activities with,” El-Shafei remarked.12 Between 2012 and 2014, as these groups attained greater international notoriety and interest from donors to support their activism, many initiatives sought the means to formalize enough to legally accept donor funds. HarassMap, for instance, incubated with the Egyptian NGO Nahdat elMahrousa in 2012, a move that allowed them to accept donor funds, managed by the NGO, without having to formally register with the Ministry of Social Solidarity. In late 2013, however, the interim government approved Law 107, the “Protest Law,” criminalizing free assembly and public expression and curtailing any form of organizing on the streets, with a subsequent effect on community outreach efforts (Kirkpatrick, 2013). In late 2014, as the military regime increased control over civil society organizations, initiatives that had worked informally were required to register and formally become NGOs (Mada Masr, 2014a). State action particularly targeted the receipt of funds from foreign donors: In September of 2014, El-Sisi amended article 78 of the penal code to increase the penalty for receiving foreign funding “with the aim of pursuing acts harmful to national interests or destabilizing general peace or the country’s independence and its unity” to life imprisonment (Nazra for Feminist Studies, 2016). Additionally, Case 173 (Criminal case No. 173/2011, also known as the “NGO Foreign Funding” case) investigated thirty-seven human and women’s rights organizations for allegedly receiving unauthorized foreign funding, leading to the prosecution and conviction of Egyptian and foreign NGO workers on financial violation charges in 2013 (Abuzaid, 2019; Nazra for Feminist Studies, 2016). The case was revived in 2015, ensnaring many more NGO workers, including those working on women’s rights (Abuzaid, 2019).13 Amid this campaign of state harassment, by 2015 most of the antisexual harassment youth initiatives had moved out of the streets and those who continued working in public spaces were increasingly required to

12 Abdelmonem interview with Shafei, October 2015. 13 As a result of these investigations, the Cairo Criminal Court ordered in March 2016

a series of actions, including the freezing of the organizations’ and their representatives’ assets as well as travel bans against some of their members (Abuzaid, 2019; Nazra for Feminist Studies, 2016).

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seek permits from the police to avoid detention of their volunteers.14 By 2016 all groups were forced out of the streets given the lack of permit approvals. Faced with the increasing militarization and securitization of public space, many of these initiatives searched for alternative spaces for activism. Educational institutions became one of the few outlets where activism against sexual harassment could continue in Egypt. HarassMap’s early work through their Safe Schools and Universities program placed them in a unique position to consolidate themselves in these spaces.

HarassMap’s Safe Schools and Universities: From Bystander Intervention to Institutional Approaches HarassMap was founded by three Egyptian and one US civil society activists, Engy Ghozlan, Sawsan Gad, Amel Fahmy, and Rebecca Chiao (who had been living and working in Egypt for more than six years), to promote a bystander intervention approach to combating street sexual harassment. Prior to creating this initiative, Chiao and Ghozlan had worked for ECWR as International Relations Director and Program Manager, respectively, and had experience in anti-sexual harassment work. HarassMap gained international attention for their use of the web 2.0-based Ushahidi platform to crowdmap street sexual harassment in the country (Bernardi, 2017; Cochrane et al., 2019; Peuchaud, 2014; Skalli, 2014). Mapping, however, was only one of several technologies HarassMap deployed to combat sexual harassment, situated largely as a support tool for more central programs, including community outreach, marketing and communications, and Safe Areas/Schools and Universities/Corporates.15 Safe Schools and Universities emerged as a critical vehicle between 2013 and 2020 through which HarassMap promoted its bystander intervention model, which included awareness raising and reporting, and engaged in policy development. Entry into schools has a long history in Egyptian anti-sexual harassment work. In their capacity as ECWR employees, Chiao proposed in 14 Galán interview with Fathi Farid, April 2015; Galán interview with Zaghloul, May 2015; Abdelmonem interview with Hussein El Shafei, October 2015. 15 The separation into three separate units (Safe Areas/Safe Schools and Universities/Safe Corporates) was meant to streamline the different lines of institutional work.

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2006 and Ghozlan developed in 2007 a teacher training program to open a dialogue with teachers about how they could help female students speak up about and male students reflect on sexual harassment.16 After founding HarassMap, Chiao and Ghozlan implemented a Safe Areas program which considered schools a critical site of engagement. The broad goal of Safe Areas was to shift the institutional culture in the hopes that such change would have a larger sociocultural impact. In essence, some HarassMap activists saw the possibility of a filter-down effect from institutions to the streets. Safe Areas operations manager Miriam Freudenberg (2012–2013) noted that “[t]he mission is to make businesses [and other spaces] safe because we think that through this method we can influence street culture, the culture of sexual harassment, because we’re establishing safe zones and these safe zones will help us to influence, let’s say, the atmosphere in a given area.”17 In line with this idea, HarassMap’s Safe Areas unit manager Ahmad Hegab (2013– 2017) believed in the importance of modifying people’s behavior, not their way of thinking, arguing that “when [people] intervene, [they] will start thinking differently.”18 For these reasons, HarassMap’s Marketing director Eba’a el-Tamimi (2012–2014) sought to make Safe Areas the blanket program for all of HarassMap’s work, looking at it not “as a project or an activity [but] as something that can encompass everything that HarassMap does under one umbrella.”19 With institutional partners, whether universities or businesses, serving as “role models” for their surrounding community, this more unified effort was meant to bring together all elements of their programming–mapping, outreach and mobilization, marketing, and research.20 Safe Schools and Universities quickly grew to become HarassMap’s signature program. In late 2013, the program received UN Habitat funding to “convert five educational institutions to safe places.”21 These institutions included a mix of public and private secondary schools and universities. HarassMap took both a bottom-up and top-down approach 16 Abdelmonem interview with Chiao and Ghozlan, January 2014. 17 Abdelmonem interview with Freudenberg and Hegab, April 2014. 18 Galán interview with Hegab, March 2015. 19 Abdelmonem interview with El-Tamimi, April 2014. 20 Abdelmonem interview with El-Tamimi, April 2014. 21 Abdelmonem interview with Freudenberg and Hegab, April 2014.

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to Safe Schools and Universities by developing bystander intervention teams and policy templates. With the bystander intervention teams, Safe Schools and Universities followed HarassMap’s Community Outreach team’s plan of training individuals to become what the group called “community captains.”22 These individuals were responsible for recruiting their own volunteer teams to raise awareness on campuses, speak to peers, and seek agreements from as many people as possible to intervene against sexual harassment when witnessed. In this context, the intervention was meant to be both verbal and physical, including positioning one’s body between a harasser and the harassed. As the program evolved, the bystander intervention model was amended to have bystanders raise awareness and report incidents rather than intervene directly. This shift in HarassMap’s model was, according to Hegab, in large part a compromise with university partners, who saw intervention as “promot[ing] violence between students.”23 Beyond that, however, the shift from direct intervention to reporting aligned with the multiple currents visible in HarassMap’s work: top-down as reflected in their desire to promote policy development in institutions and bottom-up as reflected in their focus on community-level cultural change. With the policy templates, the goal was to minimize the up-front work needed by schools that had no experience dealing with sexual harassment to formalize a process for handling claims and meting out punishments for unruly behavior, in and out of the classroom. Secondary schools proved a problematic site for the Safe Schools and Universities program, due to a lack of Ministry approvals and school interest, and weak partnerships with NGOs already working in schools. The lack of enthusiasm at the secondary school level was offset by an explosion of interest in anti-sexual harassment programming by public and private universities across the country. Not only students but, in particular, professors became active players in the movement against campus sexual harassment, which may account for the speed at which the Safe Schools and Universities program was able to spread. Between 2014 and 2017, such work took place on campuses across the country, including Cairo, Alexandria, Tanta, Helwan, Menoufiyya, Beni Suef, and

22 For that purpose, Safe Schools and Universities made use of bystander intervention training manuals developed by the Community Outreach team. 23 Abdelmonem and Galán interview with Hegab, August 2019.

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more. The private American University in Cairo (AUC) and the public Cairo University emerged as primary locations of university campus activism. At AUC and Cairo University, faculty, with the support of students and civil society groups, pushed for policy development and enforcement. As a US-accredited institution, AUC already had a Title IX policy against sexual harassment implemented through its EO&AA office. There, faculty, students, and activists focused on improving a problematic enforcement process to battle what they saw as rampant abuse of power on campus. Tighter controls and closer scrutiny of civil society following El-Sisi’s rise to the presidency in June 2014 prompted HarassMap to make operational changes and begin a process of scaling back. The return of the police to the streets effectively halted their community outreach efforts. The state’s clampdown on civil society organizations, particularly but not limited to advocacy-based ones as part of Case 173, led HarassMap to reduce programs and staff/volunteers. While HarassMap completed their registration process with the Ministry of Social Solidarity in January 2017, they still had to wait extended periods of time for the Ministry’s approval on the use of donor funds and faced enhanced scrutiny in adhering to NGO administrative guidelines. In addition, in 2018 Safe Schools and Universities came under contention from the state-led National Council for Women (NCW), which ultimately succeeded in pushing HarassMap activists out and assuming control of all campus anti-sexual harassment work, with the exception of Cairo University. Following increased state control, whereby successive executive directors were summoned by state security, and a generalized fear about the penal consequences of operating with donor funds, HarassMap officially canceled its NGO registration and ceased to operate as a social initiative in June 2020. Despite these developments, their work at Cairo University remains, as Chiao noted in a 2015 interview, the initiative’s “most concrete big impact,” serving as a model for other institutions.24

24 Galán interview with Chiao, May 2015.

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Cairo University: Building Intersectional Alliances Among Faculty, Students, and Activists In March 2014, a collective sexual assault against a female student at Cairo University, Egypt’s leading and most-populous university, served as an important turning point for the Safe Schools and Universities program. The incident, alongside Cairo University president Gaber Nasser’s initial reaction blaming the victim, touched off widespread national and international attention, forcing Gaber to publicly apologize (Mada Masr, 2014b). This episode opened up a window of opportunity for HarassMap to expand Safe Schools and Universities. By then, they had already trained some student volunteers and had finalized a sexual harassment policy template. As Hegab recalled, HarassMap was “ready with the policy and when the famous sexual assault happened in Cairo University they came to us.”25 In the months that followed, faculty (led by feminist academics Hoda El-Sadda and Maha El Said) and civil society groups, including HarassMap, Harakat Bassma, and Nazra for Feminist Studies, formed a working group to address sexual harassment in the university.26 Four months of continuous meetings led to the drafting of an antisexual harassment policy, modeled on HarassMap’s policy template, and its adoption by the university in September 2014.27 The working group also created an anti-sexual harassment unit charged with implementing the policy.28 HarassMap’s main goal was to end what Hegab saw as a generalized public denial of the pervasiveness of sexual harassment in educational institutions. This denial, he noted, had progressively disappeared from the streets as a result of four years of activism following Mubarak’s ouster but remained present in universities.29 As part of its partnership with Cairo University, HarassMap trained 50 faculty members and teaching 25 Galán interview with Hegab, March 2015. This incident also served as the basis for Egypt’s first sexual harassment law, an amendment to Article 306 of the penal code approved by interim president Adly Mansour through decree in June 2014 (Abdelaziz, 2014). 26 Abdelmonem and Galán interview with El-Sadda, August 2019. 27 Galán interview with Hegab, March 2015; Abdelmonem and Galán interview with

El-Sadda, August 2019. 28 Abdelmonem and Galán interview with El-Sadda, August 2019. 29 Galán interview with Hegab, March 2015.

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assistants as well as 120 student captains selected in collaboration with the university’s administration between 2014 and 2015. Their model was based on a three-pronged approach that included: training students on how to prevent and report instances of sexual harassment to the university’s anti-sexual harassment unit; training faculty to apply the anti-sexual harassment policy; and including anti-sexual harassment material in the university’s curriculum.30 Workshops for faculty and students differed in content and duration but always included definitions about what is/is not sexual harassment, data on the prevalence of sexual harassment in Egypt, and training on gender issues.31 In addition, student captains recruited volunteers who participated in 3-to-4-day training that included an examination of gender stereotypes, the debunking of myths regarding sexual harassment, and a session on how to organize and manage an awareness campaign or a related action on campus.32 As a diverse organizational habitat, Cairo University gave HarassMap’s Safe Schools and Universities program an expansive reach for intersectional engagements across gender, class, generational, and sectoral boundaries. With a student body of more than 230,000 ranging from working to upper-middle class, Cairo University is, as El-Sadda remarks, a good reflection of Egypt.33 On campus, HarassMap’s volunteer-based approach was open to anyone seeking to take action, and thus was neither circumscribed to one gender nor to a professionalized—mainly middleand upper-middle class—core of civil society workers. It appealed to varied segments of the student population, both politically active and not, and allowed for more inclusive forms of participation that did not require specialized knowledge, often only available to the privileged few.34 In addition, the introduction of new discourses on gender in trainings as well as through the implementation of anti-sexual harassment material in the curriculum touched a wide breadth of the university population, including faculty and administration staff. HarassMap and Cairo University faculty involved in the creation of the anti-sexual harassment policy and unit participated in exchanges aimed 30 Abdelmonem and Galán interview with Hegab, August 2019. 31 Abdelmonem and Galán interview with Hegab, August 2019. 32 Abdelmonem and Galán interview with Hegab, August 2019. 33 Abdelmonem and Galán interview with El-Sadda, August 2019. 34 Abdelmonem and Galán interview with Hegab, August 2019.

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at transferring their expertise to other universities. HarassMap, in particular, sought to replicate their model of training students and faculty and implementing a policy template in other educational institutions. Despite NCW’s attempts to co-opt Cairo University’s anti-sexual harassment work between 2018 and 2019, this experience was considered a success for ElSadda, who highlighted the fact that it emerged as an “organic” initiative led by faculty, students, and activists who were personally invested in the eradication of sexual harassment and assault and who worked together to make this change happen.35 Cairo University was, in fact, the only institution that was able to withstand the NCW’s intrusive attempts to control university anti-sexual harassment units, and it remained the last space in which HarassMap continued its work until canceling its registration in 2020.

Campus Anti-Sexual Harassment Activism and the Creation of New Gendered Subjectivities Schools and universities’ anti-sexual harassment programs highlight a number of critical facets around the role of youth in fomenting change within institutional settings. Safe Schools and Universities emerged within a trajectory of activism impacted by years of social and political upheaval in Egypt, and reflected an important shift in the nature of contentious politics in Egypt from advocacy-based to grassroots approaches, heretofore unviable given the repressive political climate. Such a focus was informed by the experience of the January 25th Revolution and derived partly from a perception of a generational split between the youth who experienced the revolution firsthand and their elders. This point was highlighted by HarassMap’s Community Mobilization unit operations manager Yasmine Zeid (2014–2016), who described the younger generations as “more aware of the phenomenon” of sexual harassment and more open to address it.36 Young anti-sexual harassment activists often shared the belief that sexual harassment would recede over time, as the youth who had participated in the revolutionary process reached adulthood and their more progressive ideas about gender relations became mainstream. It is

35 Abdelmonem and Galán interview with El-Sadda, August 2019. 36 Galán interview with Zeid, April 2015.

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not surprising therefore that educational institutions became central to their strategy for mobilization toward change. HarassMap’s focus on schools and universities has its roots in civil society’s concern for sexual violence in private as well as public spaces prior to the revolution. In the mid-2000s, youth activists working with ECWR— including Chiao and later Ghozlan—sought to address the problem by fomenting dialogue via a teacher training program at a time when it was still taboo to discuss sexual violence (FIDH et al., 2014, p. 20). With the ebbing of the taboo around sexual violence during the revolution, HarassMap sought to expand this approach by engaging not only teachers but also administrators, students, and even families across a broad spectrum of educational institutions. Their novel approach was aimed, particularly in primary and secondary schools, at reaching youth early to shape new gendered subjectivities and behaviors toward sexual harassment. Universities’ interest in the Safe Schools and Universities program provided an alternative entry point for this kind of intervention. Better aligning with revolutionary ideals, this program overcame “prevailing regime paradigms of Arab youth, as either ‘youth as trouble’ or ‘youth as victims’” (Murphy, 2012, p. 16) and regarded them instead as both agents and targets of hoped-for society-wide change. Universities served as an opportunity for youth activists to establish an “organizational habitat” (Katzenstein, 1998, p. 197) through which they could disrupt existing and negotiate new social and political power structures without having to present themselves as overtly political and thus challengers to state authority. This became particularly important following the 2013 military coup, as activism was subjected to increasing state scrutiny and a growing number of activists suffered arbitrary detention and torture (Amnesty International, 2015; FIDH, 2015). Gender became an important terrain on which youth activists sought to negotiate these new sociopolitical realities. Toward that end, Safe Schools and Universities trainings offered critical spaces of dissent over sexual harassment and the larger patriarchal system, where ideas about women’s bodies and notions of gender itself were discussed, debated, and reimagined in a way that echoed the revolutionary impetus to experimentally prefigure a more democratic future (as argued by Van de Sande, 2013 with respect to Tahrir protests), regardless of specific outcomes. Like Tahrir Square, Safe Schools and Universities training sessions became an “autonomous space” in which ideas about an alternative future were realized in the “here and now” (Van de Sande, 2013, pp. 234–236).

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Trainees concomitantly wrestled with cultural norms around men and masculinity. One of the primary activities during the training was a workshop titled “The Gender Box,” which unfolded in one of several ways.37 Women were asked to detail cultural norms assigned to men and the societal response men faced if they failed to adhere to these norms; men were asked to do the same for women. Alternatively, men and women were asked to listen to the other gender detail cultural norms for and forms of violence faced by their own gender. The goal was to encourage greater awareness of the violent ramifications each, but particularly women, suffered for failing to adhere to prevailing gender norms. Though not witnessed as part of Safe Schools and Universities, the same workshop offered during HarassMap’s biannual HarassMap Academy to train new captains in May 2014 provides insight into the potentially transformative nature of activist efforts. During that session, El-Shafei broached the topic of Egypt as a heteronormative society, casting the prevailing system of gender as binary and sexual harassment as an expression of the lack of equality between men and women. Noticeable in this session was confusion over the introduction of new terminologies, including nizam el-sina’ey (binary system) and el-mayariyya el-ghayariyya (a loose translation of heteronormative), but many trainees visibly sought to incorporate these new ideas into their personal understandings of gender, with one male participant pointing out that the current system promoted female genital circumcision/mutilation (FGC/M) because of women’s perceived uncontrollable sexuality and a female volunteer highlighting how her mother in the past wore short skirts without facing sexual harassment.38 In another activity, called “Timeline,” participants talked about instances of gender inequality in their lives in an exercise aimed at breaking the taboo around this issue while eliciting empathy among peers. “Where’s your place?” (Makanik Fein), on the other hand, encouraged students to position themselves vis-à-vis gender issues, and compelled them to abandon a position of ignorance or indifference and to take a stance for change.39 Such training provided contentious forums within which young

37 Description based on Abdelmonem’s participant observation data from August 2013, December 2013, and May 2014. 38 Abdelmonem participant observation data, May 2014. 39 Abdelmonem and Galán interview with Hegab, August 2019.

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participants negotiated what it meant to be men and women in contemporary Egyptian society, and considered trajectories of change to create a more equitable system of gender—one that might provide women, in particular, with equal access to public space. Safe Schools and Universities also provided an avenue through which the broader goals of the anti-sexual harassment movement that emerged during the January 25th Revolution could become integrated within and implemented through institutional policies. For HarassMap activists, schools and universities were locations in which to promote bystander intervention through policy awareness. Policy creation and promotion were understood as a negotiative process that involved blending new definitions and procedures with established legal codes guiding university administration, particularly in relation to punishments, as noted by Hegab.40 Mobilization took place around institutional structures aimed at defining new forms of intersubjective practice, with the hope or belief that this would produce new gendered subjectivities and behaviors toward gender-based violence. Unlike in street outreach campaigns, where bystanders were asked to physically intervene, Safe Schools and Universities volunteers were trained to talk to people about university policies and, especially at Cairo University, about the new systems of a due process enacted through the university’s anti-sexual harassment unit. Safe Schools and Universities thus allowed youth activists to shape institutionalized structures at levels lower than the state and, through these institutional changes, to refashion bystanders’ perceptions and praxis about sexual harassment. This highlights how HarassMap’s work in universities did not fully eschew but encompassed forms of advocacy-based work in new ways.

What Future for Youth Anti-Sexual Harassment Activism in Egypt? Analyses of the January 25th Revolution articulated in the years following Mubarak’s ouster identified revolutionary youth’s participation in loose, informal, horizontal, and decentralized networks and the absence of stable organizational structures aimed at taking over state power as the main obstacle to sustained revolutionary change (Abdelrahman, 2013,

40 Abdelmonem and Galán interview with Hegab, August 2019.

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p. 569). Countering this view, Van de Sande described the occupation of Tahrir Square during the eighteen revolutionary days as a form of “prefigurative politics,” a moment “in which certain political ideals [we]re experimentally actualized in the ‘here and now’, rather than hoped to be realized in a distant future” (2013, p. 230). Extending this analysis to the multiplication of anti-sexual harassment initiatives between 2012 and 2013, Tadros argued that activists’ involvement in the fight against sexual violence represented a hybrid blend of contentious and prefigurative politics (2015, p. 1359). Accordingly, informal (grassroots) structures and practices allowed youth activists to engage in novel forms of mobilization and to be “‘activated’ as part of a collective body” (Tadros, 2015, p. 1359), thus serving as “pathways for the generation of repertoires of contention for the future” (p. 1366). These arguments center on the role of youth movements in fomenting political change at the level of the state, but may have implications for thinking about HarassMap’s work inside of institutions. Grassroots anti-sexual harassment efforts do not only imagine a new political reality but seek to cultivate large-scale societal changes in which the state is only one element. Bottom-up repertoires of contention that youth anti-sexual harassment activists were, and still are, engaged in are aimed at promoting horizontal change at the deeply rooted sociocultural structures that order the very fabric of daily life and political practice, including that of the state. Within this context, HarassMap’s Safe Schools and Universities program serves as a powerful example of a more sustained effort to maintain, through their integration into institutional norms and practices, the forms of anti-sexual harassment activism that emerged during, and were inspired by, the revolutionary moment. Between 2010 and 2020, HarassMap’s trajectory was marked by an expansion of the reach of their activities, and ultimate shift from the streets to educational institutions. This enabled HarassMap to continue their work long after the disappearance of most of the other anti-sexual harassment initiatives following heightened state control and surveillance. The proscription from the streets effectively shut down community outreach efforts throughout the country. Nonetheless, entry into universities also meant the extension of ongoing civil society conversations about the pervasiveness of sexual harassment in Egyptian society to an institutional setting that had until then remained impervious to these debates as well as the incorporation of broader publics into the anti-sexual harassment effort. HarassMap’s work at Cairo University, in particular, provides important insights into

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more effective and sustainable models of collaboration across gender, class, generational, and sectoral lines. The university’s anti-sexual harassment efforts opened up a space for experimentation and facilitated a unique collaboration between faculty, students, and activists to create a more equitable environment on campus. More generally, HarassMap’s work with students at Cairo University between 2014 and 2020 holds the promise to overcome the class boundaries that have traditionally characterized civil society activism in Egypt and to diffuse more progressive gender norms among the members of the country’s future generations.

Pedagogical Feature Youth activism against sexual violence proliferated following the January 25th Egyptian Revolution to address collective sexual assaults in protest spaces and the pervasive problem of sexual harassment on the streets. Youth activists in this period developed bottom-up forms of action that sought to disrupt prevailing gender norms and enact social change, in reaction to the policy-oriented, top-down approaches adopted by women’s rights organizations prior to 2011. Following the military coup of July 2013 and Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s rise to the presidency in June 2014, the state cracked down on activists, increased restrictions to the right of assembly and association, and closed off public space, forcing youth initiatives to leave the streets and seek alternative sites of activism. Within this constrained political environment, the youth initiative HarassMap built upon their already existing Safe Schools and Universities program to target educational institutions, and particularly universities. Universities became organizational habitats where anti-sexual harassment activism could be sustained and was able to flourish in the post-coup period. Safe Schools and Universities combined bottom-up and top-down approaches to address the pervasiveness of sexual harassment in college campuses. Extending HarassMap’s community outreach work developed on the streets since 2012, Safe Schools and Universities trained students at multiple colleges to become “community captains,” who in turn were in charge of recruiting their own volunteer teams to raise awareness, speak to peers, and intervene against sexual harassment. At the same time, they worked on an anti-sexual harassment policy template that could be easily adopted by public and private universities in Egypt.

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A collective sexual assault against a student in Cairo University in March 2014 served as a pivotal moment that significantly expanded HarassMap’s work in this public institution. Following this incident, faculty at the university collaborated with HarassMap and civil society groups to draft an anti-sexual harassment policy, which was eventually adopted in September 2014. As part of this collaboration, HarassMap trained faculty members and teaching assistants on how to apply the anti-sexual harassment policy and students on how to prevent and report instances of sexual harassment to the university’s newly established anti-sexual harassment unit. This institutional partnership facilitated the articulation of cross-gender, -class, -generational, and -sectoral alliances encompassing the university administration, faculty members, students, and activists. The success of Cairo University’s anti-sexual harassment work prompted faculty at this educational institution and HarassMap’s activists to participate in exchanges for expertise transferral to replicate this model in colleges throughout Egypt. In 2018, this work was thwarted by the state-led National Council of Women, which attempted to take ownership of anti-sexual harassment initiatives in universities and succeeded in most institutions, with the exception of Cairo University. Within a context marked by the state’s push to demobilize and coopt anti-sexual harassment activism, HarassMap’s aim to foment change within institutional settings needs to be understood as a sustained effort to maintain, through their integration into institutional norms and practices, the forms of anti-sexual harassment activism that emerged during, and were inspired by, the revolutionary moment.

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El-Ghobashy, M. (2002). Antinomies of the Saad Eddin Ibrahim case. MERIP. http://www.merip.org/mero/mero081502 El-Mahdi, R. (2010). Does political Islam impede gender-based mobilization. The case of Egypt. Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, 11(3–4), 379–396. El-Mahdi, R. (2011, April 11). Orientalising the Egyptian uprising. Jadaliyya. https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/23882/Orientalising-the-Egy ptian-Uprising El-Nadeem Center for Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence and Torture, Nazra for Feminist Studies, and New Woman Foundation. (2013). Sexual assault and rape in Tahrir Square and its vicinity: A compendium of sources 2011–2013. http://nazra.org/sites/nazra/files/attachments/compil ation-_of_sexual-violence_-testimonies_between_20111_2013_en.pdf Ezbawy, Y. A. (2012). The role of the youths’ new protest movements in the January 25th revolution. IDS Bulletin, 43(1), 26–36. FIDH. (2015). Exposing state hypocrisy: Sexual violence by security forces in Egypt. https://www.fidh.org/IMG/pdf/egypt_report.pdf FIDH, Nazra for Feminist Studies, New Woman Foundation, The Uprising of Women in the Arab World. (2014). Egypt: Keeping women out. Sexual violence against women in the public sphere. http://www.fidh.org/IMG/pdf/egypt_ women_final_english.pdf Galán, S. (2016a). Beyond the logic of state protection: Feminist self-defense in Cairo after the January 25 revolution. Kohl: Journal for Body & Gender Research, 2(1), 71–89. Galán, S. (2016b). From the square to the streets: Sexual harassment and assault in Cairo after the 2011 Egyptian revolution. In D. Sharp & C. Panetta (Eds.), Beyond the square: Urbanism and the Arab uprisings (pp. 208–228). Terreform. Hassan, M., & El-Fattah, A. A. (2005, June 12). Opening by the preparatory committee. Manal and Alaas Bit Bucket. https://web.archive.org/web/200 51029194357/http://www.manalaa.net/opening_by_the_preparatory_com mittee Hassan, R. M., Aboul, O. N., & Shoukry, A. (2008). Clouds in Egypt’s sky: Sexual harassment, from verbal harassment to rape—A sociological study. UNFPA. https://www.academia.edu/42743647/Clouds_in_Egypts_sky Hipsher, P. L. (1998). Democratic transitions as protest cycles: Social movement dynamics in democratizing Latin America. In D. S. Meyer & S. Tarrow (Eds.), The social movement society: Contentious politics for a new century (pp. 153– 172). Rowman & Littlefield. Jad, I. (2007). The NGO-ization of Arab women’s movements. In A. Cornwall, E. Harrison, & A. Whitehead (Eds.), Feminisms in development: Contradictions, contestations, and challenges (pp. 177–190). Zed Books.

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Jasper, J. M. (1998). The emotions of protest: Affective and reactive emotions in and around social movements. Sociological Forum, 13(3), 397–424. Katzenstein, M. F. (1998). Stepsisters: Feminist movement activism in different institutional spaces. In D. S. Meyer & S. Tarrow (Eds.), The social movement society: Contentious politics for a new century (pp. 195–216). Rowman & Littlefield. Khalidi, R. (2011 February 24). Reflections on the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt. Foreign Policy. https://foreignpolicy.com/2011/02/24/reflectionson-the-revolutions-in-tunisia-and-egypt/ Kim, S.-C. (2016). Democratization and social movements in South Korea: Defiant institutionalization. Routledge. Kirkpatrick, D. D. (2013, November 25). New law in Egypt effectively bans street protests. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/26/ world/middleeast/egypt-law-street-protests.html Langohr, V. (2013). This is our square: Fighting sexual assault at Cairo protests. Middle East Report, 268(Fall), 18–25. Langohr, V. (2014). New president, old pattern of sexual violence in Egypt. MERIP. https://merip.org/2014/07/new-president-old-pattern-ofsexual-violence-in-egypt/ Langohr, V. (2015). Women’s rights movements during political transitions: Activism against public sexual violence in Egypt. International Journal of Middle East Studies, 47 (1), 131–135. Mada Masr. (2014a, August 31). Update: Deadline for NGO registration extended to November 10. Mada Masr. https://www.madamasr.com/en/ 2014/08/31/news/u/update-deadline-for-ngo-registration-extended-to-nov ember-10/ Mada Masr. (2014b, March 18). Victim blamed after sexual assault at Cairo University. Mada Masr. https://www.madamasr.com/en/2014/03/ 18/news/u/victim-blamed-after-sexual-assault-at-cairo-university/ Moustafa, T. (2004). Protests hint at new chapter in Egyptian politics. MERIP. http://www.merip.org/mero/mero040904 Murphy, E. C. (2012). Problematizing Arab youth: Generational narratives of systemic failure. Mediterranean Politics, 17 (1), 5–22. Nazra for Feminist Studies. (2012, June 13). Testimonies on the recent sexual assaults on Tahrir Square Vicinity. http://nazra.org/sites/nazra/files/attach ments/nazra_sexual_harassment_testimonies_june2012_en.pdf Nazra for Feminist Studies. (2016, March 21). Q & A: Background on case no. 173—The Foreign funding case. https://nazra.org/en/2016/03/q-bac kground-case-no-173-%E2%80%9Cforeign-funding-case%E2%80%9D Peuchaud, S. (2014). Social media activism and Egyptians use of social media to combat sexual violence: An HiAP case study. Health Promotion International, 29(1, 1), i113–i120.

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Reid, D. M. (1990). Cairo University and the making of modern Egypt. Cambridge University Press. Rennick, S. A. (2018). Politics and revolution in Egypt: Rise and fall of the youth activists. Routledge. Rizzo, H., Price, A., & Meyer, K. (2012). Anti-sexual harassment campaign in Egypt. Mobilization: An International Journal, 17 (4), 457–475. Shahine, S. H. (2011). Youth and the revolution in Egypt. Anthropology Today, 27 (2), 1–3. Sika, N. (2017a). Ambiguities of student activism, authoritarianism and democratic attitudes: The cases of Egypt and Morocco. The Journal of North African Studies, 22(1), 35–59. Sika, N. (2017b). Youth activism and contentious politics in Egypt: Dynamics of continuity and change. Cambridge University Press. Skalli, L. H. (2014). Young women and social media against sexual harassment in North Africa. The Journal of North African Studies, 19(2), 244–258. Tadros, M. (2015). Contentious and prefigurative politics: Vigilante groups struggle against sexual violence in Egypt (2011–2013). Development and Change, 46(6), 1345–1368. Tadros, M. (2016). Resistance, revolt, and gender justice in Egypt. Syracuse University Press. Tarrow, S. G. (1998). Power in movement: Social movements and contentious politics. Cambridge University Press. Van de Sande, M. (2013). The prefigurative politics of Tahrir Square—An alternative perspective on the 2011 revolutions. Res Publica, 19(3), 223–239. Zayed, H., Sika, N., & Elnur, I. (2016). The student movement in Egypt. A microcosm of contentious politics. Power2Youth. https://www.iai.it/sites/def ault/files/p2y_19.pdf

CHAPTER 6

When David Defeats Goliath. The Case of MeToo University: The Solidarity Network of Victims of Gender-Based Violence in Universities Gemma Geis, Patricia Melgar, and Ana Vidu

Key Terms MeToo University—a social movement launched in Spain in 2013 by victims and survivors of gender-based violence in the university and people who support them. Its main objectives are to support victims, avoid their isolation due to the isolating gender-based violence against those who support them, contribute to breaking the silence and influence

G. Geis · P. Melgar (B) University of Girona, Girona, Catalonia, Spain e-mail: [email protected] G. Geis e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 I. Rivers and C. L. Lovin (eds.), Young People Shaping Democratic Politics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29378-8_6

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policies to improve prevention and action and, with all of this, to achieve the eradication of gender-based violence in universities in the future. Support Networks —people who unite altruistically with the aim of supporting and helping others to face certain problems or difficulties. In the case of gender-based violence, for example, solidarity networks help victims/survivors by offering a place to stay, accompanying the victim to file a complaint or testify in court, and offering leisure activities to help them overcome the isolation they may find themselves in, etc. Gender-Based Violence—is a serious violation of human rights that includes any kind of attack (physical, psychological, or sexual) directed against a person because of their sex.

Introduction Gender-based violence (GBV) has been a persistent social problem present in our societies throughout history. This violence can occur in a wide variety of contexts, including universities. The first research on violence in this context dates to 1957 and was carried out on the American campus of Indiana University. This research, which was conducted by Kirkpatrick and Kanin (1957), provided quantitative data on the existence of aggressive male sexual behaviour in the university context; it also pointed out some consequences for women, such as reduced self-confidence and increased silence regarding the facts. Its findings along with other subsequent studies emphasized that in this context, gender-based violence was favoured by the confluence of power relations (Benson & Thomson, 1979; Farley, 1980). In 1979, Shirley Clark, who was the Assistant Vice President of the University of Minnesota, defined sexual harassment in university classrooms as “harassment in which the faculty member covertly or overtly uses the power inherent in the status of a professor to threaten, coerce or intimidate a student to accept sexual advances or risk reprisal in terms of a grade, a recommendation, or even a job” (quoted by Anne Truax in 1979). It

A. Vidu University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA e-mail: [email protected] University of Deusto, Bilbao, Basque Country, Spain

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was later followed by numerous investigations whose results confirm the existence of cases of gender violence in universities practically all over the world. For example, in 2014, Fnais and colleagues (2014) presented the results of a meta-analysis of 51 investigations of sexual violence in American medical schools. Of the women studied, 59.4% had experienced some form of sexual harassment or discrimination during their undergraduate years. One of the main elements that characterizes GBV in the university context is its concealment and silencing of incidents (Gross et al., 2006). Under this silence, two more elements that especially contribute to the perpetuation of GBV in universities are impunity towards harassers and the lack of institutional support, which also causes a fear of reporting (Cantalupo, 2011; Dziech & Weiner, 1990; Eyre, 2000; Grauerholz et al., 1999; Valls et al., 2016). Impunity occurs in some cases; in others, it is negligence and/or a lack of clear and effective rules. This allows that in universities, people harass without being penalized by it (Osborne, 1995). Thus, the lack of a reaction or inadequate responses leads students to feel blamed and afraid to report harassment (Cantalupo, 2011; Clark & Walker, 2011; Fisher et al., 2009). This is possible because power structures in the university context respond to asymmetrical relationships (Weber, 1978). In this context, a hierarchy is established that places some people—usually professors—above others—usually alumni—on the power scale (Rossi & Weber-Burdin, 1983). Any person can be a victim of GBV at university, regardless of class, race, nationality, etc. (Benson & Thomson, 1982). The harasser is usually someone with university leadership, which translates into someone who occupies a work status, to whom favours are owed, and it is precisely through these connections that they manage to wield this power (Dowler et al., 2014; Eyre, 2000). Therefore, we are faced with a profile that might not harass outside the university because in other spaces, they do not have this power, but within the university, they find the impunity and complicity necessary for their actions to be silenced. This university atmosphere of complicity or deliberate indifference… (Cantalupo, 2011) leads the victims themselves to state that it is worse to report GBV than to suffer it at university due to the entire process of revictimization that the victims suffer because of their report (for example, disbelief that makes them vulnerable, etc.) (Vidu, 2017). In turn, when the people who support victims also suffer

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negative consequences,1 taking a stance becomes a brave action (Melgar, Geis-Carreras et al., 2021). In Spain, the first research on GBV in the university context began in 2005 and was directed by Professor Rosa Valls (2005–2008). The results of this research provided evidence on the existence of GBV in Spanish universities and on the lack of resources to resolve existing cases or prevent new ones. More specifically, it revealed difficulties on the part of young students in identifying gender-based violence that occurred within the institution. For example, when participants were asked if they knew of or had experienced any situation of GBV at the university, 13% answered “yes”. However, when they were provided with a list of specific situations of gender violence, the affirmative responses increased to 62%. Other results, in turn, also showed the lack of reporting; 91% of respondents did not report the case. Among those who dared to report, 27% did not feel supported by the institution, and 69% of respondents felt insecure as to whether the victims would be supported by the university. This also emphasizes the lack of mechanisms or the lack of knowledge of the resources that Spanish universities have. Ninety-eight percent of students stated that they did not know if their universities had any specific mechanism that could address a case of gender violence or assist a victim. In the same vein, 85% of respondents were in favour of the creation of this type of office or service, and 89% considered that the whole community should work to support the university in the prevention, confrontation, and eradication of violence (Valls, 2005–2008; Valls et al., 2016). Preventing violence and alleviating the effects when it has already occurred require the active role of the community (Banyard et al., 2007; Cook-Craig et al., 2014). These informal networks provide the most useful and lasting support (Adkins & Dush, 2010; Goodman et al., 2016; Melgar, 2019–2022). The main benefits identified are practical and emotional, for example, accompanying victims in formal service circuits (health, justice, etc.), contributing to the identification of violence, or increasing victims’ safety and well-being (Goodman & Smyth, 2011; Sainio et al., 2011). Despite this, it is also indicated that sometimes, such assistance and institutional responses are not effective or adequate. To improve the effectiveness of interventions, it is important not to blame victims, to make them protagonists of their own process by valuing their

1 This form of gender-based violence is referred to as isolating gender violence.

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transformative potential and to promote reflection on the socialization that they have experienced in their affective-sexual relationships (Melgar, 2019–2022; Melgar, Campdepadrós-Cullell et al., 2021).

David vs. Goliath: Young People Against Gender-Based Violence on College Campuses Many historical social movements have fought for emancipation and social justice (Morris, 1986). In some of them, young people have played a fundamental role, from the historic Civil Rights movement or the World Peace Movement (1950s/1960s) to the movements that have emerged in recent decades, such as Occupy or the Dreamers (Milkman, 2014). The fight against GBV in universities was the creation of Women Organized Against Sexual Harassment (WOASH) in 1978 at the University of California, Berkeley, which established the solid foundation for the complaints of thirteen students a year later. These complaints, in turn, led to these cases being publicly defined as “sexual violence” in 1979. Some of the actions taken by these students and students on other American campuses have shaped the role of student mobilizations globally. Social movements, research, and policy have proven to be essential in contributing to the fight against GBV (Freedman, 2013). At the university level, student mobilizations in different countries have been responsible for claiming solutions to this significant social problem. The successes of these movements show that David can defeat Goliath. Fighting against GBV at the university is like fighting against a giant with considerable power (Goliath). Because of victims’ position in the institution, they were much smaller, but getting together and the desire to fight for social justice gave them significant strength. Leading a movement made them grow and eventually win and with this, also made the next generations winners. One of the main vindications of these movements has been to demand the commitment of the entire university community to take a stand in favour of victims. This demand is motivated because the university institution is seen by the victims of GBV as a hostile context that not only will not support them in the face of a possible complaint but also will try to silence them.

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This is the image that Maria2 had of her institution when she was a victim of harassment, which is one form of GBV. Maria was a master’s student at a Spanish public university. This university, at the time, followed the government’s mandate and already had an equality commission. When analysing what Maria experienced, it is important to consider that the Spanish university context presents a series of particularities that differentiate it from universities in other countries. For example, unlike in the American university context and in other European countries, it is not common for students to live on campus, and only a minority of students stay in residence halls. Moreover, there are no fraternities of boys and girls, although we can find student associations, which generally have mixed genders, whose main objective is usually to demand the rights of students in the different university governing bodies. These types of particularities mean that the statistics on GVB in Spanish universities do not show figures on its perpetration in certain areas, as indicated in the scientific literature in other countries, but this does not mean that we do not find cases of GBV within the institution. When Maria suffered GBV, she did not know what to do and feared that she had no support. She found support from only one professor, Richard. This professor, at the beginning of the 2011–2012 academic year, filed a complaint with the institutional representative and with the Equality Commission of their university. In this complaint, he described a case of harassment by a professor, John, who was a repeat perpetrator. Richard also filed a complaint at Harvard University, since the accused professor included his affiliation, although sporadic, with Harvard University in the signature of emails with harassing content. Richard presented evidence of emails with explicit sexual harassing content addressed to María and other offensive emails that document what she had experienced with the same professor a few years earlier when she was a first-year undergraduate student. The Equality Commission decided to open the case once the dean received an email from Harvard’s sexual harassment office, which mentioned that they were going to investigate the harassed professor’s use of the prestigious university’s name. On November 4, 2011, Maria’s university approved the first Gender-Based Violence Prevention, Detection and Response Protocol. This protocol regulated the investigation process of this case (Valls et al., 2016). 2 All real names have been replaced by pseudonyms to preserve the anonymity of the protagonists.

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It established that the faculty’s own Equality Commission, where the events had occurred, was responsible for overseeing and following the entire investigation process, reporting the process and protecting the complaining victims from possible retaliation. Maria only had the help of Richard, who supported her and her colleagues at the research centre. Very few teachers dared to show their support. To the contrary, many teachers criticized her or stopped talking to her. At this moment, Maria realized that she was up against people much more powerful than her and that to stand up to them, she needed to join forces and receive support. Breaking the silence and making her case public made other victims denounce. However, at the time, they did not know one another, and they knew that other victims existed, but they did not know their identities. It was not until the case was closed that they had the possibility to know who they were and to join forces and to start a movement. Thus, during the investigation process, thirteen more young people who had suffered GBV from the same professor decided to join the accusation. These new cases showed even more to the Equality Commission the seriousness and scope of the facts. Other cases did not dare to follow the complaint process. The first step in the process was to make a statement before the investigating committee of the case. The victims described this first step as difficult, but in general, they felt supported and understood by the people who listened to them and investigated the case. Soon, however, the second round of testimony began, but this time, it occurred before an investigator appointed by the university’s legal services. At this point, not all the victims were equally fortunate. Although most of the victims reported that their experience was similar to the first accusation from Maria, the first young woman who had provided the initial evidence of sexual harassment, they did not feel the same support. Instead of asking Maria about her experiences with John, the accused teacher, she was questioned about her relationship with Richard, the teacher who had supported her from the beginning. With this attitude, Maria felt undervalued. The approach of the interrogation implied that there was a power struggle between the supporting teacher and the harassing teacher. Did this mean that a young student could not have a critical conscience, that she was easily manipulated, that there are no people who support victims of GBV out of principle, and that there must always be a hidden personal interest? Maria felt that she was being questioned and treated as a liar or as guilty and that the only person who

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had dared to protect her in this situation and encouraged her to speak out was now in the crosshairs of the investigation. In contrast, the bravery of Maria and her colleagues was a milestone in Spanish universities; for the first time, disciplinary proceedings were initiated against a professor for sexual harassment. As a result, another round of statements followed, which ended with the acknowledgement that sexual harassment had been perpetrated. However, the university stated that it was unable to take legal action against John, the accused professor. The most serious allegations were time-barred. At the time, Spanish law established that after three years (now five), the events that had occurred were considered time-barred by law and could therefore not be denounced. At this point, the university turned the case over to the state prosecutor to initiate an official investigation and a judicial process in the common justice system. Thus, the victims had to testify again before the police officers investigating the case. The Public Prosecutor’s Office closed the case due to the statute of limitations, although in its report, it made it clear that the sexual harassment by John had occurred and that the Dean of the Faculty had known about it since 1987 when she was a student, as she indicated in her statement. With this, it was clear that the university had kept the case in internal proceedings long enough for the statute of limitations to expire.

From Victims to Survivors: The Rise of a Social Movement The university administrators had established that the trial should be carried out in strict confidentiality; therefore, those who had been victims of harassment by John had not communicated with one another during the two years of the process and did not know the identity of the other victims. There seemed to be a legal justification that imposed silence on these youth, and the indications of the director of the Equality Commission also prohibited them from talking about the case to anyone. This meant that the majority of the 14 victims lived this journey of interrogations in solitude, without the possibility of sharing fears and questions and without receiving advice or accompaniment. Maria was the only one who, regardless of what the politics dictated, had already decided to apply not only her common sense but also what science reveals as necessary in cases of GBV, that is, to seek the support of other people and to break the isolation that the perpetrators of violence try to impose.

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Neither the victims nor other young women at the university had had the opportunity to participate in the making of the protocol that was applied in their case or the policy that framed it. In the university, it is common for young people to be seen as the recipients of policies but never as active participants in their making. Therefore, Maria and the other 13 victims were involved in a process whose guidelines had been written by people who did not belong to their social group, namely, the student group. In this process, even though the victims were at the centre, the people responsible for its development and follow-up never assessed with the victims the correct functioning of the process, the need for modifications that could facilitate the victims’ recovery, or their accompaniment during the denunciation and interrogations. Everything changed when the prosecutor issued the final report mentioned above. Although the closing of the case was not the best news, this report recognized the existence of sexual harassment by the accused professor and showed that his behaviour had gone unpunished for more than twenty years. From the investigation conducted and having listened to the witnesses’ statements, the slightest doubt cannot be harbored that each and every one of them really noted the offender’s behavior as his strategy for trying to maintain a non-academic relationship; and because of the facts, some of the victims have modified their academic expectations (...) All these elements have been relevant to the creation of harmful relationships managed by the offender with several students, which would be accommodated within the crime of sexual harassment (...). In this regard, it should be noted that art. 184.2 CP punishes the conduct of sexual harassment and undue influence of a teaching situation with imprisonment from five to seven months and a fine of ten to fourteen months. (Servicio de Diligencias de Investigación, 2013; Vidu, 2017)

As the 14 young women thought, the legislation at the time did not allow the GBV that they suffered to be sanctioned because they had prewritten the facts, but they did expect intervention on the part of the university to prevent what had already been going on for twenty years from continuing to happen. This was not the case, and in fact, Professor John, whose harassment had been proven, was not condemned by law and was not sanctioned by the institution. The university did not activate any type of preventive action. This implied that he would continue his teaching activity. However, the 14 victims decided to transform this

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defeat. At this moment, María and the rest of the victims were clear that they had to make this a collective struggle. They had to stop acting individually as isolated victims and instead build a movement in which they could support one another and other people who wanted to support them. Something was beginning to change; the foundations were being laid for a hopeful future for the next generations. At this moment, Robert, a young man and one of the victims, stated: This victory did not imply any triumph of honor, but it represented an important consequence for many more people, and this is the most important aspect, or at least it is what motivated me to survive all of this. First, it will help other people avoid suffering the same that we have suffered. And second, it was a warning to other harassing professors. (Vidu, 2017)

It was thus decided that by joining forces and being the ones to lead the movement—without impositions from the university authorities—they could respond to the real problems that students faced in their daily lives with respect to GBV at the university and prevent other young people from suffering the same GBV and reprisals that they had suffered in the future. We can say that for many of the victims, this was the moment when they began to construct their identity as survivors. In Spain, when referring to those who have suffered GBV the term “victim” is usually used, although, in the second decade of the twenty-first century, this is changing. In the USA, American survivors define themselves this way because they feel that they have overcome the condition of “victim” and the harmful consequences associated with this word. In many cases, a survivor is also commonly an activist, although the meaning of the two terms is different. The term activist refers to those who are actively involved in the fight against sexual violence in academia; some are survivors of rape or sexual violence, but others are not (Vidu, 2017). In the case of the members of the solidarity network in Spain, we find a certain similarity. They started to feel like survivors when they stopped being isolated, and it was also at this time that they started their activism. The survivors contacted one another and began to meet and talk about their situations and feelings, and they were relieved to finally be able to talk to someone. First, these meetings had a therapeutic effect on the survivors; they felt relief from the simple fact that there were other people in the same situation who had probably suffered not only GBV but also

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the same uncertainty and isolation during the investigation. However, at the same time, they felt that the problem remained unresolved and that no one was acting to solve it in the institution. Therefore, they met and discussed what to do. At this time, they understood that they were struggling at another level. Paula describes the moment when they decided to act beyond the structural barriers that they encountered. I remember when, with the attorney’s report in hands, we had to decide what to do next. We knew that we wanted to go further. As victims, our struggle is for other victims, we cannot sleep knowing that more students are being harassed every day. Our fight is not institutional, or it is not only institutional; rather, we are worried about how to prevent students from becoming victims. (Vidu, 2017)

To listen to, believe, and support other survivors, the Solidarity Network of Victims of Gender Violence in Universities was created at the end of 2013 and was officially launched on a Facebook page on February 10, 2014. It was created to be a peer network aimed at supporting this struggle at the student level. It is made up of survivors of GBV in universities in collaboration with the people who support and stand in solidarity with them. The members are committed to working together to achieve universities free of GBV, and they, therefore, work to prevent GBV in the academic environment and react to the cases in which it occurs. From the beginning, it was clear to them that their aim was not to go against the institution but to transform it and help it, since the institution alone is not able to eliminate GBV. Formal mechanisms need informal mechanisms (such as support networks) to truly achieve the objectives that they claim to defend. Therefore, the members of the Solidarity Network argued that they would not be against the protocols, the structure or any other administrative body created to fight against gender violence in universities; in contrast, they would support the existence of these mechanisms, but they saw the need for them to be participants in their definition and application. The analysis that María and her peers shared about their experiences throughout the process led them to establish a series of principles in the configuration of the Solidarity Network, which, in turn, became the demands on which they based their struggle. The first of these was to always take the side of the victim. Research has widely demonstrated

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the importance of support in the fight against gender violence (Krebs et al., 2007), which must be clear, and to always avoid victim blaming. Second, the principles should complement institutional measures. International research on this topic shows that institutional measures alone are not sufficient to prevent GBV; therefore, additional initiatives are necessary. Among the many international examples are peer support networks. In addition, to break the silence and address the problem, committed individuals are needed to support the victims. This is precisely the focus of different prevention programs and campaigns developed in universities outside Spain, such as “Green Dot” or “Tell Someone”. Finally, we extend the actions—prevention and intervention—to the people who support the victims, i.e. the potential victims of second-order sexual harassment (SOSH). This form of violence was first defined by Dziech and Weiner in 1990 as follows: “Sexism on campus creates a second order of sexual harassment victims, those who advise, support, and rule in favor of the primary victims. These are the affirmative action officers, ombudspersons, counselors, assistant deans—the people assigned, and usually committed, to helping sexual harassment victims” (Dziech & Weiner, 1990). Subsequent research, such as Flecha (2021), has analysed in depth this form of violence, which, in December 2020, was included for the first time in the world in legislation against gender violence, specifically, in the autonomic law of Catalonia (Vidu et al., 2021).

Extending the Struggle: Weaving Alliances, Joining Forces From the beginning, the Solidarity Network set out to serve student mobilizations against sexual violence in universities. The members of the Solidarity Network contacted student activists from other universities, also international, and decided to join forces and collaborate in activities that would achieve the Network’s objectives and protect other potential victims. Shortly after its creation, the Solidarity Network was considered “good practice” and included in the Bank of Good Practices of the Women’s Foundation of the Government of Spain (Puigvert et al., 2019). One of the first actions that they carried out took place when the “Student Assemblies"—a group of student activists—wanted to show their support and make their voices heard in relation to GBV in their departments. This happened because of the case narrated in the previous pages, and other universities’ young people started to become aware of this

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problem. The young people who participated in this student assembly, in view of the proven facts, became aware of the potential danger to which the university was exposing them by allowing the harassing professor to continue in the classrooms, halls, office, etc. For this reason, they decided to raise their voices. The strategy that they followed was based on the previous experience of the 14 complainants. This experience told them that the policy applied at the university is a policy for students but is built without them. At the same time, practice showed them that the results of its application did not meet their needs. Their need was to be as certain as possible that any space in the university was a space free of violence. However, obviously, this need was not met if, despite knowing about professors repeated harassing practices over time, the university allowed a professor to continue to work as such. Therefore, the Solidarity Network collaborated with the student assembly in a campaign to collect signatures. This campaign was entitled “No more violence at the university”. The manifesto that accompanied it demanded the definitive destitution of the accused professor and the protection of the victims by the institution in the management of current and future cases and complaints. In a few weeks, this campaign succeeded in obtaining 1,000 signatures from different people, namely, faculty, students, other members of the university, members of other institutions, and individuals. The dissemination and involvement of people in the collection of signatures managed to make visible and raise awareness about the reality that was being experienced in the institution; therefore, it had a social impact. The political impact was attempted to be achieved by calling an event for the delivery of signatures, and the media was also called. This event was held in the main building of the university and was attended by almost eighty people who gave their support to the victims and to this cause. At the event, the students read the manifesto: In relation to the cases of gender-based violence that have occurred at the University by Professor John, we, the undersigned individuals and groups, demand: 1-The definitive and immediate cessation of the academic functions, especially teaching, of Professor John. 2-A public position of the University that: - demonstrates its support for the victims - assumes the existing problem at the university

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- commits to take effective measures of prevention and action to put an end to the problem of GBV in an unequivocal manner.

In 2014, shortly after the report from the prosecutor’s office, the Solidarity Network succeeded in getting the university to give the accused professor a leave of absence from work so that he could be away from the university for two years without contact with students. In 2016, when they wanted to incorporate his workplace, the student movement was very empowered. This is why the collection of signatures was so successful and even the media coverage was very relevant, which gave voice to the victims. Their struggle was captured in the documentary “Voices against silence”, and this documentary won the Golden Globe at the World Media Festival in Hamburg in 2018. Despite the public visibility, the institution did not shy away from complicity with violence. In 2016, the professor denounced harassment and returned to his office at the university during protests. There, he stayed until he retired, a year later, although he never returned to teaching again. The success of the student movement against GBV and the structure that covered it up had already changed the system permanently. For example, in 2018, when the university wanted to award a gold medal to John—the professor denounced for harassment—in recognition of his academic career at the institution, the repercussions achieved by the previous mobilizations made the university change its position, act in accordance with its code of ethics and not award the professor with any recognition.

The Right to a University Free of GBV In general, the dialogue among different people from the university community, which was focused on the obstacles that they had to face in the fight against gender violence, quickly led them to the conclusion that they should extend this movement to other universities and seek complicity with movements beyond the university. Thus, on May 9, 2014, the Unitary Platform Against Gender Violence of Catalonia— a social movement that brings together diverse associations (women’s groups, neighbourhood associations, youth groups, etc.), in collaboration with the Solidarity Network, launched a public campaign called “Our daughters have the right!” With this title, the youth put the following rights at the centre of the debate and their claims:

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The right not to be forced to be taught by a harassing professor, the right to always be defended by the university and not that the university defends the harasser, the right to a university free of sexual harassment, the right to learning and training based on freedom and respect. (Female member of the Solidarity Network of Victims of Gender-Based Violence in Universities)

That is, these rights encompass a university free of GBV. Subsequently, the Solidarity Network has focused its work on supporting any victim of violence at the university and actions to denounce such violence. At the same time, it has also strived to make its voice heard and to ensure that university policies in this area take into account its contributions. Regarding making the Solidarity Network’s voice heard, this is an objective in which young women in this and other areas already have a long track record of success. Social mobilizations have been incorporating the voices of young people for decades, and in the specific case of the fight against gender violence, their presence has been very active. In this sense, the Solidarity Network in Spain has supported other young survivors and activists and the birth of similar movements in other universities, which is the case of the Violet Points at the Complutense University of Madrid. Another example is the support given to the group of students of the Coordinadora Campus Diagonal at the University of Barcelona. This group decided to raise its voice and present a video in which it talked about specific situations of GBV not only in the academic context but also in parties and other student environments. Outside Spain, they have maintained contact with other activists, especially from the United States, who are involved in similar movements. In January 2022, for the first time, one of the most widely read media in Spain published, on the front page, a report on MeToo University with the testimonies of 25 women professors who reported GVB cases.3 As a result of this first publication, media outlets across the country have echoed the publication of increasingly more news on the issue on television. At the time, the Solidarity Network was aware that the GBV in universities was already on the agenda of the media, universities, and political bodies. For this reason, and with the will to join the Solidarity Networks’ efforts in a worldwide commitment, they launched an international campaign under the name MeToo University. In Spain, the 3 https://www.elperiodico.com/es/cuaderno/metoo-university-spain-sh/index.html.

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campaign collected 1,001 signatures in 72 hours. These were the main demands contained in the petition4 : Urge researchers, institutions, universities, and scientific associations to approve the following statement in their statutes or code of ethics: “The [Name of the Organization] takes a stand against gender violence, revictimization and isolating gender violence, urging its members, congress members and collaborators to support the victims.” Join the efforts of our networks from different countries in an international network of networks: World MeToo University, International Joint Network of Victims and Survivors of Gender Violence and Isolating Gender Violence. Of course, maintaining total independence of each network.

This visibility of the Solidarity Network in the media throughout the country impacts the fact that more students and professors are daring to explain their cases and seek help. The proof of this is that the Solidarity Network, which since January 2022, is known as MeToo University, has multiplied the number of victims who contact it, explain their testimony, ask for advice, and want to join the movement. The example of the founders of MeToo University has made them feel that they are no longer alone in the tough journey of addressing GBV in the university context. Regarding the political impact, they have achieved it even though, in Spanish universities, it is still a pending issue to involve the students in shaping the policies that affect them. In its case, the Solidarity Network has managed to influence the laws through its alliances with other people sensitive to their cause, especially professors, and by lobbying as a group. This means that it has not been the heads of the equality commissions or other bodies who have requested their participation but the young women who have sought ways to make their voices heard. Furthermore, notably, some of the youth who, as students, were militants or supporters of the Solidarity Network, have now become part of the teaching staff of different universities. However, this promotion in terms of the position that they occupy in the universities has not changed their principles. That is, these women, who as young people, agitated for the overcoming of violence in universities continue in a coherent way their support for the struggle. Therefore, they now represent a reinforcement from a position

4 https://chng.it/zTnV7GjHhR.

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closer to power. Moreover, they have also become an example of what could be called “successful victims” because reporting GVB has not driven them out of the university. This is important so that other people also dare to report or support victims. Notably, although this change of position has made them slightly less vulnerable than they were as young students, neither the fight against GBV in the university context nor the people who militate in this movement are not always well received. The most significant political impact in which the Solidarity Network has been able to participate was achieved in December 2020. At this time, the regional legislation against GBV in Catalonia incorporated secondorder gender violence (also referred to as isolating gender violence) as a form of GBV (Melgar, Geis-Carreras et al., 2021). Later, other regions also added it. In March 2022 was included in the regional law of Euskadi. This achievement is one of the most transcendental in which the Solidarity Network has participated since it will have the most benefit in overcoming GBV in universities. To achieve this goal, it is necessary to break with the isolation experienced by the victims to build networks that show solidarity and give their support to the victims (Melgar, 2019–2022; Valls et al., 2016). The existence of this support is strongly conditioned by the fear that many people have of retaliation, that is, of being themselves also harassed because they have given their support (Flecha, 2021; Melgar, Campdepadrós-Cullell et al., 2021). Therefore, this legislative advance implies the recognition of this reality and the implementation of mechanisms that by protecting those who protect, it will, in turn, be helping the victims of violence. Having an impact on the political sphere has become one of their main areas of intervention, along with social mobilization and direct support and advice for victims and survivors. The members of the solidarity network link the possibility of having a social impact and, with it, eliminating gender-based violence from the university space, with the fact of influencing all those laws, regulations, protocols… that regulate universities. At the same time, we see that their empowerment process, having gone from being victims to survivors, has made them aware of their right, as members of the university community, to participate in the elaboration and revision of these regulations. Another example of this can be found in 2022, when faced with the presentation of the draft Science Law by the regional government in Catalonia, the Solidarity Network, through the

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“Osoigo”5 platform, launched a public proposal to ask four parliamentarians about this issue. Anyone could add their support to this initiative. The petition focused on requesting the inclusion of a section on gender violence in universities, institutes, and research centres. In the statement of their initiative, they emphasized the following: ’The citizens of Catalonia are increasingly informed and aware of the resistance of academic structures to decisively support victims and survivors of both direct gender-based violence and isolating gender violence (or second order of gender violence). However, both the citizens and the Parliament of Catalonia have passed very advanced legislation against GBV; the academy cannot be a fortress where these regulations continue not to be complied with. The initiative for change has not come and will not come from these structures, nor will it be the right one if it is led by the same people who are responsible for these situations. It is the citizens and the Parliament of Catalonia who must guide future change.

Pedagogical Feature What Are the Challenges for Young People to Achieve Political and Social Impact? The example of the Solidarity Network shows that in institutions such as the university, which is strongly hierarchical, it is possible to do justice even without holding a position of power. It is possible to achieve a policy impact even if the institution did not initially invite you to participate in the creation and subsequent implementation of these policies. Precisely the fact that young people are in the most vulnerable position makes it difficult for their successes to be achieved in the short term. The success of the Solidarity Network began to build on an apparent defeat. They failed to get the harassing professor penalized by the university. Therefore, at first, they also failed to get people in positions of responsibility on their side. However, the young people knew that their work could create changes that went beyond a specific case and a specific moment in history. 5 Osoigo (https://www.osoigo.com/) is a portal that aims to promote participatory and accessible policies for citizens. On this website, individuals or organizations can pose questions to politicians. Citizens support the question and with it, put pressure on politicians to answer these questions. The aim is to encourage dialogue to move from questions and answers to political action.

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In the university, it is common for young people to be seen as recipients of policies but never as active participants in their construction. Even so, the example of Maria and the other young people and the subsequent work of the Solidarity Network show that beyond the elaboration of policies, the key moment comes when they must be applied, since their application also falls in the hands of the university administrators in power. Therefore, the Solidarity Network focused on lobbying for the correct application of existing policy. That is, in future cases, victims should be protected, and harassers should not be left unsanctioned. They employed two strategies to build their successes, specifically, joining forces and moving the debate into the public sphere. In the joining of efforts, they sought the complicity of the different strata of the university community and not only students. They also sought the support of people and social movements outside the university, for example, the United Platform Against Gender-Based Violence.6 During this process, while joining efforts, they made known their struggle and the objectives that they proposed to overcome GBV in universities. In this way, they also began to break the silence that always plays in favour of the perpetuation of violence. To break this silence, they took advantage of the traditional mobilization capacity of young students, organized campaigns and managed to capture the attention of the media. At a time when GBV at the university had already been unmasked, those who did not want to favour the correct application of policies against GBV were faced with difficult choices regarding a way of proceeding, hidden until now, between complicity with violence in the past and the social claim driven by young students. There was no turning back. The work of the Solidarity Network has focused on supporting and advising other victims of GBV at the university, building alliances and extending the movement to other universities and even other countries, lobbying for the effective implementation of existing laws and resources, and influencing the development of new policies. Achieving violence-free universities in the future is only possible if the voices of victims and survivors are also included. Formal mechanisms need informal mechanisms (such as support networks) to truly achieve the objectives that they claim to defend.

6 https://www.violenciadegenere.org/.

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CHAPTER 7

Practising Sectarianism: Lebanese Youth Politics and the Complexity of Youth Political Engagement Elinor Bray-Collins

Key Terms Youth Politicization—Youth Politicization is the process (or processes) by which young people become politically aware and active. It refers to how young people develop political opinions, ideas, and perspectives and how they translate those into action. Processes of politicization may be explicit, such as the process of indoctrination, for example, or they may be (and more often are) more subtle and implicit, like processes of socialization or enculturation. In this chapter, the term is used to show how student elections on Lebanese university campuses, and specifically the American

E. Bray-Collins (B) Humber College, Toronto, ON, Canada e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 I. Rivers and C. L. Lovin (eds.), Young People Shaping Democratic Politics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29378-8_7

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University of Beirut, are sites that enable youth political participation and politicization. However, as discussed, partisan youth activists co-opt these otherwise democratic institutions to advance the agendas of their sect-based political parties. Therefore, rather than learning about elections, democracy and student governance, Lebanese students often find themselves mired in a divisive confessional political logic. Thus, campus elections can tend to reproduce, rather than challenge, sectarian dynamics on the campus and among students, at the expense of more secular, democratic, non-partisan ends. Social Movement Learning —Social Movement Learning refers to how groups of people in social movements learn over time. Activists, participants, and leaders of social movements learn from experience and new information, and this changes the nature of their activism, tactics, goals, and strategies. This is why social movements are often understood to be sites of knowledge creation about the world and practice. In the context of this chapter, the term “social movement learning” refers to how pro-democracy, anti-sectarian movements in Lebanon have changed and evolved because of their previous experience trying to change the Lebanese political system. With each new wave of protest, we see evidence of social movement learning as Lebanese activists learn from the past and become savvier and more strategic in their efforts to create change. Sectarianism—In the context of Lebanon, the term “sectarianism” tends to be “highly charged” and overburdened. It refers to several categories of things—some political, some institutional, some more emotive and intangible (Weiss 2010, 11). Formally, “sectarianism” often refers to Lebanon’s political system. That is, a consociational democratic state, which, like other consociational systems, is designed to reduce conflict and promote intergroup stability by guaranteeing shares of political power and granting each community segment autonomy over its own affairs. In Lebanon, this means that political power and representation in government, Parliament, and all bureaucratic posts are allotted on the basis of religious confession, with quotas assigned to each confession’s community according to the size of its population. In Lebanon, however, “sectarianism” can also refer to the broader set of both formal and informal institutional arrangements that govern a citizen’s relationship with the state and which in turn have shaped relationships between Lebanon’s religious communities. Indeed, much of the relationship between a Lebanese citizen and their state is negotiated through their religious (confessional) community. Thus, as Makdisi writes, Lebanese sectarianism is

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a result of a multiple formal and informal processes “through which a kind of religious identity is politicised, even secularised, as part of an obvious struggle for power” between communities (Makdisi 2008, 559–560). A key point to understand is that sectarian identity and sentiment in Lebanon is a modern phenomenon—one that is fluid, malleable, constructed, and produced by a variety of socioeconomic and political factors. This chapter aims to examine how sectarian dynamics can be reproduced, and why they persist among young people—even where the literature would expect to find them lacking, such as among educated Lebanese youth, in western-oriented universities, or in civil society movements.

Introduction What do young people’s political activism and participation look like in the context of deeply divided societies? The case of youth activism in Lebanon illuminates the complexity of youth politics in societies characterized by political polarization—particularly, polarization based on communal identity. Lebanon is home to some of the most tenacious and anti-establishment youth movements in the world. Over the last two decades, young Lebanese have emerged as a significant political force as they have been a defining feature of protests demanding greater democracy and an end to corruption and political sectarianism. In this chapter, I highlight the ambiguities and ambivalence of youth politics. I examine the case of Lebanon to explore how the strategies and activism of youth and students can also work towards more illiberal ends—in this case, in support of the traditional political parties led by Lebanon’s sectarian oligarchs and against the efforts of smaller groups of youth fighting for systemic change and an end to political sectarianism. I explore this by examining young people’s politics on university campuses and consider how these spaces enable youths’ political participation and advance a range of youthful and political agendas.

Oversimplifying Middle Eastern “Youth” as a Political Force Studies on Middle Eastern youth have tended to oversimplify young people in terms of their engagement in and contribution to politics (Yom

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et al., 2019). Both academic scholarship and grey literature have tended towards facile depictions of young people’s politics, as researchers have tended to project either their “hopes and dreams” or “their fears and anxieties” about the future onto Middle Eastern youth (Dimitriadis, 2014, p. xi). Youth are portrayed in one-dimensional, “either / or” terms: as “vulnerable innocents,” “passive agents” or “disruptive recruits” who are at risk of being “seduced” by external forces—usually either Islamist radicals or western consumerism depending on the position of the author (Harb et al., 2021; Meijer, 2000). At different historical junctures, Arab youth have been deemed the “vanguards” or the “vandals” of their nations and their activism seen as either “a sign of social decay” or “our best hope for the future” (Abbink, 2005, Abbink & van Kessell, 2005; Austin & Willard, 1998, p. 2). Regardless, the diversity, complexity and ambivalence of Middle Eastern youth and their politics insufficiently reflected by simplistic depictions. Middle Eastern youth began to capture scholarly attention in the late 1990s and early 2000s, mainly due to the sheer size of the population. Indeed, nearly two thirds of the population in the region are under the age of 30 and half of this group is between 15 years and 29. In the midst of a lack of jobs, and narrowing economic and political opportunities, combined with exposure to conflict and increases in political repression, researchers tended to “typecast” youth as vulnerable to extremism and radicalization and draw pessimistic, even foreboding, conclusions about youth in the Middle East (See: Dhillon, 2009; Dhillon & Yousef, 2009; Fuller, 2003, 2004; Urdal, 2004, 2006). In 2011, when tens of thousands of Arab youth took to the streets in largely peaceful protests to demand greater democracy, an end to corruption, authoritarianism, and genuine economic opportunity, many scholars were caught by surprise. The Arab uprisings triggered a re-evaluation and revisiting of scholarship on the politics of the Middle East, as well as on the perceptions of Arab youth as either prone to violence, or as passive, gullible, and vulnerable (Murphy, 2012). Since the 2011 uprisings, research on Arab youth political activism has proliferated. Numerous studies were funded by western and international agencies such as the EU, UN, World Bank to assess youths’ demands and political agendas with the aims of creating policy guidelines for their political and economic inclusion. In the aftermath of the Arab uprisings, we’ve thus seen a reversal of the previously pessimistic assessment of youth politics in the scholarship on young people in the Middle East (See: Murphy,

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2012; Yom et al., 2019). In this view, the massive population of young people across the region were reimagined as a generation of democratic revolutionaries, whose shared values were bound to bring their societies a “demographic dividend” (Momani, 2015) that would help to usher in a more civil, inclusive, form of liberal democracy (Austin, 2011; Daffron, 2015; Hoffman & Jamal, 2012; Momani, 2015). The 2011 Arab uprisings did not achieve the lasting democratic change that youthful protesters may have hoped for. Indeed, the underlying problems remain profoundly unresolved (Yom et al., 2019, 3). In the years since the uprisings, the image of youth has swung back into the “problem” category as youth movements have waned and young people seek to leave countries that offer them little hope for the future (Harb, 2016). More recently youth have been assessed as “lost” or “apathetic” vis-à-vis political processes, once again becoming a group that is stigmatized or looked down upon” (Harb, 2016, p. 23). Much of the scholarship on youth politics since the Arab Spring has focused on the democratizing potential of young people. However, there is a wider range of politics and activism among youth in the Middle East that includes those with conservative aims, particularistic tendencies or more narrow political goals (Bayat, 2017b). There are divisive trends among youth that run along ideological, religious and socio-economic lines, and which are reflected in conservative or particularistic youth political activism, but which is not extremist. Studies from other regions have demonstrated more complex, mixed picture of youth politics and its consequences. Oskar Verkaaik’s (2004) ethnography of urban youth in Pakistan is one such example. In his examination of the Muhajir Qaumi movement in Pakistan, Verkaaik shows how urban youth imagine and utilize ethnic-religious divisions as opportunities for self-assertion and ‘fun,’ and end up perpetuating ethnic-religious conflict in their pursuit of these things. Similarly, Desmond Bell’s study on youth culture and sectarianism in Northern Ireland shows how youth politics has played “an active part in the reproduction of sectarian ideology” through new, youthful cultural practices such as new music, bands, wall-art, and bonfires (Bell, 1987, p. 158). Bell argues that through these youthful activities young people have helped generate “new sectarian culture” which became an important link between the formal institutions of Orangeism and the informal realm of the politics of the “street” (ibid.). In her studies of democratic revolutionary youth in the Middle East, Linda Herrera and Rehab Sakr (2014) remind us that even youth of “the

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political and cultural vanguard,” often hold “both tendencies of liberation and oppression within themselves” (p. 5). As Amro Ali and Dina El-Sharnouby state, youth may “reinforce reactionary dogmas around class and culture to the detriment of their own emancipation” (2014, p. 90). Sociologist Karl Mannheim, a scholar of generations, warns against making the assumption that younger generations will be progressive. Mannheim states “whether youth will be conservative, reactionary, or progressive depends… on whether and what kind of opportunities the existing social structure, and the position they occupy within it, provides for the promotion of their own social and intellectual ends” (1952, p. 18). Asef ) makes a similar argument in relation to youth in the Middle East, stating that “youth political behaviour cannot conceivably be understood without considering the interplay of youthful agency and societal structures, mediated by political culture and political opportunity” (p. 22). In other words, the claims and movements of youth will take various shapes and have different political consequences depending on the structure of political opportunities which surround them. In the case of Lebanon, the “other social structures” include communal identities such as religious sect. It is the main argument of this chapter that in Lebanon youth mobilize these identities for their own claims, as part of their own culture and struggle for power within their own contexts. Indeed, in Lebanon, the country of focus in this chapter, recent surveys have shown a slight decline in support for secular politics, greater separation of religion from society, gender equality and liberal values among youth (see Moaddel, 2021). If we take seriously the idea that youth have agency of their own, we cannot then dismiss conservative or particularistic politics of youth as simply “a consequence of their simply being brainwashed into doing what the dominant systems tell them they should be doing” (Jeffrey, 2012, p. 250). Rather, we must seek to understand the interconnections between the socio-political, economic contexts in which youth find themselves, their political agency, and the diversity of their political agendas.

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2005 and the “Independence Intifada”1 : The Mobilization of a New Generation All these young people who took to the streets back in 2005 learned one very important thing; politics to them is no longer something that happens on a different planet. They had the experience that if they take action, they can actually make things happen. Sami Ofeish, political scientist, University of Balamand (in Wimmen, 2007)

In the postwar era (i.e., 1990 onward), Lebanese youth and students were largely disengaged from and apathetic toward politics in their country because, in the view of many at that time, politics were inextricably linked to the evils of war, and thus something to be avoided (Younes, 2003). There was one notable exception, however, namely, the young Lebanese who endeavoured to resist Syrian hegemony. While a small number of these youth were independent, leftist activists seeking a new political platform of their own outside of the traditional leftist parties, the majority had more partisan leanings, specifically, loyalty to one of two rival Christian parties that had been banned in the postwar era: Samir Geagea’s Lebanese Forces (LF), and the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) of General Michel Aoun. During the postwar period when these leaders were absent from the political scene, the clandestine and determined activism of these partisan youth kept the message and the spirit of these parties—and their leaders—alive in the minds of Lebanese society. From the mid-1990s and into the early 2000s, it was these youth, in conjunction with secular, independent, leftist youth and the Druze youth of Walid Jumblatt’s Progressive Socialist Party (PSP) who joined later, who laid the foundations for the protests of the Independence Intifada of 2005. After the assassination of Rafiq Hariri on 14 February 2005, Lebanon witnessed a massive, peaceful “uprising” demanding the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon. Young Lebanese came to the streets of

1 This series of demonstrations has also been known as the ‘Cedar Revolution’—a term coined by an American official, Paula Dobriansky (US Under Secretary of State), at a time when other ‘colour revolutions’ in the Ukraine and Georgia also had ‘catchy brand names.’ It was the political allies of the recently assassinated Rafiq Hariri who came up with the term ‘Independence Intifada’ which was a term with more relevance to an Arabic audience and specifically a Sunni audience, because of the connotations it shared with Palestinian uprisings against Israel (see Young, 2010, pp. 3–4).

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Beirut, many journeying to the city for the first time, in hopes this was the beginning of a revolutionary change in their country (Young, 2010). These protests awakened many young people to their political potential. Initially, it was student activists associated with the PYO, the Christian parties, together with independent leftist student groups and the newly formed Democratic Left Movement (DLM), who were the main orchestrators of the protest. Riding on their activist experience that came from having resisted Syrian hegemony since the 1990s, these youth were the first to come to Beirut’s Martyrs’ Square. This was a transformative experience for many young people who had grown up in homogeneous sectarian cantons since the end of the war. As one young demonstrator described it: “We have gathered together youth from all different backgrounds here. We are overcoming our confessional differences to work towards common goals. We youth are finally coming together for the liberation of Lebanon.”2 The early days of the demonstrations had a feeling of “joie et la revolution” and attracted thousands of students and youth to the streets (Majed, 2007). Many felt exhilarated at being part of a political movement for the first time—especially one that bridged certain sectarian divisions. In her study of the Independence Intifada, Rayan Majed (2007) describes Muslim youth as, “carrying bibles and Christian youth carrying Korans” and how they “met each other for the first time in the camps at Martyrs’ square” (Majed, 2007, p. 47). One new youth activist described his feeling at being involved in the protests: “for the first time we were seen and heard. For the first time, I was fighting for something I believed in. It was exhilarating. The TV stations all reported on our activities.”3 Importantly, youth brought new culture, new aesthetics, and new modes of protesting to these demonstrations. They injected creativity, humour, technology, and a sense of playfulness into these street demonstrations. For example, students began a petition that grew to 200 metres long, organized music concerts, rallied people via text message, and came up with pithy slogans like “Ukraine did it, why don’t we?” (Majed, 2007, pp. 22, 31).

2 Halami, interview with author, Beirut, April 2005. 3 Salam, interview with author, Beirut, November 2009.

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Though many, up to this point, had praised the unity of the youth, divisions quickly appeared between the youth who were politically independent and those who were supporters of a political party. The Christian youth, for example, had the much more limited goal of Syrian withdrawal. They had no interest in ending the sectarian system, rather, they were more interested in getting their “fair share” within it. In the case of the Sunni youth, the Hariri assassination had propelled them into politics in a novel way. Young followers of Hariri described feeling “orphaned” after his death and were motivated to attend the protests in order to demand the truth behind his assassination. These youth turned to the Future Movement with a new purpose at this time—with an explicitly political purpose. Yet, as Wimmen astutely notes, “not everybody felt equally invited” to the party (Wimmen, 2014, p. 18). It was impossible to miss (and quickly noted by political observers) the conspicuously low participation of Shiite Lebanese. Many Lebanese, especially those close to Hezbollah (who are primarily, but not entirely, Shiites), considered the Hariri assassination an “Israeli false-flag operation designed to discredit Syria” and regarded the events in Martyrs’ Square as little more than products of American manipulation (ibid., loc. cit.; see also Chit, 2006). The response of the protesters in Martyrs’ Square was to “parade” individual Shiite participants in front of the media in an attempt to show the movement truly did span the sectarian spectrum (Wimmen, 2014, p. 18; see also Bortolazzi, 2013). Many had hoped that the Shiites would eventually join the movement. On 8 March, however, Hezbollah organized its own rally to “thank Syria” for its patronage and for “standing by our side” for 15 years (BBC, 2005). Waving Lebanese flags and signs reading, “No to foreign interference,” hundreds of thousands of Lebanese attended the 8 March rally. In fact, the turnout on 8 March dwarfed all previous rallies, and revealed the movement’s claim to national unity to be a delusion. Hezbollah’s 8 March rally created a strong incentive to the original protestors to up the ante and organize an even larger rally for 14 March. Thousands of Sunni supporters, organized through the clientelist networks of the Hariri family, were bussed to Beirut’s Martyrs square from around the country to support the protests. Given that all the other sectarian communities were already onboard, these efforts succeeded in generating a turnout that trumped the rallies of March 8th. Indeed, the historic turnout on 14 March was not simply a product of Lebanese communities united in their demand for sovereignty and freedom, it was

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also a product of the competitive process of sectarian mobilization. As Michael Young writes, the March 14th protest was a tit-for-tat “sectarian payback” and thus more of a reflection of “Lebanon’s pluralist cacophony than of its unity” (Young, 2010, pp. 52–53). March 14th was also the “day the youths were forgotten”: not one of the youth activists from the Tent City was invited to the podium to address the crowds on that day. Instead, the political leaders of the sectarian communities stepped in and took turns giving speeches in what one commentator described as a confessional “speech-sharing formula” and began to lay claim to the youth-initiated movement as if it was of their own doing (Moawad, 2011). The power of the “Freedom Camp” (as the Tent City in Martyrs’ Square was called) to generate political momentum and popular legitimacy had, by now, become plainly apparent to the political parties and their leaders. Moreover, the political parties, particularly Hariri’s Future Movement, had now begun to fund the demonstrations—giving the youth the financial lifeline they needed to continue their protests and sustain their camp. The youth activism that initiated the demonstrations was now increasingly becoming divided along partisan, sectarian lines. For the independent and unaffiliated youth who thought that Martyrs’ Square was the beginning of radical political transformation, March 14th marked the “denouement of the Independence Intifada”—the day the “carousel of fantasies” stopped (Young, 2010, p. 54).

The Complexity of Youth Political Engagement The majority of studies of this period highlight either the role of youth activism in creating new forms of political protest for democratic change or the role of the political elites in “co-opting” it and dividing it (See Chit, 2006; Young, 2010; Majed, 2007; Bortolazzi, 2013; Narwani, 2015 among others). There is no doubt that youth spearheaded these historic demonstrations and injected them with a new sense of creativity and fun. Similarly, it would be naïve to doubt that the party leaders sought to capitalize on the youth activism for their own particularistic purposes. However, what is overlooked -indeed minimized- here is the agency and activism of youth activists themselves, specifically partisan youth activists. For example, when the independent activists attempted to convert the structures that had been established in the tent city camp into a permanent civic movement, it was not the leaders who interfered, it was the

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partisan youth activists. The partisan youth acted independently, without “top-down” instructions from their parties, to suppress the attempts of independent and unaffiliated youth to transform the protests into something more enduring (see also Sleiman, 2006). For example, in one incident, the independent youth activists of Martyrs’ Square had wanted to commemorate the closing of the demonstrations and the dismantling of “Tent City” by holding a ceremony and handing out medals of honour to all the young activists who had taken part. In the end their efforts were “sabotaged” by the activists of the Free Patriotic Movement associated with the exiled Christian Lebanese General, Michel Aoun, who argued the event should be put off until General Aoun returned to Lebanon so that he could address the youth in person. She explains: We were planning the best way to end the demonstration… We thought we could give out medals to the young activists there. Unfortunately, the FPM sabotaged everything. They wanted to hold off until General Aoun returned to Lebanon so he could give a speech to the youth and to the whole of Lebanon. They wanted to create the conditions for him to return as a national hero, the long-awaited hero who was finally coming back. They sabotaged everything we tried to do. I have very bad memories about how they treated us and how they acted. They ruined the event in the end. We just had to take our tents down and leave the square and that was that. It was a sour ending to a beautiful time.4

Moreover, partisan youth activists were actively reaching out to unaffiliated youth in the universities and communities. Many of these newly politicized young people were drawn to the Independence Intifada protests thanks to the grassroots efforts of the partisan activists. Partisan youth activists succeeded in attracting many youth to the streets into their specific partisan circles. Thus, not only did the partisan youth help pioneer the anti-Syrian protests that built the foundation for the Independence Intifada in the first place; they also built support among youth at the grassroots level that allowed Lebanon’s political elite to establish new bases of support among youth that did not exist before. They did this, first, by rallying previously unaffiliated youth to attend the protests and “baptizing” them into their parties, and second, by advancing partisan

4 Myrna, Interview with author, Beirut, April 2005.

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agendas among independent activists and resisting their attempts to create a movement free from sectarian-based political affiliations. The deepening sectarian divisions among youth in the aftermath of the March 14th demonstration were a bitter disappointment for those who had considered the Independence Intifada to be the beginning of deeper change. These divisions have strengthened and been reinforced by the growing geostrategic competition at the regional and global levels, as is often the case with Lebanese politics. Thus, rather than marking the beginning of a period of political change, or, in other words, a “critical juncture” in Lebanese politics, the Independence Intifada was (yet another) case of the Lebanese system “defining its boundaries,” reminding the Lebanese of its “mechanisms of continuity” (Young, 2010, p. 56). In the years that have followed the Independence Intifada, the Lebanese political field has been characterized by the “deepening and institutionalisation of sectarian factionalism” which has entrenched divisions “as profound as the country has ever experienced” (Hirst, 2010, p. 312; Kingston, 2013, p. 80; see also Shebaya, 2007). The years since 2005 have been characterized by repeated cycles of popular protest and revolution in which young Lebanese have played a central role. In 2011, 2013, 2015 and most notably, in 2019, young Lebanese have joined widespread demonstrations expressing deep dissatisfaction with Lebanon’s sectarian political system and its elites. Like the massive demonstrations of 2005, youth come to these demonstrations from their own communities and/or political groups. However, because of the fragmented nature of the Lebanese political field and Lebanese civil society, maintaining alliances, cohesion and unity of message among those seeking to challenge the system is a challenge. The difficulty of coming together has been evident both within youth movements, as protestors have struggled to free themselves from the “ambient polarization” of the March 14 and March 8 coalitions” (Abu-Rish, 2015), as well as between movements and the sectarian system itself, as the presence of certain parties has, at times, rendered the relationship of the movements to the system it vows to overthrow “inherently ambiguous” (Wimmen, 2014, p. 19). Having said this, the fact these protests have broken down and not achieved their main goal of dismantling the sectarian political system, does not mean there have not been important achievements.

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Changes to Youth Politics in the Aftermath of 2005 Up until the events of March 2005, youth and student activism was not a widespread phenomenon, it was mainly limited to the Christian student activism. The 2005 protests, however, instilled a new sense of political possibility and engagement among young people. One of the key changes in the youth political field was the growing institutionalization of youth participation. After 2005 youth political participation was increasingly formalized into two of organizations: (a) the so-called “independent” youth-run or youth-led NGOs, which absorbed many of the “independent” and “civic-minded” youth activists, and (b) into the youth wings of the partisan political parties, which absorbed many newly politicized youth who were more sympathetic to community-based groups, like the Lebanese Forces, FPM or Future movement. It was only after the protests of 2005 that these movements (the Future Movement, the Free Patriotic Movement, and the Lebanese Forces are the main examples) became formal political parties. In adopting a more formalized political party style of organization these parties have been undergoing a process of institutionalization, resulting in the establishment of modern, broad-based party structures more akin to parties of the West (Catusse & Karam, 2010; Sensenig-Dabbous, 2009). One component of this process has been the formalization of youth political participation, specifically, the establishment of youth branches of the political party. These “youth wings” are run by youth (in the majority of cases this means unelected, older “youth” who are hand picked by senior party executives) and dedicated to the activities of youth and students. These youth wings have allowed the traditional parties to penetrate spheres of society that would otherwise be beyond their reach, such as university campuses. This brings us to the other significant change in Lebanese youth politics post 2005— the reinvigoration of politics on university campuses—more specifically, the reigniting of university student elections as a hotbed of political contestation.

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University Student Elections in Lebanon: Sites of Politicization University student politics in Lebanon is “serious business”.5 Student elections are the “pinnacle” of the academic year, a long-awaited climax to months of student organizing and campaigning. Moreover, student elections in Lebanon receive widespread, national attention by all the country’s major news networks. The fact that all the TV networks are present—interviewing candidates on prime-time news and reporting live as the results roll in—only adds to the heightened ambiance. Student politics are seen as a barometer of politics at the national level and a harbinger of things to come. They are routinely described as a “microcosm” of Lebanon’s politics, “reflections” of the adult political scene, and “a rehearsal for the real thing” (Caldwell, 2011; Gatten, 2013; Worth, 2009). While student politics have always reflected national political dynamics to some extent, following 2005 they regained their previous fervour due to the high-stakes nature of Lebanon’s deeply polarized political field (Hijab, 2008). Furthermore, the establishment of formalized youth wings in several of the key parties also meant that partisan student activism had new life on university campuses. Numerous studies have identified the special role of the university in awakening a political consciousness of young Lebanese (Anderson, 2017; Chehayeb & Majzoub, 2021; Faour, 1998; LeFort, 2013a, 2013b; Maaroufi, 2014; Rabah, 2009; Rowayheb, 2014). In interviews, Lebanese students frequently described how it was at university where they first began to identify political causes they identified with, where they first felt “politically active,” and began to express their political voice (see also Chatterji, 2008). There are several reasons universities are sites of politicization for youth. First, the university is where most Lebanese youth get their first “taste” of political agency and often the place where they are first encouraged to express their political views. In most Lebanese high schools, political activity is explicitly forbidden because of its association with sectarianism and thus also with the country’s history of corruption and conflict (though the schools themselves are not free from political

5 “Sects impact Beirut student polls” https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2009/12/10/ sects-impact-beirut-student-polls

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influences). Many Lebanese universities cite providing civic and political education to students as part and parcel of their overall purpose (El Amine & Abou Chedid, 2008). As one of the Dean of Students states: University is where students begin their political education. We teach them critical thought. We teach them the principles of democracy and it is here they learn about society’s issues. They don’t just do this in the classroom. Participating in politics on campus is a big part of this education. It is where they get to practise democracy.6

Second, the start of university is also a time in a young person’s life when they begin to step outside of the protective realm of their families. Though many Lebanese youth are by no means independent of their families when they enter university (indeed the great majority are financially dependent and many will live at home until they are married), beginning university is nonetheless a symbolic step into the world and towards adulthood. Added to this new experience of political and social liberty is a third element: the fact that in Lebanon the legal voting age is 21. For most youth, this means they cannot vote in national or municipal elections until their senior year in university. Furthermore, Lebanese citizens are not allowed to run for public office until the age of 25. University elections thus become the main (if not the only) avenue for youth to participate in a formalized political process and express their opinions, since they are excluded from Lebanon’s national and municipal elections. Lebanese students therefore “feel that their votes actually matter to national politics… they feel as if they are influencing politics at the national scale.”7 The reality, however, is that students are denied an official voice in national politics, and confined (as one cynical professor described it) to the “playpen” of university elections—an arena that post 2005 tended to reflect rather than direct politics on a broader scale.

6 Kisarwani, interview with author, AUB, Beirut, November 2007. 7 Nizameddin, interview with author, Beirut, December 2007.

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Protecting Democratic Space: The American University of Beirut The American University of Beirut’s (AUB) student body is the most representative of Lebanon’s confessional diversity in the country and it is home to some of the most open and democratic elections in Lebanese civil society. The university prides itself on having crafted the most democratic electoral laws in Lebanon. While other universities are embedded within certain confessional communities and/or open to the influence of factional political forces, its administration goes to great lengths to limit this type of influence. AUB also prohibits the presence of sectarian parties in elections. All political parties, their names, images, colours, slogans and pictures of their leaders, are formally banned from campus and student elections. In fact, AUB has carefully designed their election process to maximize transparency, democracy, and non-sectarianism. Precisely because of this AUB provides a particularly “clear view” of the types of strategies partisan youth activists utilized in order to overcome these restrictions on their campus presence. AUB thus presents an interesting puzzle. Why, on a campus where formal regulations create and protect non-sectarian space in campus politics, have student elections still been dominated by the factional sectarian parties?8 The Partisan Colonization of Student Spaces The fact that political parties are officially banned at AUB is widely seen as “a joke” among the students. Though they do not have official status, political parties operate on campus “between the rules.”9 One of the ways partisan students make their presence felt on campus is through occupying physical spaces and claiming them as their own. Much like the way youth gangs operate in local communities, partisan students claim physical space on the university campus. Stepping foot on campus means 8 While many of the quotes are drawn from interviews conducted years ago, recent research and communication with key informants demonstrates that youth activists associated with the traditional confessional parties have dominated campus elections since 2005 and have done up until a recent swing towards the independents in 2020 which I discuss below. However, the victory of the independents post 2020 has been uneven across university campuses in Lebanon. Meanwhile the tactics of partisan youth to accomplish electoral victory have remained the same. 9 Kalim, interview with author, AUB, Beirut, November 2007.

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stepping foot onto a particular geographical tapestry of political relationships. One student explained: “The Main Gate, the cafeteria, West Hall, and the Green Oval are all divvied up by the parties. Right now, it’s known that the green oval is March 8th territory, for example.”10 Another student said that “the parties build their own domains on campus” and yet another student put it this way: “You don’t realize it at first, but it doesn’t take long to figure it out. You know if someone is affiliated to March 8th or March 14th by where they hang out on campus” because “even the cafeteria tables get divided up by the parties”.11 This physical division of territory among the groups reinforces youth allegiance to the parties and limits social contact between youth who are affiliated to different political blocs. It is an “open secret,” however, that many of the student clubs act as de facto proxies for the political parties (Rowell, 2013). Organizing a student club, or taking one over, is one of the main informal strategies partisan students use to overcome AUB’s formal restrictions on their campus presence. The student club becomes a vehicle through which the party organizes student activities and a central site for the party’s operations during student elections. The practice of working through student clubs has been going on since the civil war (see Harik & Meho, 1996). During the civil war the AUB administration attempted to forestall the takeover and politicization of student clubs and societies by selecting the student chairpersons of these clubs and societies themselves. Administrators would specifically choose popular students who declared their willingness to serve and who were not known to have political “entanglements” (ibid., 72). Today, the AUB administration has officially banned all political party activity on campus. Unofficially, however, the AUB administration is aware of the politicization of student clubs and even tries to work with the partisan students. The Dean of Students stated: We know the students who are with the parties, and we try to work with them as much as possible. We feel if we do this then we can have more influence and a better relationship than if we tried to prevent them, which wouldn’t work anyway. But our focus is really on them as students. Our 10 Maha, interview with author, AUB, Beirut, November 2007. 11 Mhanna, Interview with author, AUB, Beirut, November 2007; Myrna, interview

with author, Beirut, February 2008.

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help is good for them as well, especially because they do not always agree with their leaders on the outside. Being here at AUB helps give them more control over their own decisions. For instance, we recently had some problems with a particular political party that tried to encourage its students to generate troubles in the university. However, the students who belonged to that party came to us and together we found a way to help diffuse the tension so they would not have to do what their leaders were asking of them. It ended up that the students were the ones who convinced their leaders to avoid causing strife in the campus.12

By focusing on the status of partisan activists as students, the administration walks a careful line in relation to partisan activism on their campus. By informally allowing the partisan students to operate at AUB, the administration maintains more influence vis-a-vis these students. Partisan activists are, after all, still students with equal rights and access to student organizations. However, allowing the informal strategy to persist means the administration risks enabling partisan activists and their influence in student life and student elections—the opposite of what AUB’s carefully designed electoral rules and systems seek to achieve. Attracting New Support: “Sororities and Fraternities of Lebanon” During the first weeks of the academic year, as at most universities, there are a multitude of orientation activities that take place at AUB. Partisan students obtain lists of the names of all incoming freshman students from the university administration. They then identify “their” students by last name and make sure that members of the party are present to “welcome” them when they arrive at AUB. A Druze student described her experience the year before when she was a freshman: “I used to get phone calls. They wouldn’t tell me who gave them my number. Later I found out that they had a list of students by name and religion and were calling me because they figured I’d be more likely to join them.”13 Since the intensification of competition between the parties since 2005, some parties now even go as far as to contact incoming students before they even reach university; this is especially true of the two rival Christian parties, the FPM and the LF. In interviews with freshman students, several acknowledged they had 12 Kisarwani, interview with author, Beirut, November 2007. 13 Ghosn, interview with author, AUB, Beirut, February 2008.

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been contacted by either the LF or the FPM youth wings in the summer after their graduation from secondary school. A youth member of the PYO explained this strategy: We do this because we know when they enter the campus, they feel lost, especially if they are coming from smaller schools or cities. At AUB we have youth coming from all over the country, from all regions and backgrounds. Imagine a student coming from the North. He is new to the area; he doesn’t know the area and he doesn’t know anyone. We greet him and he will feel more comfortable. That’s what we are trying to do here in AUB: we are trying to show the students that our party is strong, but also that you can enjoy your time with us. When we hang out together, we organize talks, study sessions, we have fun, we have our laughs.14

New students at AUB reported finding the support offered by the parties to be helpful, both academically and socially. Partisan networks provide a valued social network—as one student put it, “An instant group of friends.”15 While some new students are likely drawn toward others of a similar background, ethnographic research, longitudinal survey data, and opinion polls suggest that many youth are also drawn by the appeal and benefits of confessional diversity of which AUB, in particular, is known for (see Hanf, 2007; Larkin, 2012, p. 121; Yassin, 2012). In fact, they actively seek it out, especially when in the liberal urban environment of Beirut (Yassin, 2012). Partying and Politics: The Competition Over Fun A large part of the youth culture at Lebanese universities, including AUB, revolves around having fun. Most university students want to socialize and enjoy themselves while pursuing higher education. Partisan youth are no different. They share a desire for fun and socializing, while also being motivated by a particularistic political project and perspective. As one professor, who acts as an advisor for a student club at AUB, remarked, the partisan groups “often have less to do with politics and more to do with parties.”16 14 Rabah, interview with author, Beirut, November 2008. 15 Dabbous, interview with author, AUB, Beirut, November 2008. 16 Hadar, interview with author, AUB, Beirut, November 2009.

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Unlike student elections, these parties are not about competing for political positions; they are about achieving a social position. In the words of AUB students, they are about attracting “the coolest AUBites,” securing the “hottest clubs,” and organizing “killer events.”17 In fact, other than the occasional orange wristband (signifying an affiliation with the FPM) or the occasional LF hand signal (a triangle-shaped hand gesture made using both hands), there are few overt political displays at these events. As many students reiterated: “we try to keep politics out of it.”18 One student explained: “Nightlife is a big part of what we do, and it is a big part of life in Lebanon. People relate to each other during nightlife in a way they may not in other places. They might be political rivals, but they can still go to the same club and enjoy the party.”19 Even though students perceive the events to be non-political in nature, providing the best fun for students is another layer of competition between the partisan organizers. The social success the parties achieve contributes to a partisan group’s overall position and reputation on campus. Indeed, all of the above efforts of partisan activists help to lay the groundwork for the “pinnacle” of student life at AUB, the annual student elections. Elections at AUB: The Annual “Carnival”20 While much of the efforts of partisan youth activists in universities are often focused on aspects of student life, there can be little doubt that partisan youth have explicitly political aims, and winning student elections is a top priority. Winning, however, is less about control over student councils and more about the message that victory sends to the border Lebanese public.21 Victory in campus elections, which are fair, transparent 17 Jabbour and Sakr, interviews with author, AUB, Beirut, November 2011. 18 Khalil, interview with author, AUB, Beirut, November 2009. 19 Ahmad, interview with author, AUB, Beirut, December 2009. 20 The term “carnival” was used in a video produced by independent students

of the AUB Secular club on the student elections. See: http://hummusforthought.com/ 2013/11/01/aub-elections-in-3-minutes/. 21 Student councils at AUB are often not very active nor are they perceived to be very effective at the art of student government. Once elected, student representatives frequently “fade into the background, never to be heard from again,” as one student described them. Instead, elections seem to be less about being in office and affecting student government,

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and democratic, is understood to project popularity in the national political arena, where elections are marred by big money, coercion and fraud (Rabah, 2020). The victories and dominance of the traditional parties in student elections since 2005 is the culmination of the activist efforts of partisan youth who, in their capacities as both students and partisans, reproduce divisive partisan dynamics making it difficult for independent progressive activists to make gains within this realm. The elections themselves are an “annual carnival” of campaigning that all students, both progressive and partisan, take months to prepare for. Often activists begin recruiting student candidates to run for them six to eight months in advance of the election season. It is puzzling, why, in a university like AUB that prides itself on diversity and democracy, so many students have been willing to run on behalf of the traditional parties. However, students report that doing so increases their chances of winning. Rasha, a student running on behalf of the Sunni-based Future Youth (the Youth Club), explained why it is difficult not to run with a partisan group: I am officially with Future Youth, but to me, I wish that youth had nothing to do with politics – or least with sectarian politics. You know, we need to change. I don’t get it; why do we have to follow this leader? We all live in the same country; why can’t we just work together? But on the other hand, you have to be with one of the big parties if you really want to win. If you run with a party, they will get their whole network to vote for you and they also give you lots of help. (Independents) can’t get as many people to run with them because asking someone to run independent is like asking someone to lose. And it’s hard to convince someone to lose.22

There is also the fact that partisan students offer their candidates a range of electoral support including campaign training, campaign materials, and hundreds of campaigning hours. Partisan students have extensive networks which they rally in support of their candidates. Without one of the major coalitions on your side, “no one has your back” in elections. Moreover, while financing from outside sources is strictly prohibited at

and more about demonstrating popular support. Interestingly, this is also true for the independent, progressive activists who, at times, have gone so far as to boycott campus elections and simply focus on causes and activism at the national stage. 22 Rasha, interview with author, AUB, Beirut, November 2007.

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AUB, it is widely understood that the political parties contribute thousands of dollars to fund campaigns. According to an article on the subject by Lebanon’s English-language newspaper, The Daily Star, there are even accusations of vote-buying by the parties during university elections.23 It is well known that partisan students distribute free textbooks, copies of past exams, parking passes, pens, mobile phone cards, cupcakes, and other paraphernalia to their supporters. These gifts and services are used to encourage students to vote for the parties and are something that the independent students cannot compete with. It also limits students’ opportunity and ability to immerse themselves in critical and tolerant political discourse both on and off-campus. In parallel to the activism of partisan students, independent students organize to challenge the traditional parties and assert a civic, secular, progressive voice into the sectarian fray. Groups of independent activists have constituted part of the base for Lebanon’s “new left” which has emerged in the postwar period. Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s these groups began to appear on university campuses across the country and sought to defend secularism and promote politics that are independent of the major sect-based parties. On campus progressive student clubs such as Bilâ Huddûd (‘No Frontiers’), the Secular Club, “Change Starts Now,” and “Campus Choice,” among others, have sought to challenge the “the supremacy of the political parties” and create a student politics free from the tentacles of Lebanon’s sectarian political elite. Despite being in the minority, independent student groups are tenacious and have managed to have a great deal of influence—most importantly, in forging and expanding the non-partisan space they symbolize and create.

Conclusion: Hopeful Shifts in Youth Politics Youth politics are complex and often contradictory. Universities play a clear role in youths’ politicization; however, in a deeply polarized society like Lebanon’s, this politicization occurs on campus landscapes marked by partisan affiliations, where partisan youth activists extend and strengthen their networks of support according to Lebanon’s confessional logic.

23 See: “Political money soils elections” Daily Star, 8 November 2013. http://www. dailystar.com.lb/News/Lebanon-News/2013/Nov-08/237163-political-money-soils-lauelections.ashx#axzz3BB67pW00

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The victories partisan activists have enjoyed in student polls since 2005 illustrate that they are effective at deploying a range of strategies to establish their influence on student life and politics. This also indicates that many students go along with partisan agendas. Indeed, the politics of young people in Lebanese universities encompasses ambivalent, contradictory, and ambiguous positions. Students may rail against the system of patronage that characterizes Lebanese politics and bleeds onto their campuses while simultaneously using it to their advantage. They articulate strong desires for less confessionalism, and yet get swept up in the carnival-like competition between the dominant parties on their campus. Even at a university such as AUB, where the administration has endeavoured to create an inclusive atmosphere and carve out space for a different type of politics to emerge, student elections have served to energize and renew partisan dynamics and affiliations among youth. Yet independent, progressive youth have also made gains, albeit in fits and starts. Independent students constitute an important part of Lebanon’s small but important “new left” that has emerged since the civil war. Their activism and determination to mount a challenge to the “sectarian giants” has played an important role in raising awareness and increasing the involvement of youth in anti-establishment activism both on and off campuses, even if it has not always paid off at the student polls. While a full analysis of the social movements and popular protests between 2005 and 2019 is beyond the scope of this chapter, the parallel activism of progressive, independent students shows the importance of interconnections between different spheres of youth politics for the strategic learning and cohesion of progressive students and youth seeking to challenge the status quo. On campuses, independent students have increasingly tied student issues to broader national issues like youth unemployment. Young feminist activists have also had increased in both presence and visibility. Perhaps most important, however, are the new networks that have formed between independent student groups from different universities, leading to greater collaboration. The interconnections between students’ activism on campus and their participation in uprisings off-campus has also paid off in student elections. Most notably in 2020, when independent students trounced the sectarian parties in an unprecedented electoral sweep of student elections across Lebanon’s key universities for the first time since the civil war. These were the first elections since the massive uprisings of the “17 October Revolution” in 2019.

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Viewed as a mirror of politics at the national level, the victory of the independents was taken as an indicator of the disgust Lebanese citizens held for the Lebanese political class and, for progressives, a hopeful sign that change was possible. The setbacks the independents subsequently experienced in student elections in 2021 on many campuses show that partisan activism on university campuses is not fading away any time soon. Partisan activists deploy a range of strategies to establish themselves in student space and overcome formal rules that restrict their parties’ presence on campus and can use informal networks to capture student support. From colonizing student clubs to holding parties, to convincing students to become their candidates and offering incentives for participation, these youth actively strengthen partisan affiliations among students. Understanding this sphere of youth politics can help to shed light on the “sticky” and persistent reproduction of sectarian logic in other spaces and places of daily life in Lebanon. Young activists have energy, agency and organization, but their political impulses can take them in contradictory directions. Even as they share growing unity in their desire for an end to corruption, greed and conflict, the lens through which they see these issues is filtered through their affiliations and commitments to village, family and confession. The agency and energy they bring to their spheres of politics, like the university, shows how they can rejuvenate sectarian affiliation by translating it into activities relevant to youth on campus.

Pedagogical Feature The extent to which youth activism in Lebanon contributes to political change is an open question. The activities of young activists are complex and, as I have shown in this chapter, ambivalent, shaped by their communal identities as well as their desires for political change. The politics of youth who support Lebanon’s traditional political parties (partisan youth), on campus are multi-layered. Partisan students actively seek to extend their party’s influence on campus. They are only effective, however, if they can genuinely connect and appeal to other students. So, as they aim to channel students toward engagement with their parties, they are also constantly responding and adapting to the interests, trends, and social relationships that exist among youth. As they do this, they in turn are also shaped by them. As students themselves, they are insiders to the university campus, and very much a part of the campus scene.

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Even when there is widespread agreement among youth on political change and the need to end corruption, and dislodge an entrenched political class, they still face challenges coming together across various lines of identity like community, class and confession. With each wave of protest there have been important developments and learning among activists, yet, thus far, these movements have difficulty overcoming internal divisions, and have also failed to create lasting change. How do we explain this? As the Arab Spring has shown us, street politics and public outrage will only go so far to change entrenched political dynamics. In the case of Lebanon, these dynamics run along sectarian lines that are deeply institutionalized—both in the formal political system, and the informal system of patronage and clientelism that underpins it. These institutions strongly shape political behaviour and outcomes. There are several questions to consider: How and to what extent must these institutions change in order for new and more democratic political outcomes to emerge? • What role do universities play in both challenging and promoting party politics? • What are the possibilities of social movement learning in the context of Lebanon? • Will the incremental gains protestors make over time result in institution change? • Does that type of change need to come from a critical juncture in politics? • What types of challenges face the activists and groups from Lebanon’s social movements who enter formal politics as they seek to initiate processes of change? This chapter also raises questions about the nature of communal (or ethnic) categories and identities, such as sectarianism. It is widely accepted in the academic literature on ethnicity that these group identities are socially constructed. I assert the same for sectarianism and sectarian identities. If we take theories of the constructed nature of ethnic identity seriously, it follows that if ethnic identities and affiliations endure and continue to be the basis for political mobilization, they do so because of identifiable “feedback” mechanisms that work to reproduce those identity affiliations. In this chapter, it seems that the networking and activism of

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partisan youth constitute one such mechanism of reproduction on university campuses. It is worth considering what other feedback mechanisms might contribute to the persistence of communal identity categories in other societies.

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CHAPTER 8

Interrogating Vulnerability Within the University: A Case Study of Undocumented/DACAmented Students at a Jesuit Institution Anna Sampaio and Jesica Siham Fernández

Key Terms Critical Intersectional ethnography—a methodology and process of examining sociocultural and political dynamics and how these intersect with systems of power and inequality; a reflexive praxis grounded in feminist, women of color theorizings that emphasizes issues of class, race, sexuality, and gender—as embodied identities, as modes of organization, and as important tools for knowledge production; an active systemic process of observation, engagement, and critical analysis that retains a commitment

A. Sampaio (B) · J. S. Fernández Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, CA, USA e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 I. Rivers and C. L. Lovin (eds.), Young People Shaping Democratic Politics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29378-8_8

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to advancing racial and gendered justice and is deliberately anti-colonial, humanistic and liberatory in the process of producing knowledge. Feminist vulnerability—interpretations of human relationships of dependency that challenge traditional views emphasizing feminized forms of weakness, fragility, and incapacity in favor of an understanding that views vulnerability as intrinsic to the human condition, emphasizing human interdependence, and empathic awareness of our ethical obligations toward others; resists the marking of some bodies as inherently vulnerable and others as invulnerable; recognizes the uneven distribution of precarity as well as points of mutual precarity in politically heightened moments and values collective mobilization and an ethically grounded shared commitment of care. Undocumented student activists —students within institutions of higher education who given their positionalities as undocumented/Dreamer/DACAmented students are engaged and involved in efforts to render visible their experiences and challenging dehumanizing, racist, and restrictive immigration laws, policies, and practices, while making claims to expanded, rights, belonging, inclusion, incorporation, and enfranchisement, as well as protection alongside agency and self-determination, within the context of the university.

Introduction For the past two decades the DREAMers Movement has been a constant force of resistance and political mobilization to challenge antiimmigration policies and the criminalization of immigrants in the U.S. (Gonzales, 2016). The undocumented students that catalyzed this immigration movement describe themselves as Dreamers, in accordance with the DREAM (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors) Act, a bill introduced originally to Congress in 2001 to provide permanent residency and ultimately a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who migrated as minor to the U.S. Building on the gains made via the landmark Plyler v. Doe (1982) decision which secured the right to a K-12th grade public education for undocumented youth (Lopez & Lopez, 2009), the movement began with academically oriented and high-achieving students claiming education access by demanding these rights be extended to higher education (Jones & Nichols, 2017; Nicholls, 2013).

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The failure of Congress to pass the DREAM Act or comprehensive immigration reform, coupled with aggressive restrictions aimed at undocumented immigrants has amplified their organizing, mobilization, and activism. Undocumented youth, many of whom grew up in the context of organizing, have sustained the movement while shifting or adjusting its focus, membership, and strategies from direct action to raising awareness and public support for undocumented families. As Negrón-Gonzales (2014) writes “the undocumented youth movement does not have clear boundaries: it is scaffolded by and connected to undocumented migrants who are not young, it has deep connections to grassroots initiatives in other sectors, and it is rooted in the politics of solidarity, which creates lines of connection to other marginalized communities facing similar struggles” (p. 91). The multiple forms of organizing and mobilizations that constitute the DREAMers movement are inclusive of the intersectional experiences and concerns of undocumented students and families in the U.S. Under the Obama Administration, the Dreamers pushed for comprehensive immigration reform legislation that ultimately failed to garner sufficient support in both the House and the Senate. Recognizing the intractability of Congress, and the need to deliver on a significant campaign promise, President Obama initiated the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) via executive action in June 2012. DACA provided a renewable two-year period of deferred action from deportation and work authorization for young people who had come to the U.S. as children. Over 640,000 youth and young adults qualified for the program which improved their academic, political, social, and economic conditions. Yet the seemingly inclusive reception that DACA generated was limited and unsustainable. According to Ellis, Gonzales and Rendón García (2019), DACA “could not relieve them [undocumented students] from the experience of objectivity. Ultimately without permanent routes to citizenship, their lives remained constrained by ‘illegality’ and in this sense DACA recipients merely came to occupy a new form of precarious legal status” (p. 168). The election of Trump in 2016 and the ascendance of white nationalism as the dominant national narrative shifted immigration politics once again toward aggressive initiatives including efforts to terminate DACA and parallel protections such as Temporary Protective Status (TPS), and Deferred Enforcement Departure (DED). In 2017, the Attorney General took steps to terminate DACA only to have those actions successfully

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challenged in federal court. The years-long campaign by the Trump administration to undermine DACA renewed organizing and activism among undocumented youth at the local, state, and national levels. Such organizing, including voter education and mobilization campaigns, citizenship drives, registration, and get out the vote efforts were crucial to the increased turnout of Latina/o/x voters and other key constituents in battleground states such as Arizona and Georgia and ultimately to Trump’s defeat in the 2020 general election. The election of Joe Biden in 2020 signaled an important challenge to both Trump’s aggressive campaign against immigrants and efforts to terminate DACA. On the first day of his administration, Biden signed 17 separate executive actions including an order directing the Department of Homeland Security to preserve and fortify DACA (Biden, 2021). Today, both undocumented and immigrant students alike face a challenging and increasingly constraining reality on college campuses that has increased the daily scrutiny of their lives, limited mobility, employment, access to public services, and heighten threats of apprehension, detention, and deportation for themselves and family members with insecure status (De Genova, 2002; Nevins, 2010; Sampaio, 2014, 2015). In states such as California and Texas where the preponderance of undocumented students reside, universities continually assess their roles and responsibilities in attending to the needs of undocumented students and mediating the precarity of immigrant student’s lives while also managing university endowments, enrollments, and the intersecting responsibilities to regents, alumni, donors, students, staff and faculty across campuses. While the vulnerability and precarity of immigrant students loom large for many universities, there is often hesitancy to take decisive action to defend undocumented/DACAmented students through progressive policies and practices, preferring to react when individual cases emerge. These cases of harm or precarity are often easier to defend to stakeholders, including alumni, trustees, and donors, and may even become part of a university’s marketing strategy that aids in university fundraising. In this way, we argue that the university, as an extension of neoliberal state politics, creates a preference for vulnerability in determining their level of institutional support, resources, and protections for undocumented students. Yet, when undocumented refuse to cooperate, or assert strategic resistance in response to the anti-immigrant hostilities that surround them, then University support often waivers. Indeed, the way immigrant

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bodies are “read,” as vulnerable, threatening, or agentic, holds significant consequences for how the nation-state and its institutions, specifically universities, engage with immigrants and their embodied experiences. Vulnerability becomes a multi-sided axis on which the status of student lives turns. Vulnerability also emerges in the context of immigrant student organizing as a strategic method for movement building and solidarity. Mirroring the work of feminist theorists, student awareness of their precarity fuels forms of sociopolitical engagement, solidarity, reciprocity, and even dependency with other students who are similarly situated. In this way the shared conditions of vulnerability and precarity ground student organizing at the same time, their organizing aims to remedy the hostilities and restrictions that gave rise to conditions of precarity, threat, and fear within and outside the university. While the future of DACA is still unfolding undocumented students continue to organize and mobilize for rights and recognition within and beyond the university. We demonstrate such possibilities through a case study of undocumented student activism at SCU. Using a critical intersectional framework, we begin by examining theories of vulnerability highlighting critical feminist interventions and detailing how competing logics of vulnerability manifested within the university and student organizing. Through our case study, we examine how students strategically challenged a university’s practices while sustaining their political agency and collective action in alliance with the DREAM movement. We end with both an analysis of the competing forms of vulnerability and recommendations for how universities can support and include undocumented students and their organizing in meaningful ways.

Contexts, Conceptual Frameworks, Constructs, Narratives, and Methodological Implications Feminist Interpretations of Vulnerability and Precarity Vulnerability has long been a feminized concept owing in large part to its association with weakness, fragility, incapacity, and dependency, especially in theoretical work on sexualized violence (Andrijasevic & Mai, 2016; Lutnick, 2016; Showden & Majic, 2014). However, feminist scholarship has challenged this tradition. In their groundbreaking work on domestic minors involved in the sex trade, both Lutnick (2016) and Showden

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and Majic (2014) note how mainstream media cultivates a “hierarchy of victimization” in their reporting. Showden and Majic (2014) advance an intersectional feminist analysis mediated through a “matrix of agency and vulnerability” that addresses the social structures that facilitate sexual exploitation and the complex manifestations of these in the lived experiences of youth. They note that “to be unequivocally anti-trafficking, we need to see and understand the broader picture of young people” (p. 5). Similarly, if the goal of the university is to support undocumented youth and ensure they have the same access to high-quality education as all other students, then we need a broader picture of undocumented student challenges and responses as well as more “complex and multivaliant stories” of young people. We need to disrupt the preference for vulnerability by the university that idealizes students as victims, and distances itself from— or disciplines—those who exercise agency, refusal, resistance, or merely strategic choices that run counter to the dominant preferences. Feminist theorists have also reimagined vulnerability by positioning it as intrinsic to the human condition, constituting us as inextricably connected to each other in relations of interdependency thereby creating an empathic awareness of our ethical obligations towards others (Butler, 2004, 2009, 2015; Butler, 2016; Fineman, 2008, 2010; Gilson, 2014; Mackenzie et al., 2014). To recognize vulnerability as an intrinsic feature shared by all living beings; to resist the marking of some bodies as inherently vulnerable and others as invulnerable; and to acknowledge the agency implied by shared vulnerability and the ethical response that it demands, offers a means of contesting prevailing narratives of weakness. Recognition of mutual implacability, the entwinement of people’s existence, significantly applies to immigrant communities. The acknowledgment of their vulnerability serves as a mechanism of resistance to the narratives of immigration that erase certain people’s experiences as beyond the scope of humanity. However, while vulnerability may be universal, it is differentiated as Martha Albertson Fineman (2008) notes “people are positioned differently within a web of economic and institutional relationships and possess or control varying levels of resources” (pp. 13–14). The vision of equality that guides Fineman’s ethical philosophy, emphasizes the building of coalitions among marginalized communities to collectively resist institutional practices that sustain inequalities (Fineman, 2008). Resistance is an important element of movement building and organizing efforts, as well

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as the development of solidarities and coalitions across differently positioned groups, especially among those whose constant state of precarity limits their possibilities of action and agency. Judith Butler’s theorizing of precarity (2009, 2015) extends the basis for rethinking vulnerability by challenging interpretations that strip agency, advancing only helplessness and injury. Butler recognizes that appealing to a definable, autonomous subject to articulate claims for equality, justice, protection, and entitlements may, in fact, be politically necessary at times, yet she argues that claims of individual autonomy conceal how we are “formed within the crucible of social life” (Butler, 2009, p. 26). The collective experience, or formation of the “we,” is what binds people together as accomplices in accompaniment with each other—expressions well-grounded in radical liberatory movements for civil, social, and human rights (Martín-Baró, 1994). For Butler vulnerability can be constructive, generative even, as when one’s experience of suffering serves to mobilize resistance against the use of violence (Butler, 2009). Theorizing vulnerability from a critical intersectional feminist perspective leads to a recognition that most people’s lives are not without pain and loss. Yet how these encounters with suffering, indignation, and even anger are leveraged and retooled toward movement building are significant for understanding how the vulnerability is leveraged toward action. According to Butler, what is needed then is a “recognition of precariousness as a shared condition of human life,” an understanding that “one’s life is always in some sense in the hands of the other,” and “reciprocally, it implies being impinged upon by the exposure and expediency of others” (Butler, 2009, pp. 13–14). These are not necessarily relations of love but constitute obligations toward others in an ethically grounded shared commitment of care. Butler’s theory, therefore, opens us to the possibility of reorienting progressive politics not by avoiding vulnerability but rather by recognizing the mutual precarity of a politically heightened moment. Theorizing shared vulnerability as promising sites of coalitional change can lead to cultivating an openness to being affected by the differential precariousness of ourselves in relation with others in contradistinction to the preference for vulnerability and the limits on agency.

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University Engaging Vulnerability and Victimhood Vulnerability, as perceived fragility, and harm figures prominently in the university’s responses to shifts in immigration politics, especially their engagement undocumented/DACAmented students. When the students in question are perceived as incurring a clearly definable harm because of the deepening conditions of vulnerability caused by state and federal restrictions, and thus lacking in necessary resources to remedy or resist the harm, the university takes affirmative steps to conditionally protect and support students. Yet, when students collectively resist other types of harm, such as a loss of agency, self-determination, or incur forms of racial and ethnic discrimination from the elevated discourse targeted against immigrants—then support is often stalled or limited. This is particularly the case if a student is perceived as culpable in the loss of DACA status or responsible for their own vulnerability by virtue of strategic choices they make. The latter is often manifested in situations where the students exercise refusal and agency to challenge or resist encroachments from the state. Universities do not offer students who organize marches and rallies to federal buildings, immigration detention or processing centers, and/or students who openly challenge apprehension and prosecution by resisting arrest or engaging in forms of civil disobedience resulting in their apprehension, detention, or incarceration are not offered the same support, protection, and aid. The university’s preference for a particular form of vulnerability positions the students as incapacitated victims. In contrast, students whose lives complicate this narrative, who exercise agency in a way that challenges their own vulnerability or the university’s culpability and responsibility, are often left without recognition or support. Paralleling Showden and Majic (2014), this often results in a hierarchy of abuse victims with those students who can demonstrate the right types of harm as worthy victims. For those students whose harm manifests in a loss of agency, self-determination, dignity, or in fear for their relatives, and family members who occupy a liminal status often far away, there is little to no remedy or resources provided by the university. The logic of vulnerability as constructed through this binary relies upon a political fiction that one is either a victim worthy of university intervention and support, or a person with agency, capacity, and power—but not both. The university’s preference for vulnerability among undocumented/DACAmented students creates a deference to the state since

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it centers the perception of harm and vulnerability on encroachments created by aggressive state action, and it stakes its remedies on forms of protection permissible or enabled through state and federal law. Thus, it creates a significant gap between the complex forms of precarity and tenuousness that undocumented/DACAmented students regularly experience and what is validated and remedied by the university. This removes the student’s daily experiences from a broader understanding of power, and the intersecting modes of subordination that impact their lives and lived experiences prior to becoming a student, and even before any aggressive anti-immigrant state action. In the following pages we interrogate the way these dynamics of power, vulnerability, and agency play out in the lives and organizing of undocumented/DACAmented students at a Jesuit institution in the Silicon Valley. Methodological Notes: Critical Intersectional Ethnography As a qualitative research method, grounded in critical race and feminist theory, critical intersectional ethnography examines how sociocultural and political processes in context intersect with systems of power (Noblit, Flores, & Murillo, 2004). A critical intersectional ethnographic methodology that builds on the reflexive praxis of feminist theorists and women of color ethnographers such as Behar (1996), Zavella (1987) and Visweswaran (1994). Specifically, it is an active/activist framework of systematic observation, engagement, and analysis that refuses to engage in disembodied apolitical positivist research. In this way, critical intersectional ethnography is neither a passive methodology nor a strict adherent to distanced positivist interpretations of subjects and society. On the contrary, by shifting the focus away from surface questions and interactions, it foregrounds relationality and positionalities among all involved in the research. To this end, our research engages with an intersectional subject manifested in the lived experiences, identities, and agentic expressions of undocumented/DACAmented students at Santa Clara University, while simultaneously employing a critical intersectional feminist framework to analyze the racialized and gendered sociopolitical context of their organizing. We engage critical intersectional ethnography as a methodology to produce a case study of undocumented/DACAmented student activism at the university wherein we are situated. We opt to center ourselves in relation to the activism, resistance, and agentic vulnerabilities of undocumented students. In what follows we provide a brief

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overview of the political agency of undocumented/DACAmented student organizing across the U.S. to situate the movement building efforts by undocumented/DACAmented students at SCU. Undocumented Students Coming of Age in U.S. Education The undocumented population constitutes a significant demographic in the U.S. Recent reports estimated 10–12 million undocumented people living in the country as of 2019 (New American Economy Research Fund, 2021; Passel & Cohn, 2019). Of this number, approximately 1 million youth under the age of 18 are undocumented (Gonzales, 2016). Despite coming of age in the U.S., undocumented youth are confronted with challenges and constraints due to their status. As youth enrolled and socialized in U.S. schools, undocumented students are often safeguarded from the most restrictive contours of their immigration status and are immersed in popular culture, media, and English language colloquialisms comparable to their peers. However, these conditions are significantly altered when youth recognize the structural and institutional barriers imposed upon them because of their undocumented status—a realization that often comes as they approach the end of high school and make their way to college and/or the workforce. For many undocumented students high school graduation represents a transition to “illegality” (De Genova, 2002; Ngai, 2014), especially as they shift away from the protections that govern K-12 education. Critical immigration scholars conceptualize “illegality” as the experience of living life in the shadows of U.S. civil society. “Illegality” as a sociolegally constructed category denotes a process by which undocumented immigrants are confronted with, and must learn to navigate differential treatment with significant implications for their wellbeing. The process of “illegality” marks a political condition wherein undocumented immigrants are subjected to particularly hegemonic forms of criminalization, policing, and regulation on the basis of their immigrant status (De Genova, 2002). While the 1982 case of Plyer v. Doe mandated protections for undocumented students through high school, these protections do not extend into higher education. The constrained opportunities that undocumented youth experience on account of their status, are intertwined and exacerbated by other modes of subordination tethered to their race, age, gender, and class.

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For undocumented youth in the U.S., the racist nativism that constructs discourses that situate them as “perpetual foreigners” produces a condition of precarity marked by fear and insecurity. This sensibility is particularly prominent within higher education. Recent reports indicate that enrollment of undocumented students in higher education has increased significantly from 13,000 in 2012 to 225,00 in 2015 (Chan & Dorador, 2012; Mulhere, 2015). Because undocumented students experience a constant threat of detention and deportation, many students navigate universities under a code of silence that serves to protect them. As Dozier (1993) and Andrade (2019) report, undocumented students’ concerns center on the fear of deportation, both for themselves and their families. The fear and threat that characterizes their lives affect their academic engagement, participation in college-related activities and social events, and their overall health and wellbeing (Andrade, 2019). Furthermore, undocumented students face dire conditions that are compounded by what Perez et al. (2010) describe as a “triple minority status,” characterized by their race/ethnicity, undocumented status, and economic instability. The intersections of these positionalities create aggressive conditions of precarity and marginalization for undocumented students. Clark-Ibáñez et al. (2012) underscore undocumented students are less likely to speak out or participate in class, experience chronic stress and poor health, and are more likely to leave school due to their academic and social isolation. The stigma attached to their undocumented status constrains avenues for the agency including advocacy and seeking out resources to aid them. Undocumented students also face financial challenges including, but not limited to, their inability to qualify for financial aid and other forms of subsidized resources to help defer the cost of a college education. Consequently, undocumented students often must work multiple jobs—both formally and informally—to support themselves, while striving to maintain an outstanding academic record. Clandestine work, such as tutoring, waiting tables, and landscaping, often for many hours a week or in environments that might not reflect their academic experiences or career aspirations, and may even put them at risk of labor exploitation, are some of the few means available to sustain their pathways through college (Gildersleeve & Vigil, 2015; Perez et al., 2010). Many undocumented students, while striving to pay their way through college, also serve as caretakers for their families. Such responsibilities add to the time and stress that further challenges their wellbeing. Undocumented students’

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pressure to succeed, despite inadequate emotional, social, and financial, coupled with the stress of expanding anti-immigrant policies, significantly compromises their academics and wellbeing. As a result, the vulnerabilities that undocumented/DACAmented students experience cannot be understated.

Undocumented Student Organizing at a Jesuit Institution: A Case Study The Setting: The University Santa Clara University (SCU) is a private Jesuit university located in the heart of California’s Silicon Valley and one of the first higher education institutions established on the West Coast. As a comprehensive private institution SCU serves approximately 5,500 undergraduate students, and 3,100 graduate students. As part of the Jesuit tradition SCU belongs to a network of 27 Jesuit Colleges and Universities that pride themselves on a tradition of academic excellence and social justice centered in cura personalis (care for the whole person). These values promote an ethically grounded holistic education, premised on enacting accompaniment, solidarity, and the cultivation of a life of service to those most marginalized. Within the scope of student activism, particularly around racial justice, and immigrant rights, SCU has stood out among its counterparts. This is due in large part to the concentration of resources in the Ethnic Studies department, one of the oldest programs in the U.S. dating back to 1969, and the Jesuit society’s support for undocumented college students through the Hurtado Scholars program. Because of these actions SCU garnered a reputation as a leader in education access and opportunity. However, the social justice tradition of the university does not reflect the academic and social experiences of many students of color. Although SCU is described as being “diverse and inclusive,” it remains a primarily white institution, with 46% of its students identifying as white and 21% and 18% as Asian and Hispanic respectively (Santa Clara University, 2017). In a state where people of color have long constituted the majority with Latinas/os/xs leading the way at approximately 40% of the population, SCU’s ability to recruit, retain, and grow its population of Latina/o/x students, staff, and faculty has repeatedly faltered. Students of color are particularly attuned to the institutionalized whiteness of the university,

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and have been quick to call-out its complicity in academically marginalizing students of color, first-generation college students, and LGBTQ students (Santa Clara University, 2017). The lack of diversity is similarly reflected in the number of undocumented students. Among these students, several have been particularly vocal in contesting the mission and practices of SCU, specifically how it falls short of living up to its values of providing the necessary support and accompaniment to those most in need. The restrictive immigration policies that characterize the political context have a significant impact on the climate and culture of university settings nationwide. Despite its long history of advocating, supporting, and offering sanctuary to immigrant communities, SCU has been implicated in reproducing various forms of precarity and vulnerability. This has been particularly the case among undocumented students, students in mixed-status families, and the wider university community affected by anti-immigrant policies and discourses. We describe some of the vulnerabilities we documented from within SCU through an intersectional critical analysis that is organized along three interconnected themes. First, the structural and systemic vulnerabilities perceived by the university, specifically how it constructs, and subsequently embraces, a narrative of vulnerability, fiscal precarity, and sustainable risk, is deployed to strategically minimize its alliance with undocumented students, and advocacy on immigration issues. The university’s assessment of the boundaries of its legal obligations to mitigate harm, along with other forms of social and economic capital, limit its will to act upon its purported social justice values. Second, the university’s preference for vulnerability is based on notions of fragility, dependency, and being “at-risk.” The university strategically offers support when the vulnerability of the student’s does not pose a threat to its institutional interests, legitimacy, and power. The patronizing and paternalistic role of the university over students’ agency, determination, and autonomy to mobilize serves to constrain students’ power. Third, through an interpretation of vulnerability that re-centers resistance as embodied through the sociopolitical subjectivities of undocumented student’s organizing at SCU, we describe their refusal to adhere to norms of conformity and passivity in the face of tenuous conditions of precarity and fear. Together, these themes challenge the role of the university in its complicity to remain passive before anti-immigration policies, politics, and discourses that impact students.

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The Undocumented Students and Allies Association (USAA) Noting the limited institutional support provided to students at SCU, a collective of undocumented/DACAmented and allied students was formed in 2016, under the name of the “Undocumented Students and Allies Association” (USAA). As an on-campus student-led organization, USAA strives to support and address the needs of undocumented/DACAmented students, as well as students in mixed-status families by building community, connecting students to resources, planning, and programming events, and organizing actions, as well as fundraisers. The group was formed to create visible support and advocacy for Dreamers at SCU, at a time when the university’s Hurtado’s Scholar Program was being downsized. USAA students, regardless of their immigration status, are committed to supporting the inclusion, thriving, and overall wellbeing of undocumented students and students in mixed-status families. USAA is organized by a committee of student leaders tasked with overseeing the responsibilities, resources, and recruitment, as well as retention of its student members. Students with leadership positions in USAA often have roles and responsibilities in other student organizations, which facilitates their strategic organizing and advocacy across various student groups. Demographically, USAA members are predominantly Latina/o/x, with most self-identifying as Mexican. The group also includes several Central American and South American students, as well as some Asian American students. Since its inception there have been intentional efforts on the part of USAA leadership to reach out to other students groups, seeing that “undocumentation” is not an exclusively Latina/o/x issue but one that affects other racial and ethnic communities as well. This has led to a growing involvement of Asian American students, as well as LGBTQ students. The positionalities of students involved in USAA reflect the intersectional dynamics outlined in the previous section and by virtue of this dynamism often challenges existing identity markers reflected in campus politics. As the students form their own identities and perceptions of themselves in relation to the sociopolitical context, they also forge spaces within the university where they can belong, be seen, and be heard. As a relatively new group at SCU, USAA has made great strides in supporting the needs of Dreamers. In 2018, with support from faculty

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and staff, the Cabrini Fund was established to address the needs of “immigrant students.” As the SCU website indicates: “In line with Santa Clara University’s mission to serve the most disadvantaged of our community members, these funds help ensure that students, who face some of the most challenging educational pathways, have the opportunity to succeed at SCU.” The Cabrini Fund, named in honor of the patron saint of immigrants, Saint Francis Xavier Cabrini, has generated modest funds for students. USAA has capitalized on the institutionalization of this fundraising mechanism to bring additional resources. In addition to the Cabrini Fund, in the spring quarter USAA organizes an annual gala to celebrate the graduating students, as well as raise funds, through raffles, donations, and silent auctions, to garner financial support and resources for undocumented students. Through these concerted efforts USAA has forged a sense of community, and a seemingly inclusive and safe space for Dreamers at SCU. USAA has helped mobilize a powerful voice to be reckoned with at SCU; yet, centering such voices has been challenged, scrutinized, or silenced. Agency, Resistance, and Strategic Deployment of Feminist Vulnerability The Undocumented Students and Allies Association (USAA) group at SCU responded with resistance and political activism to the antiimmigrant context associated with 2016 presidential election. Instead of assuming a passive, conforming, and vulnerable role, or awaiting a response from the university, USAA engaged in direct action to be seen and heard on campus. A few days following the election USAA members wrote a letter sent via email correspondence (Cerritos-Rivas & Escun, 2016) to the then President of the university, along with other key administrators including the Provost and the University’s general counsel. The letter powerfully conveyed students’ concerns and demands for sanctuary. Specifically, it asked the university to offer a concrete response and steps to ensure undocumented students’ protection in the aftermath of the presidential election, and the rising anti-immigrant discourses surfacing on and off campus. USAA students urged administrators to “take immediate action toward making Santa Clara University a sanctuary campus for students, staff, and their family members who face deportation.” The letter asserted their visibility as active members of the SCU community

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with a rightful place on campus, demanding an institutional response of support and advocacy. In reconceptualizing vulnerability, the students took it upon themselves to challenge and critique the complicity or passivity of the university as evidenced by their hesitance to call themselves a sanctuary campus. They also expanded the terrain of concern to recognize that student vulnerability is not limited to the boundaries of campus and called upon SCU to provide meaningful remedies to both the larger political dynamics as well as the specific needs of SCU students. By interrogating the values and mission of the university, USAA positioned the campus in relation to other affiliated institutions, among them Jesuit universities, that had explicitly embraced undocumented students by publicly affirming themselves a sanctuary. In their letter to the administration the students also stated: Under President-elect Donald J. Trump, undocumented members of our community are put at unprecedented risk. We write in solidarity with other campuses across the nation who have called upon their own schools to take similar action.

USAA’s declaration of solidarity and alliance with other universities show how students were simultaneously challenging and encouraging the university to attest to its mission to serve, care and advocate for those who have experienced or are under the stronghold of injustice. To complement their initial letter, outlining their demands to the university administration, they also wrote and circulated a “Sanctuary Campus Petition” that gathered more than 320 signatures. To raise awareness about their situation and concerns, they organized a campuswide solidarity walk that was attended by more than 400 people and drew local news media attention. At this gathering administration, staff, faculty, students, and members of the local community gathered to show their support. Media coverage of this event featured USAA student organizer, Marlene, who called into question the university’s values, stating:know President-elect Donald Trump has used a lot of rhetoric that has scared the community. Undocumented students on campus don’t know what’s going to happen to them once he takes office [...] I how real this fear is because I live it every single day of my life. (Sanchez, 2016)

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By calling the university to action, while also critiquing its lack of transparency and immediate advocacy to stand in support of undocumented students, USAA members advanced a narrative of resistance, agency, and self-determination cognizant of their precarity but refusing to be silenced. USAA members asserted their political determination to be seen, to be heard, and to belong, as well as laid claims to receive requisite support and protection from the university. USAA statements and direct actions called for university administrators to declare a powerful stance to refuse collaboration with U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE). By publicly asking the university to respond to their concerns they were, strategically utilizing the power of the media to bring attention to their concerns. Marilynn, another USAA member in an interview with local media stated: Now that the new president [Trump] has spoken very badly about immigrants. We want to show that there are students, that there are faculty, that there are employees in this school that supports them.

The calls for institutional university expressions of support, followed by concrete actions and procedures could not be understated. This was further evidenced in their petition noting: An internal 2011 memo declares that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers are subject to certain restrictions upon entering college campuses. We ask that you not only reiterate our University’s values of inclusion, but to act upon them.

Students were adamant to ensure their rightful place on campus despite their vulnerable political circumstances. The demands by USAA members were not limited to the university’s values and mission. USAA also listed a set of demands and restrictions that the university should uphold and maintain to ensure the wellbeing and safety of DACAmented/undocumented students. Listed in their letter were the following demands: 1) Prohibit the use of e-verify; 2) Voluntarily refuse ICE any physical access to all land owned or controlled by the University; 3) Prohibit campus safety from collaborating with ICE/CBP in actions that may put students at risk of coming into contact with ICE; 4) Provide public and institutional support of the continuation of the DACA program and its students’ rights

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to equal access to financial aid, scholarships, and enrollment; 5) Do everything within their power to provide institutional and financial support to undocumented students; and 6) Prioritize the formation of readily available resources for undocumented students and students in mixed-status families in a centralized location.

According to the students, these demands, when enacted and put into practice by the university, would serve to “honor Santa Clara University’s values and dedication to social justice, diversity, and inclusion.” In closing their letter, the students added: We ask that you immediately devise a plan to make our campus a sanctuary. Doing so will demonstrate our commitment to ensuring that the University remains a safe institution of higher learning that holds to its Jesuit values and remains in solidarity with those who suffer threat or violence.

With this powerful remark the USAA sought to hold the university accountable, and to abide by its promise to cultivate a thriving learning community, one that aims to educate the whole student, regardless of their status. SCU strives to cultivate the formation of citizen leaders of consciousness, competence, and compassion; yet, in its response to the concerns and demands raised by USAA it failed to address those demands adequately. Initially refusing to adopt the principles of sanctuary outlined in their letter and petition, SCU asserted a limited set of protections months later. Specifically, SCU joined with other campuses in the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities (AJCU) to assert the “dignity of every person” on campus as well as the following protections for students, faculty, and staff: To protect to the fullest extent of the law undocumented students on our campuses; To promote retention of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program (DACA); To support and stand with our students, faculty and staff regardless of their faith traditions; To preserve the religious freedoms on which our nation was founded. (Jesuit University Presidents Express Support for Undocumented Students, November 30, 2016)

Notably, they chose never to use the words “sanctuary” in this letter and to circumscribe their work by what was legally permissible, eschewing a

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long tradition of civil disobedience in defense of social justice within Jesuit work. Ultimately, the letter, petition, and solidarity walk organized by USAA served as important actions to demonstrate to undocumented students and others in mixed-status families impacted by the anti-immigrant rhetoric the power, and necessity to challenge the political climate. Itzel, a USAA member responding to the media present at the solidarity walk, offered the following reflection: This (moment in time) is just another obstacle for undocumented students to get through. It’s hard to have hope, but we must have some faith that things will work out.

Hope, when coupled with action and the political agency to organize, helped sustain USAA in their efforts to challenge the condition of vulnerability within the university that, rather than being proactive in responding to their demands, was passive and recalcitrant in their actions to express and act in solidarity.

Conclusion The overall wellbeing and thriving of undocumented students wavered significantly under threats unearthed in relation to the political climate that unfolded throughout the Trump administration. The lives, opportunities and social conditions of undocumented students were significantly scrutinized prior to Trump’s election, and under his administration marginalization, threats of deportation, and a state of vulnerability heightened. The experience of vulnerability among undocumented students has amplified their sense of fear, instability, and uncertainty. Despite undocumented students’ vulnerable circumstances, through their activism and organizing they have carved spaces of community, solidarity, and resistance within higher education institutions. Although the creation of such groups, like USAA, on university and college campuses poses a risk to undocumented students’ safety and wellbeing, as some might have to reveal their identity or status to justify the need for such spaces, the sociopolitical and collective community implications are warranted for many undocumented students (Martinez-Calderon, 2009). The sense of community, validation, and support that such groups, and physical spaces on campuses can offer to undocumented students is profound and not

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replicated in other groups or programs. The S.I.N collective (Dominguez et al., 2009), for example, established one of the first visible spaces for students who are exempt from non-resident tuition, as stated in Assembly Bill 40. Since then, other similar undocumented student centers and spaces have been built in institutions across the state, and nationwide. With institutional, administrative, and federal support, as well as dedicated funding resources, these spaces have been sustained to meet several of the needs of undocumented students. Although physical spaces are critical to undocumented students’ wellbeing and safety of equal value has been the presence and contributions of administrators and faculty who have served as advocates and allies to undocumented students—often in the absence of resources or actions. Universities must reflect the values and help inform the ideologies of society and campuses such as SCU have a unique role in sustaining democratic principles and practices that underscore the inclusion of undocumented immigrant youth. There are several actions that universities can take to uphold the create inclusive environments for undocumented students. First, the persistent threats to DACA and similar temporary relief programs (e.g., TPS, DED) means that financial concerns will continue for undocumented/DACAmented students. Universities should strategically cull resources to support undocumented students by developing scholarships, fundraisers, and internship opportunities that could aid students with monetary assistance. Some universities should strongly consider waiving or reducing student fees to help minimize the economic burden. Second, the state of precarity, fear, and instability among undocumented students compromises their mental health and overall wellbeing. Undocumented students experience higher levels of stress, anxiety, and depression. Universities must help address the unique circumstances of these students by providing health-related resources, such as counseling and mental wellness support free of charge. Services must be culturally grounded and socially attuned to the political climate to provide students with appropriate services. Each student has a unique circumstance, and mental health providers can help foster a culture of community care and competence in the university. Third, universities must build partnerships with local community organizations that can provide legal assistance and advocacy to undocumented students. Collaborations with local organizations can serve as an avenue for universities to demonstrate in very practical and concrete ways their commitment to undocumented students.

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In line with this recommendation is the university’s wielding influence on increasing political power for legislative change. Together these initiatives that can support undocumented students’ access to in-state tuition, funding support, licensure and other employment or internship opportunities. Universities hold significant power in the public sphere, and by partnering with organizations they can influence political support toward the enfranchisement of undocumented students. Our outlined recommendations stem from our respective location and positionalities within a Jesuit institution on the West Coast of California. As educators, we have a rightful duty of service, social justice, and accompaniment with and for the most marginalized. In this chapter we have described the vulnerability deployed at our university with the goal to offer a case study of the forms of precarity and marginalization that institutions reproduce. Using critical intersectional ethnography, we have examined how students interrogated and challenged their precarity in ways that often exacerbated their sense of fear and threat. We also highlighted how students used their shared conditions of vulnerability to build progressive humanistic and intersectional coalitions to address the hostilities and restrictions they experienced inside and outside the university. In doing so, undocumented/DACAmented students at SCU engaged the discourse of vulnerability strategically and politically to empower themselves and to demand their rightful place in the university.

Pedagogical Feature In the United States, undocumented/DACAmented youth political participation in response to the heightened anti-immigrant political climate, which threatens their safety, agency, sense of belonging, and overall wellbeng, is examined within the context of a Jesuit university in the Silicon Valley (CA, USA). Guided by a critical intersectional ethnographic methodology we offer a case study of the Undocumented Students and Allies Association (USAA), an undocumented/DACAmented and mixed-status family student collective, that challenged discourses of vulnerability within the university. As political actors, students strategically engaged with the precarious conditions of their experienced vulnerability to mobilize the campus community and raise awareness about their concerns as they made demands of the university for sanctuary and support.

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Our chapter examines how undocumented/DACAmented student organizing developed in the aftermath of the 2016 presidential elections to resist and interrogate narratives of vulnerability, as well as inclusion/exclusion rooted in an anti-immigrant rhetoric. As students negotiated the conditions of their precarious circumstances within the institutional context of the university that was recalcitrant in providing concrete support and sanctuary, they leveraged discourses on vulnerability to further their organizing, as they made their demands visible and urgent to the campus community. The outcomes of their mobilizing and collective action, which included circulating a campus-wide petition with a set of demands calling for the university to take action and organizing a solidarity walk that drew media attention, USAA garnered allies and support for their rightful inclusion and protection on campus. By resisting to be silent and excluded from institutional university expressions of performative solidarity in response to the ensuing antiimmigrant political context, student activists both challenged and held the university accountable to its purported values of social justice, cura personalis, and accompaniment with communities on the margins. The chapter foregrounds the various supporting policies and practices that both enable and disempower student mobilization through a case study of students enacting and embodying a critical feminist vulnerability that affirms their agency despite the precarity of their lives. In particular, our examination highlights the various states of vulnerability that students face, from the state as well as the university, and how they navigate this terrain to form their own spaces and places of resistance to actualize justice and their rightful place on campus. Through a critical feminist lens, notions of vulnerability that exacerbate conditions of precarity for undocumented/DACAmented student activists is therefore examined. Specifically, who is included/excluded in the polity is often predicated on the intersections of multiple modes of subordination, including race, class, gender, and status. How bodies and beings are “read”—as vulnerable, threatening, or agentic—holds consequences for how the nation-state and its institutions, including universities, respond to politically engaged youth, such as undocumented/DACAmented student activists. The neo-liberalization of higher education along with the precarity, racialized targeting, and gendered hostilities that characterizes the US sociopolitical context, requires a critical interrogation of vulnerability as it pertains to the political experiences

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and formation of undocumented/DACAmented student activists who are both included and excluded.

Appendices

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References Andrade, L. M. (2019). “The War Still Continues”: The importance of positive validation for undocumented community college students After Trump’s presidential victory. Journal of Hispanic Higher Education, 18(3), 273–289. Andrijasevic, R., & Mai, N. (2016). Trafficking (in) representations: Understanding the recurring appeal of victimhood and slavery in neoliberal times. Anti-Trafficking Review, 7 (1), 1–10.

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Behar, R. (1996). The vulnerable observer: Anthropology that breaks your heart. Beacon Press. Butler, J. (2004). Precarious life: The power of mourning and violence. Verso. Butler, J. (2009). Frames of war: When is life grievable? Verso. Butler, J. (2015). Notes toward a performative theory of assembly, vol. 1. Harvard University Press. Butler, J., Gambetti, Z., & Sabsay, L. (2016) (Eds.), Vulnerability in resistance. Duke University Press. Biden, J. (2021). Preserving and fortifying Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). The White House Briefing Room. https://www.whiteh ouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2021/01/20/preserving-andfortifying-deferred-action-for-childhood-arrivals-daca/. Cerritos-Rivas, M., & Escun,M. (2016). Sanctuary campus petition [email]. https://docs.google.com/document/d/16d3gukxfbeSqTDFfJBbvFBHTQk LFQnWh/edit. Chan, B., & Dorador, R. (2012). 2012–2013 Financial aid guide for undocumented students. Educators for Fair Consideration (E4FC). http://www.e4fc. org/images/E4FC_FinAid-Guide.pdf Clark-Ibáñez, M., Garcia-Alverdín, F., & Alva, G. (2012). A passport to education: Undocumented Lation university students navigating their invisible status. In Z. Bekerman & T. Geisen (Eds.), International handbook of migration, minorities and education (pp. 497–513). Springer. De Genova, N. P. (2002). Migrant “illegality” and deportability in everyday life. Annual Review of Anthropology, 31(1), 419–447. Dominguez, N., Duarte, Y., Espinosa, P. J., Martinez, L., Nygreen, K., Perez, R., & Saba, M. (2009). Constructing a counternarrative: Students informing now (SIN) reframes immigration and education in the United States. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 52(5), 439–442. Dozier, S. B. (1993). Emotional concerns of undocumented and out-of-status foreign students. Community Review, 13(1), 33–38. Ellis, B. D., Gonzales, R. G., & Rendón García, S. A. (2019). The power of inclusion: theorizing “abjectivity” and agency under DACA. Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies, 19(3), 161–172. Fineman, M. A. (2008). The vulnerable subject: Anchoring equality in the human condition. Yale Journal of Law and Feminism, 20(1), 1–23. Fineman, M. A. (2010). The vulnerable subject and the responsive state. Emory Law Journal, 60(2). https://scholarlycommons.law.emory.edu/cgi/ viewcontent.cgi?article=1333&context=elj Gildersleeve, R. E., & Vigil, D. (2015). Institutionalizing support for undocumented Latino/a students in American higher education. New Directions for Higher Education, 172(1), 39–48.

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Gilson, E. C. (2014). The ethics of yulnerability: A feminist analysis of social life and practice. Routledge. Gonzales, R. G. (2016). Lives in limbo: Undocumented and coming of age in America. University of California Press. Jones, T., & Nichols, L. (2017) (Eds.). Undocumented and in college: Students and institutions in a climate of national hostility. Fordham University Press. López, M. P., & López, G. R. (2009). Persistent inequality: Contemporary realities in the education of undocumented Latina/o students. Routledge. Lutnick, A. (2016). Domestic minor sex trafficking: Beyond victims and villains. Columbia University Press. Mackenzie, C., Rogers, W., & Dodds, S. (2014), Introduction: What is vulnerability and why does it matter for moral theory. In C. Mackenzie, W. Rogers, & S. Dodds (Eds.), Vulnerability: New essays in ethics and feminist philosophy (pp. 1–29). Oxford University Press. Martín-Baró, I. (1994). Writings for a liberation psychology. Harvard University Press. Martinez-Calderon, C. (2009). Out of the shadows: Undocumented Latino college students. ISSC Fellow Working Papers. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9zj 0694b Mulhere, K. (2015). Undocumented and stressed. Inside Higher Ed, 26(1). https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/01/26/study-finds-undocu mented-colleges-students-face-unique-challenges Negrón-Gonzales, G. (2014). Undocumented, unafraid and unapologetic: Rearticulatory practices and migrant youth ‘illegality.’ Latino Studies, 12(2), 259–278. Nevins, J. (2010). Security first: The Obama administration and immigration ‘reform.’ NACLA Report on the Americas, 43(1), 32–36. New American Economy Research Fund. (2021). Examining the economic contributions of undocumented immigrants by country of origin. New American Economy. https://research.newamericaneconomy.org/report/contributionsof-undocumented-immigrants-by-country/ Ngai, M. M. (2014) Impossible subjects: Illegal aliens and the making of modern America-updated edition. Princeton University Press. Nicholls, W. (2013). The DREAMers: How the undocumented youth movement transformed the immigrant rights debate. Stanford University Press. Noblit, G. W., Flores, S. Y., & Murillo, E. G., Jr. (Eds.). (2004). Postcritical ethnography: Reinscribing critique. Hampton Press. Passel, J. S., & Cohn, D. (2019). Mexicans decline to less than half the US unauthorized immigrant population for the first time. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/06/12/us-unauthori zed-immigrant-population-2017/.

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Peréz, W., Cortés, R. D., Ramos, K., & Coronado, H. (2010). “Cursed and blessed”: Examining the sociolemiotional and academic experiences of undocumented Latina and Latino college students. New Directions for Student Services, 131(September), 35–51. Sampaio, A. (2014). Racing and gendering immigration politics: Analyzing contemporary immigration enforcement using intersectional analysis. Politics, Groups, and Identities, 2(2), 202–221. Sampaio, A. (2015). Terrorizing Latina/o immigrants: Race, gender, and immigration politics in the age of security. Temple University Press. Sanchez, T. (2016, November 17). Santa Clara University students walk out in solidarity with undocumented immigrants. Mercury News [online]. https:// www.mercurynews.com/2016/11/17/santa-clara-university-students-walkout-in-solidarity-with-undocumented-immigrants/ Santa Clara University (2017). Diversity dashboard. https://www.scu.edu/divers ity/diversity-dashboard/santa-clara-university-trends/. Showden, C. R., & Majic, S. (Eds.). (2014). Negotiating sex work: Unintended consequences of policy and activism. University of Minnesota Press. Visweswaran, K. (1994). Fictions of feminist ethnography. University of Minnesota Press. Zavella, P. (1987). Women’s work and Chicano families: Cannery workers of the Santa Clara Valley. Cornell University Press.

CHAPTER 9

Making Visible Intersectional Black Pain: Embodied Activism and Affective Communities in Recent South African Youth Movements Grant Andrews

Key Terms Embodied activism—refers to the way that bodies are strategically employed to highlight violence and to stage resistance. Bodies act in ways that are transgressive, they occupy and claim spaces where they were once excluded, and they defy boundaries of “appropriateness” in order to confront existing power structures. Intersectional black pain—refers to the acknowledgement that blackness, in many societies like in South Africa, is often met with violence

G. Andrews (B) University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 I. Rivers and C. L. Lovin (eds.), Young People Shaping Democratic Politics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29378-8_9

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and violation, and black people are systemically oppressed and dehumanised. The impact of struggle and pain is brought to the fore, as well as a recognition that these struggles intersect with other identity markers like gender. Decolonisation—the process of confronting and transforming the legacy of colonialism. It involves material and symbolic transformation, such as removing statues of colonial figures on university campuses or renaming buildings. It also includes challenging colonial knowledge systems that devalue or marginalise indigenous knowledge systems, including indigenous languages.

Introduction South Africa’s long history of racist oppression and exploitation, from colonialism and apartheid to continued economic injustices against black people, has contributed to deep-rooted systemic inequalities that shape the lived realities of South Africans. These inequalities have led to continued social activism in the country, with regular protest action in major cities and impoverished townships. These range from protests over grossly inadequate service delivery by the local and national government, political conflicts, police brutality and continued violence against women, children and gender and sexual minority groups. Since 2015, student movements at institutions of higher learning have become important forms of activism to highlight multiple forms of exclusion, oppression and violence suffered by black young people in South Africa. These recent student movements, collectively referred to as the Must Fall movements, were interrelated and nationwide protests against multiple forms of symbolic, epistemic and physical violence against black people in spaces of higher learning. The most prominent calls were for the decolonisation of higher education institutions in South Africa and the end to financial exclusion of students. The protests were heated, massive in scale and in many ways violent, with many cases of police brutality, accusations of sexual violence both during protests and during detainment of students and destruction of property. While there have been multiple forms of youth resistance to structural inequalities over the past few years, three major movements took shape in the mid-2010s, primarily led by students and spanning across many of the institutions of higher learning in South Africa—these were

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the Rhodes Must Fall, Fees Must Fall and End Rape Culture movements. These movements’ timelines, objectives and forms of activism overlapped, and the same student leaders were often vocal and involved in multiple movements. The major threads linking these movements were a focus on decolonisation in higher education, intersectional oppression, and highlighting the forms of violence and exclusion suffered by the most vulnerable students. Shefer (2018) specifically discusses embodied forms of protest in student movements that highlighted women and gender and sexual minorities, and her article offers an analysis of some examples of how bodies can be strategically employed to highlight violence and to stage resistance. In addition, Marback (2018) explores embodied activism in the Rhodes Must Fall movement in South Africa and abroad, as students at Oxford University, Harvard University and others took up the call to decolonise institutions. Gouws (2018) explored how experience and lived realities were invoked through bodies in the End Rape Culture protests, and Malebye (2018) looks at examples of nudity in female activism. I extend the analyses in these three studies by focusing on how the body is staged to specifically highlight intersectional black pain, and how the examples I explore speak to Ahmed’s theory of affective communities that brought together protesters and added to the effectiveness of the movements. Intersectionality was central to protests in the country and embodied activism was a way for intersectionality to be vividly brought to the fore through public displays of violated or transgressive bodies, including bodies occupying spaces where they were excluded by forces of racism, patriarchy and queerphobia. The main examples I explore are female students marching topless during the End Rape Culture campaign, trans and genderqueer activists disrupting a photographic display of Rhodes Must Fall using their semi-naked bodies to block entrances, and students throwing faeces at a statue of Cecil John Rhodes and building a shack at the University of Cape Town during Rhodes Must Fall.

Contexts of Exclusion and Intersectional Oppression The various movements that were part of the broader Must Fall campaigns each focused on specific elements of how systemic violence and exclusion are enacted in higher education spaces. Protest action included

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strategies like occupying buildings, disrupting lectures or examinations and blocking entrances to institutions to highlight the way that black students experienced university spaces as hostile and exclusionary to their bodies, cultures, histories and indigenous knowledges, and to demand greater access for black students and academics. The outcomes of the protests were mixed; on the one hand, they led to large-scale changes in the removal of colonial symbols on university campuses, new student funding models that sought to give more students access to higher education, and shifts in political and academic discourse in the country. Decolonisation discourse has been adopted by a much greater number of researchers and curricula have begun to change. In addition, Ex-President Jacob Zuma announced in December 2017 that free higher education would be phased in for needy students at all public universities (Zuma, 2017, n.p.). However, despite these major shifts, inequalities continue to exist, and might even have been exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic that saw all public universities move to remote teaching in 2020. As recently as March 2021, a new wave of nationwide student protests have been initiated as the promises of increased funding for higher education were not met by the government, and students continued to be financially excluded or were not allowed to register due to their historic debt at universities. These continuing struggles highlight how government programmes have not led to material, significant change for the majority of poor students. Despite these mixed results, the ethos of the original Must Fall protests remains part of public consciousness in South Africa, and the aim of decolonised, inclusive South African universities has gained greater public support. The strategies of early protesters were key in highlighting the plight of black people in university spaces, and the joint participation of students, staff and community members in protests heightened awareness of multiple forms of exploitation and exclusion. These forms of oppression included financially excluded students, outsourced workers at universities who were not given job security or a living wage, and black, female and queer academics who still faced racism, sexism and queerphobia in their professional lives. The students who drove these protests were diverse in their motivations and strategies, but as noted in the early Rhodes Must Fall mission statement written by students at the University of Cape Town (UCT), the major movements centred “black pain” (Ndelu et al., 2017, p. 2). As the mission statement reads: “At the root of this struggle is the dehumanisation of black people at UCT.

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This dehumanisation is a violence exacted only against black people by a system that privileges whiteness” (UCT: Rhodes Must Fall, 2015, n.p.). Tamara Shefer notes that “[s]tudents’ activism has in particular foregrounded the significance of the material and symbolic realm and how geographies, spaces and territorial contexts of higher education, evident in architectures, classrooms and curriculums, are implicated in discomforting, unsafe and marginalising experiences for many” (2018, p. 172). In addition, Shefer notes that the student protests used bodies strategically to highlight that “what happens on university campuses is also about what happens to bodies, not only an intellectual pursuit” (p. 178). The continued use of the word “violence” by protestors to refer to their experiences, and the way that they highlight forms of symbolic, epistemic and physical violence in their activism, demonstrate the visceral and immediate nature of students’ experiences at universities. Students recognise their blackness (their black bodies, and the violent, exploitative histories and systemic inequalities that inform the way those bodies are “read” and treated) as central to their struggle. In recognising that bodily violence and violation were central to the struggle, students began to strategically use their bodies as sites of resistance, staging embodied forms of activism that sought to discomfort, unsettle and challenge the “sanitised”, supposedly “disembodied” space of higher education. Shefer emphasises that universities are often seen as spaces that, through a Cartesian (mind/body) dualism, “privileg[e] consciousness, cognition and rationality” (2018, p. 173) in ways that exclude bodily realities. Centring the mind and excluding or disacknowledging the body allows for the everyday violences against black bodies to be not only perpetuated, but also to be normalised. Student protesters sought to bring the black body to the centre of their protests, as a decolonial move that could viscerally challenge the exclusion of black bodies from the university project, but also as a way to display the forms of violence that they had suffered and continue to suffer in universities. This is what is referred to in this chapter as embodied activism, where the body is central to the work of activism. Students’ bodies were brought into spaces that excluded them through the occupation of buildings or disruption of movement, bodies were used to challenge boundaries of “appropriateness” in what are framed as rational, intellectual university spaces and bodies were loud, brash, shocking and present in spaces that wanted them to “conform” or be absent, and that actively violated them on a regular basis.

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This strategy of embodied activism challenged previous strategies of enculturating black students into a university space that was still dominated by white hegemony. A central concern of transforming universities in South Africa has been granting epistemic access to black students—the key here is that this does not include embodied or experiential access, or a sense of “being-at-home” that comes with defining the self as part of an affective community, as Sara Ahmed would describe it (2004, p. 127). The push to increase epistemic access has involved highlighting concerns of poor academic language skills, South Africa’s poor schooling system, and a lack of finance for higher education, abstract structural problems that, while valid, ignore a range of other concerns that are much more immediate to students. As Boughey and McKenna (2016) have discussed, the so-called “language problem” was widely popular in explaining students’ lack of epistemic access, as this argument particularly highlights that the majority of black students do not speak English as a home language and thus have an additional burden when engaging with academic reading and writing. There is a widespread belief that academic literacy and access to university discourses are the major barriers to the success of black students at university, a belief that sees “failure” as the inability of black students to adapt to the “neutral” skills of the academy in the same way white students are generally able to. Boughey and McKenna contend that “[t]he assignment of ‘language problems’ to working class black students as they entered South African universities therefore allowed multiple structural issues to be elided” (p. 2). The focus on “neutral” academic skills, “language problems” and decontextualised acquisition of “academic literacy” specifically ignored the everyday affective, material and bodily aspects of exclusion. Race is a bodily dimension as much as it is a structural and historical dimension; one’s race is carried in the body, and the body is both marker of and significantly marked by race (as well as gender, sexuality and dis/ability, which are all encoded in and around bodies). Thus, ignoring the body in academic exclusion is a significant move to decontextualise the experiences of black students in higher education learning environments, and not only absolves senior academics and university managers of responsibility for structural privileges that are still encoded in their (disproportionately male, white, able-bodied, cisgender, heterosexual) bodies, but also gaslights students who feel affective, embodied oppression on a daily basis—through racism, gender-based violence, homophobia and transphobia, ableism, and many other forms of violence that are intimately

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linked to their bodies. But, as Shefer notes, “bodies continue to intrude, transgressing the erasures of body and affect and disturbing normativities and power inequalities that are interwoven into the shape and form of universities in South Africa” (2018, p. 173). Students demonstrated their understanding of this fundamental aspect of their exclusion in how they performed activism in the protests that began in 2015. Bodies were central canvasses for highlighting violence and exclusion, and to bring dimensions of affect and experience into activism. Bodies were used strategically to shock, inconvenience and invoke histories of oppression. In addition, the violence against bodies was re-enacted in horrific ways through the brutality of police and security forces against activists. Bodily performance became the way that students could emphasise the immediacy of their oppression; this was not an abstract, purely structural and indirect form of violence, but it was visceral, embodied, everyday violation suffered by students and other black people in university spaces. These inequalities and forms of oppression might surface in the many deaths by suicide of university students over the past few years, with some black students citing financial and academic exclusion as reasons for their suicide attempts (Mbasa, 2018), or the killing of a black man, allegedly by police, during student protests on the streets of Johannesburg near the University of the Witwatersrand in March 2021 (Bosch, 2021). Black bodies are violated and lose their dignity—and even their lives—regularly in contexts of higher learning in South Africa, and are further violated in the struggle for justice. The student protesters located their activism in black bodies to powerfully speak back to these forms of violence.

The Must Fall Movements in South Africa: Decolonisation and Intersectionality The Rhodes Must Fall movement originated in 2015 as a call for colonial symbolism, particularly the statue of Rhodes that stood prominently on the University of Cape Town’s main campus, to be removed as these symbols represented continued oppression of African subjects in higher education. The protests that followed called for decolonising South African higher education, and led to the genesis of many similar movements, such as the Open Stellenbosch movement at Stellenbosch University, which seeks to “purge the oppressive remnants of apartheid in pursuit of a truly African university” (Open Stellenbosch, n.d). This

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movement also centred the role of the colonialism of language policies, protesting the fact that Afrikaans, a minority language that is rarely the home language of black African people, continues to be the language of instruction at the university. Incidents of racism were brought to the fore at institutions across the country, and a general mood of student resistance had been ignited by Rhodes Must Fall. The End Rape Culture protests began at Rhodes University in 2016, as the Rhodes Must Fall movement and its offshoots at other universities were gaining traction. End Rape Culture began as a response to the high rate of sexual violence in the country and particularly cases of rape and the normalisation of rape culture on university campuses, and activists famously leaked a list of alleged rapists at Rhodes University called the RU Reference List (Gouws, 2018, p. 4). Black women leaders took centre stage in the protests, and the multiple forms of gender-based violence and discrimination in South Africa saw the End Rape Culture movement spread to many campuses countrywide. After the statue of Rhodes had fallen at UCT and other movements centring the experiences of poor, black students had gained momentum across the country, students further called for higher education to be tuition-free with the new hashtag #FeesMustFall (Fees Must Fall) that gained traction in late 2015 and grew throughout 2016. #FeesMustFall became the rallying cry bringing together all of the multiple movements nationwide, as government funding for universities had steadily been shrinking in real terms, and most universities instituted increases to student fees in excess of 10% per year. While other movements had been relatively smaller in scale, Fees Must Fall had massive participation by students, staff and community members, and saw major disruptions to the academic programme in 2016 and 2017, until the presidency’s announcement in 2017 that government would fund free higher education for poor and working-class students (Zuma, 2017, n.p.). Students were able to organise via social media as they occupied buildings and staged large marches. Many campuses were closed and end-of-year examinations were cancelled at many institutions. Some student leaders, like University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) student representative council leader Nompendulo Mkhatshwa, were heavily featured in news media with striking, evocative imagery that demonstrated the prominence of female activists in the Fees Must Fall movement, and Mkhwatshwa went on to become a member of parliament for the ruling African National Congress (ANC) political party.

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Intersectionality was central to these movements since their inception. Many queer students were actively involved in the early organisation of the Must Fall movements (Andrews, 2020), and activists from the Rhodes Must Fall and End Rape Culture movements helped to shape the later political activism on campuses that would come together in Fees Must Fall. The UCT Rhodes Must Fall group wrote on their Facebook page as the movement was taking shape: An intersectional approach to our blackness takes into account that we are not only defined by our blackness, but that some of us are also defined by our gender, our sexuality, our able-bodiedness, our mental health, and our class, among other things. We all have certain oppressions and certain privileges and this must inform our organising so that we do not silence groups among us, and so that no one should have to choose between their struggles. (UCT: Rhodes Must Fall, 2015)

However, despite this focus on intersectionality and the centrality of queer activists, there were multiple contestations and divisions in the movements from the very beginning, as certain figures within the movements sought to side-line intersectional concerns in favour of only focusing on blackness in activism, a strategy which has a long history in South African political activism (Davids & Matebeni, 2017). As Wanelisa Xaba explains: Middleclass Black men in the movement strategically aligned themselves with radical Black feminists in order to steal their intellectual labour, and their class privilege sheltered them from criticism of their “private school patriarchy”. Individuals in the movement whose politics are informed by homophobic and patriarchal interpretations of Pan-Africanism, Black Consciousness and Decoloniality fail to recognise the critique and reimagination of gender, sexuality and bodies (in reference to differently abled bodies) as a crucial part of decolonisation. This must be called out for what it is— the internalisation of White supremacy and the normalisation of violence against minority groups. (Xaba, 2017)

Many queer and female activists highlighted the fact that the movements took a patriarchal turn as they continued, with queer and women activists being side-lined as the movements grew (Collison, 2016). This saw a series of counter-protests. Student activist Lindiwe Dhlamini notes: “There is the institutional violence you have to deal with, the violence by

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cops, [but there is also] comrade-to-comrade violence and sexual harassment. All types of violence you can think of, black queer bodies have taken it” (qtd. in Collison, 2016, n.p.). Intersectionality was actively resisted by some student leaders, especially male cisgender heterosexual leaders who saw black pain as the primary (and perhaps, in their view, the only) struggle of the Fees Must Fall movement. Even as this chapter centres black pain in discussing South African student activism, I am cautious to do so with an awareness of intersectionality, which is the spirit that student activists waged their struggle in. The pain and violation that many students speak of are intersectional, and the divisions that emerged in the student movements themselves demonstrate the continued marginalisation of women and queer people even as they share black pain and other forms of erasure and violation that intersect with their black pain.

Affective Communities and Black Pain Sara Ahmed’s theory of affective communities is useful in analysing the bonds formed around the concept of black pain in South African student activism. Ahmed importantly notes that an awareness of intersectionality is essential in recognising how institutions reflect power and hegemony, and in being able to do diversity work within these institutions (2017). In Ahmed’s theory of affective economies and communities, emotion is important in understanding relations between individuals and between communities. Ahmed argues that “emotions play a crucial role in the ‘surfacing’ of individual and collective bodies through the way in which emotions circulate between bodies and signs” (2004, p. 117). Emotions, thus, are not private or individual, and do not originate from “within” an individual, but instead “they create the very effect of the surfaces or boundaries of bodies and worlds” (p. 117)—emotions mediate and are fundamental to the way we understand bodies. Emotions of love and hate, discomfort and pain, create understandings of what it means to be a body in the world, and which bodies or signs are greeted with which emotions. These affects, or emotional mediations between bodies or signs in the world, create communities with common, shared emotions. As Ahmed explains through the example of a racist, white affective community who are fearful, repulsed or angered by the perceived threats of the racial other: “It is the love of white, or those recognisable as white, that supposedly explains this shared ‘communal’ visceral response of hate. Together

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we hate, and this hate is what makes us together” (p. 18, emphasis in original). Ahmed sees emotions as functioning in economies, with circulations of emotions creating “relationships of difference and displacement” (p. 18), and emotions “mediate the relationship between the psychic and the social” (p. 18). Ahmed explains that emotions operate in relation to various signifiers, including bodies. The emotions that mediate our experience and communities not only interact with our bodies, but also other bodies. Hate, for example, is reflected in the body of the outsider who threatens the affective, “pure” community. For white hegemony, particularly colonial affective communities, hate has been related to the “threat” of the black body. This is evident in the way that black bodies have been conceived in university spaces in South Africa; the symbol of Rhodes as a so-called benefactor demonstrates an affective community at UCT, positioning whiteness as noble and worthy of positive affects like admiration, love and respect. By erasing the black body as a signifier, removing it from the realm of recognisability through Cartesian divides and discourses of “appropriateness” in institutions of higher learning, and divorcing it from symbolic significance through the lack of building names and statues of black leaders, the colonialist affective community based on white hegemony can be maintained. Student activists in the Must Fall movements seemed keenly aware of the power of affective communities, both the communities that had excluded them from university spaces (the white hegemony that had cast them as “threats”, as “problems” to be dealt with, rather than legitimate members of the academe) and the communities that they could forge in order to disrupt colonialism and racism, as well as intersectional forms of exclusion, at institutions of higher learning. By centring black pain in their activism, young people could recognise themselves as part of this affective community, as being cast as “threats” and as violated by similar everyday experiences of oppression and exclusion; together they experienced pain, and this pain could bring them together in activism. The evocative forms of activism, and engaging black bodies in how they protested, were ways to symbolically and experientially invoke black pain to mobilise affective communities. The pain was the affect that bound these activists together, and by discounting the role of the body in higher education institutions, managers and senior academics were also discounting the legitimacy of pain as signified through histories and “economies” of blackness and black bodies. These university managers, either consciously or unconsciously,

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sought to fracture the affective community that could arise when people realised they shared black pain in their everyday, embodied experiences. The forms of activism I discuss in this chapter could harness black pain to mobilise collectivism and bring about transformative conscientising in South Africa. This chapter’s framing of affective communities constructed through embodied activism also resonates with theories of abjection. Leticia Alvarado explains that the abject is the figure in social structures that renders intelligible “the formation of a normative national identity cohered by the casting out of other undesirable bodies whose own interiority is diminished” (2018, pp. 8–9). The abject has been theorised as inhabiting a position that is loathsome to the hegemonic culture and is simultaneously “not-quite subject” (p. 7) as the abject is alternatingly appropriated into hegemonic culture and discursively excluded from it. As Julia Kristeva explains, while the abject might be used to reify or reinforce dominant culture, the abject also has subversive potential as it “disturbs identity, system, order [and] does not respect borders, positions, rules” (1982, p. 4). Indeed, black bodies in South African higher education spaces inhabit forms of abjection, as these bodies are appropriated as symbols of progressiveness and inclusivity—the positive self-image of hegemonic culture—but the physical and psychological violence that many first-generation South African students face in these spaces is largely unacknowledged. Public performances of abjection highlight the uncomfortable truths that the hegemonic culture wishes to render invisible. As Alvarado explains, “an aesthetics of abjection makes visible the continuous labor required to cohere a dominant majority but also the dangers of desires for normative inclusion that will require repudiation of other abjects if seeking out proper subject status” (2018, p. 9). In this vein, the embodied performances I highlight in this chapter resist the “respectability” and “appropriateness” that is often demanded of oppressed people and undermine attempts to gloss over the continuing legacies of colonialism and apartheid that mark university spaces.

Rhodes Must Fall: Embodied Histories and Relics of Colonialism The catalytic moment in the Rhodes Must Fall movement was performed by a group of young people led by activist Chumani Maxwele, who threw human excrement at the statue of Rhodes at UCT. Maxwele staged his

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protest wearing a pink hard hat, symbolic of the working class in South Africa, and wearing a sign that read “Exhibit White Arrogance @ UCT” and “Exhibit Black Assimilation @UCT”. Maxwele had carried the excrement from a container of a public toilet in the township Khayelitsha, a symbol of the indignities that poor black people face daily as these public toilets are shared by large numbers of people, offer little privacy and are poorly maintained. Maxwele explained of his and fellow protesters’ actions at the time: “This poo that we are throwing on the statue represents the shame of black people. By throwing it on the statue we are throwing our shame to whites’ affluence” (Bester, 2015, n.p.) (Fig. 9.1). Richard Marback (2018) explains that responses to the early protest sought to again abstract the subject from the material and embodied reality that students were highlighting. Then-vice chancellor of the University of the Witwatersrand, Adam Habib, responded: “We need an intelligent conversation, rather than a rhetorical conversation” (qtd

Fig. 9.1 Chumani Maxwele throwing excrement at a statue of Rhodes Image: © David Ritchie/African News Agency (2018)

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in Marback, 2018, n.p.). These appeals to reason and intelligence again highlight the university as a site of intellectual rather than embodied concerns. What’s more, Habib’s statement, and similar statements by commenters globally in reaction to Must Fall protests (see Marback, 2018) situate the activism of Maxwele purely in the realm of rhetoric, meant to cause an effect on onlookers and by implication also lacking sincerity. These statements seek to rob the activism of the affective and material dimensions which are intrinsic to the motivations for and methods of protest and seem to question the sincerity and immediacy of embodied activism. However, for activists like Maxwele and millions of black people in South Africa, their lived realities are of being regularly surrounded by the stench of excrement in overcrowded townships with poor sanitation, and the activism was a way of no longer allowing the university space to be sanitised through disembodied intellectualism but bringing the reality of black South Africans into the faces and spaces of the white coloniality that underpinned the university project in South Africa. This history is captured in the absurdity that Rhodes had “donated” the land that UCT was built on, an ironic history that speaks of spatial exclusion, appropriation and the continued humiliation caused by colonialism and perpetuated through symbolism on university spaces. Following this early demonstration, a powerful disruptive strategy of protesters in the early Rhodes Must Fall and Fees Must Fall movements was to occupy university buildings and rename them. Students would locate their bodies in university spaces that were often named after colonial or apartheid oppressors, or bore the symbols of the oppression of black bodies and minds in South Africa, including colonial artwork or statues. Significant examples of this continued colonial and racist legacy include the unchanged name of Rhodes University, or a plaque commemorating apartheid leader H. F. Verwoerd that was prominently displayed at Stellenbosch University and only removed after student protests in 2015 (Kekana, 2015). As students occupied buildings in 2015 and 2016, the buildings would be renamed by activists to reflect black history, black political leaders or African identities (very few universities officially honoured this renaming of buildings by activists). The occupation of buildings would last multiple days, with many students sleeping in the spaces and refusing to leave until they were able to directly address university leaders at the universities or until certain demands were met. Black students’ bodies became an “inconvenience” to those who were carrying on with the everyday activities of the university, whereas black students

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had often been pressured to assimilate to dominant white cultures or to make their bodies invisible through performances of “appropriateness” to succeed at universities. In early 2016, Maxwele and other Rhodes Must Fall protesters again staged an embodied protest at UCT, building a shack between two of the large residence halls on the main campus in protest of the student housing crisis at the university, where many students were put on waiting lists and not able to secure accommodation close to campus. The corrugated iron shack was accompanied by a portable toilet like one found in some of the townships of Cape Town. Activist Lindiwe Dhlamini reflects on being part of the group who erected the shack: “It felt so good to disrupt whiteness. It felt so good to just barricade that area and own that land for those couple of hours. To sit in that space and be like, I own this. This is my space. You have no right to pass here” (Charlie & Dougan, 2018, n.p.). Dhlamini’s description of intersectional violence that she suffered as a student activist earlier in this chapter, and the sense of elation at “owning” a space at UCT, reflect the experiences of black bodies that are often kept on the periphery of university spaces. As Scott Burnett explains of the Shackville protest, bringing the modest shack, a symbol of widespread poverty linked to black bodies, into the pristine university space, is a form of highlighting black pain: This geographic juxtaposition says, so eloquently: We will not let you forget our living conditions. We will come to your front door and rub your noses in the sights, smells, and sounds of an informal settlement. For oppressive structures to work, they must repress everyday knowledge of violence and suffering. If they cannot, their moral foundation is eroded. In that sense #Shackville is therapy for the university, forcing people to face reality. (Burnett, 2016, n.p.)

The protest of occupation, of claiming space and centring black bodies and experiences in universities that would seek to exclude or fail to recognise them, speaks to an affective community that had always been expected to assimilate to a dominant culture that privileges whiteness, coloniality, patriarchy and heterosexism. As Maxwele’s sign at the first Rhodes Must Fall protest demonstrates, activists rejected this concept of assimilation and of making their struggle invisible in order to maintain the sanitised vision of the university space where bodies ostensibly are of no concern. Ahmed’s theory, however, argues that the logic of assimilation and becoming an ideal and acceptable part of the dominant culture is a

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way of perpetuating and maintaining the violation of bodies. Those who occupy the position of abject, those hated or conditionally accepted (characterised as asylum seekers in Ahmed’s article), are expected to “pass” as the ideal version of the outsider that presents no threat to the dominant culture. This passing is geographical (being allowed to pass through “our” space) and existential (passing as “one of us”) and is based on assimilation: “to pass through a space requires passing as a particular kind of subject, one whose difference is unmarked and unremarkable. The double possibility of passing commands the [community’s] Right and will to keep looking for signs of difference and justifies violent forms of intrusion into the bodies of others” (2004, p. 122). Activists rejected the requirements of assimilation and the erasure of their embodied experiences and passed into spaces where they had previously only been conditionally allowed or accepted.

Embodied Activism of Women and Queer Activists While the major movements that gained the most media attention and critical mass were focused on race and economic forms of exclusion, and these movements were largely intersectional in nature during their early stages, there were forms of activism that also specifically highlighted the violence suffered by women and queer people. Women and queer activists were early leaders in the movements and staged powerful embodied activism that highlighted intersectionality from the genesis of Rhodes Must Fall (Andrews, 2020). However, by recognising the patriarchal inclinations and queer erasure in student leaders and the divisiveness that began to take shape as the movements grew, there were also forms of counter-protest against dominant shifts in the Rhodes Must Fall and Fees Must Fall movements. A powerful moment of female embodied activism took place on the day that the statue of Rhodes was removed from the University of Cape Town in April 2015. Artist Sethembile Msezane performed the piece titled Chapungu—The Day Rhodes Fell , appearing in the likeness of the Zimbabwe bird statue that was appropriated by Rhodes. Msezane emphasises that her performance was meant to highlight the intersectionality of oppression and the histories of black women in Africa: “Msezane located her body—as a black female—within a public memorialized space […] Msezane performs her gendered body as inextricably linked to her

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racialised body—validating the body as a space loaded with history, identity and meaning” (Iziko Museums of South Africa, 2019, n.p.). The form of embodied activism, and the invocation of the history of cultural appropriation by colonial forces through taking on the likeness of a stolen Zimbabwe bird statue, locates the body as the site of everyday violence and everyday struggle. Msezane situated her body as a black woman within these forms of historical exploitation and violence, and stood proudly in resistance to patriarchal and colonial oppression, a moment of victory over an oppressive history and a way to reclaim space. The End Rape Culture protests also employed bodies strategically, with topless marches that both signified vulnerability of women’s bodies to violation in South Africa, and simultaneously resisted dominant conceptions of “appropriateness” around black women’s bodies. As Princess Malebye explains, “[n]udity as a form of resistance rejects the idea that the female body is passive, powerless and simply a sexual object for men’s consumption. […Nude women in protest] are summoning dominant gendered norms to deliberately confront and resist them” (2020, p. 72). Nude and semi-nude bodies in the student protests “articulat[ed] both vulnerability and agency and ‘claiming space’ in the university and the larger city space to destabilise higher education’s binaristic attempts to keep its intellectual project apart from embodied and material experiences” (Shefer, 2018, p. 178). A counter-protest also using semi-naked bodies was staged when trans and queer activists highlighted the fact that the contributions and concerns of trans people were almost entirely ignored in publicly historicising the Must Fall movements. The Trans Collective, a group primarily from UCT, disrupted a Rhodes Must Fall memorial photo exhibition at UCT in 2016 through bodily performance, interrupting heteronormativity through the presence of their bodies. The exhibition sought to memorialise the Rhodes Must Fall movement and its impact but included little recognition of trans or queer activists. Protesters painted their nude or semi-nude bodies with slogans and symbols in red paint and stood in front of photographs in the exhibition, and some placed their bodies across entryways and on the floor of the exhibition space. Shefer notes that “the performativity of lying down at the door to the exhibition, so that all who enter are forced to step over their bodies symbolises […] the sense of ‘being walked over,’ of being both brutalised and invisibilised” (2018, p. 177). The protest was an evocative way of demonstrating the invisibilising of not only trans and queer concerns and voices, but

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also marginalised bodies. The counter-protest demonstrated the way that bodies can assert themselves; the evocative presence of semi-nude trans and queer bodies in spaces that excluded them, and even in the movement that purportedly fought for their inclusion but then failed to recognise their contributions, speaks to broader harms and violations against queer people.

Conclusion: Revolutionary Change, Interrupted The various instances of embodied activism in the youth movements since 2015 created evocative displays of black pain that were able to forge affective communities, bring together large numbers of students and staff and lead to major political and structural changes in higher education. The fractures in the movements, however, demonstrate challenges to the goals of equality and redress and might undermine the project of dismantling systemic violation and violence on university campuses. The interventions by trans, queer and women activists discussed in this chapter show that the experience of black pain is not singular but is intersectional. The counter-protests and analyses such as those by Wanelisa Xaba, who detailed the exploitation of radical black feminists by patriarchal activists (2017), show the contestations that existed within these movements and how they were marred by divisions. This also highlights the potential limitations of some movements centred on black pain and embodied activism, as affective communities that focus on the experiences of black bodies are still enmeshed in multiple dominant economies of love and hate (Ahmed, 2004, p. 118); anti-woman, anti-trans and anti-queer sentiments still manifest in erasure and suppression of particular voices in these movements. Youth activists will have to contend with these questions as they continue to organise. The movements have become increasingly scattered, and many South Africans feel that students have now achieved free education so the struggle is over. Finding a way to recentre intersectionality can refocus the activism of students. Their material, embodied, intersectional struggles have not ended, even with the promise of greater inclusion into higher education for poor black students. Youth movements in South Africa have thus been propelled by affective communities centred on black pain, but their continued effectiveness hinges on foregrounding intersectionality and unequal forms of privilege and vulnerability despite shared experiences of black pain.

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Pedagogical Feature South Africa emerged from the racist and exploitative system of apartheid in the early 1990s, culminating in the first democratic elections in 1994. Apartheid was defined by spatial divisions, systemic oppression and exploitation of black people for the benefit of the white minority. Despite greater access to opportunities in the postapartheid era, there continues to be massive economic inequality, exacerbated by widespread corruption and poor governance of the postapartheid government. The country also faces one of the highest rates of youth unemployment in the world. These factors have left many young people to feel left behind and uncertain about their futures in South Africa. Higher education has been particularly contentious in recent years. Many of the country’s top universities were designated as whites-only institutions during apartheid. Despite efforts to transform university demographics, these spaces still housed monuments of the colonial and apartheid past, notably the statue of Cecil John Rhodes that stood prominently at the University of Cape Town until 2015. Student protests started in the mid-2010s to demand that institutions of higher learning be decolonised, and furthermore, as education was enshrined as a right in South Africa’s Constitution, they demanded that higher education should be tuition-free to grant greater access to poor students. The protests also shed light on the ongoing violence faced by students, particularly black students, in university spaces, including gender-based violence and rape. Young people drove the process of demanding fee-free higher education and decolonising university spaces. Notably, students threw faeces on the statue of Rhodes, sparking greater public engagement with the symbolic violence on campuses and later resulting in the removal of the statue. Students also occupied buildings at multiple universities, staged massive protests and engaged with government and university management about their demands. Three significant student movements were the Rhodes Must Fall, Fees Must Fall and the End Rape Culture movements. The main marker of inclusion in these student movements was race, with the protests focusing on intersectional black identities and how these were symbolically, financially and physically excluded from university spaces. However, there were contestations around these boundaries of inclusion, and many queer activists and women expressed that patriarchal and homophobic males had attempted to silence their voices in the

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movements or to disregard the struggles of various oppressed identities in favour of a focus on blackness and poverty. Students made use of social media websites to share images of the protests, to publicise moments of violence and to organise donations, meetings and marches. Twitter was central to these social media engagements, and various hashtags allowed people across the country and around the world to follow the news of the movements in real time, to spread information and to engage with protests. Many other countries also staged solidarity marches during the Rhodes Must Fall and Fees Must Fall movements, including young people at universities in the United States and the United Kingdom. In the aftermath of the movements, many students still face financial exclusion at universities. However, the various student movements continue to have an influence as they centred the voices and experiences of young people, particularly the violence that these young people are subjected to. Many universities have renamed buildings and removed symbols of colonialism and apartheid on their campuses. Government also announced in 2017 that fee-free education would be phased in at public institutions after the growing political pressure. It remains to be seen how effective these changes will be in the long term at improving the everyday experiences of poor black students at South African universities.

References Ahmed, S. (2004). Affective economies. Social Text, 22(2), 117–139. Ahmed, S. (2017). Living a feminist life. Duke University Press. Alvarado, L. (2018). Abject performances: Aesthetic strategies in Latino cultural production. Duke University Press. Andrews, G. (2020). Teaching gender and sexuality in the wake of the must fall movements: Mutual disruption through the Lens of critical pedagogy. Education as Change, 24(1), 1–20. Bester, J. (2015, March 10). Protesters throw poo on Rhodes statue. IOL. https:// www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/western-cape/protesters-throw-poo-onrhodes-statue-1829526. Bosch, E. (2021, March 11). Man dies after police clamp down on protesting wits students. TimesLIVE. https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/ 2021-03-11-watch--man-dies-after-police-clamp-down-on-protesting-wits-stu dents/ Boughey, C., & McKenna, S. (2016). Academic literacy and the decontextualised learner. Critical Studies in Teaching and Learning (CriSTaL), 4(2), 1–9.

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Burnett, S. (2016, February 19). Appreciating #Shackville. The South African. https://www.thesouthafrican.com/opinion/appreciating-shackville/ Charlie, A. & Dougan, L. (2018, February 27). No filter, Volume 4: Shackville two years on—A perspective from the student who graduated. Daily Maverick. https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2018-02-28-no-filter-volume-4-sha ckville-two-years-on-a-perspective-from-the-student-who-graduated/ Collison, C. (2016, October 13). #FeesMustFall ‘burns’ queer students. Mail & Guardian. https://mg.co.za/article/2016-10-13-00-feesmustfallburns-queer-students/ Davids, N., & Matebeni, Z. (2017). Queer politics and intersectionality in South Africa. Safundi, 18(2), 161–167. Gouws, A. (2018). #EndRapeCulture campaign in South Africa: Resisting sexual violence through protest and the politics of experience. Politikon, 45(1), 3–15. Iziko Museums of South Africa. (2019). The people’s art: Chapungu—The day Rhodes Fell. Iziko. https://www.iziko.org.za/news/peoples-art-chapunguday-rhodes-fell Kekana, M. (2015, May 27). Verwoerd plaque removed from Stellenbosch. https:// ewn.co.za/2015/05/27/Verwoerd-plaque-removed-from-Stellenbosch Kristeva, J. (1982). Powers of horror: An essay on abjection. Columbia University Press. Mabasa, N. (2018, October 28). Mental Health: Suicide on campus: Spate of deaths raises alarm. Daily Maverick. https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/art icle/2018-10-28-suicide-on-campus-spate-of-deaths-raises-alarm/ Malebye, P. M. (2020). Fallist feminist futures in South Africa. In A. Okech (Ed.), Gender, protests and political change in Africa (pp. 61–80). Springer International. Marback, R. (2018). Rhodes must fall: An embodied rhetorical assertion. Enculturation: A Journal of rhetoric, writing and culture. http://enculturation. net/rhodes_must_fall Ndelu, S., Dlakavu, S., & Boswell, B. (2017). Womxn’s and nonbinary activists’ contribution to the RhodesMustFall and FeesMustFall student movements: 2015 and 2016. Agenda, 31(3–4), 1–4. Open Stellenbosch. (n.d.). Open Stellenbosch. Facebook. https://www.facebook. com/openstellenbosch/ Shefer, T. (2018). Embodied pedagogies: Performative activism and transgressive pedagogies in the sexual and gender justice project in higher education in contemporary South Africa. In R. Braidotti, V. Bozalek, T. Shefer, & M. Zembylas (Eds.), Socially just pedagogies: Posthumanist, feminist and materialist perspectives in higher education (pp. 171–188). Bloomsbury.

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UCT: Rhodes Must Fall. (2015, March 25). UCT rhodes must fall mission statement. https://www.facebook.com/RhodesMustFall/posts/uct-rhodesmust-fall-mission-statementwe-are-an-independent-collective-of-studen/155 9394444336048/ Xaba, W. (2017). Challenging fanon: A black radical feminist perspective on violence and the fees must fall movement. Agenda, 31(3–4), 96–104. Zuma, J. (2017). The President’s response to the Heher Commission of inquiry into higher education and training. The Presidency. https://www.thepresidency. gov.za/press-statements/president%E2%80%99s-response-heher-commissioninquiry-higher-education-and-training

CHAPTER 10

Existential Activism: The Complex Contestations of Trans Youth Mary Hawkesworth

Key Terms Existential Activism—a mode of transformative action grounded in trans citizens’ physical existence, which disproves the belief that there are only two configurations of human bodies (male/female) and that sex is fixed from birth. Embodiment —the historically contingent, culturally specific, and dynamic experience of the lived body, which comprises sensations, emotions, capacities, self-understandings, and social embeddedness. Since

I would like to thank C. Laura Lovin for her sharp insights and outstanding editorial work to improve this chapter. M. Hawkesworth (B) Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 I. Rivers and C. L. Lovin (eds.), Young People Shaping Democratic Politics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29378-8_10

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the eighteenth century, biologically reductionist claims about race and sex have played an outsized role in naturalized accounts of embodiment. Transgender—individuals whose gender identities and expression do not conform to the sex assigned at birth or to conventional assumptions that sex and gender are invariant. Intersex, male-to-female transsexuals, female-to-male transsexuals, gender fluid, gender nonbinary, gender nonconforming, genderqueer, and third gender are some of the various forms of trans existence.

Introduction The nature you bedevil me with is a lie. (Stryker, 1994, 240) Biology is politics by other means. (Fausto-Sterling, 2000, 269) Existence is resistance. (Trans youth activist slogan)

Being young and transgender can be “painfully lonely,” according to Emme, a transfeminine high school student who began transitioning between the age of 11 and 12. “In my first years of transition, when people around me knew I was trans because I was visibly trans, I experienced deep discomfort in nearly every situation…There is an ever-present discordance between the internal conception and external perception, a feeling of insufficiency when you try and eventually fail to make the two match. I stopped using the bathroom at school or any other public place, stopped going to gym class, and eventually to the rest of my classes too” (Belle, 2018b). The challenges of negotiating the “ever present discordance between internal conception and external perception” are emblematic of stigmatization. Transgender youth are often shunned and bullied by their peers—and by adults. The 2015 National School Climate Survey documented that 65% of transgender students in the United States are harassed at school because of their gender expression. In response to harassment, marginalization, and discrimination, many trans students turn to activism. Like Emme, they seek to change “hearts and minds” and “move people to action” by sharing their life experiences and dispelling distorted views (Belle, 2018b). Several recent episodes indicate the kinds of harassment experienced by trans youth—from identity invalidation to outright exclusion. In 2009, a high school principal in Gary, Indiana, refused to allow K.K. Logan, a transfeminine student to attend her high school prom, insisting that

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“boys” were not allowed to wear dresses (Logan v. Gary Community School Corporation, 2007). In December 2018, an Assistant Principal at Liberty High School in Harrison County, West Virginia, confronted Michael Critchfield, a 15-year-old transboy in the boys’ restroom, demanding that Michael come out of a bathroom stall and “use the urinal to prove he was really a boy” (Allen, 2018). In December 2018, a 47year-old French teacher told his superiors at West Point High School in Virginia that his Christian faith prevented him from using male pronouns for a transmale student who had informed the school of his transition (Richmond Times Dispatch, 2018). In addition to such refusals to recognize the legitimacy of trans identity, in the context of single-sex schools, trans students have been denied admission or subjected to expulsion (Kvetenadze, 2018). According to a 2016 survey of transgender adults conducted by the National Center for Transgender Equality, of those who reported they identified as or were perceived as transgender or gender nonconforming during their K-12 school years, “77 percent had been harassed or mistreated in some way; just over half reported being harassed verbally for their gender identity; a quarter indicated they’d been physically attacked, and about a tenth said they’d been sexually assaulted. Seventeen percent said they left school before they graduated because of the harassment and violence they endured. Just over half of those who reported negative experiences in schools said they had considered suicide, which is higher than the third of transgender-identified youth who had not been harassed” (Murib, 2020). Beyond school walls, trans students experience harsh treatment from elected officials—from members of school boards and state legislatures to federal officials. When considering policies governing the use of bathrooms, changing rooms, participation in sports, preferred pronoun usage, and trans students’ health and privacy concerns, school boards often hold public hearings—many of which have been governed by transphobic tirades. At a school board hearing in Gloucester, Virginia, in December 2014, for example, the rhetoric was vicious. Convened to consider allowing Gavin Grimm, a 15-year-old transmale to use the boys’ bathroom at Gloucester High School, public testimony was dominated by anti-trans parents, one of whom asserted, “Here we have a thousand students versus one freak. Who should accommodate who?” (Goodyear, 2016). Debates in state legislatures have also been riddled with transphobic rhetoric. After the Obama administration introduced Title IX

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regulations requiring schools to allow trans students to use facilities consonant with their gender identity and expression, Republican legislators in more than twenty states introduced bills to oppose implementation of these federal regulations. In Wisconsin, Arizona, Kentucky, Minnesota, and Texas, legislators articulated their conviction that “normal” students needed protection against encroachments of “perverts” or “deviants” seeking to destroy the privacy rights and safety of cisgender students (i.e., those whose gender identity coincides with assigned gender at birth) (Goodyear, 2016). In the spirit of “protecting children from unnecessary confusion,” the Trump administration rescinded the Title IX protections for trans students in February 2017, and in February 2019, the South Dakota House of Representatives approved a bill that would ban any mention of transgender identity in kindergarten through seventh-grade classrooms (Ring, 2019). In 2020, Idaho became the first state in the United States to pass legislation barring transgender girls from participating in girls’ and women’s sports and to legalize the practice of asking girls and women to undergo sex testing in order to compete (Minsberg, 2020). During the first two months of 2020, state legislatures introduced 21 bills addressing transgender issues—a “new wave of anti-transgender legislation” (Murib, 2020). In contrast to the majority of anti-trans bills introduced between 2014 and 2019, which banned transgender people from using sex-segregated public facilities, primarily bathrooms, the most recent proposed legislation would ban doctors from treating youth under age 16 with hormones or gender-confirming surgeries, punishing violators with up to a year in jail and a $2,000 fine (Murib, 2020). In addition, any doctors found to be dispensing puberty blockers or hormones would have their medical licenses revoked. A bill proposed in Missouri would classify parents who approve gender-affirming treatments for minors as child abusers (Knutson, 2020). Proposed legislation in New Hampshire would classify all gender-affirming health care as child abuse (Burns, 2020). In 2022, 155 anti-trans bills were introduced in legislatures across the United States (Manion, 2022). In response to such pervasive and persistent transphobic action, trans students have launched innovative campaigns to educate their peers, teachers, school administrators, elected officials, and the public— responding to questions, giving presentations at school assemblies, meeting with teachers and administrators to explain trans issues, creating “diversity clubs” at school, testifying before school boards and legislative

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committees, and creating social media sites to communicate with much larger audiences. Matthew Moore, a 15-year-old Tennessee transboy, for example, routinely responds to questions about his identity from other students and from adults as well. According to Matthew, “It doesn’t bother me that they ask those questions; what bothers me is the ignorance” (Goodyear, 2016). Matthew also runs an Instagram site, lgbt bros, where transgender students discuss issues that matter to them. When the Lakeview School District in Mercer Country, Pennsylvania, began discussing a nondiscrimination policy to address needs of transgender students, Daniel, a 16-year-old transman, volunteered to address the School Board. Noting that “many parents and adults in the community seem to be vastly misinformed about gender identity and gender nonconformity,” Daniel said, “I really do try my best to educate those around me…. I had already been defending myself in petty disagreements in class, so I saw an opportunity to present accurate information on a large scale. I realized that no one else was going to stand up for our rights, so I felt it was my responsibility to do so” (Back to School Q&A, 2018). Describing himself as “an average teenage guy floating through small town life and trying to organize my college resumé,” Daniel attributes his burgeoning activism to the systematic misunderstanding of trans life that fuels abuse of trans students. “I don’t intend to stop fighting for our rights until I take my last breath. I wouldn’t quite say this has changed my life, but it certainly jumpstarted my involvement in activism” (Back to School Q&A, 2018). Similarly, Gavin Grimm roots his activism in experiences of discrimination: “I am not the kind of person by nature to roll over and accept an injustice, no matter where it may be…. Knowing what kind of humiliation and ostracism that a school doing this to a child can do, I do not want anyone to go through this ever again” (Goodyear, 2016). Although Gavin did not succeed in persuading the Gloucester County School Board to adopt supportive nondiscrimination policies when he testified before them, he and his family subsequently filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, alleging that the Gloucester County School Board violated his rights under the equalprotection clause of the 14th Amendment and Title IX of the U.S. Education Amendments of 1972, which prohibits sex discrimination by schools. The initial suit sought a temporary injunction to allow Gavin to use the boys’ restroom during his remaining two years in high school. A federal judge denied injunctive relief in September 2015. Gavin and

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his lawyers appealed the decision to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, which in August 2016 reversed the lower court’s decision. The Gloucester Country School Board appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which agreed to hear the case. Before the Court could hear oral arguments, however, the Trump Administration rescinded the regulations prohibiting discrimination against trans students, so the Supreme Court remanded the case to the lower court for reconsideration. In August 2019, that court granted Gavin’s motion for summary judgment, ruling that the school violated Gavin’s rights under Title IX and the 14th Amendment (ACLU, 2019). The School Board again appealed and in June 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court let the lower court decision stand. In Gavin’s region, public school students can now use the bathroom that corresponds to their gender identity. The Internet provides powerful examples of the bravery of trans students like Emme, Gavin, Matthew, and Daniel who have challenged their schools, school systems, local and state governments to counter heinous harassment and discrimination. Yet in focusing on conventional modes of activism, whether in schools, municipal boards, state legislatures, or federal courts, these profiles in courage miss a form of activism seldom discussed in social movement literature. I draw on trans* theory1 to map the contours of existential activism—a mode of transformative action that debunks the notion that there are only two configurations of human bodies (male/female) and the belief that sex is fixed from birth. In their daily interactions with family, friends, schoolmates, school authorities, and the larger public, trans students challenge the “presumption that assigned sex and identified sex always align” (Heaney, 2017, p. xiii). They demonstrate that “many humans—in their gender identities and gender expressions—do not conform to conventional gender expectations and moral judgments about what kinds of gender ‘go with’ what kind of body” (Enke, 2012, p. 4). Challenging “common sense” as well as the authority of science, the state, and religion, trans students provide living proof that “binary gender norms and gender hierarchies are established 1 Trans* theory emerged in the context of a growing activist movement that seeks to unite “all possible oppressed gender minorities…transsexuals, drag queens, butch lesbians, cross dressers, feminine men, masculine women, female to male (FTM), male to female (MTF), gender queer, trans woman, trans man, butch queen, fem queen, transy, drag king, bi-gender, pan-gender, femme, butch, stud, two spirit, people with intersex conditions, androgynous, gender fluid, gender euphoric, third gender, and man and woman” (Enke, 2012, p. 4).

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and maintained through violence against those who visibly deviate from them” (Enke, 2012, p. 4). In this way, trans students make visible “the political processes [that] are seen and felt in the realities of the flesh” (Cameron et al., 2013, p. 3). By living openly as trans, these students draw attention to modes of injustice routinely ignored in contemporary society. And through their daring existential activism, trans students prove that “gender variation itself is intensely valuable as one facet of the creative diversities essential for wise and flourishing societies” (Enke, 2012, p. 5).

Contesting Common Sense--- “The Natural Attitude” A recent study by the Centers for Disease Control reported that 2% of high school students in the United States identify as transgender (Kesslen, 2019). The journal Pediatrics estimates that 3% of students in grades 9 through 12 identify as transgender or gender nonconforming (Kvetenadze, 2018). According to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law, there are approximately 150,000 transgender youth between the ages of 13 and 17 in the United States (Burns, 2020). Despite the growing visibility of trans students (and adults), many people assume that “man, woman, male, female are…ontologically given and stable across cultures” (Stryker & Aizura, 2013, p. 9). Sociologist Harold Garfinkel (1967) labeled convictions about the fixity of sex the “natural attitude.” These “unquestionable” axioms conflate sex and gender, insisting that there are two and only two sexes/genders; sex/gender is invariant; genitals are the essential sign of sex/gender; the male/female dichotomy is natural; being masculine or feminine is natural and not a matter of choice; and all individuals can (and must) be classified as male or female— any deviation from such a classification is either a joke or a pathology. Garfinkel noted that for most people the natural attitude is “incorrigible;” these beliefs are held with such conviction that it is near impossible to challenge their validity (Garfinkel, 1967, pp. 122–128). The natural attitude postulates physical sex (male/female) as the determinant of gender identity, which flows naturally into a particular mode of (hetero)sexuality and mandates certain gender roles embraced happily by individuals with uniformly positive gender role identities. According to the natural attitude, then, a person born with a uterus “naturally” develops a nurturing personality, craves association with a member of the “opposite” sex, engages in heterosexual intercourse, gives birth, happily

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assumes the responsibilities of childrearing, and defines meaningful existence in relation to mothering; a person born with a penis “naturally” seeks adventure, sows his wild oats, advances his career interests, delegates responsibility for childcare to his heterosexual partner, and defines his most meaningful experiences outside the domestic sphere. Trans existence challenges each of these posited relations. By their very existence, trans students demonstrate that bodies are more varied, open-ended, plural and malleable than biological essentialism acknowledges and that gender identity is not determined by sex assigned at birth.

Contesting the Authority of Science The natural attitude is shored up by biological determinism—the view that there are fundamental, innate physiological differences among kinds of humans, manifested in the incontrovertible evidence of race and sex. In the words of proponents of recent anti-trans legislation, “The sexual binary is a biological reality. There is no scientific—indeed, no non-ideological—ground for denying it. That some people experience disorders of sexual development, sometimes referred to as intersex conditions, does not negate this reality. Disorders of sexual development do not constitute a third sex or a spectrum of sex. There is no third gamete, no third gonad, no third genital, no third reproductive system” (Anderson & George, 2019). Although asserted as a scientific universal, biological determinism originated in the past few hundred years. Sex has been understood as the anatomical division of the human species into male and female only since the eighteenth century. Far from being given in nature, sexual dimorphism is intimately tied to the politics of modernity. The “two sex” model that posits men and women as incommensurate “opposites” was created by natural scientists during the Enlightenment as they sought to displace the authority of the church. Prior to the Enlightenment, for nearly two millennia, science, medicine, and religion accredited a “one sex” model. Entrenched in a metaphysical system that conceived sex in relation to embodied “souls,” the differences between men and women were understood in relation to the divine (Laqueur, 1990). Although corporeal differences carried political and social consequence in earlier eras, the relevant markers of difference were not lodged in the genitalia or reproductive organs. Women purportedly had less perfect “nutritive,” “generative,” and “rational” souls than their male counterparts. “Natural

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philosophy” emerging in the eighteenth century substituted a biological ground: sexual dimorphism, “a fixed oppositeness, that was somehow foundational and beyond culture,” as a “natural foundation” for differentiated social roles and responsibilities, legal status, as well as divisions of power and opportunity (Laqueur, 2012, p. 1). In the version of biological dimorphism cultivated over the twentieth century, male and female are construed as “natural kinds,” distinguished by unique configurations of chromosomes (xy/ xx), hormones (androgens/estrogens), gonads (reproductive organs such as testes and ovaries), internal morphology (seminal vesicles and prostate as opposed to vagina, uterus, and fallopian tubes), external genitalia (penis and scrotum/clitoris and labia), as well as secondary sex characteristics (body hair, facial hair, breasts). None of the typical correlates of biological sex conform to the demands of classification as natural kinds, however. A natural kind refers to a category that exists independent of the observer and that can be defined in terms of a set of properties common to all members of the kind. But “there are no behavioral or physical characteristics that always and without exception are true only of one sex” (Kessler & McKenna, 1978, p. 1). Chromosomes, hormones, sperm-production, and egg-production, all fail to differentiate all men from all women or to provide a common core within each sex. Both men and women have testosterone and estrogen in their systems and the human “X” chromosome, wantonly mischaracterized as the “female” chromosome, is not only common to both men and women but carries a large collection of male sperm genes (Richardson, 2012). Surveying the evidence presented by endocrinology, genetics, neuroscience, and other scientific disciplines, Ann Fausto-Sterling (2000, p. 4) concludes: “Our bodies are too complex to provide clear-cut answers about sexual difference. The more we look for a simple physical basis for ‘sex,’ the more it becomes clear that ‘sex’ is not a purely physical category. What bodily signals and functions we define as male or female come already entangled in our ideas about gender.” Rather than being given in nature, sexual dimorphism is imposed by human beings to make sense of the natural world. As Suzanne Kessler and Wendy McKenna (1978) noted, this imposition is as characteristic of scientific inquiry as it is of everyday observation. “Scientific knowledge does not inform the answer to the question, ‘What makes a person a man or a woman?’ Rather it justifies (and appears to give grounds for) the already existing conviction that a person is either a man or a woman and that there is no problem differentiating between the two.

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Biological, psychological, and social differences do not lead to our seeing two genders. Our seeing two genders leads to the ‘discovery’ of biological, psychological, and social differences” (Kessler & McKenna, 1978, p. 163). Trans students disrupt dichotomous thinking, shattering the illusion that the social body is layered on the biological body and that the biological body is fixed by nature (Sedgwick, 2003, p. 8). Indeed, as Pat Triarch has humorously put it, “Gender queers and trans-folks are ‘deconstruction workers,’ who by quite literally putting misfitting bodies on the (disassembly) line, begin to resist and rebuild the man-made gender imperatives that pass as those of nature” (cited in Noble, 2013, p. 257). Rather than privileging constancy and stability, trans students manifest the openness, fluidity, and instability of bodies. Instead of conceiving gender as implacably linked to a biological ground, trans students illuminate the transformative potential of gender fluidity and gender atypicality as forms of human flourishing.

Contesting the Authority of the State When science is accorded the authority to make definitive claims about bodies, it is easy to believe that sex (and race) characteristics attributed to bodies are pre-political or apolitical.2 Within this frame, state classifications of sex appear unproblematic: they simply record the given. Yet, in mandating that male or female be recorded in birth registries, states construct dichotomous sex as a legal identity category that determines an individual’s future rights and responsibilities. When the designations male and female carry markedly different rights and when male/female exhaust the options for embodiment, the state accords privilege to some and disadvantage to others. Binary sex is a legal designation: male or female is an official status accorded by the state in the context of birth registration. In many nations, the state delegates the power to assign sex at birth to medical professionals. But when the options allowed are binary, the power deployed by medical science to make bodies conform to state requirements for classification as male or female can be thoroughly coercive. Dan Irving (2013) 2 Space limitations do not allow detailed explication of state construction and imposition of racial categories (for such an analysis, see Brubaker, 2016; Hawkesworth, 2019; Roberts 2011).

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has pointed out that state recognition of trans citizens requires both medicalization and pathologization. In delegating sex identification to doctors, the state defers to a professional cohort trained to define sex by visual inspection of genitalia. Although they may have learned in medical school that manifold chromosomal and genital configurations occur in nature, obstetricians fit physical variation into statistical categories of “normal” (i.e., average, modal, or typical) and “abnormal” (i.e., rare). Within this mathematical frame, doctors assign sex at birth, filtering diversity into the binary classification, male or female, which is recorded in official state documents. To contest this judgment, trans people cannot simply point out a misjudgment on the part of the physician, nor are they allowed to protest the medical conflation of rarity with statistical “abnormality.” Recourse to the language of a “mistake” in sex assigned at birth is typically deployed by subsets of trans folk who identify as Intersex or transsexual. It is not a discourse embraced by those who identify as nonbinary or genderqueer, those who Rogers Brubaker (2016) classifies as “trans of between” and “trans of beyond.” Approximately one-third of transgender and genderdiverse adults and 40 percent of transgender and gender-diverse youth identify as nonbinary (Allen et al., 2019). Less than five percent of the nations in the world recognize a “third gender” or allow individuals to alter their gender identity on official documents. Those states that permit administrative changes to birth certificates insist that trans people accept medical treatment for a “set of mental maladies” diagnosed as gender dysphoria or gender identity disorder (Irving, 2013, p. 18). In the twentieth century, doctors who worked in gender identity clinics “accepted only one transsexual narrative”—which subscribed to heteronormative and hegemonic categories of sex/gender. They insisted that their patients must seek surgical assistance to rectify a “wrong body problem” and demonstrate a vision for their future life that conformed to culturally-approved gendered expectations: “Prior to surgery, candidates had to prove they could live successfully as the ‘opposite sex’ without being provided any of the hormones that would have facilitated their transition. Those who succeeded in withstanding daily harassment and discrimination were determined eligible for surgery” (p. 20 & p. 24). Irving notes that the gendered conventions to which trans people had to conform to qualify for surgery were race and class specific and markedly sexist. Female-to-male trans people (FTM) were “expected to be economically industrious… demonstrate their authentic

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masculinity by participating in the labor market…and become reliable providers” for their families (p. 20). They were required not only to seek certain kinds of gendered employment, but to be unreservedly heterosexual. Doctors refused to approve surgery for transsexuals who were gay, bisexual, or lesbian (p. 20). Medical expectations for male-to-female transsexuals (MTF) manifested prevalent cultural denigrations of women and tolerance for institutionalized sex discrimination. MTF candidates were “quizzed on their willingness to accept lower status jobs and lower wages as women…the success of their sexual reassignment was measured partly through their complacency (an ideal mark of femininity) and their ability to assimilate into gendered and exploitive relations” (p. 21). In restricting alteration of official sex registration to transsexuals, the state both denies official recognition to Intersex individuals and reduces all forms of trans existence to the “trans of migration” (Brubaker, 2016), that is, to those who transition from male-to-female or femaleto-male. Precisely because the “trans of migration” typically understand hormonal and/or surgical intervention as “transition to a final destination” (Brubaker, 2016, p. 78), state recognition of transsexuals reinforces the binary logic of sex as either male or female. In making state recognition dependent on conformity to the conventional gender binary (M/F), states not only reduce the rich transgender spectrum to transsexuality but also restrict the possibilities for changing gender identity to those who wish for and can afford medical diagnosis and gender-affirming treatment. Rather than affirming diversity and fluidity, “medicine and law work together primarily to ‘correct’ individuals whose bodies or gender presentations fall outside the expressed norm, promoting concealment of trans status in order to reestablish that norm” (Beauchamp, 2013, p. 48). By normalizing “unruly transgender bodies through surgery and hormones,” medical interventions reinscribe notions of “deviant gendering” in relation to mental, physical, and behavioral states. They “create a non-threatening body that is undetectable as trans in any way. Transgender bodies that conform to a dominant standard of dress and behavior may be legible to the state not as transgender at all, but instead as properly gendered and ‘safe’” (p. 49). State recognition does not simply record what is given; it produces accredited categories and requires bodies to conform to them. It imposes certain identities, converting pigmentation into race and bodily fluidity into dichotomous sex. It suppresses certain modes of embodiment

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(intersex and trans*) and erases that suppression by premising state recognition on individual identification with state-sanctioned categories. It imposes the restriction that “to be human just is to be male or female, a girl or a boy, or a man or a woman” (Scheman, 1977, p. 132), and requires surgical and psychiatric interventions to produce conformity with that gender order. By publicly identifying as trans, students make it clear that bodies do not exist outside politics and beyond the reach of the state. They draw attention to the processes through which the state accords or denies legal status determining citizenship rights. And they illuminate the pervasive effects of state classification, which span education and employment, levels of income and wealth, and access to prestige and power. The institutions that require sex/gender legibility and consistency are multiple, including social services (rape crisis centers, homeless shelters, medical clinics, job training services), housing and public accommodations (restrooms and locker rooms), marriage and family formation, inheritance, health insurance, incarceration in “gender-appropriate” facilities, and identity records (passports, social security and social insurance cards, driver’s licenses) (Enke, 2013, p. 245). As existential activists, trans students make visible and challenge these multiple and overlapping exercises of state power.

Contesting Religious Authorities Much of the opposition to accommodations for transgender students in the schools has been fueled by people who profess to be defending their faith. In the United States, a well-financed organization, the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), has mobilized a national campaign against the rights of transgender students. Characterizing itself as “an alliancebuilding legal organization that advocates for the right of people to freely live out their faith,” the ADF has initiated lawsuits to protect the “privacy rights” of cisgender students by excluding trans students from facilities consonant with their gender identity and expression (Goodyear, 2016). The ADF campaign against transgender rights echoes the rhetoric of religious conservatives who have mobilized transnationally against “gender ideology” (Case, 2019, p. 640). Their goal is to “put a stop not only to the English word ‘gender’ as it is used in legal and policy-making documents by such bodies as the United Nations and the European Union but also to those many reforms in secular law governing the sexes, sexuality, reproduction, and the family” (p. 641). This coalition of Catholic,

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Christian, Islamic, and Jewish fundamentalists takes aim at feminist and LBGTQI efforts to “dismantle entrenched divisions of labor and power, challenge heteronormativity, recognize diversity of family forms and of sexual and gender expression, and to provide access to new reproductive technologies, condoms, contraceptives, and abortion—in short, most of what goes under such diverse headings as sexual and reproductive rights, protections for sexual orientation and gender identity, family law reform, and the elimination of sex stereotyping” (p. 641). In the words of Pope Benedict XVI (2010), humanity is endangered by “laws or proposals which, in the name of fighting discrimination, strike at the biological basis of the difference between the sexes.” Trans students are the living embodiment of that danger. Conservative Christians who have championed anti-trans legislative proposals insist that trans’ existential claims imply that “God made a mistake [but] God being perfect, it is impossible for Him to make mistakes” (cited in Brubaker, 2016, p. 25). By intentionally conflating sex and gender, using the terms interchangeably, conservative Christians align theology with Enlightenment conceptions of science, insisting that anatomy is destiny and dimorphic genitalia exhaust embodied possibility. Pundits who provide “scientific” evidence to fuel anti-trans legislation pathologize varieties of embodied existence: “despite the reality that these two systems can and sometimes do develop in certain disordered ways. It is a red herring to point to physical developmental disorders to justify an ideological view of gender as something fluid, nonbinary, and utterly detached from our embodiment as male or female” (Anderson & George, 2019). In addition to contesting the authority of science and the state, trans students by their very existence challenge religious authority, which, according to believers, represents divinely established and mandated order. The depth of the challenge that trans students pose to religious accounts of a divinely ordained sex binary is inseparable from the intensity of the attacks trans students suffer at the hands of religious zealots.

Contesting Injustice Science, medicine, religion, and the state are deeply invested in dichotomous constructions of sex and their supposedly “natural” correlates— binary gender and a presumption of heterosexuality. Individually and collectively, these institutions transform “social custom into legal control

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mechanisms, a sort of ‘natural law’ theory of gender” (Weiss, 2001, p. 124). Those who fall afoul of cisgender, heteronormative legal presumptions face the full force of the state’s capacity to criminalize acts, behaviors, or even illness. State policies toward gender variant and sexually adventurous citizens illuminate unique dimensions of state injustice, ranging from denigration, dehumanization, and criminalization to identity invalidation and violent “reality enforcement.” Between 1848 and 1914, laws against cross-dressing made it a crime to appear in clothing belonging to the “opposite” sex (Sears, 2013, p. 555). These ordinances specifically prohibited individuals from “masquerading in another person’s attire for unlawful purposes” (Capers, 2008, p. 9). As Clare Sears has noted, “these laws did much more than police the types of clothing that belonged to each sex; they used the visible marker of clothing to police the types of people who ‘belonged’ in public space….Between 1863 and 1900 more than 100 arrests for cross-dressing snared feminist dress reformers, female impersonators, ‘fast’ women who dressed as men for a night on the town and people whose gender identifications did not match their anatomical sex. Those arrested faced police harassment, public exposure and severe financial penalty along with loss of freedom” (Sears, 2013, p. 555). In the twentieth century, these laws became a key tool for policing transgender and queer communities. If arrested, sexual and gender-variant people risked institutionalization in prisons and psychiatric facilities or deportation if they were not U.S. citizens (p. 555). Thus, exclusion from public space became a powerful means to regulate gender transgression. Fear of arrest led some people to modify their public appearance and confine their cross-dressing to private spaces. After more than a century of enforcement, prohibitions against crossdressing were struck down by the courts in the final quarter of the twentieth century in the United States. Ordinances prohibiting “‘dress not belonging to [one’s] sex’ were deemed unconstitutionally vague given current dress habits…yet dress codes persist in schools, the military, workplaces, in courtrooms, in legislative halls” (Capers, 2008, pp. 10–11). Requiring trans students to dress according to conventions conforming to the sex assigned at birth is a potent mechanism of coercive control that continues to be deployed by some parents, school authorities, and school systems. Although the state is supposed to protect the privacy and physical security of children, intersex children often find themselves subjected to

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abusive genital scrutiny. As Cheryl Chase has noted, “This misplaced focus on gender distorts the perspective of clinicians in many ways that are harmful to patients. Intersex patients have frequently been subjected to repeated genital examinations, which create a feeling of freakishness and unacceptableness” (2003, pp. 5–6). Given the non-consensual nature of surgery on intersex infants, these operations are not only a violation of physical integrity but also a kind of sexual violation. In the words of intersex activist Sharon Preves (2003, p. 73), “I was forced to be surgically mutilated and medically raped at the age of fourteen.” The state is complicit in the exorbitant harm resulting from its failure to protect in such instances. Trans and intersex citizens experience multiple harms as they are compelled to make themselves legible to the state. They are pressured to frame their existence in terms of a “wrong body problem,” which forces them to endure pathologization (i.e., to be diagnosed as having a mental illness) and medicalization (i.e., subjected to hormonal and surgical intervention). They are also subjected to forms of “identity invalidation.” Neither the legal nor the medical system acknowledges or accredits embodiment, self-understandings, or identities that deviate from dichotomous, heteronormative scripts. Talia Mae Bettcher (2016) has noted that “identity invalidation” pervades the lives of trans people. “Transsexuality is about having one’s sex doubted, challenged, impugned in manifold daily transactions. It’s about going out on a date and worrying about when to tell one’s date that one is trans. It is about harassment by the police who treat trans prostitutes as ‘really men.’ It is about the risks of ‘being exposed as a man’ in a commercial sexual encounter. It is about how pervasive identity invalidation contributes to HIV-prevalence among trans women” (Bettcher, 2016, p. 420). It is also about being required by the state to deny one’s embodied past and erase any trace of birth gender in order to fit in and reestablish normalized binary gender (Beauchamp, 2013). Gender nonconforming citizens experience unique forms of state injustice. To make themselves legible to the state, trans citizens must incur insults, coercive and expensive medical treatments, and assaults on their memory and identity that cis-citizens never encounter. Gender and sexual variance have many manifestations. Although the “wrong body” narrative corresponds to the experiences of some, it systematically distorts the identities of many. When the state requires adoption of a “wrong body” narrative as a condition for state recognition, it marginalizes and discredits all those who understand themselves

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“beyond the gender binary.” And it makes state recognition dependent on a degree of affluence that few trans and intersex people ever attain. Thus, it forces gender nonconforming people who do not want or cannot afford surgical intervention into a liminal existence in which they possess erroneous state-issued identity documents. At a time when the “undocumented” are subjected to massive hostility and scrutiny, any gap between official papers and public gender presentation can be particularly hazardous, heightening the possibility that the individual will be subjected to “reality enforcement” by the police, employers, or members of the general public. The goal of “reality enforcement” is to reveal trans people as “deceivers,” often through physically violent genital “verification” (Bettcher, 2016, p. 420). Trans citizens are subjected to unrelenting invasions of privacy, queried by peers, teachers, school administrators, police, airport security guards, airline personnel, medical professionals, potential employers, colleagues, transphobic bar patrons, and people on the street about the relation between their gender identity and their genitalia. State agencies themselves position trans and intersex people as “imposters.” Since 1994, for example, the U.S. Social Security Administration (SSA) has sent out “no match” letters to employers in cases where employees’ hiring paperwork contradicts employee information on file with SSA, a policy that disproportionately affects trans people whose employers receive SSA notification of “no gender match” (Beauchamp, 2013, p. 49). The REAL ID Act passed by the U.S. Congress in 2005 established a federal database that stores supporting documents used to create an official ID (birth certificates, social security cards, court-ordered name changes) for seven to ten years. The purpose of the Act was to reveal “deception” (p. 50). Due to state classifications imposed on them, trans and intersex people are particularly liable to be identified as deceivers. This heightened vulnerability stems in part from “the impertinent assumption that the intimate details of trans bodies should be available for examination, diagnosis, judgment” (Heaney, 2017, p. 237), and in part from the state’s refusal to recognize the defects of classification schemes grounded in a gender binary. Trans women do not desire to be women; they are women; trans men are men. Gender variant and genderqueer people are neither men nor women. That the state refuses to recognize that reality is another instance of state injustice that trans activists make visible.

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Subverting the Accredited Gender Order As existential activists, trans youth challenge the prevailing sex binary, the notion that anatomy is destiny, the idea that male/female exhaust all modes of being, and the belief that gender is an apolitical socio-cultural formation that flows naturally from sexed embodiment. Rogers Brubaker (2016) suggests two modes of trans existence, in particular—the “trans of between” (those who define themselves in relation to masculinity and femininity without belonging unambiguously to either or moving definitively from one to the other) and the “trans of beyond” (those who position themselves in a space that is not defined with reference to established categories of male or female)—“destabilize the cognitive and moral order.” Yet Brubaker notes that to destabilize is not the same thing as “challenging gender as systemic injustice, [a] much harder case to make” (p. 25). This chapter traces multiple ways that trans youth challenge operations of power that perpetrate palpable injustices embedded in scientific accounts of biological determinism, religious appeals to divinely ordained dichotomous sexual order, state construction and imposition of binary sex through official documents, as well as everyday practices of identity invalidation and reality enforcement. Brubaker’s failure to accredit the full scope of trans-existential activism stems from the limitations of some of his own theoretical commitments. Although eschewing strict biological determinism, Brubaker assumes the sexed body provides the raw material upon which cultural constructions of gender rely, thereby replicating a form of “biological foundationalism” (Nicholson, 1994). By assigning biological sex an objective ground and characterizing gender identity as subjective belief, Brubaker positions trans identity as a personal choice—a stance rejected within trans discourses.3 Within Brubaker’s problematic frame, the transformative potential of trans activism is necessarily limited: trans of migration reinforce the sex binary, while the trans of between create new categories such as genderqueer or trans* that chafe against the reality of dimorphic sex, and the trans of beyond advance utopian visions of a social world

3 Although a thorough explication of alternative conceptions of gendered embodiment lies well beyond the scope of this chapter, see Hawkesworth 2019, Chapters 2 and 3 for accounts that discredit both essentialist and voluntarist frames.

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no longer organized by gender categorization in the allocation of political and legal rights, divisions of labor, social expectations for behavior, perceptions and interpretations of the social world, and cognitive and emotional organization of the self (p. 119). According to Brubaker, these efforts can never transcend a paradoxical politics fixed by sex as a biological category. As this chapter demonstrates, however, paradoxical politics is not the necessary fate of trans youth activism. In their schools, communities, halls of government, and social media outreach, trans youth supplement conventional social change strategies with existential activism to demonstrate how the conditions established for state recognition of trans citizens institutionalize transphobia, fail to address the embodied diversity among humans and impose oppressive regulatory regimes grounded in racialized constructions of binary sex, gender, and sexuality. Their existential activism shows how binary gender norms and hierarchies are created through and legitimize violence against gender variants and nonconforming trans folk. Recent religious efforts “to make sex cis,” secular attempts to restrict the meaning of trans to those who have undergone surgical procedures, and collaborative efforts to pass punitive and lifethreatening anti-trans legislation exemplify this violence. By openly living as trans and courageously demanding rights, trans youth (and adults) unmask the complex dimensions of violence deployed to suppress diverse and fluid modes of embodiment, gender identity, and expression. Their existential activism charts a path toward the systematic changes in contemporary life necessary to subvert these manifold modes of injustice. Far from paradoxical politics, trans youth activism advances an impeccable social justice agenda.

Pedagogical Feature In the contemporary United States, trans youth experience multiple forms of discrimination ranging from denial of access to gender-appropriate bathrooms, sports, and gender-confirming medical care to verbal harassment and physical and sexual assault. Their gender identities are routinely invalidated by peers, teachers, school administrators, school boards, and state legislators and their rights to full participation in school activities and public life are severely restricted. In response to pervasive and persistent transphobic discrimination, trans students have launched innovative campaigns to educate their peers,

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teachers, school administrators, elected officials, and the public—illuminating the contours of gender beyond the fixed binary male/female, responding to questions, giving presentations at school assemblies, meeting with teachers and administrators to explain trans issues, creating “diversity clubs” at school, testifying before school boards and legislative committees, and creating social media sites to communicate with much larger audiences. Coining the slogan, “Existence is Resistance,” trans youth engage in unique modes of existential activism designed to challenge “common sense” about human embodiment. Contesting the authority of science, trans students disrupt dichotomous thinking, the notion that the social body is determined by biology and that the biological body is fixed by nature. Lobbying and litigating to change laws that deny their very existence, they show how state action accredits narrowly defined gender categories and requires diverse bodies to conform to them. Insisting on their right to exist, trans youth defy religious authorities who allege that binary sex is divinely ordained. Trans students provide living proof that binary gender norms and gender hierarchies are established and maintained through violence against those who visibly deviate from them. Trans students make visible the political processes that operate to construct what is deemed to be natural. By living openly as trans, these students draw attention to modes of injustice routinely ignored in contemporary society. And through their daring existential activism, trans students make a compelling case that gender variation itself is intensely valuable as one facet of the creative diversities essential for flourishing democratic societies. Social media has played a critical role in forging trans youth activism, linking students across great distances, helping to overcome the isolation of gender nonconforming students in particular locales, and providing a virtual space in which to forge community and devise strategies to contest policies and practices that denigrate, dehumanize, pathologize, and criminalize gender-variant people. In their schools, communities, halls of government, and social media outreach, trans youth supplement conventional social change strategies with existential activism to demonstrate how the conditions established for state recognition of trans citizens institutionalize transphobia, fail to address the embodied diversity among humans, and impose oppressive regulatory regimes grounded in racialized constructions of binary sex, gender, and sexuality. Their existential activism shows how binary gender norms and hierarchies are created

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through and legitimize violence against gender variant and nonconforming trans folk. By openly living as trans and courageously demanding rights, trans youth (and adults) unmask the complex dimensions of violence deployed to suppress diverse and fluid modes of embodiment, gender identity, and expression. Their existential activism charts a path toward the systematic changes in contemporary life necessary to subvert these manifold modes of injustice.

References Anderson, R., & George, R. (2019, December 8). Physical interventions on the bodies of children to “affirm” their “gender identity” violate sound medical ethics and should be prohibited. Public Discourse: The Journal of the Witherspoon Institute. https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2019/12/ 58839/ ACLU. (2019, November 27). Update: G.G. v. Gloucester County School Board. https://www.aclu.org/cases/grimm-v-gloucester-county-sch ool-board. Allen, B. J., Coles, M. S., & Montano, G. T. (2019). A call to improve guidelines for transgender health and well-being: Promoting youth-centered and genderinclusive care. Journal of Adolescent Health, 65(4), 443–445. Allen, S. (2018, December 18). Trans teenager claims teacher demanded he ‘prove’ he was a boy in bathroom. The Daily Beast. https://www.thedailybeast.com/ trans-teenager-claims-teacher-demanded-he-prove-he-was-a-boy-in-bathroom. Back to School Q&A with Daniel. (2018). https://www.pghlesbian.com/ 2018/08/back-to-school-qa-with-trans-activist-daniel-16-of-lakeview-schooldistrict/. Beauchamp, T. (2013). Artful concealment and strategic visibility: Transgender bodies and state surveillance after 9/11. In S. Stryker & A. Aizura (Eds.), Transgender Reader 2 (pp. 46–55). Routledge. Belle, E. (2018b, September 18). What high school is kike for transgender students. Teen Vogue. https://www.teenvogue.com/story/what-high-schoolis-like-for-transgender-students. Bettcher, T. M. (2016). Intersexuality, transgender, and transsexuality. In L. Disch & M. Hawkesworth (Eds.), Oxford handbook of feminist theory (pp. 407–427). Oxford University Press. Brubaker, R. (2016). Trans: Gender and race in an age of unsettled identities. Princeton University Press. Burns, K. (2020, January 29). Why Republicans are suddenly in a rush to regulate every trans kid’s puberty. Vox. https://www.vox.com/identities/2020/1/29/ 21083505/transgender-kids-legislation-puberty-blockers.

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Cameron, A., Dickinson, J., & Smith, N. (2013). Body/State. Ashgate. Capers, I. B. (2008). Cross dressing and the criminal. Yale Journal of Law and Humanities, 20(1), 1–30. Case, M. A. (2019). Trans formations in the Vatican’s war on ‘Gender Ideology’. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 44(3), 639–664. Chase, C. (2003). What is the agenda of the Intersex Patient Advocacy Movement? Endocrinologist, 13(3), 240–242. Enke, A. F. (2012). Transfeminist perspectives in and beyond Transgender and Gender Studies. Temple University Press. Enke, A. F. (2013). The education of little cis: Cisgender and the discipline of opposing bodies. In S. Stryker & A. Aizura (Eds.), Transgender Studies 2 (pp. 234–247). Routledge. Fausto-Sterling, A. (2000). Sexing the body: Gender politics and the construction of sexuality. Basic Books. Garfinkel, H. (1967). Studies in ethnomethodology. Prentice Hall. Goodyear, S. (2016, January 12). Seat of unrest. NY Daily News. http://intera ctive.nydailynews.com/2016/01/transgender-students-war-over-public-sch ool-bathrooms/. Hawkesworth, M. (2019). Gender and political theory. Polity Press. Heaney, E. (2017). The new woman: Literary modernism, queer theory, and the trans feminine allegory. Northwestern University Press. Irving, D. (2013). Normalized transgressions: Legitimizing the transsexual body as productive. In S. Stryker & A. Aizura (Eds.), Transgender Studies Reader 2 (pp. 15–29). Routledge. Kesslen, B. (2019, January 24). Two percent of high school students identify as transgender, CDC report finds. NBC News. https://www.nbcnews.com/fea ture/nbc-out/two-percent-high-school-students-identify-transgender-cdc-rep ort-finds-n962526. Kessler, S., & McKenna, W. (1978). Gender: An ethnomethodological approach. John Wiley. Knutson, J. (2020, February 11). The states seeking bans on transgender minors’ medical treatments. Politics and Policy. https://www.axios.com/transgendermedical-treatment-minors-8f5c4bb1-3ea7-42d0-9e9f-a11b271aa1b4.html. Kvetenadze, T. (2018, August 18). Trans students: A test of identity for US girls schools. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-education-tra nsgender/trans-students-a-test-of-identity-for-u-s-girls-schools-idUSKBN1L 30B7. Laqueur, T. (1990). Making sex: Body and gender from the Greeks to Freud. Harvard University Press. Laqueur, T. (2012). The rise of sex in the eighteenth century: Historical context and historiographical implications. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 37 (4), 802–813.

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Logan v. Gary Community School Corporation. (2007). United States District Court for the Northern District of Indiana, Hammond.https://www.lambda legal.org/in-court/cases/logan-vs-gary-community-school. Manion, J. (2022). December 6. Public Lecture at the Philadelphia Athenaeun. Minsberg, T. (2020, April 1). ‘Boys are boys and girls are girls’: Idaho is first state to bar some transgender athletes. New York Times (B10). https://www.nyt imes.com/2020/04/01/sports/transgender-idaho-ban-sports.html. Murib, Z. (2020, February 25). A new kind of anti-trans legislation is hitting red states. Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/ 02/25/new-kind-anti-trans-legislation-is-hitting-red-states/. Nicholson, L. (1994). Interpreting gender. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 20(1), 79–105. Noble, B. J. (2013). Our bodies are not ourselves: Tranny guys and the racialized class politics of incoherence. In S. Stryker & A. Azira (Eds.), The transgender studies reader 2 (pp. 248–258). Routledge. Preves, S. (2003). Intersex and identity: The contested self . Rutgers University Press. Richardson, S. (2012). Sexing the X: How the X became the ‘female chromosome’. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 37 (4), 909–933. Richmond Times Dispatch. (2018, December 7). Virginia teacher fired for refusing to use trans student’s pronouns. https://www.boston.com/news/nat ional-news/2018/12/07/virginia-teacher-fired-for-refusing-to-use-trans-stu dents-pronouns. Ring, T. (2019, February 13). South Dakota moves to ban discussion of trans identity in schools. The Advocate. https://www.advocate.com/transgender/ 2019/2/13/south-dakota-moves-ban-discussion-trans-identity-schools. Roberts, D. (2011). Fatal invention: How science, politics, and big business recreate race in the 21st Century. The New Press. Scheman, N. (1977). Queering the center by centering the queer.” In D. Meyers (Ed.), Feminists rethink the self . Westview Press. Sears, C. (2013). Electric brilliancy: Cross dressing laws and freak show displays in nineteenth century San Francisco. In S. Stryker & A. Aizura (Eds.), Transgender reader 2 (pp. 554–564). Routledge. Sedgwick, E. (2003). Touching feeling: Affect, pedagogy, performativity. Duke University Press. Stryker, S. (1994). My words to Victor Frankenstein above the village of Chamounix: Performing transgender rage. GLQ, 1(3), 237–254. Stryker, S. & Aizura, A. (Eds.). (2013). Transgender reader 2. Routledge. Weiss, J. T. (2001). The gender caste system: Identity, privacy and heteronormativity. Law & Sexuality, 10(123), 123–186.

CHAPTER 11

Critical Literacies and the Conditions of Decolonial Possibility Navan Govender

Key Terms Critical Literacies —an orientation to reading through a social justice lens, critical literacies also requires unpicking the relationship between language, literacy, and power. From decoding texts and genres, to (re)designing them, critical literacies empowers people to identify, deconstruct, disrupt, and transform various relations of power through discursive and social action. Decoloniality—a theoretical paradigm that disrupts predominantly Western constructs of knowledge, being, and power, and works from the assumption that the logic of coloniality persists despite the perceived “end” of historical moments of colonialism.

N. Govender (B) University of Strathclyde, GLASGOW, UK e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 I. Rivers and C. L. Lovin (eds.), Young People Shaping Democratic Politics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29378-8_11

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Political-pedagogical action—involves recognising that all teacherly decisions (from classroom practice to curriculum design) are inherently bound to issues of power. From this position, teachers might make pedagogical choices in more socially just ways that empower themselves and students to deconstruct and reconstruct teaching and learning in more equitable ways.

Introduction Scotland represents a tenuous negotiation of identity and power, as both an instrument of the past British colonial empire and a victim of colonisation by that same empire. As a cog in the British colonial machine, Scotland has a history of benefitting from the trade of enslaved people, resource mining, land occupation, and other practices associated with colonisation. Yet, as a subject of coloniality and neocolonialism, the processes of colonial domination have also been employed within Scotland. The continued dominance of English language classrooms as sites that privilege sameness by overvaluing standardised English monolingualism and monoculturalism are driven by national standardised assessments which, in turn, are informed by the persistent discourses of coloniality. Together, the tensions existing between colonisation as a perceived past event, ongoing ideologies of coloniality, and neocolonialism, emerge through a variety of sustained social issues: from socio-economic divisions, the devaluing of indigenous languages as well as minority/minoritised languages and foreign languages, to the ongoing inequalities based on race/ethnicity, (a)gender and (a)sexual diversity, and dis/ability. Glasgow, as the “second city” of the empire, represents a focal point for these tensions. To question ideology and discourse in this context is perhaps pertinent, especially in a time of Covid-19, the rise of #BlackLivesMatter and #TransBlackLivesMatter movements, calls for decolonising curriculums and public spaces, ongoing work for (inter)national equality networks (particularly in relation to (a)gender and (a)sexual diversity), calls for environmental sustainability amidst a climate crisis, and continuous concern for language and literacy attainment “gaps” across poverty lines that intersect with race/ethnicity, gender, sexuality, language variety and accent, and geography. With so many intersecting and interdependent social issues circulating social, cultural, and political spaces, the question is

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perhaps not just about how these social issues are recognised and critiqued to reveal their underlying ideologies, but it is also about imagining and enabling more socially just futures. Critical literacies offer one such means for doing this. As a practice of multimodal critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 2001), critical literacies is a pedagogical approach for unpacking the ways in which meaning and power are imprinted into texts through a series of choices, and how these choices “are tied to the conditions of possibility” (Janks, 1997, p. 329). That is, the capacity to recognise, name, explain, disrupt, and transform relations of power through discursive consumption (i.e., critical reading) and production (i.e., critical design) is a means to raise the political-pedagogical power of students, teachers, and young people as they engage with the world around them. Tapping into those important local and transnational socio-political events happening alongside our own educational processes within the PGDE English programme became necessary for creating those “conditions of possibility” (Janks, 1997) for valuing, recognising, or even activating our (student teachers’ and mine) own political-pedagogical capacities through how we read and re-read, wrote and re-wrote, designed and redesigned identity, power, and meaning-making. For example, #BlackLivesMatter and Fallist movements provided a strong impetus for asking critical questions about race, ethnicity, and the role of monuments across colonial and postcolonial contexts. Queer and feminist movements, on the other hand, provided a foundation for noticing how those issues of race, ethnicity, and coloniality are bound to certain representations of gender and sexuality. In this chapter, I therefore present the ways in which critical literacies, decoloniality, and multimodality intersect and how student teachers’ political-pedagogical agency was asserted in different ways during an outdoor learning session in which they conducted a critical multimodal discourse analysis of a local artefact, the Doulton Fountain in Glasgow Green Park. This project reveals the richness of working across texts, modes, and perspectives in re-reading and reconstructing the world (Freire & Macedo, 1987).

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Power, Place, and Space My partner and I moved to Glasgow, Scotland, in January 2018. One of the many sites we saw was Glasgow Green city park, home to the People’s Palace and the Doulton Fountain. Glasgow Green was a meeting and trading site for the old merchants whose businesses, at the time, thrived from colonial practices of domination, slavery, indentured labour, and resource mining. Furthermore, it is situated in the Eastend of Glasgow which is historically known for being an economically deprived area. Today, the Eastend is undergoing gentrification and the Green is a tourist site and park, with the People’s Palace Museum acting as a hub of information about Glasgow’s “working-class history”. Just outside the museum sits the Doulton Fountain, the world’s largest terracotta fountain designed by Arthur Edward Pearce. The fountain, originally constructed for Queen Victoria’s jubilee in 1887, and put on display at the 1888 International Exhibition for colonial innovation and empire at Kelvingrove, sits 46 feet high and 70 feet across (Banerjee, 2009; Palladino & Miller, 2011). A stone slab set into the paving at one side of the fountain has its name inscribed and some basic information. It reads: The Doulton Fountain Designed by A. E. Pearce and modelled by students from Lambeth School of Art, the fountain was first erected in Kelvingrove Park for the International Exhibition of 1888. It was moved to Glasgow Green in 1890 and to its present site in 2004. The fountain depicts Britain’s four colonies: Australia, Canada, India and South Africa, with soldiers and sailors above and Queen Victoria presiding at the apex. Standing fourteen metres high, it is the largest terracotta fountain in the world.

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The Doulton Fountain is an interesting artefact not only because it symbolises colonial power but because its imperial symbolism persists quietly. Visiting the fountain, one will notice how tourists photograph it, saunter around, and relax on benches, while residents walk their dogs or visit the museum café. Furthermore, the limited information available online presents the history of the fountain as a singular, objective fact— typical of the genre—by presenting mostly a descriptive account of its form and construction. By actively excluding information about the social impact of colonialism on race/ethnicity and culture, nationhood, gender and sexuality, and socio-economic disparities, these texts present the fountain, and colonialism at large, as apolitical and universally beneficial. This is, however, only one version of the story. As such, it has become necessary to consider how our pedagogical choices as academics, (emerging) teachers, and life-long learners enable or disable our political voices and those of young people. Finding pedagogical utility—that meaningful teachable moment—in everyday texts, including artefacts and spaces, is therefore a necessary component of political-pedagogical agency. Further, explicitly confronting, exploring, and reimaging issues of power, as they are imbued into those everyday texts and spaces is vital in recognising and capitalising on the already political nature of teaching, meaning-making, and discursive construction. The Professional Graduate Diploma in Education’s (PGDE) secondary English and literacy specialism is therefore well-suited for grappling with the political nature of language, representation, and meaning-making.

Enter Decoloniality Decolonial Thinking is the Pluriversal Epistemology of the Future; an Epistemology that De-Links from the Tyranny of Abstract Universal (Mignolo, 2007, p. 159). The theories of (de)coloniality offered by scholars such as Walter Mignolo, Nelson Maldonado-Torres, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, and others, seek to disrupt the myth of universality. Universality, in this sense, is a colonial device for positioning certain knowledges, cultures, languages and language varieties, cisgendered norms, heteronormativities, and other social categories (ways of being and doing) as original and timeless (Mignolo, 2007; Mignolo & Walsh, 2018; Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2015; Gaztambide-Fernández, 2012). From this assumption, it becomes easy to rationalise that one story, one perspective, and one version of the world can be applied to understanding all others. It restricts knowledge,

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ways of knowing, identities, and lives to be listed in a hierarchy. Coloniality, then, might be described as a system of knowledge, subjectivity, and power that over-values sameness: monoculturalism, monolingualism, and monomodality. For the English language, literacy, and literature classroom, this is perhaps most evident in the ways in which curriculum is shaped by certain “canonical” texts and the lenses used to read them (Connell, 2003), national and international standardised testing that draw on narrow definitions of literateness, and the positioning of diversity and social justice in mainstream policy and practice as additive rather than intrinsic to everyday school practice (Mendoza, 2014) and teacher education both in the “global norths and souths” of the world (Martin & Pirbhai-Illich, 2016). This is, in part, the colonial matrix (Mignolo & Walsh, 2018). A decolonial turn therefore necessitates reshaping the dominant logic of sameness, of “the tyranny of abstract universals” (Mignolo, 2007, p. 159), to that of a logic founded on plurality. By placing plurality at the centre of teaching and learning, pedagogy, and meaning-making become dependent on critical text selection (Andrews & Govender, 2022) and navigating multiple perspectives. Martin and Pirbhai-Illich (2016, p. 361) explain that “knowledge (of culture, identity, self) only comes into being in each moment of relation with difference, and through dialogue that seeks to understand those differences in relation to the socio-cultural, environmental, economic and political contexts that formed them”. In this sense, difference becomes both the pinnacle of teaching and learning practice as well as a productive resource for making meaning of the world.

Political-Pedagogical Practice: Critical Literacies and Critical Multimodal Discourse Analysis Critical literacies are deeply foundational to my own scholar-activist identity and therefore informs much of my own political-pedagogical practice. As a pedagogical approach, it takes seriously the relationship between language (and other sign systems), meaning-making, and power. It is a pedagogical and research frame for unpacking how discourses operationalise ideology, and the socio-cultural, political, and material effects of these. Meaning and meaning-making are highly political acts that can function to reproduce, maintain, resist, or transform relations of power— from the everyday and interpersonal to the systemic and institutional. Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is one means to do critical literacies as well as design environments where critical literacies can happen. For

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this project, I also turn CDA toward a range of multimodal texts (Kress, 2015) as a means to challenge both those instantiations of power in texts, but also our means of conveying power and meaning through text production beyond the written or spoken word. While there are various approaches to critical discourse analysis (CDA), I have taken up Fairclough’s (2001). Fairclough’s (2001) model illustrates the relationship between text, reader/writer, and context with the need to consider all three of these aspects in order to engage in critical reading/viewing practices which has been applied to multimodal texts (Catalano & Waugh, 2020; Lim, 2018; Pahl & Rowsell, 2011; Serafini, 2012) and teacher education (Govender, 2018, 2019a; Rogers et al., 2014). Represented as three concentric boxes, with the innermost labelled “text”, the middle box labelled “processes of production and reception” and the outermost “conditions of production and reception”, the model for CDA helps critical practitioners to understand that to be critical one must see beyond the text and its intended meanings by participating in practices of description, interpretation, and explanation from a socio-cultural theory: By working across the description, interpretation, and explanation, critical discourse analysts pull texts apart to reveal their constructedness in order to make meaning and situate that meaning in socio-cultural context. Description, or code-breaking, involves systematically pulling apart the text to reveal its composite components (i.e., its grammar). From this, participants can engage in interpretation by making sense of the text’s whole meaning in relation to its component parts by considering both its intended meaning (i.e., substantiated by the author’s processes of production) and its realised meanings (i.e., substantiated by readers’ processes of reception). Alongside this, participants can begin to engage with explanation by considering how both the text and the meanings available fit within broader socio-cultural, historical, and ideological trends or patterns of representation.

Designing Conditions of Decolonial Possibility: The Pedagogical-Political Activists I now focus my attention on the ways in which student teachers of secondary English at a Glasgow-based university participated in an outdoor learning experience (OLE) situated in the Professional Graduate Diploma in Education’s (PGDE) English specialism. Typically, each year’s cohort is comprised mostly of white Scottish students, mostly cisfemale,

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with a minority of Black and People of Colour (BPoC) folk. Another, sometimes interconnected, minority includes international and transnational students (including those from Europe, Africa, the Americas, Asia, or Australasia). Students’ ages range from early twenties to late forties, representing a broad range life trajectories. Students have also undeniably and inevitably embodied various (a)gendered and (a)sexual identities, cultural and religious identities, and physical and neural diversities. As such, the PGDE English programme seeks to recognise and validate the intersectional social positions (Hill Collins, 2019) that each year’s cohort brings to the programme as resources for building teacher identities, critical practices, and civic participation with the aim that student teachers will draw on their diverse resources to develop critical dispositions of being and doing (Vasquez et al., 2019). Inviting student diversity into the programme involved revising entry requirements to include a broader range of students with qualifications and experiences related to English language, literacy, and literature education. Within this change, the previously narrow understanding of English literature as being only from England or the United States has also been revised to include English literary study from a transnational perspective. PGDE English cohorts now explicitly include people with feminist and postcolonial backgrounds, film and media studies, sociolinguistics, etcetera. Furthermore, we actively use an asset-based approach to teaching and learning (Jackson & Boutte, 2018; hooks, 1994; Paris & Alim, 2014) which sees students’ identities, cultures, social positions, and political concerns as resources for learning. This approach resonates with decoloniality’s notion of pluriversality where the multiplicity of meaning, viewpoint, and practice is intrinsic to doing the political-pedagogical. These moves within the English specialisation sometimes sit in tension with the broader PGDE programme, and so the students and I often speak openly about the relationship between practice and pedagogy with broader institutional, social, cultural, and political systems. Pulling together the theoretical and praxis-based threads of critical literacies, CDA, decoloniality, and asset-based pedagogy, I designed a series of activities that help facilitate students’ critical engagement with the Doulton Fountain. The activities are sequenced following CDA: (1) Observational tasks, (2) Space and place-based tasks, (3) Research-based tasks, and (4) (Re)Design tasks. Students engage with these tasks by collecting and producing a range of texts (from written descriptions

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to photographic essays, to redesigned monument plaques) that, collectively, contribute toward critical discussions of power, access, diversity, and (re)design (Janks, 2010) posing the following critical questions (adapted from Janks, 1993; Janks et al., 2013): Who is included/excluded? Who is foregrounded, backgrounded, or silenced? Who gets represented and misrepresented? What patterns emerge across texts? Who gets to speak, and who gets spoken for? What social issues are embedded in the text? Whose interests are served?1

In its design, I have sought to use the series of activities as a means to begin building the conditions of decolonial possibility, wherein student teachers and I are able to ask difficult questions about ourselves and society in relation to literacy and power, draw on each other’s perspectives and cultural capitals to garner deeper critical engagement with space and place and play with multiple meaning-making practices such as photography and writing. (De)Activating Our Political Voices And then […] Jane alights upon the woman she has passed over at least twice. How could she not have noticed before, there in the niche, sitting cool as a cucumber in the Glasgow chill, is a young woman, no more than a girl, but unmistakably coloured. Jesus, she says aloud; she has not been looking properly after all, has missed the girl in all that elaborate Victorian detail and modelled in the same white stone as all the other figures […] quite unbelievable that more than a hundred years ago, miscegenation was celebrated in a public work here in the ‘centre’. (Extract from Zoë Wicomb’s, 2008, p. 71, There’s the bird that never flew).

Seeing is a situated, positioned, social practice (Govender, 2019b; Sturken & Cartwright, 2001), given that the “way we see things is 1 A more detailed discussion of the design of the series of activities and their intended meanings is available as a blog post on the Anti-Racist Educator’s website: Govender, N. (2019b). Can you see a social issue?(Re) Looking at everyday texts: https://www. theantiracisteducator.com/post/can-you-see-a-social-issue-re-looking-at-everyday-texts. An early version of the workbook in which these activities are situated are also freely available online as Critical Discourse Analysis in Teacher Education: Power, Place, & Text: https://pureportal.strath.ac.uk/en/impacts/critical-discourse-analysis-in-teacher-edu cation-power-place-text.

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affected by what we know or what we believe” (Berger, 1977, p. 8). From critical literacy, this includes being able to see and name the social issues inherent in multimodal texts (Janks, 2014). From a decolonial perspective, the colonial matrix of power often goes unnoticed because it “is maintained alive in books, in the criteria for academic performance, in cultural patterns, in common sense, in the self-image of peoples, in aspirations of self, and so many other aspects of our modern experience. In a way, as modern subjects we breathe coloniality all the time and everyday” (Maldonado-Torres, 2007, p. 243). To see coloniality at work in the texts around us is therefore a political act. To resist and act upon coloniality takes us a step toward the decolonial turn. In the following sections, I explore student teachers’ (emerging) political-pedagogical voices through their acts of (1) seeing power and problematising the common sense as well as (2) assertions of self. Seeing Power: Problematising the Commonplace Student teachers’ critical engagement with the Doulton Fountain is evident in the texts they collect and produce. Across these texts, a range of social issues emerge—sometimes framed as thoughts and considerations, sometimes posed as questions, and sometimes articulated as observations. Collectively, we spent time looking and looking again at the monument to unpick the ways in which its discursive features operationalised a range of values or ideologies and social issues. These social issues include: (1) hierarchical relations of power represented through the shape, size, and layout of the fountain; (2) contradictions between representations of power instantiated in the fountain and the surrounding context of Glasgow’s Eastend, a historically deprived area; (3) the representation of various human figures that make coloniality and empire explicit by actively constructing Westernised versions of colonised cultures and identities, underpinned by racism and cisheteronormativity; (4) the use of religious iconography, as well as connections made between the fountain and other popular culture texts; (5) representations of colonial relationships with the environment; and (6) the materiality of the fountain. Student teachers’ actions in collecting and producing texts demonstrate certain political disruptions. Firstly, the multiple ways of seeing the same artefact, space, and place reveals that literacy itself is always pluriversal. Our collaborative effort at doing CDA meant that our multiple ways of seeing and experiencing all contributed toward building knowledge, disrupting dominant understandings that literacy and meanings are static or necessarily individualised (Street, 2006).

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Secondly, knowledge itself was not fixed to any one mode. Instead, written words, images, spaces, locations, beliefs, discussions, and so on all contributed to building understanding. Consider, for instance, how the images in students’ photographic work helps to illustrate or anchor some of the meanings expressed in Table 11.1. Where hierarchal power is described in viewing the monument in Table 11.1, photographs 1– 3 in Fig 11.1 (by Anoosh, pseudonym) help to exemplify the form of that power relation as it appears in terracotta. Furthermore, images 2 and 3 further zoom into the details of that hierarchy by pinpointing who is represented as having different “levels” of power within the colonial structure. While images 1–3 help to illustrate students’ ways of seeing power in text, images 4 and 5 (Matthew, pseudonym) demonstrate how they played with perspective to reveal additional relations of power. In these images, students explore their capacity to navigate space—repositioning themselves and their bodies, in different spaces and positions around the fountain to consider its location more thoroughly. Their play with space and photography reveals certain contradictions in power: the socioeconomic disparities between Glasgow’s East End , “An area suffering poverty hosting a fountain that received £4mil in funding” (Matthew), or the classist divide underpinning images of empire surrounded by a security fence and camera surveillance. Collaboratively, we brought our ways of seeing (Berger, 1977) into political-pedagogical action by unpicking the multimodal grammar of the monument—an act of untangling the colonial matrix. This means that our readings of the monument intermingled: some spotted features that others had missed, some made connections that others couldn’t, and we all contributed toward a collective social practice of deconstruction. Separating the individual meanings and engagements therefore deteriorates the overall political act of collective deconstruction. As such, I use Table 11.1, below, as a means to represent how our multiple voices intermingled within a moment of political-pedagogical agency (i.e., each student has a voice) and collective meaning-making (i.e., each voice is interdependent upon others to be disruptive). It is an attempt to display our “reading practices as a situated coming-together of identities, geographies, and semiotic resources” (Campano et al., 2020, p. 143) (Fig. 11.1).

Social issues: Hierarchical relations of imperial power

Textual features:

Shape and size

Table 11.1 A multimodal grammar of power

(continued)

• The first thing I noticed at the fountain was the statue of Queen Victoria at the very top and I would say the figures on the fountain are definitely the most prominent features • My eye was immediately drawn to the large colonial figures within the fountain • Glasgow details are lowest and not prominent • Imposing. A demonstration of power and wealth. Protected by railings and CCTV —to prevent damage or again about protecting colonial view of ourselves? • You are forced to look up to authority at the top of the fountain—a forced act of subservience—a reminder of our place. Between the queen and commoners, home-nation military men enforce order and power structures • The fountain is structured to represent a social and political hierarchy propped up at the bottom by Glasgow, second city of the Empire and surrounded by an iron fence

Extracts from the data:

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Social issues: Contradictions

Textual features:

Space, place, and time

(continued)

(continued)

• “Let Glasgow Flourish” interesting in context of placing of the fountain and people’s palace in the East End—amongst poverty. Could be seen in lots of ways; A demonstration of power and wealth to maintain control, a way to inspire the proletariat to keep working hard, a reminder of where the city’s wealth and grand buildings come from, a Victorian signal of philanthropy and benevolence—trying to improve living standards for the working classes? Doesn’t feel like that is what make’s Glasgow flourish anymore! • Fountain is at the “Front” of the palace which adds to it’s grandeur, but is actually tucked away, behind an embankment and away from the main walkway through Glasgow Green, hints at a vague apologetic embarrassment about it. A denial of what it says about our history as a nation and trading centre for colonial power

Extracts from the data:

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Social issues:

Coloniality and race/ethnicity, culture, and nationality

Textual features:

Human figures

(continued)

(continued)

• The fountain is surrounded by an iron fence and flanked by CCTV cameras. A further reminder of our place as subjects • Something that really stayed with us was a bunch of flowers left on the Doulton fountain that were left in memory of someone’s loved one, celebrating the good times they had shared in Glasgow Green. After that, we could see the same sentiment everywhere—people celebrating their personal highs on a backdrop of humanity’s lows • It has been positioned between the palace and the new housing estate just outside Glasgow Green. Between the palace of the people and the people • Only those serving the empire are represented here, but in stereotypical, generic ways • Colonies at the bottom—South Africa at the back. India at the front directly under Victoria. Australia and Canada. Interesting which colonies are picked as worthy of representation here • The fountain places natives and natural resources of commonwealth countries at the bottom of the statue, a military above them, women pouring jugs then Queen Victoria above them all

Extracts from the data:

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Iconography

Textual features:

(continued)

Popular culture

(continued)

• We notice the Australian statue differs from the other because the woman is standing while the man is sitting dow[n] • Women are seated, men are standing apart from in Australia (make the Sheila’s work hard!). No Aboriginal representation • Westernised features. South African black lady only person not fully clothed or with deviation in the representation of her features (hair/height/nose etc.) • The women pouring jugs are almost lost in the ornamental flourishes beside them. The fountain reinforces traditional ideas of masculinity and femininity • Surrounded by a circle of Christian bishops. Giving weight to missionary role of colonialism and the idea that Victoria is acting in God’s name/with God’s power, protection and blessing • This reminded us of movies that depict romanticised, idealistic visions of Empire and the exploration of the “exotic” e.g., “Out of Africa”, “Indiana Jones: Temple of Doom”, “Pocahontas”

Heterosexism and heteronormativity

Religion

Extracts from the data:

Social issues:

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Social issues: Relationship(s) with the environment

Coloniality endures

Textual features:

Animals, plants, and minerals

Materiality

(continued)

• Also there aren’t any specifically Australian animals or symbols depicted. India doesn’t have an animal instead is represented by cultural dress and religious symbols • The Moose head used to represent Canada reminded us of the stereotypical use of a kilt to represent Scotland. Does a moose = Canada? • It was probably once a deep red in colour but has fallen into slight disrepair with algae and weeds building up around it • The fountain is made from Terracotta, donated from a British potter. A Chinese resource which is left unsaid

Extracts from the data:

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Assertions of Self If “The power to narrate, or to block other narratives from forming and emerging, is very important to culture and imperialism, and constitutes one of the major connections between them” (Said, 1979, p. xiii), then employing critical literacies and decolonial praxis should include constructing conditions under which students (including youth) might (1) speak back to colonial power and/or (2) speak up from their own positionalities. The former resonates with critical literacies’ concept of redesign whereby problematic discourses and texts are reimagined and reconstructed in more socially just ways, while the latter is perhaps more resonant with a decolonial turn and involves placing typically disempowered people and positions at the centre of discursive design. That is, while redesign (Cope & Kalantzis, 2016; Janks, 2014) entails transforming texts and discourses from alternative viewpoints, being moved to write suggests an assertion of identity and perspective into the teaching and learning space. Consider the example of a redesigned information plaque by Eilidh (pseudonym), below: Information Plaque Redesign: The Doulton fountain was built to commemorate Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee in 1887. Its construction and the figures it depicts of monarchy, military power, religion and the people of the commonwealth, provides an interesting, yet potentially uncomfortable representation of the empire, the power structure of Victorian society and the place that Glasgow had as a centre of trade and industry during the colonial era. The inscriptions at the bottom read “Let Glasgow Flourish", but when looking at the fountain, we should also reflect upon who it was that flourished during this controversial era, in terms of class, race, gender and economic prosperity, and at what cost to others.

I Would then also Have Smaller Signs Around the Fountain Asking Engaging Questions to Make People Think About What They Are Looking at, Such as: What do you think the figures of the commonwealth countries shown here tell us about Victorian ideas about gender, race and the importance of trade?

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1 2

4

Besides the obvious irony of "Enjoy" (but from afar! Remember we are watching via surveillance!), I found the use of the word "best" interesting here, also. What do they mean by "best"? The most intact? The most preserved? Or the most intricate? The most beautiful? "Best" is a subjective word- who has decided this superiority?

3

5

This fact is more powerful when considering the placement of the fountain, with multiple meaning depending on where you stand. Queen Victoria looks down on the entrance of the People's Palace. From the entrance of the People's Palace, the backdrop to the fountain is Glasgow's East End. An area suffering poverty hosting a fountain that received £4mil in funding. A plume of industrial fumes bellow from a chimney in the south.

Fig. 11.1 Visual components in the multimodal grammar of power

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What does the construction of the fountain tell you about the values and power structure of Victorian society? What makes Glasgow flourish as a city today? What commonwealth countries are missing from the fountain? Why do you think that might be?

Eilidh’s redesign of the fountain’s information plaque represents at least two critical shifts: (a) a shift away from typical information genre texts as presenting only descriptive accounts or lists of historical events and (2) a move toward repositioning the relationship between text, text designer, and audience. On one hand, Eilidh makes certain design choices about what information to include, and how to sequence it. While there is perhaps space for this redesign to be developed further to include more critical accounts of power and social effect on marginalised groups within colonial Britain as well as Indigenous people and racialised diaspora across colonised contexts, Eilidh’s design choices here provide some indication of turning toward increased social awareness. A further critical move is demonstrated in their use of questions rather than a more typical presentation of information about the fountain. These questions relate closely to the critical questions presented earlier in this chapter. Following the order of questions in Eilidh’s redesign, they attend to the following broader questions of literacy and power: – – – –

Who is foregrounded? Whose interests are served? What are the possible alternative perspectives? Who gets represented, misrepresented, or silenced?

Audiences of this redesign are therefore positioned as active in the reading/viewing process—reimagined as participants in reading the monument. To an extent, Eilidh’s discursive redesign operates at two different levels: (1) at the level of text design, it re-imagines interactional relationships between readers/viewers and the fountain. This is an assertion of Eilidh’s own learning about how texts work in a social context. And (2) it operates at a political-pedagogical level wherein Eilidh applies their own practices of critical literacies to reconstruct, and bend, the genre of information plaques so that it engages readers in critical literacies. Operationalising voice in these interconnected ways seems to demonstrate “the

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recognition that liberation is a collective project that requires dialogic participation and a critical consciousness of how both oppressor and oppressed are bound together through power relations” (GaztambideFernandez, 2012, p. 45), as well as how this is mediated through discourse. In another example, Devi (pseudonym) was moved to write. That is, they produced a piece of creative writing that was not explicitly prompted by the activities set for the OLE: Nobody Cares to Look up You stand above me. Your greedy eye can’t see me, By design. But you know I am here. I feel the weight of your decorated dress and your silent soldiers who stand firmly on my neck. But I smile as your pride spews forth the last drops of power to be carried away by time. You know I am here. Years and miles I travelled to sit beneath your gaze, a reminder of those Empire days. Of glory. And I am here. What riches do I represent? What purpose did I serve? And who will know my story when my voice leaves the earth? Yet I am here. I am here in celebration of my colours and my taste I’m alive in waves of fabric, with my history. Replaced. You stand frozen, with that grimace on your face.

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Almost out of place. Yet, I am here. And I am stronger than you. You stand above me, but your face is out of view. And nobody cares to look up. The critical lies in being moved to write, to speak up (and against) the issues of power being discussed without depending on or reformulating existing texts. It therefore matters that the writer of this poem identifies as a female Person of Colour and that their assertion of self in a formal educational environment represents a decolonial praxis of struggle: “all those struggles against the modern/colonial matrices of power in their myriad manifestations and faces. And I am thinking of all those struggles—and all those efforts, strategies, processes, and practices—to push, enable, create, and construct a decolonizing otherwise” (emphasis added: Mignolo & Walsh, 2018, p. 101). Devi’s poem demonstrates the tensions between: – Belonging and nation state: “What riches do I represent? What purpose do I serve?” – Ethnic and cultural identity: “I am here in celebration of my colours and my taste…”

amongst others. Significantly, this is a “decolonised otherwise” that pushes against the silent, persistent empire in this space, with her own voice: “Yes, I am here”.

Conclusion and Recommendations decoloniality is a perspective, stance, and proposition of thought, analysis, sensing, making, doing, feeling, and being that is actional (in the Fanonian sense), praxistical, and continuing. Moreover, it is prospectively relational in that it looks, thinks, and acts with the present-future-past, including with the peoples, subjects, and situated and embodied knowledges, territories, and struggles that push toward, advance, and open possibilities of an otherwise. (Walsh cited in Mignolo & Walsh, 2018, p. 100)

It is impossible to capture in this chapter the fullest available understandings of decoloniality, of critical literacies, and of the meanings and

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assertions made by the student teachers during their Outdoor Learning Experience (OLE). However, as Walsh mentions, both the OLE and this chapter constitute a “process, practice, and project of sowing seeds” (in Mignolo & Walsh, 2018, p. 100). That is, if student teachers engage in processes of critical literacies that take decoloniality seriously, then perhaps their own classroom praxis might be reshaped by the voices and perspectives of young people. In this sense, young people might be able to contribute more significantly to meaning-making in classrooms, reshaping institutional culture, curriculum (re)design, and community involvement that break traditional in-/out-of-school boundaries. This requires following pedagogical approaches that make explicit ways of identifying norms and discursive instantiations of power, deconstructing how power works through discourse, exploring non-normativity as a means to disrupt normativity itself, and designing activities on social transformation and civic participation (Andrews & Govender, 2022; Janks, 2014; Luke & Freebody, 1999). As part of a decolonial project, praxis also requires making coloniality visible, placing these particular issues of power, marginalisation, identity, and so on at the centre. These might then provide the conditions for teachers and youth to be moved to speak back to power and speak up for themselves in more socially just ways. Furthermore, gaining a political-pedagogical voice therefore requires disrupting normative understandings of literacy and literateness, reading/viewing, and writing/designing, as well as the value placed on different modes and media that can be used to convey knowledge or understanding.

Pedagogical Feature Recent activist movements, such as #BlackLivesMatter, #StillNotSafe, the climate crisis, Trans* Lives Matter, as well as associated calls to decolonise the curriculum, and so on, demonstrate the ways in which young people are reigniting calls for social change. Large media followings, burgeoning social media profiles and activities, as well as recent in-person protests across the world signal not only what changes young people want to see in the world but also how social transformation might be practised. That is, perhaps more and more, young people are seeing, naming, and acting upon the social issues that matter to them. In this context, meaningmaking and literacy as a means to (re)design social futures (Cope &

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Kalantzis, 2016) therefore become vital considerations for education and educational praxis at all levels. Working at the interface of critical literacies and decoloniality, it becomes possible to understand that political voice and participation can be shaped in a broad range of ways that are deeply bound to individual, community, and (trans)national identities and experiences with power. On one hand, this means tapping into the ways young people already participate in the world: from social media, text consumption, the spaces and places they live in, the languages they use and how they use them, and their existing ways of speaking up and speaking back to power. On the other hand, literacy education that is both critical and decolonial has an existing and ever-evolving body of praxis that often remains out-ofreach to young people, contributing to the limited knowledge and skills that they might have access to in schools, colleges, and higher education institutions. The role of the teacher therefore becomes vital in providing young people with access to information as well as practices of critical enquiry that they might then be able to use to make their lives better. Developing and employing political-pedagogical agency in and out of the classroom therefore becomes a means for teachers to create conditions of decolonial possibility as part of everyday practice. Literacy is a political practice: rethinking traditional, colonial (monolingual, monocultural, and monomodal) ways of teaching–learning toward critical and pluriversal praxis. From the chapter discussion above, both the what and the how of teaching therefore matter. The what might include: 1. A asset-based approach—Starting with students’ existing knowledge and ways of knowing as the baseline for teaching, 2. A multimodal approach—Drawing on non-traditional texts, especially those that are often designated every day or common sense texts as part of serious investigation, and 3. A decolonial approach—Actively working with texts that present pluriversal social categories, perspectives, contexts, experiences, and so on, and rubbing them against each other. The how might then include considering what political-pedagogical practice looks like in context by drawing on:

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1. An intersectional approach—Actively engaging with students’ experiences of privilege and marginality as a means to access and critically engage with privilege and marginality they might not have experienced, 2. A transmodal approach—Working across sign systems and genres in both consuming and producing texts, interrogating powerful genres, and providing opportunities to reshape them in culturally sustainable ways, and 3. A critical literacy approach—Asking critical questions about discourse, power, privilege, silence, and marginality and directing these to both texts and practices of teaching–learning. Applying critical and decolonial research and pedagogical frameworks to designing and implementing teaching–learning experiences in and out of the formal classroom is therefore pluriversal in itself, where both teachers and students navigate the matrices of power. This may help to transform education into one that values who teachers and students are, takes seriously the range of possible meanings in a context, and situates meaning-making (literacy) within political practice and civic participation bent on (re)designing more socially just and equitable futures.

References Andrews, G., & Govender, N. (2022). Doing queer critical literacies: Transnational moments. In D. Banegas, & N. Govender (Eds.), Gender diversity and sexuality in English language education: New transnational voices. Bloomsbury. Banerjee, J. (2009) Doulton fountain, Glasgow, designed by Arthur Pearce. http://www.victorianweb.org/sculpture/fountains/3.html Berger, J. (1977). Ways of seeing. Penguin Books. Campano, G., Philip Nichols, T., & Player, G. D. (2020). Multimodal critical inquiry: Nurturing decolonial imaginaries. In E. B. Moje, P. Afflerbach, P. Enciso, & N. K. Lesaux, (Eds.), Handbook of reading research (Vol. V, pp. 137–152), Routledge. Cope, B., & Kalantzis, M. (Eds.) (2016). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Learning by design. Springer. Catalano, T., & Waugh, L. R. (2020). Critical discourse analysis, critical discourse studies and beyond. Springer.

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Connell, L. (2003). Modes of marginality: Scottish literature and the uses of postcolonial theory Comparative Studies of South Asia. Africa and the Middle East, 23(1), 41–53. Fairclough, N. (2001). Language and power. Longman. Freire, P., & Macedo, D. (1987) Literacy: Reading the word and the world. Routledge. Gaztambide-Fernandez, R. (2012) Decolonization and the pedagogy of solidarity. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education and Society, 1(1), 41–67. Govender, N (2019b) Can you see a social issue? (Re) Looking at everyday texts. https://www.theantiracisteducator.com/post/can-you-see-asocial-issue-re-looking-at-everyday-texts. Govender, N. N. (2018). Deconstructing heteronormativity and hegemonic gender orders through critical literacy and materials design. In E. Walton & R. Osman (Eds.), Teacher education for diversity: Conversations from the Global South (pp. 36–52). Routledge. Govender, N. N. (2019a). Negotiating gender and sexual diversity in English language teaching: ‘Critical’-oriented educational materials designed by preservice English teachers at a South African University. In M. E. López-Gopar (Ed.), International perspectives on critical pedagogies in ELT (pp. 125–149). Palgrave Macmillan. Hill Collins, P. (2019). Intersectionality as critical social theory. Duke University Press. hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. Routledge. Jackson, T. O., & Boutte, G. S. (2018). Exploring culturally relevant/responsive pedagogy as praxis in teacher education. The New Educator, 14(2), 87–90. Janks, H. (Ed.) & colleagues. (1993). Critical language awareness series. Witwatersrand University Press. Janks, H. (1997). Critical discourse analysis as a research tool. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 18(3), 329–342. Janks, H., Dixon, K., Ferreira, A., Granville, S., & Newfield, D. (2013). Doing critical literacy: Texts and activities for students and teachers. Routledge. Janks, H. (2010). Literacy and power. Routledge. Janks, H. (2014). Critical literacy’s ongoing importance for education. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 57 (5), 349–356. Kress, G. (2015). Semiotic work: Applied linguistics and a social semiotic account of multimodality. Aila Review, 28(1), 49–71. Lim, F. V. (2018). Developing a systemic functional approach to teach multimodal literacy. Functional Linguistics, 5(1), 1–17. Luke, A., & Freebody, P. (1999). Further notes on the four resources model. Reading online, (pp. 1–4).

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Maldonado-Torres, N. (2007). On the coloniality of being: Contributions to the development of a concept. Cultural Studies, 21(2–3), 240–270. Martin, F., & Pirbhai-Illich, F. (2016). Towards decolonising teacher education: Criticality, relationality and intercultural understanding. Journal of Intercultural Studies, 37 (4), 355–372. Mendoza, S. (2014). The Adelante Oral History Project as a site of decolonial potential in transforming school curriculums. Regeneración Tlacuilolli: UCLA Raza Studies Journal, 1(1), 11–26. Mignolo, W., &Walsh, C. (2018). On decoloniality: Concepts, analytics, praxis. Duke University Press. Mignolo, W. (2007). Introduction: Coloniality of power and de-colonial thinking. Cultural Studies, 21(2–3), 155–167. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S. J. (2015). Decoloniality as the future of Africa. History Compass, 13(10), 485–496. Pahl, K. H., & Rowsell, J. (2011). Artifactual critical literacy: A new perspective for literacy education. Berkeley Review of Education, 2(2), 129–151. Palladino, M. M., & Miller, J. (2011). Glasgow’s Doulton Fountain and postcolonial heterotopia in “There’s the Bird That Never Flew.” Safundi, 12(3–4), 407–423. Paris, D., & Alim, H. S. (2014). What are we seeking to sustain through culturally sustaining pedagogy? A loving critique forward. Harvard Educational Review, 84(1), 85–100. Rogers, R., & Mosley Wetzel, M. (2014). Designing critical literacy education through critical discourse analysis: Pedagogical & research tools for teacher researchers. Routledge. Said, E. (1979). Orientalism. Pantheon Serafini, F. (2012). Expanding the four resources model: Reading visual and multi-modal texts. Pedagogies: An International Journal, 7 (2), 150–164. Street, B. (2006). Autonomous and ideological models of literacy: Approaches from new literacy studies. Media Anthropology Network, 17 , 1–15. Sturken, M., & Cartwright, L. (2001). Practices of looking. Oxford University Press. Vasquez, V. M., Janks, H., & Comber, B. (2019). Critical literacy as a way of being and doing. Language Arts, 96(5), 300–311. Wicomb, Z. (2008). There’s the bird that never flew. In Z. Wicomb (Ed.), The one that got away: Short stories (pp. 65–79). The New Press.

CHAPTER 12

Conclusion: International Perspectives on Youth Political Mobilisations Ian Rivers and C. Laura Lovin

In 2019, the thinking underpinning this text was inspired by protests led by young people that aimed to address injustices and inequalities, which were then rooted in poverty, austerity, violence, increased surveillance, global warming, dislocation, xenophobia and the rise of the political and social right. We saw how children and young people become politicised in moments of conflict and how they become conduits for political and policy change. However, we were also aware that those very children and young people represent a group that is often relegated to the apolitical sphere both before and after such moments of crisis. Through this edited collection, our community of authors have recognised and advocated for children and young people’s inclusion in both

I. Rivers (B) University of Strathclyde, GLASGOW, UK e-mail: [email protected] C. L. Lovin (B) Independednt Scholar, GLASGOW, UK e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 I. Rivers and C. L. Lovin (eds.), Young People Shaping Democratic Politics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29378-8_12

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praxis and policy and have challenged, with evidence, those dominant and exclusory norms that have so often guided education philosophies. We believe that inclusive education should transform schools into spaces that are responsive to and supportive of all groups of learners and explore the political discourses that are present in the media, at home and, ultimately, influence our places of study (McAuliffe, 2018). The chapters in this book have sought to explore multiple frameworks of inclusion by highlighting spaces for participation in political processes that are or have been populated by the voices of children and young people. In the context of politics, we believe inclusion constitutes a prerequisite for the practice of democracy. Our authors have shown how young people engage in a moment or series of moments where particular groups experience exclusion from the exercise of political rights, political debate, and participation. They have also shown how the political participation of children and youth become essential to democratic discourse, and how their power and agency in challenging inequality can be important drivers of transformation.

Education: Where Inclusive Praxis and Discourse Meet Institutionalisation When this book was first mooted, we were struck by the fact that, within mainstream academic and professional writing, there had been a narrative of disengagement (Esser & de Vreese, 2007; Russell et al., 2002). Some authors also argued that, where once there was interest, over the years, some young people have become disenfranchised by the absence of positive change (Southwell, 2016). Yet, as social researchers, we also knew from our own academic writing that children and young people are not passive observers of political discourses, but actively attune to and engage with ideas, campaigns, and philosophies, and have their own opinions about the ways in which politicians present themselves and represent constituents (Rivers et al., 2018). For example, during the 2015 General Election in the UK and the 2016 Presidential Election in the US, Rivers and colleagues found that students in both primary/elementary and secondary/high schools in the UK and the US had acquired a great deal of information about local and national campaigns and had very clearly formed views about political leaders. These observations differed significantly from those of authors such as Bronstein, Daily and Horowitz in the early 1990s (Bronstein et al., 1993): they argued that, although

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children and young people understand that an election is taking place, they do not possess concrete information or the factual content about the issues being debated and thus only pick up the “exciting” negative information that appears in the media. However, as one US 5th-grade student in Rivers et al.’s (2018) study observed during the 2016 Presidential Election: [They] should be talking about health care, because they’re saying that Obamacare isn’t good, and they’re trying to figure out a better way to give health care… I don’t know if they’re talking about it… because they’re not really doing anything about it, they’re just kind of watching.

Throughout this book, we have seen how these keen observations have become manifest in both campus and street political movements and have resulted not only in the mobilisation of young people affected by the discrimination they faced but also of their allies—students and faculty— all of whom shared a belief that discrimination, exclusion and, ultimately, the silencing of whole communities is inherently wrong and profoundly unjust. This is clearly emphasised in the chapters written by Anna Sampaio and Jesica Siham Fernández, and by Wanda Blanchett and Shelley Zion in their chapter on Black Lives Matter—#BLM. Here, educational institutions are not only part of the solution in mobilising action but can also be part of the problem of reproducing inequality and injustice, as Blanchett and Zion attest: Our public schools have long been used as an instrument of segregation and forced assimilation, beginning with laws that forbade slaves to learn to read, removed Native American students from their homes and placed them in boarding schools, outlawed the use of languages other than English in public school classrooms, and criminalized children who did not attend school.

The chapters in this collection have shown us how institutions, such as schools and universities, have become spaces where students not only learn to recognise exclusion but also can actively seek to redress it. For example, in Serbia, Dragan Stanojevi´c, Jelisaveta Vukeli´c and Aleksandar Tomaševi´c aptly demonstrated that education is a key facilitator of conventional political engagement. They have also shown us that age is a factor in unconventional political engagement with younger people more willing to post critiques on social media, sign petitions and participate in

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boycotts and social demonstrations rather than engage with party politics and elected politicians. Stanojevi´c and colleagues make one very important point about the difference between unconventional and conventional political participation among young people in particular. They note that “engagement is more common among those who have gone through the college experience” and this “shows that those with more cultural capital find it easier.” Thus, the acquisition of this cultural capital through education along with increasing self-confidence and a sense of agency become the fundamental building blocks of political activism. Building upon Stanojevi´c and colleagues’ observations, in his chapter, Grant Andrews explored the ways in which Black students in South Africa sought to redress historical discrimination and the commemoration of the man who paved the way for the introduction of apartheid, namely Cecil Rhodes, through unconventional political participation. The #RhodesMustFall movement not only sought the removal of the statue of Cecil Rhodes from the University of Cape Town campus but also intersected with a number of other movements focusing on the failure of successive governments to address the social and economic barriers to university education (#FeesMustFall), and the failure to address rape culture (#EndRapeCulture). In this chapter, we have seen how unconventional political participation incorporated the use of the body as a means of expressing opposition and, ultimately, celebrating success through performance, as well as a means of interrupting or blocking a photographic display of the #RhodesMustFall exhibition by trans students who were themselves marginalised and silenced. Andrews’ chapter is an important focal point because it shows us that universities are places of contradiction, and it highlights the importance of not looking at one political movement in isolation. In the case of the University of Cape Town protests, we have to understand the intersectionality that exists between being Black, being poor, being a woman and being queer or trans, and the tensions that are manifest. We must also reflect upon the fact that different unconventional political movements have different aims and objectives: the #RhodesMustFall movement did not recognise the contributions of trans and queer activists in the MustFall movements, and yet they were there. Indeed, we see similarities today in the anti-trans campaigns by some organisations purporting to support sexual minorities, and who have conveniently forgotten that trans activists were present at the start of gay rights protests. When Sethembile Msezane performed her

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piece entitled Chapungu—The Day Rhodes Fell at the University of Cape Town, Andrews argues that the performance not only was an expression of resistance against imperialism and Black oppression but it was also very much gendered, reflecting the oppression of Black women. Thus, while this performance spoke to some, it did not speak to others, and thus resulted in other forms of protest. Comparable with the protests at the University of Cape Town in 2015 and 2016, across several chapters we have also seen how educational institutions defer to state narratives and are unwilling to tackle the contradictions and tensions that are born out of their histories. Anna Sampaio and Jesica Siham Fernández described this institutional view of children and young people as being one where they are portrayed as “incapacitated victims” and not potential agents of change. Here, children and young people who represent minority groups are “done to” by those institutions that represent the state or status quo—see also Mary Hawkesworth’s chapter on the complexities of trans youth activism in the US, and Susana Galán and Angie Abdelmonem’s chapter on anti-sexual harassment activism in Egypt. Ultimately, those who represent the institutions lead our society’s (political, social, scientific and, of course, religious) aim to render mute, ignore, or persecute those who do not conform to the mainstream. As Hawkesworth observed in her chapter: Trans citizens are subjected to unrelenting invasions of privacy, queried by peers, teachers, school administrators, police, airport security guards, airline personnel, medical professionals, potential employers, colleagues, transphobic bar patrons, and people on the street about the relation between their gender identity and their genitalia.

While Hawkesworth demonstrated that it is not just schools and universities that are the source of discrimination against trans youth— it is endemic within modern-day societies—schools and universities are, as Navan Govender has shown, places where we can begin to interrogate prevailing narratives of exclusion and rejection through the curriculum. Indeed, the curricula of schools and universities should open minds, not close them to alternative arguments—this was the reason why subjects such as Modern Studies, Social Studies, Citizenship, and Civics were introduced into mainstream education. They are not instructional (how

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to) classes, but they are there to help children and young people understand our systems and their origins and provide opportunities to question and indeed challenge prevailing dogmas. Perhaps one of the most pertinent demonstrations of a failure to understand the central role of educational institutions in interrogating political decisions can be found in the Scottish Referendum on Independence that took place in 2014. While 16–17-year-olds could vote, 26 of the 32 local authorities in Scotland did not allow Yes/No campaign organisations to facilitate debates in schools (Rivers et al., 2018). Yet, as Rivers and colleagues asserted, with secondary/high-school education, the Modern Studies curriculum specifically requires students to study issues of democracy, social inequality, and international political or socioeconomic concerns So, the question has to be asked, why deny students an opportunity to discuss an issue that would directly influence their future prosperity? Of course, independence from the UK was an emotive subject for many in Scotland at the time, and while the debate became a prominent feature of daily life, there was a chasm of silence in many of Scotland’s schools. Interestingly, the fears associated with discussing this topic in school were not so much grounded in the topic itself but in how it would be taught, as there was deep-rooted feeling on either side; and this could have influenced the ways in which the issue was presented. However, what local authorities failed to realise was that social and political movements are not about uniformity and the maintenance of the status quo, they are disruptive, challenging, usually disrespectful of authority, and necessarily so. A vital learning opportunity was lost, and vital voices were silenced in this debate. The spaces occupied by children and young people are incredibly important if we truly believe in democracy and democratic change. They should not pay deference to the state but challenge it to do better. As Dragan Stanojevi´c and his colleagues have illustrated, schools and universities are integral to the continued economic and social prosperity of a community and nation; yet we have seen that there remains a belief that children and young people need to be protected from those debates and discourses that are not mainstream, conventional, or endorsed by science or theology. By way of contrast, during the COVID-19 pandemic we also saw how state-endorsed public health initiatives to combat the spread of this lethal infection were positioned as deleterious to children and young people (educationally). We saw how protesters framed those very same public health controls in terms of inhibiting freedom of speech and, for

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US Americans, the denial of other first amendment rights—freedom of the press, of assembly, and the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances. Finally, we saw how protesters framed vaccination as a form of social control, with children and young people in particular being positioned once again as victims through a discourse that characterised vaccination as dangerous to their health. Throughout the pandemic, we saw these direct challenges to political authority and scientific knowledge through the lens of “fake news.” Because we were all learning as we experienced the pandemic (governments, scientists and citizens alike), each of us had to decide whom to believe, and who was right and who was wrong. However, there was one constant in all of this: children and young people were silenced and often portrayed as victims. Going forward, we have to consider how we reconcile the opposing positions that COVID-19 introduced for the state, communities, and individuals (especially children and young people). We should also reflect upon the ways in which those social movements galvanised opinion to re-open our communities in the face of public health hesitancy, and the integral role played by narratives relating to children’s and young people’s futures in this.

Allies: Promoting Visibility and Eradicating Silence Throughout this book, the role of allies in advancing causes has featured significantly. On the one hand, Elinor Bray-Collins has shown us in her chapter focusing on Lebanon that, where there is a groundswell of support for a cause (in this case, anti-sectarianism), that cause can be derailed when it is adopted or taken over by other groups (allies and political leaders) who then use the movement for their own political purposes, excluding and silencing those earlier voices. Yet, as Sampaio and Fernández have shown us in their case study of Santa Clara University, DREAMers needed allies: they needed faculty and students to support them as well as national leadership to effect change. Through their use of a feminist lens, Sampaio and Fernández demonstrated how the vulnerability and precarity of undocumented young people within a system driven by assumptions of whiteness and certification of citizenship needed reform, and how those young people who had grown up in the US needed a physical space where they were accepted, and where they could enhance their own well-being.

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Allies need not just be on campus, allies can be part of a social movement that transcends geography, and this is aptly demonstrated by Gemma Geis, Patricia Melgar and Ana Vidu in their chapter exploring the #MeToo movement. Geis and colleagues use the metaphor of David and Goliath to demonstrate how difficult it is to address gender based violence on university campuses. Power resides with the university system and leadership, and their desire to protect the institutions’ good name and the reputation of the professor. However, once again we see how the system can be challenged when others stand up. In the example given of Maria, we saw that not only did she have the support of a professor when other professors turned their backs on her but she also understood that in order to get justice she had to speak out and give strength to other targets of gender based violence (GBV) and encourage them to come forward. What is perhaps most interesting about Maria’s case is that the students who had been targets of GBV did not know one-another’s identities until closure. Here again, we see the power of the institution to control information and, under the guise of protecting those who are vulnerable, keep them isolated. The beauty of the #MeToo movement lies in the fact that it provides a global link between those who are currently targets of GBV and those who have come through it. The simple presence of a hashtag and the words “MeToo” on a social media profile signifies that anyone who has experienced GBV is not alone. Furthermore, Geis et al. showed us how, through this movement, individual connections were not only formed but alliances came together to campaign and stem the silence that surrounds GBV. As Galán and Abdelmonem demonstrated in their own chapter on anti-sexual harassment in Egypt, universities are places where organisational habitats can be established to “disrupt existing and negotiate new social and political power structures.” Geis and colleagues showcased that this is exactly what happened in Catalonia: through the solidarity network “Me too Universidad” and the push to end GBV in Catalonia’s universities, there began political and legal change. However, it is the nature of the legal change introduced in Catalonia that stands out for us: where an individual or institution retaliates against those who support targets of GBV (thus ensuring the targets remain isolated) this too is now recognised as GBV and is called Isolating Gender Violence or IGV (see Vidu et al., 2021). The introduction of legislation to protect those who support victims of GBV is undoubtedly an important step in recognising the risks and challenges that allies have faced and continue to face in standing up against the power and authority of institutions and

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their desire to retain control of processes to limit fallout and reputational damage. Luckily, we have also seen how activists and allies can work within curricula frameworks to challenge the dominant narratives that exist in our societies. In Navan Govender’s chapter, we see how a critical literacy lens can be brought to texts that demonstrate how literature is replete with attestations of power and dominance and seeks to silence dissent (cf. Andrews’ chapter). Through his work as an educator, preparing studentteachers for the classroom, he provided a framework whereby teachers and their students can better understand how stories and histories/herstories are created and perpetuated by asking seven key questions: • • • • • • •

Who is included/excluded? Who is foregrounded, backgrounded, or silenced? Who gets represented and misrepresented? What patterns emerge across texts? Who gets to speak, and who gets spoken for? What social issues are embedded in the text? Whose interests are served?

While the subject of Govender’s chapter is decolonisation, this approach does not foreground any one ideology or political position but asks the reader to deconstruct the text in a way that considers the preference or indeed politics of the author, and how that author presents an issue or topic with those preferences in mind. The issue is not one of proselytisation or imposing one belief above another but seeing where power lies and re-activating those political voices that so often fall silent within the curriculum. Nowhere has the challenge to the silencing of a community been seen more readily than in the Black Lives Matter or #BLM movement. Founded in 2013 following the acquittal of George Zimmerman, a volunteer neighbourhood watch co-ordinator, for the murder of African American teenager Trayvon Martin, and further galvanised by the death of other African Americans such as George Floyd, who was asphyxiated by police officer Derek Chauvin during an arrest, the #BLM movement is international (US, UK and Canada) in reach and seeks to address the violence faced by black communities at the hands of the state and individuals. It aims at creating a safe space for “Black imagination and

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innovation, and centering Black joy” (www.blacklivesmatter.com). While there are many similarities between the #MeToo and #BLM movements, there are also notable differences. #BLM arises from communities that are born out of histories and herstories of slavery, subjugation and segregation. Black voices, like those of women, were and are often silenced. While women have the right to vote in most countries, Black Americans in the US face constant challenges to their right to exercise their political power despite the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States (1870) and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. In their chapter, Wanda Blanchett and Shelley Zion pointed out to us how students of colour are still being denied the education that was promised in Brown vs. Board of Education in 1954: Although we no longer have “Jim Crow Laws” and White Only signs blocking Black and other students of color from attending schools attended by their White peers, we still have unexplained educational disparities, on the basis of race, social class, and perceived ability and segregated schools in 21st century America.

Comparable with the approach taken by Govender, Blanchett and Zion described an intervention called “transformative student voice” which provides minority students with the opportunity to explore the causes of the problems they encounter within their schools and communities and, significantly, to work with adult allies to facilitate change (see Zion, 2020). Like in Govender’s case study, this requires the school community to embrace critical pedagogies that develop individual and collective critical consciousness. Transformative student voice is built upon four core values: • • • •

Communication as dialogue Participation and democratic inclusivity Recognition that power relations are unequal and problematic The possibility that change and transformation exists.

Blanchett and Zion attest to the power of this approach, as a means of tackling inequalities that are endemic and addressing social issues that have a fundamental impact on the lives of young Black Americans. The key to success is undoubtedly the youth–adult partnerships that emerge,

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and the learning that takes place among a teacher workforce that so often does not reflect the student body.

Causes, Contradictions and Complexities Political mobilisation is never easy. Taking up a cause and building a groundswell of support requires emotional investment, sacrifice and a willingness to challenge authority. As we have noted previously, social and political movements are disruptive, challenging, and usually disrespectful of authority. The lack of respect for authority is sometimes tolerated and even understood when it comes from adults, but rarely so when it comes from children and young people. Political leaders use mockery or claim that issues are more complex than they have been presented to diminish those young people who stand up passionately for what they believe in. Perhaps one of the most pertinent examples is former US president Donald Trump’s response when 17-year-old environmental activist Greta Thunberg was named Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year.” He tweeted that she should work on her “anger management problem” and “go to an old-fashioned movie with a friend.” Here we see the failure of a political leader to understand how one young person can galvanise millions to challenge governments, corporates and all of us to do better on climate action. She did not do this alone. Thunberg found allies—other political leaders, activists, journalists and scientists—and, through these allies, she was afforded platforms to speak out and challenge world leaders on their inaction. In building social movements and challenging political intransigence, there comes a time when mainstream politicians may take up the cause, often for purposes that are not necessarily the same as those of the young people who first protested. We have seen this in Elinor Bray-Collins’ chapter on the anti-sectarian movement in Lebanon. However, BrayCollins has also shown us how young people in Lebanon often hold complex and contradictory positions that confound social movements. For example, within the anti-sectarian movement, she noted that many young people were also members of what were ostensibly sectarian political parties. Bray-Collins argues that university political activity (including student elections) acts as a barometer of political direction at a national level. Thus, student activism in Lebanon is one that is closely allied to conventional political expression, rather than unconventional one. This is not really as surprising as it may seem, as it affirms the observation

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made by Stanojevi´c and his colleagues that students with cultural capital acquired through education are more likely to engage with conventional political activity. However, this remark also suggests that young people can themselves create or affirm boundaries that are at the heart of social unrest, and that these boundaries ultimately limit outcomes and cause potential division among allies, as we saw at the University of Cape Town. In their chapter, Nafisa Tanjeem and Rawshan Fatima provided an exploration of student activism that challenges mainstream development narratives proposed and championed by the state. They demonstrated how the political leadership of Bangladesh ignored basic infrastructural developments, namely the transformation of the unregulated traffic system in the country, preferring to focus on internet connectivity. Following the death of two high-school students who were run over by a speeding bus driver in Dhaka, protests by middle- and high-school students were seen not only as a threat to the authoritarian system of government; but, instead, they became a key question being asked about state accountability, surveillance, inequity and, ultimately, calls for democratic change. However, in this protest, we also saw students taking radically different positions and engaging in radically different acts of protest and support from those Andrews described in South Africa. In the Bangladeshi protests, students’ physical bodies became targets of violence by other students who supported the government, whereas in South Africa, among Black South African students, protests were peaceful and engaged with creative modes of expression. Comparable with other movements in other countries, Tanjeem and Fatima discussed the central role alliances play in bringing to the fore a campaign that intersects with the lives of so many people regardless of age, class, gender or indeed geography (urban and rural). In a similar vein to Bray-Collins’ exploration of the anti-sectarianism in Lebanon, we also see the ways in which conventional politics attempted to influence and derail a movement. One of the approaches taken by the Government of Bangladesh was to close all educational institutions and silence those 15–19-year-old protesters by limiting opportunities to come together. As indicated above, one of the most pernicious responses to this protest was the purported mobilisation of members of the student wing of Bangladesh’s ruling party. Here, student engagement with conventional politics can be characterised as insidious with members of the pro-government student league (Bangladesh Chhatra League) attacking and injuring protesters on the streets as well as tracking down supporters

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of those protests by scanning social media accounts. In the case of one student (Rafsan Ahmed), we also saw how Dhaka University and BCL became complicit in his arrest and interrogation. While the government and bus owners did make concessions, including a new traffic act and a commitment by bus owners to stop paying their drivers per trip and instead grant them a monthly salary, inevitably Tanjeem and Fatima’s chapter bore testimony to the complex and often contradictory spaces that students and also educational institutions occupy during times of protest.

Pedagogical Features Throughout this book, we have asked our authors to reflect upon the ways in which we can take the learning from the social and political movements that have been discussed and create a learning opportunity for students in the classroom. We see this book as a tool that situates critical learning as central to understanding social and political dialogues that affect children and young people. Combined with our commitment to promote inclusive education practice, this book has relevance beyond the classroom and offers students opportunities not only to learn how to recognise exclusion but to examine their own and others’ attachments to ideological positions that sustain dominant discourses and subjugate or silence others. We hope that we have provided a conduit to understand some of the social and political movements that have ignited protest and mobilised young people to take action and explored how these scenarios have activated possibilities for democratic practice and political inclusion.

Final Reflections If, as Edward Said (1979) asserted, “the power to narrate or to block other narratives from forming and emerging is very important to culture and imperialism,” then it becomes incumbent upon all of us educators (activists and allies) to adopt a critical lens to understand the stories, histories, herstories and narratives that affect the young people we teach. Of course, there are stories that are missing. We have not, for example, included chapters that focus on youth mobilisations relating to the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and the political unrest arising from a resurgence of the right and far-right in Western societies. These too are important points in our own stories that have yet to be fully

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understood but offer other learning opportunities that have relevance for children and young people today. In bringing together our authors, our hope is that this collection offers a springboard for contemporary students to understand how the (mis)recognitions of cultural, linguistic and religious groups or the limited economic power of marginalised groups comes about, and how students themselves can, through learning, engage with or create scenarios that explore and, ultimately, activate possibilities for political expression and inclusion. We have sought to map the continuities and discontinuities in the practice and performance of inclusion moving from educational spaces to political spheres across diverse cultural and geographical locations. Ultimately, we position ourselves as educators who believe that schools and universities are critical spaces where students and teachers should be able to explore and debate challenging, controversial and partisan political ideas, and through those explorations participate meaningfully in democratic debate.

References Bronstein, C., Daily, K., & Horowitz, E. (1993). ‘Tellin’ it like it is: Children’s attitudes toward the election process and the ‘92 campaign’, 76th annual meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, Kansas City, MO, 11–14 August. Esser, F., & de Vreese, C. H. (2007). Comparing young voters’ political engagement in the United States and Europe. American Behavioral Scientist, 50(9), 1195–1213. McAuliffe, L. (2018). Inclusion for all? In T. G. K. Bryce, W. M. Humes, D. Gillies, & A. Kennedy (Eds.), Scottish Education: Referendum (pp. 697–706). Edinburgh University Press. Rivers, I., Carragher, D. J., Couzens, J., Hechler, R. C., & Fini, G. B. (2018). A cross-national study of school students’ perceptions of political messages in two election campaigns. International Journal of Educational Research, 92(December), 10–19. Russell, A., Fieldhouse, E., Purdam, K. & Kalra, V. (2002). Voter engagement and young people. The Electoral Commisson. Said, E. (1979). Orientalism. Pantheon Southwell, P. (2016). Young votes after the 2008 election: A disappearing act. Journal of Political and Law, 9(1), 80–84.

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Vidu, A., Puigvert, L., Flecha, R., & López de Aguileta, G. (2021). The concept and the name of Isolating Gender Violence. Generos: Multidiscipinary Journal of Gender Studies, 10(2), 176–200. Zion, S. (2020). Transformative student voice: Extending the role of youth in addressing systemic marginalization in U.S. Schools. Multiple Voices for Ethnically Diverse Exceptional Learners, 20(1), 32–43.

Index

A Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF, US), 223 American/Americans, 12, 13, 15–19, 27, 110, 111, 113, 114, 118, 137, 139, 174, 267, 269 American University in Cairo (AUC), 95 American University of Beirut (AUB), 132, 146–151, 153 Amnesty International, 73, 89, 99 Anti-sexual harassment activism, 4, 84, 85, 87, 88, 102–104, 265 Anti-Sexual Harassment Movement (Ded del-Taharrush), 89, 101 Arab, 87, 134, 135 Arab Spring, 85, 135, 155 Arab youth, 99, 134 Asian economic crisis, 59 Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities (AJCU), 178 Authoritarianism, 3, 39, 42–44, 46, 85, 134 Awami League (AL), 58

B Bangladesh, 4, 56–59, 61, 63, 65, 67, 68, 71–75, 272 Bangladesh National Party (BNP), 59 Bangladesh Shadharan Chhatra Odhikar Shangrakkhan Parishad, 61 Bangla News 24.com, 64 Benedict XIV, 224 Biden, Joseph, 164 Black Black Americans, 12, 13, 270 Black and People of Colour (BPoC), 242 Black History, 19, 202 Black Lives Matter (BLM), 3, 13–15, 17, 67 Black men, 11 black pain, 5, 192, 198, 199, 206 Black people, 3, 13, 14, 67, 190, 192, 195, 201, 207 Black students, 16, 19, 21, 192, 194, 195, 202, 207, 264 Black women, 13, 196, 204, 265

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 I. Rivers and C. L. Lovin (eds.), Young People Shaping Democratic Politics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29378-8

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278

INDEX

intersectional black pain, 189, 191 Bridges, Ruby, 13, 19 British empire, 236 Brown, Michael, 15 Brown V. Board of Education – 1954 (US), 13 Butler, Judith, 166, 167 Bystander intervention, 84, 92, 94, 101

C Cairo University, 4, 95–98, 101–104 California, 164, 172, 181 Case 173 (Egypt), 91 Catalonia, 120, 125, 126, 268 Centers for Disease Control, 217 Chapungu – The Day Rhodes Fell , 204, 265 Chhatra Chhatra Dol, 58, 72 Chhatra League, 58, 59, 61, 71, 272 Chhatra Shibir, 58, 72 Chiao, Rebecca, 89, 92 Christian, 137–139, 141, 143, 148, 213, 224, 249 Civil Rights/Civil Rights Movement, 3, 12, 13, 15, 16, 19, 20, 25, 84, 113 Colonial, 190, 192, 195, 199, 202, 205, 236, 238–240, 244–247, 251, 253, 257 coloniality, 6, 202, 203, 235–237, 240, 244, 248, 250, 256 colonisation, 236 Complutense University of Madrid, 123 Congress (US), 124, 162, 163, 227 Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), 12 Consociational Democratic State, 132

COVID-19, 10, 13, 15, 16, 236, 266, 267, 273 Critical intersectional ethnography, 161, 169, 181 Critical literacies, 6, 235, 237, 240, 244, 251, 253, 255–258, 269 Crowd, 56, 57, 65–72, 74, 75, 140 D Decoloniality/decolonization, 197, 235, 237, 239, 242, 255–257 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA, US), 163–165, 168, 180 Deferred Enforcement Departure (DED, US), 163, 180 Democracy/democracies, 3, 14, 32–37, 58, 59, 65, 85, 132–135, 145, 146, 151, 262, 266 Democratic Left Movement (DLM, Lebanon), 138 Denver (US), 24 Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act (DREAM, US), 162, 163 DREAMers, 162, 163 Dhaka (Bangladesh), 4, 56, 60, 64, 66, 74, 272, 273 Dhaka Times, 63 Diversity clubs, 6, 214, 230 Doulton Fountain, 237–239, 242, 244, 248, 251 E Egypt, 4, 84, 86–88, 92, 96–98, 100, 103, 104, 265, 268 Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights (ECWR), 88, 89, 92 El-Sisi, Abdel Fattah, 85, 91, 95, 103 Embodied activism, 5, 6, 189, 191, 193, 194, 200, 202, 204–206

INDEX

Embodiment, 57, 73, 75, 212, 220, 222, 224, 226, 228–231 Empire, 6, 236, 238, 244–246, 248, 249, 251, 255 #EndRapeCulture, 5 English (Language), 17, 18, 62, 63, 152, 170, 194, 223, 236, 237, 239–242, 263 Ershad, Hussain Muhammad, 57, 58 European, 32, 33, 40, 48, 114, 223 European Social Survey (ESS), 38 Existential activism, 6, 211, 216, 217, 228–231 F Facebook, 38, 60, 61, 69, 72, 119, 197 #FeesMustFall, 5, 196, 264 Feminism/feminist theory/theories, 169 Feminist vulnerability, 162, 175, 182 Floyd, George, 10, 13, 15, 16, 269 Fourteenth (14th ) Amendment, 215, 216 Free Patriotic Movement (FPM, Lebanon), 137, 141, 143, 148, 150 G Garner, Eric, 15 Gender gender-affirming, 214, 222 gender based violence (GBV), 4, 110, 112, 115, 118, 119, 122, 123, 125, 127, 268 Gender-Based Violence Prevention Detection and Response Protocol, 114 gender identity, 6, 212–218, 221–224, 227–229, 231, 265 theory of, 225

279

General election, 2, 59, 164, 262 Glasgow, City of (Scotland), 6, 236–238, 243–247, 251

H Hammer, Fanny Lou, 13 HarassMap, 4, 85, 86, 88–104 Harvard University, 114, 191 Hasina, Sheikh, 59, 71, 72 Heteronormative/heteronormativity, 6, 100, 205, 221, 224–226, 239, 244, 249 Hezbollah, 139

I Imprint Movement (Harakat Bassma), 89, 96 Inclusive curriculum, 10 Independence Intifada, 137, 138, 140–142 Indiana University, 110 Information and Communication Technology Act 2006 (Bangladesh), 72, 73 Institutionalization, 4, 7, 85–88, 143, 175, 225 International Crimes Tribunal, 60 Intersex, 212, 216, 218, 221–223, 225–227 Islami, Jamaat-e-, 58, 60, 72

J Jabbar, Mustafa, 72 Jim Crow Laws, 12, 18, 270 Johannesburg, 195

K Khan, Shajahan, 56, 62–64, 69, 74

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L Lakeview School District, 215 Latinx, 18 Lebanon/Lebanese, 5, 131–133, 136, 137, 139–146, 149, 150, 152–155, 267, 271, 272 Lebanese Forces (LF), 137, 143, 148–150 LGBTQ/LGBTQI+, 173, 174 Little Rock Nine (US), 13, 19

M Maharastra (India), 62 Male-to-Female Transsexuals (MTF), 216, 222 Martin, Trayvon, 13, 14, 269 Masud, Tareq, 63 Maxwele, Chumani, 200–203 MeToo University, 109, 123, 124 Mim, Diya Khanam, 62 Ministry of Social Solidarity (Egypt), 89, 91, 95 Minneapolis (US), 13, 16 Mkhatshwa, Nompendulo, 196 Mollah, Abdul Quader, 60 Monir, Mishuk, 63 Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis, 6, 237

N National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), 12 National Center for Transgender Equality, 213 National School Climate Survey (2015, US), 212 Network of Victims of Gender Violence, 5, 119 New Orleans (US), 13

Non-Government Organizations (NGOs), 47, 87, 89, 91, 94, 95, 143

O Obama Administration, 163, 213 Open Stellenbosch, 195 Organizational habitat, 83, 84, 86, 88, 97, 99, 103 Oxford University, 191

P Pakistan, 57, 61, 135 East, 57 Parkland, 20 Parks, Rosa, 14, 19 Pedagogical features, 3, 25, 47, 74, 103, 126, 154, 181, 207, 229, 256, 273 Philadelphia (US), 24 Plyer v Doe (1982), 170 Political political atomization, 32, 48 political engagement, 3, 32–34, 38, 56, 64, 75, 140, 165, 263 political-pedagogical action, 6, 236, 245 Political participation, 3, 32–38, 45–48, 85, 133, 262 conventional political participation, 35, 38, 45, 264 unconventional political participation, 32, 264 Politician/politicians, 38–40, 43, 126, 262, 264, 271 Postapartheid, 207 Post-socialist context, 3, 32 Precarity, 162, 164, 165, 167, 169, 171, 173, 177, 180–182, 267

INDEX

Professional Graduate Diploma in Education (PGDE), 237, 239, 241, 242 Progressive Socialist Party (PSP, Lebanon), 137 Public, 6, 17, 34, 37, 38, 48, 58, 61, 63, 64, 66, 69, 84, 85, 87–89, 91, 92, 94–96, 101, 103, 104, 114, 115, 122, 126, 127, 145, 150, 155, 162–164, 181, 191, 192, 200, 201, 207, 208, 213, 214, 216, 223, 225, 227, 236, 266, 267 public education, 16, 17, 21, 27 public schools, 17, 18, 57, 216, 263 PYO (Lebanon), 138, 149

Q Queer activism, 197, 204, 205, 207, 264

R Racism, 2, 10–12, 15–17, 19, 21, 25–27, 191, 192, 194, 196, 199 Rajib, Abdul Karim, 62 REAL ID Act (2005, US), 227 #RhodesMustFall, 5, 264 Rhodes University, 196, 202 Road Transport Act - 2018 (Bangladesh), 70

S Safe Areas program, 93 Safe Schools, 4, 22, 92, 94–96, 98–103 Sanctuary campus, 175, 176 Santa Clara University (SCU), 165, 169, 170, 172–176, 178, 180, 181, 267

281

Second order sexual harassment (SOSH), 120 Sectarianism, 5, 133, 135, 144, 155 Serbia, 3, 4, 32, 37, 38, 45–48, 263 Serbian politics, 45 Sex, 6, 84, 110, 165, 211, 212, 214–222, 224–226, 228–230 Sexual sexual development, 218 sexual dimorphism, 218, 219 sexual disorders, 218 sexual harassment, 4, 84–87, 89, 92–94, 96–104, 111, 114–117, 120, 198 Sexual minority(ies), 190, 264 Shackville protest, 203 Shahbag protest, 60 Shoft Ta7rosh (I Saw Harassment), 89 Social movement learning, 132, 155 Solidarity Network (of Victims of Gender Violence in Universities), 5, 119–127 South Africa, 5, 189–192, 194–196, 199–202, 205–207, 248, 264, 272 Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), 12 Spain, 109, 112, 118, 120, 123 Spanish universities, 112 Stabilitocracy, 32, 37 #StillNotSafe, 256 Student student activism, 3, 5, 6, 17, 19, 56, 143, 144, 165, 169, 172, 198, 271, 272 student engagement, 56, 75, 272 student mobilization, 5, 61, 113, 120, 182 Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), 12 student protests, 4, 60, 65, 192, 193, 195, 202, 205, 207

282

INDEX

Support networks, 110, 119, 120, 127 Syria/Syrian, 137–139 Systemic and structural racism, 9, 12

T Tahrir Square, 4, 85, 99, 102 Task Force to Combat Sexual Violence, 88 Temporary Protective Status (TPS, US), 163, 180 Tent City, 140, 141 The accidental, 56, 64, 65, 75 Thunberg, Greta, 271 Till, Emmet, 14, 15 Title IX of the U.S. Education Amendments of 1972, 215 #TransBlackLivesMatter, 236 Transformative student voice, 10, 21, 23–25, 270 Transgender/trans, 6, 191, 205, 206, 211–218, 220–231, 264 trans youth, 6, 212, 228–231, 265 Trump, Donald, 163, 164, 177, 179, 214, 216, 271 Twitter, 38, 60, 208

U UN Conference on Population (1994), 87 Unconventional political participation, 32, 264 Undocumented/DACAmented, 5, 162, 164, 168–170, 172, 174, 177, 180–183 Undocumented Students and Allies Association (USAA), 174–179, 181, 182 Unitary Platform Against Gender Violence of Catalonia, 122

United States (US), 2, 3, 12, 21, 26, 67, 84, 123, 181, 182, 208, 212, 214, 217, 223, 225, 229, 242, 262, 265, 267, 270 US Department of Education, 18 University of California, Berkeley, 113 University of Cape Town (UCT), 191, 192, 195, 197, 199, 200, 203–205, 207, 264, 265, 272 University of Dhaka, 57, 60, 61 University of Minnesota, 110 University of Strathclyde, 6 University of Witwatersrand, 189 V Vulnerability, 5, 162, 164–169, 172, 173, 176, 179, 181, 182, 205, 206, 227, 267 W White, 3, 11–13, 15–19, 21, 27 White Supremacists/Supremacy, 14–16, 19, 27, 197 William Frantz Elementary School (US), 13 Women’s Foundation of the Government of Spain, 120 Women Organized Against Sexual Harassment (WOASH), 113 World Peace Movement, 113 X X chromosome, 219 Y Youth Middle Eastern youth, 133, 134 youth activism, 10, 16, 20, 21, 25, 85, 88, 89, 103, 133, 140, 154, 229, 230, 265

INDEX

youth political participation, 5, 35, 132, 143, 181 youth politicization, 131 YouTube, 60

Z Zaghloul , Nihal Saad, 90, 92 Zia, Khaleda, 59 Zimbabwe, 204, 205

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