Civic engagement development in Argentinean adolescents: An autobiographical approach

Abstract

Youth’s distancing from traditional politics and their preference for new forms of civic participation has become an international issue in the last decades. Based on a sociocultural dialectical framework, this study analyzes the relations between acting, thinking, and feeling in the development of civic engagement as an expression of civic identity in the autobiographical narratives of Argentinean adolescents (N = 23) aged between 15 and 18 who engage in some practice to transform their community. Participants elaborate on their autobiographical narrative during interviews. The information gathered made it possible to distinguish two profiles in the development of civic engagement: individual and collective. The former includes the explanation of society as the result of personal actions and the involvement in practices aimed at the transformation of the local community the adolescents are a part of, and it is the one that prevails among the participants. The latter refers to the tendency to think about society by considering historical-political factors and practices aimed at long-term objectives, as they contribute to a general transformation of society and imply a future-oriented perspective. In both profiles, participation in high school students’ unions plays a formative role in the feeling of efficacy that underlies adolescents’ civic engagement.