School Strike 4 climate : Australian students renegotiating citizenship

Abstract

In this chapter, we have shared one account of the School Strike 4 Climate. In doing so, we argue that this important school student-led movement can be understood and examined as a scene in which student citizenship is being actively negotiated. Situating the current moment in the context of a broader trajectory of school student politics in relation to sustainability, land rights, and climate action, we have reflected on the ways students’ “acts of citizenship” (Isin 2007) reveal more than young peoples’ calls for meaningful political action to address climate change. Our analyses of surveys and media coverage of the September 20, 2019, protest in Sydney help describe and explain what students did and how diverse adults and institutions have variously responded. Our analysis reveals how the dynamics of student individualized collective claim making is increasingly associated with intergenerational solidarities as adults rally around students to support their organizing. At the same time, we find that the “discursive violence” of the state through the media is also a powerful force at work in the “scene.”