The political participation and involvement of youth is a controversial topic both in academia and in public debate. More than two decades ago, Robert Putnam (Reference Putnam2000) argued that the individualism of the new generations would lead to the collapse of democracy, while Pippa Norris (Reference Norris2002) saw in the younger generations the main force for democratic renewal. These two positions have coexisted since then, fuelled by the difficulty of capturing through the most common instruments of social research the growing complexity and dynamism of the political involvement of young people.
In this article, we argue that this difficulty is partly explained by the increasingly changing and complex nature of youth biographical trajectories. During the transition from childhood to adulthood, individuals undergo the most significant life changes in terms of socioeconomic resources, roles and social relationships, and they also experience the crystallisation and transformation of values and identities. In recent decades, moreover, all these processes typical of youth transitions have lengthened in time and have become more complex and uncertain (Chesters Reference Chesters2024). Thus, in the span of just a few years or months, an individual’s circumstances, resources, contexts and maturation processes can undergo major transformations: relocation to attend university, entering into shared living arrangements, meeting new friends or partners, changing jobs, etc. All these changes are experienced with great intensity and have a great impact on the formation of preferences, the availability of resources and identity itself.
Although the changing nature of youth trajectories is not denied, studies on the political participation and attitudes of young people struggle to integrate this complex and dynamic logic. Emphasising the biographical perspective of political involvement and participation helps to adopt greater flexibility and dynamism in the use of concepts and instruments of analysis. This helps to overcome an excessively rigid and static conception in the analysis of young people’s relationship with politics that can lead to apparently contradictory conclusions.
Rigidity, for example, is the often unproblematised use of the dichotomous taxonomies participant-non-participant, active-passive, involved-disaffected, which do not adequately reflect the complexity of political involvement and its processual nature, especially in times of constant life change (Amnå and Ekman Reference Amnå and Ekman2014). These rigid boundaries are also noticeable when considering the relationship between subjective involvement and practices, often neglecting the complex and bi-directional character that links them.
Political involvement, on the other hand, frequently tends to be analysed in a static way. Although there are relevant findings on the impact of life-course-related factors on political involvement, little attention is generally paid to the interactions between political engagement and other spheres of life. Similarly, despite knowing the relevance of micro (individual), meso (organisational and mobilisation) and macro (socio-political context) determinants in political dispositions and practices (Barrett and Brunton-Smith Reference Barrett and Brunton-Smith2014), we found few studies that integrate analysis of the interactions of these different levels in youth biographies.
This study is based on the idea that to understand the dynamics of political involvement and activism it is necessary to overcome the limitations inherent in this way of approaching the phenomenon, especially when studying younger generations. We therefore propose the notion of engagement biographies as an analytical framework that emphasises the biographical and interactionist nature of political involvement and participation. This perspective helps to better understand the underpinnings of some of the identified trends, such as their volatile nature (Amnå and Ekman Reference Amnå and Ekman2014; Devine and Valgarðsson Reference Devine and Valgarðsson2024), being more linked to everydayness and lifestyles (Bowman Reference Bowman2019; de Moor and Verhaegen Reference de Moor and Verhaegen2020) and more direct, less mediated (Pickard Reference Pickard2019; Pleyers Reference Pleyers, Kaldor, Selchow and Murray-leach2015) and distant from institutional politics (Soler-i-Martí and Ballesté-Isern Reference Soler-i-Martí and Ballesté-Isern2024; Stockemer and Sundström Reference Stockemer and Sundström2025).
To reveal the relevance of youth biographies in activists’ experiences of political engagement, this article has two main aims. First, it analyses how narratives of activist trajectories are inextricably interrelated with other spheres of life. Second, it examines how these biographical and activist trajectories are, in turn, linked to the immediate environment as well as the broader social and political context. To this end, using Spain as a critical case study, 61 biographical semi-structured interviews with young activists between 17 and 34 years of age are analysed, employing a hybrid approach that combines narrative elements, a chronological script and a biographical timeline in which participants record key moments in their personal and activist lives.
Youth trajectories and political involvement
Traditionally, the literature on political involvement and behaviour has considered youth as a time of political socialisation and the acquisition of civic habits (Hooghe Reference Hooghe and Rudolph2022; Smets Reference Smets, Ferraro and Carr2021) and as a crucial stage for understanding the characteristics of the political behaviour of future adult citizens (see Strate et al. Reference Strate, Parrish, Elder and Ford1989). The concept of ‘impressionable years’ (Sears Reference Sears1983) emphasises this view of youth as a time especially prone to the modification of what has been learned and the acquisition of new political habits and values in line with changes in the environment. The political involvement of youth has also been studied from a generational point of view (Edmunds and Turner Reference Edmunds and Turner2002), which has made it possible to identify trends of change in political values (Inglehart Reference Inglehart, Goetz, Mair and Smith2013), a decline in electoral participation (Franklin et al. Reference Franklin, Lyons and Marsh2004; Kostelka and Blais Reference Kostelka and Blais2021) or partisan identification (Dalton Reference Dalton, Dalton and Wattenberg2000), and to identify emerging forms of activism among new generations (Juris and Pleyers Reference Juris and Pleyers2009; Theocharis and Van Deth Reference Theocharis and Van Deth2017).
Thus, political science has identified the dynamic nature of political engagement across the life course and its implications in terms of age and generational effects (Serra and Smets Reference Serra, Smets, Giugni and Grasso2022). However, beyond the focus on the crystallisation of political attitudes and habits or as an agent of generational change, the internal processes related to youth political involvement have gone more unnoticed. However, an understanding of the dynamics of involvement and socio-political engagement that occur during this stage is essential to unequivocally understand both the processes of political socialisation and generational traits. Some research has studied the effect of the changes inherent to youth transitions on political attitudes and behaviours: the impact of youth elongation on voting (Smets Reference Smets2016), or the impact of education (Ahearn et al. Reference Ahearn, Brand and Zhou2022), employment status (Lorenzini and Giugni Reference Lorenzini and Giugni2012), motherhood (Bhatti et al. Reference Bhatti, Hansen, Naurin, Stolle and Wass2019) and marriage (Stoker and Jennings Reference Stoker and Jennings1995).
These important contributions help us to understand the relationships between certain events specific to youth and political involvement, but are insufficient to understand how activist trajectories and identities are constructed more globally. The biographical perspective allows us to capture how the dynamics of political involvement and commitment are linked to circumstances and changes in other spheres of life at a time in the life cycle characterised by constant change. The potential of biographical analysis to shed light on the dynamic nature of political engagement – whether in activism (Nolas et al. Reference Nolas, Varvantakis and Aruldoss2017) or in political leadership (Walter Reference Walter, Rhodes and Hart2014) – has already been highlighted. Our argument is that, in the case of youth activism, recent transformations in youth trajectories make this biographical perspective even more relevant.
These youth transitions have become longer and more complex processes (Chesters Reference Chesters2024). The study stage has lengthened in time, as well as the situations of instability in the labour or housing market (Arnett Reference Arnett2000). This also causes a certain blurring of the boundaries of youth to such an extent that some authors argue that some features, such as constant change, experimentation, uncertainty or vulnerability, have become generational traits (Blatterer Reference Blatterer and Chesters2024). Likewise, youth trajectories become more complex and de-standardised, including more reversibility in situations in the transition stages and alteration of the linear order (Biggart and Walther Reference Biggart, Walther, Ruspini and Leccardi2016).
These changes have an impact on the experience of one’s own trajectory, on expectations and on the construction of one’s own life story. In fact, the de-standardisation of trajectories means that one’s own path is increasingly perceived as an individually constructed trajectory and less as an outcome shared with peers (Furlong and Cartmel Reference Furlong, Cartmel and Roulleau-Berger2003). This perceived individualisation in a context of greater uncertainty and vulnerability has led to an increasing reflexivity in trajectories (Thomson Reference Thomson and Furlong2016). Young people experience the construction of their paths as a process in which their conditioning factors, opportunities and limits are closely linked to their own capacity to construct their personal biographies. Still, these biographies are shaped by the socialisation experiences lived within the social settings in which young people have become actively involved and which, as the literature on socialising spheres has shown, have a direct impact on youth political practices (Holecz et al. Reference Holecz, Fernandez and Giugni2022).
All these processes have an enormous impact on the experience and decisions of young people, which are linked to socio-political involvement and activism. On the one hand, political involvement is subject to important biographical changes that occur in this period. Resources for participation or exposure to agents of mobilisation change radically at different stages of youth, and this has a major impact on the forms and intensities of political involvement. Moreover, in this increasingly long, uncertain and changing period, the biographical trajectory acquires more and more weight in the dynamics of political involvement and activist identities.
Biographies, interactions and political engagements
In light of the above, it seems clear that personal biographies and activist engagements influence and rely on each other. This underlines the need to analyse the multiple connections established between these two life spheres, as well as the importance of other contextual factors, as doing so will provide a better understanding of the changing logics that characterise youth activism today. In order to understand our theoretical perspective, it should be clear that we do not think of activist commitments as a state reached after an action by the subject, guided by previously defined values or interests, but rather as a process to be understood in the time of its development (Bidet and Gayet-Viaud Reference Bidet and Gayet-Viaud2023). From our perspective, activism entails a sustained commitment to one or more causes. Nevertheless, this commitment may assume different forms and intensities throughout an individual’s trajectory and may involve varying degrees of affiliation or engagement with organisations or movements. Activism is therefore viewed as a dynamic process, inscribed in specific social and political conditions, during which a subjective experience is configured and expressed in different activist practices. In parallel, this activist experience also generates committed dispositions that contribute to generating or reinforcing these feelings of subjective involvement and, in some cases, to mitigate them (Fillieule Reference Fillieule2005; Fillieule and Pudal Reference Fillieule, Pudal, Agrikoliansky, Sommier and Fillieule2010). This processual understanding suggests that activist engagement must be analysed in relation to the conditions that make its initial incorporation possible, the ways in which it contributes to shaping personal trajectories, and the tensions or constraints that may emerge from its coexistence with other spheres of life.
According to this approach, based on interactionist sociology, activism is conceived as a social activity inscribed in time and space that is articulated in several phases and recognises different forms of engagement throughout the life journey of individuals. There are three fundamental assumptions of this interactionist sociology to be taken into account (Agrikoliansky Reference Agrikoliansky, Fillieule, Haegel, Hamidi and Tiberj2017): (a) activism is a process composed of different sequences linked to the biographical trajectory, which allows relating the periods of activist engagement with the different phases of the life cycle; (b) the focus is on unravelling the circumstances which shape the process and how activist engagement develops over time and the life course, not seeking to understand the causes of engagement; and (c) it is essential to analyse the meanings that actors give to the practices they develop in order to understand activist engagement. From this perspective, particular analytical attention must be paid to how individuals become open to activism, how engagement feeds back into and reorients their biographies, and how activists negotiate the conflicts and limitations that emerge along their life course.
As the political participation literature on period and cohort effects has shown (Grasso Reference Grasso2016), activism is shaped by the contexts, circumstances, opportunities and constraints of the environment, as well as by the dynamics of the agencies and spaces of mobilisation in which it is expressed (Paschou and Durán Mogollón Reference Paschou and Durán Mogollón2024). Events such as, for example, the COVID-19 pandemic (Betancor Nuez et al. Reference Betancor Nuez, Martínez, Benedicto and Fernández-trujillo Moares2024), the wave of environmentalist mobilisation at the end of the last decade (Pickard Reference Pickard, Bessant, Collin and O’Keefe2024) or the triumph of certain political actors that favour youth militancy, as occurred in the Kirchnerist stage in Argentina (Vázquez et al. (Reference Vázquez, Vommaro, P and Blanco2017)), all constitute factors that have conditioned the possibilities of youth participation and, therefore, have contributed to delineate their activist trajectories. In the same vein, Eva Fernández et al. (Reference Fernández, Portos and Felicetti2024), through a comparative analysis, consistently demonstrate the impact of the Great Recession (2008–2013) on attitudes towards democracy among the generation of young people socialised during those years
The phenomenon of activism should therefore be analysed from a multilevel perspective, insofar as it is configured by the interrelation of three spaces with their own logics. First, the individual/self: the young activist who expresses his or her commitments through a series of socio-political practices while constructing his or her own biography. Second, the group/the we: the collective in which he/she is inserted or at least serves as a reference, in which one must take into account not only the organisation but also the others with whom the activist meets and establishes relationships that are fundamental to his/her own identity. Finally, the context/the them: the contextual factors that favour or hinder activism at a given moment. Multidirectional interactions between individuals, agencies and spaces of mobilisation and socio-political contexts must always be present in the analysis.
The notion of engagement biography underlines that political involvement in youth is a situated process, which develops in a dynamic, though not always linear, way and is intertwined with other spheres of life. Moreover, this process is shaped within a framework of conditions that are linked both to the immediate environment and to the broader political and social context in which it takes place. In this sense, it is possible to identify two key dimensions that shape the development of the engagement biography:
• The interaction between socio-political engagement and other dimensions of life: How young people’s activist trajectories are intertwined with other areas of their lives, within a context characterised by numerous life changes which are typical of this stage.
• The interaction between the individual trajectories and the environment: How personal decisions and individual circumstances relate to the immediate environment and the broader social and political contexts, shaping opportunities and constraints that impact the development of a personal biography and activist trajectory.
The empirical part of this study aims to identify and analyse these interactions in the trajectories of young activists in order to better understand the nature of their participation. Through the narratives of these young people, we seek to answer two fundamental questions: (1) To what extent are youth biographical trajectories, political orientations and activist practices interrelated? (2) How do individual choices and circumstances interact with environmental opportunities and constraints in the construction of their biographies of engagement?
Data and methods
To meet these objectives, this article analyses 61 biographical qualitative interviews with young Spanish activists. Spain serves as a critical case study for this research, providing a particularly suitable context to test the engagement biographies framework. Our theoretical argument holds that the weight of biographical trajectories in understanding the nature of youth activism is particularly relevant in contexts of de-standardisation, uncertainty and vulnerability in youth transitions. Spain has been classified as a paradigmatic case of a sub-protective regime in relation to youth transitions, characterised by labour market instability and precariousness, prolonged dependence on family support, and the role of extended education as a waiting strategy (Walther Reference Walther2006). Moreover, the current young generation has been socialised in a particularly dynamic context of mobilisations (15M, the Catalan independence process, the feminist wave and the climate movement). This alignment makes Spain a critical case (Yin Reference Yin2003) for testing the theory, allowing us to confirm, challenge or extend the connections between the dynamism of youth biographies and their activism. At the same time, it offers an opportunity to understand the processes linking the conditions of de-standardised youth trajectories and the complex nature of activism.
Semi-structured interviews with a biographical approach were conducted, mixing elements of the biographical narrative interview with the more typical guide of semi-structured interviews. This allowed the researchers to reconstruct the life narrative of the activist in a coherent and meaningful way for the interviewee (Rosensthal Reference Rosensthal, Seale, Silverman, Gubrium and Gobo2003) and to systematically identify and compare relevant themes for the objectives of the study. The interview guide, fieldwork materials and coding framework are available at the UNED institutional repository: https://doi.org/10.21950/WXUGEF.
To develop this hybrid approach, an interview guide was created following the key stages of activist trajectories, while incorporating a biographical line to be completed by the interviewee. At the beginning of each interview, participants were asked to mark on a timeline, from age 15 to the present, the key processes and moments in their lives. Above the line, aspects such as place of residence, studies, work and personal relationships were recorded. In the lower part, moments related to social and political commitment were noted, such as participation in mobilisations, membership in organisations or important experiences. During the interviews, this biographical timeline remained visible, allowing it to be completed and complemented, which facilitated the biographical reconstruction and, at times, contributed to identifying coincidences between the different areas of the activist’s life.
This article analyses 61 interviews conducted between January and October 2023, involving young people aged 17–34 years (37 women and 24 men) linked to social and political organisations and collectives. This gender imbalance can be explained by the interest in adequately representing feminist activists. Drawing on the interactionist concept of activism and in order to capture the diversity of discourses and experiences across life and activist trajectories, the sample included young participants from a range of collectives and organisations, including ecological, feminist, civil rights, socio-community, trade union and political groups. We considered both organisational institutionalisation and individual involvement. At the organisational level, we distinguish between formal, hierarchical organisations (high institutionalisation) and informal, spontaneous, horizontal organisations and movements (low institutionalisation). At the individual level, we differentiate between high-intensity activists, with ongoing daily engagement, and low-intensity activists, whose participation was more intermittent or sporadic at the time of the interview. Table 1 presents the distribution of interviewees according to these criteria. Finally, we also ensured diversity in the sociodemographic profile of the participants, considering variables such as gender, age, level of education and employment status.
Distribution of Interviewees According to the Sampling Criteria
Table 1 Long description
Counts of interviewees are broken down by type of organization and by two sampling criteria: organizational institutionalization (high or low) and activist involvement (high or low). Political parties are concentrated in the high institutionalization and high activist involvement cell with 11, plus 2 in high institutionalization and low activist involvement, and none in the low institutionalization cells. Ecologists and women and feminist groups each have 4 in high institutionalization with high activist involvement, and 5 in low institutionalization with high activist involvement; ecologists also have 3 in low institutionalization with low activist involvement, and women and feminist groups have 4 there. Civil rights groups are more evenly spread, with 2 in high institutionalization and high activist involvement, 2 in high institutionalization and low activist involvement, 2 in low institutionalization and high activist involvement, and 1 in low institutionalization and low activist involvement. Socio-community groups skew toward low institutionalization, with 5 in low institutionalization and high activist involvement and 2 in low institutionalization and low activist involvement, compared with 1 and 3 in the two high institutionalization cells. Trade unions appear only under high institutionalization, with 2 in high activist involvement and 3 in low activist involvement. Blank cells indicate no reported interviewees for that combination.
The analysis of the interviews was carried out with Atlas-ti following a basically deductive coding strategy based on a codebook organised in a two-level structure. The first of these, the most general, is made up of 11 categories that represent the main themes which the research project sought to investigate, based on the literature on activism, especially those developed from a biographical perspective: activist socialisation, areas of socialisation, personal trajectories, movements in activist trajectories, reasons for changes in activist trajectories, internal dynamics in the collectives, subjective link with activism, identity categories, daily life and social relations, online activism and emotions in activism. Each of these categories encompasses a second level of more specific codes covering the basic aspects of these dimensions.
In relation to the object of this study, we focused preferentially on the categories ‘Personal trajectories’ (which included codes such as ‘Family life’, ‘Social life/friendships’, ‘Work/subsistence’, ‘Leisure, other activities’, ‘Housing’, ‘Geographical mobility’, ‘Individual issues’ or ‘Education’) and ‘Movements in activist trajectories’ (with codes such as ‘Entry and stay in activism’, ‘Stabilisation in activism’, ‘Change to new activisms’ or ‘Leaving activism’). We were interested, therefore, in those fragments of the interviews that reflect the interactions between activist trajectories and all other spheres of life. As a first approach to the significance of these interactions, Figure 1 shows the co-occurrence of cross-codings of codes linked to personal trajectories with codes linked to the stages of activist trajectories.
Co-occurrence of Codes Linked to Activist Trajectory with Codes Linked to Life Trajectory
Figure 1 Long description
Flowchart illustrating connections between activist trajectories and life trajectories. On the left, activist trajectories codes include: beginnings in activism, stabilization in activism, changes to new activities and end of activism. These are linked to life trajectories codes on the right: family life, social life/friends, leisure/other activities, housing, work/subsistence, geographic mobility, individual circumstances and education. Arrows indicate the flow and interaction between these aspects, showing how different phases of activism relate to various life domains.
In the 61 interviews, 406 fragments were coded that relate aspects linked to activism with other spheres of their own biography. This implies that 52.7% of the quotations with codes related to life trajectories (763) are at the same time related to other aspects linked to activist trajectories. Figure 1 illustrates how, in the interviews, key moments in activist trajectories (beginnings, endings, phases of consolidation or shifts in activism) are explained through their interaction with other spheres of life. This provides initial evidence that these moments are particularly associated with changes characteristic of youth transitions in the realms of work, education or mobility, among others. Nevertheless, it is important to note that this finding is mediated by our coding of the interviews rather than representing a direct outcome of the data itself. Therefore, it should be interpreted not so much as direct evidence, but rather as a demonstration of the suitability of the data for an in-depth qualitative analysis of these interactions between activist trajectories and other life domains, an analysis that we further develop in the results section. In this sense, the transcripts that accompany the analyses have an expressive and not a representative role.
The set of interviews was analysed from a sociological discourse analysis perspective (Conde Reference Conde2009; Serrano and Zurdo Reference Serrano and Zurdo2023). From the biographical narratives of the interviewees, the different forms of interrelation between the social context (general or close), personal life (family, work, studies, peer relationships) and activism were highlighted, which thus constitute the main axes of the resulting narrative configurations. For this article, gender, ethnic or class differences are not specifically analysed, as we focus on common processes relating activism with biographical events and social context. Even though we are aware of the tendency to impose coherence on narrative biographical accounts (Billig Reference Billig1987), the context and characteristics of our interviews reduce its possible impact on results: the interview setting, the types of questioning and the similarly young interviewer all contributed to a fluid conversation where the interviewee did not feel compelled to present a coherent picture of themselves. The methodology used is particularly well-suited to collecting the discursive positions of young people on activism, which allows us to appreciate the place they occupy in our society, as well as the uncertain processes of incorporation into adult life.
Life trajectories and activist practices
In order to respond to the first research question, we analysed how life trajectories and activist practices are interrelated in order to highlight the ways in which they intersect and conflict, but also how they can become intertwined and transform the lives of activists. In analysing activist narratives in relation to life trajectories, three main dimensions emerged inductively from the data, capturing different ways in which activism and personal biographies intersect and shaping the structure of the results presented below: (a) openness to activism, that is, how activism entered individual biographies, constituting a precondition for the interrelation between life trajectories and activist practices; (b) the productive dimension, referring to how activism produces different kinds of changes in personal biographies; and (c) the conflict dimension, which reflects how the demands of activism and other life spheres may clash with each other.
These empirically grounded dimensions are consistent with our interactionist theoretical perspective, which conceptualises activism as a process unfolding over time and embedded within individual life trajectories rather than as a fixed state or a purely attitudinal disposition (Agrikoliansky Reference Agrikoliansky, Fillieule, Haegel, Hamidi and Tiberj2017; Bidet and Gayet-Viaud Reference Bidet and Gayet-Viaud2023; Fillieule Reference Fillieule2005). From this perspective, activist engagement develops through successive phases and is shaped by the evolving configuration of personal circumstances, social relations and contextual conditions that characterise the life course. In this sense, moments of entry into activism, its consolidation, transformation or disengagement become key sites where the mutual constitution of biography and activism becomes particularly visible, as opportunities, constraints and personal experiences linked to other life domains may facilitate engagement while also generating tensions that limit or hinder it.
Openness to activism
Activists recall different ways in which activism came into their lives, either during childhood or later, and which refer to different relationships or personal social interactions and which may take place in different social contexts. In this sense, family relationships appear to have a socialising impact, but they can also serve as a vital reference point. The socialising impact of paternal-filial relationships can be direct, in the form of an intentional ideological transmission or, somewhat more indirectly, by providing examples of committed individuals (parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts, etc.):
My paternal grandmother was a Black woman […] She was a politically involved person […] it’s like a way of feeling close to her, I couldn’t enjoy her, but it’s a way of identity, it’s like being able to gather my Afro roots, somehow, and to remember her, right? Of… of ‘I’m here, I’m doing this’, as a way of… of paying tribute to her, of not forgetting her. (Daniela, Civil rights, W28)Footnote 1
In other cases, parents may be no more than facilitators of activist participation, seeing their children’s commitment in a positive light for ideological or moral reasons but also for other benefits (personal, social) that it may provide them: ‘And I entered, as in another participatory space, and my parents were also very happy because I had a little more discipline’. (Clara, Socio-community, W20)
It is also common for parents to remain indifferent, even reticent or opposed to these activist concerns, either due to lack of interest, knowledge or availability for politics or social issues, or so as not to interfere in their children’s lives: ‘I think my parents never taught me what activism was. […] I have more radical positions than them. […] when the four of us get together, we always end up arguing’. (Pablo, Ecologist, M27)
Thus openness to activism can come from other relationships. Relationships in formal educational spaces, high schools or universities and peer relationships in these spaces play an important role in the activist beginnings of many young people. ‘In high school, I decided to change to a public high school. […] there, people there seemed to have much more political awareness in general, and that was when I started to participate in the feminist group in that high school’. (Arantxa, Parties, W22)
A third type of openness to activism comes from certain personal experiences of injustice, discrimination or violence that trigger the desire to transform the situation through continued involvement, such as experiences of abuse, discrimination or marginalisation linked to personal identity. These experiences often constitute turning points that connect personal biography with activist engagement. The type of activism in which the person engages is directly related to the bases of violence or discrimination and is, therefore, linked to some element of personal identity:
It wasn’t consensual sex, even though he was my partner, so it was also rape. So there it was like, okay, now that I put a name to it, now that, that I know what happened to me, well that. I started to get interested in feminism, in the whole movement really. (Inara, Feminist, W22)
The productive dimension
The link between activism and personal life finds forms that we could call productive, in the sense that they generate processes of transformation of the activist and even orient personal biography. Thus, activists can orient their studies along lines related to their activist activity: ‘And from there I thought about what to study […]my militant thing let’s say, or my interest, and it directly affects what I study’. (Rubén, Sexual Diversity, M29) Also regarding his professional career: ‘[Environmental collective name] it’s work in the sense that it brings me income, but it’s also a place for experimenting with how to change the world’. (Álvaro, Ecologist, M28) This intertwining of studies, work and activism shows the capacity for the latter, as already mentioned, to transform personal biographies into authentic biographies of commitment, where life is oriented from an ideological openness towards activities consistent with it in its different spheres and manifestations:
My ideological beliefs have a lot to do with my militancy, which I began to develop more consciously, you know? So it has determined my professional profile, because it’s also something I want to continue doing if I can. (Zahara, Trade union, W27)
In environmental activism there are even specific cases that link subsistence, housing and activism, as is the case of ecovillages:
And in the end I kind of accepted this job because in the ecovillage, we live with a mixed model of economy and we contribute money from outside, the inhabitants, apart from what… what is common economy. So, in other words, it’s possible to combine going in the afternoons and teaching three hours of classes. For now. (Candela, Feminist, W25)
The link between activism itself and youth sociality also emerges as a transforming element of personal life. Activism makes it possible to meet like-minded people with whom deep friendships are developed that give rise to confluences between people’s social and activist relationships: ‘In the end, they are relationships of friendship and support, […] with people with whom I wouldn’t otherwise have established a friendship or that bond. That for me right now are like super important people’. (Carmen, Feminist, W23)
This attunement between the different spaces of expression of the person makes it possible to avoid conflicts and personal tensions that can become a source of stress, opening the possibility of a personal situation of well-being: ‘I started going to the psychologist and decided that activism had helped me at a certain moment to feel understood and well. And I decided to try getting back into it and see what… see what happened. And since then, I haven’t stopped being an activist’. (Lucía, Ecologist, W23)
The conflict dimension
Conflicts between activism and personal life emerge when activist commitments compete with other life domains, particularly work, education and personal relationships. The most obvious conflict arises between activism and work, education and even family life, as these constitute limiting factors in the time available to the individual to develop his or her participatory activities, so that attempts are made to try to reconcile these different endeavours. Work undoubtedly constitutes the vital space that most often appears as an explanation for the abandonment of activism when economic needs become more important for life: ‘Instead of working part-time, because I was very active in all this world, I work full-time and save until I can leave and be somewhere else’. (Yamila, Socio-community, W19)
Many young people try to make activist commitments compatible with the demands of work and also those of their studies, which is why stress or exhaustion appear as a reason for abandoning activism, and it is even related to psychological problems, such as anxiety:
I still have a social commitment and I still have some values or, whatever you want to call it, but, consciously and for the sake of my personal and professional life, and my mental health, I don’t get so involved in those kinds of spaces anymore. (Antía, Feminist, W24)
Since peer relationships are an important element of youth life, which also require attention and time to maintain them, tensions arise in the activist narratives due to the difficulty of reconciling the times for activism and friendship, especially when friends do not share the subject’s activism:
In the end, me working, studying and being so involved in the associative world and all this topic, because they [my non-activist friends] didn’t understand that I could not leave, for example, my activity in the [name of youth institution], because, to begin with, I really can’t leave it. (Clara, Socio-community, W20)
These tensions, in addition to this certain temporal incompatibility that takes time away from socialising in youth leisure, manifest differences of interests between peers, activists and non-activists that can lead to peer group breakups.
Interaction between meso and macro dimensions in the engagement biography
Regarding the second objective (the relationship between environment and context in activist trajectories), we have analysed how elements external to the subject and their life, which refer to contextual elements at the meso and macro levels, appear in the narratives.
Macro level: events of national or international significance
Events with national, and even international, repercussions are frequently understood by the informants themselves as events that affect the unfolding of their activist commitments, whether as facilitators, hinderers or limiters. At the time we conducted the fieldwork, references to the COVID-19 pandemic were particularly common; specifically in reference to the environmental movement, the 2019 wave of environmentalist mobilisation featured highly; and specifically for Catalonia, there was mention of the events surrounding the 1 October 2017 independence referendum (referred to as 1-O).
[1-O] was a day that I think marked a generation, what happened here in Catalonia that day. I think it marked everyone in society, but I say a generation because some of us were very young… well what I’m telling you, it was the first thing we lived in politics, what interested us, and we saw how that day they charged against… against us. (Rodrigo, Ecologist, M21)
The pandemic, as a complex global event, had different effects: it undermined the wave of environmental mobilisation, but produced a revitalisation of local movements, especially through the mobilisation of mutual support networks to help the groups most affected by the confinement:
It’s not that I wasn’t interested in participating in the neighbourhood militancy, it was just that it was an unknown space for me. And after the pandemic, after the pandemic, a neighbourhood assembly was created, completely autonomous, of neighbours, which, well, was managing, well, the issue of dispensations, then the issue of demonstrations for public health and so on. (Rosa, Feminist, W28)
Meso level: events with a local impact on the action of social movements and mobilisation agencies
The dynamics of social mobilisation agencies (emergence, development, crisis, disappearance) condition the possibilities of activist participation and, therefore, have different impacts on activist trajectories. For example, when a new collective appears, the possibilities of activist involvement are revived, just as they are drastically reduced when they disappear:
I felt like political militancy, I would almost say queer, I don’t know, this more underground thing, right? And in that… that space was dead, that wasteland was dead. No… [LGBT collective name 1] was dead, it was resurrected later, [socio-community collective name], this was in the [social centre], the [social centre] was evicted, it also died at that time. [LGBT collective name 2] died, and I knew a lot of activists from those spaces. […] Then the critical pride has gained a lot of strength in recent years, [LGBT collective name 1] I don’t know what it’s like now, but it gained strength too. (Rubén, Sexual diversity, M29)
Also interesting is the multiplying role of certain spaces whose vocation is to host various activist groups. These spaces become a meeting place for different groups and thus a point of connection between many initiatives:
I saw that there was a collective in the [social centre], which was the [socio-community collective name 1], which was the one that had made those stickers and I looked for them on Twitter. […] the collective called [socio-community collective name 2], which is now [socio-community collective name 3]. And the solidarity pantry also in the [social centre]. (Lidia, Socio-community, W29)
This relevance of mobilisation spaces also explains the desolation that their disappearance can produce: ‘Then, they evicted me in May of last year [social centre 2] and I had a few months of desert in terms of militancy’. (María, Socio-community, W30)
Mobilities and activism
A very specific case of this interaction between meso factors and activist trajectory can be seen in the weight of youth mobilities: changes of residence, temporary or permanent, put people in contact with other situations and local dynamics, with other activist collectives that can mean an opening to discoveries, new experiences, relationships, etc., and thus new possibilities for activism: ‘I first discovered the whole network of self-managed squatted spaces in Madrid and all the projects that they encompassed, then it was like seeing it in a palpable and personal way. I’d never seen it before, so it was like a discovery’. (María, Socio-community, W30)
The change of residence for studies brings young people, usually from smaller towns, urban or rural, into contact with the activist ecosystem of the big cities, first through student associations, especially university ones, and then with activist groups in their own locality:
Going to, to Valencia was a displacement in every sense, wasn’t it? To start. One, because it implies starting the university, that you start to meet people who also like politics, right? […] That we could go out on a Saturday and instead of listening to reggaeton in the usual café in town, you had the option of going to [social centre], and they had a stand about political prisoners. And for me that was a visceral change in my whole paradigm of life. (Myriam, Feminist, W23)
It is also important to highlight young migrants, who access these new activist spaces as a consequence of their migratory experience, even becoming aware of their status and situation in the confrontation with the dynamics of the receiving society and its activist collectives.
Shortly after arriving, we began to have a more formal relationship, and when I realized that I am a migrant person, […] I started to investigate and become interested in these issues. (Marcela, Civil rights, W31)
Interrelation between activist practices, life trajectories and the social and political context
Despite having distinguished two objectives of the analysis (interrelation between the life trajectories and activist practices of young people, on the one hand, and the influence of the environment and context on both), it should be clear that this is no more than an analytical artefact, since in the activist experience everything is interrelated: decisions about personal life are made in a given environment and social and political context, which also allows or hinders one or another activist practice. This is clearly seen in the activist narratives. In many of their interventions, allusions to personal life decisions are intermingled with references to certain elements of activist practices in no predetermined order, while at the same time aspects of the context may appear, equally related to life and activist elements. To appreciate these interrelationships, we constructed a specific coding system that we applied to quotations that had previously been coded within a group of codes related to personal trajectories. This specific coding resulted in 11 categories, of which the first 7 related to the interrelationship between personal life and activism and the other 4 were more linked to the context in its different dimensions (see Table 2).
Coding System for Personal Trajectories
Table 2 Long description
Coding scheme lists eleven subject areas used to analyze personal trajectories and activism, organized under two targets. Target P1 covers seven subjects: personal predispositions, family upbringing, work or livelihood, social life and leisure, education and studies, personal issues, and mobilities. Target P2 covers four subjects: collectives and mobilizing agents, local activism, local circumstances, and global events. The structure separates individual life-course factors from environmental and collective influences on activism. Entries are categorical labels rather than counts or rankings, so the table indicates coverage and grouping, not frequency or strength of relationships.
The codes related to the interrelationship between personal life and activism take into account the crossover between the different domains that influence personal trajectories (family, work, social life, education, mobilities), with some personal factors (predispositions to activism and other personal issues). The codes related to environment and context consider the existence of specific activist organisations, the possibilities of activism at the local level, the local circumstances of the person’s place of residence, but also global events that may have a general social impact. All of this intersects in the biographies of the activists’ commitment and is reflected in the interviews. Below are three examples, in which we can see how the 11 categories mentioned above appear in just a few lines:
[activist collective name] has been like the first place where I feel useful and I feel that I am constantly learning, […] In [activist collective name], I don’t miss a single assembly[8]. First, because I am in a situation that allows me to do so, right? I have a work schedule that prevents me from going[3], and because I know that there’s a lack of hands […] So yes, maybe it’s also linked to self-esteem a little bit, to feel like, like you’re valued and feel like yes, you’re useful, yes[6]. And also look, with a colleague from [activist collective name] we were talking the other day, about whether we are optimistic about the future, with what’s going on, Ukraine war… like more conflicts at the level, geopolitical… well, climate crisis and so on. And we both came to the same conclusion, that when you look at things on a macro level[11], it’s like it’s impossible to that everything is going to get better, but that we shared that, to participate in a space like [activist collective name], isn’t it, which is like a very small collective[8] inside a within a neighbourhood, within a city, within a country, within the entire universe that, in that particular space[9], we saw that things could be done, that is to say, it gave as yes, as a positive attitude towards the future. (Lidia, Socio-community, W29)
In this first transcript, we can see how the interviewee begins by commenting on how her work reduces her possibilities for activism [3]. She then points out some personal issues [6] that encourage her to participate in the activist organisation and then refers to the influence of global events [11], in this case the war in Ukraine or the climate crisis. In view of this, the possibility of participating in an organisation at the local level [8, 9] is experienced in a very positive way.
I had a little bit of a need to get involved in social projects or that had to do with[1]… with the transformation of the neighbourhood in general[9] or with campaigning, even political and so on. So, through participating in the [youth leisure organisation], I get to know [name of the collective], which is the coordinating organization[8], and there I meet people because they are people who have attended the public schools and high schools in the neighborhood[4, 10] I meet again with some people and… that is, they start to introduce me to the issue of the [name of the collective]… ‘hey, look, we’re going to have a [name of the collective] that we’re going to inaugurate this year[4, 8]. We are preparing the whole project, would you be interested in participating?’ And I… well… at that point I also had more time to participate in these projects. I was studying at the university, I was working only three or four hours a day[3, 5]. So most of my time I dedicate it to the militancy. (Francesc, Parties, M27)
In this second fragment, the interviewee reveals personal predispositions to activism [1], relating it to local activism [9], then referring to a collective that serves as a mobilising agent [8], as well as a provider of social relations [4]. Local circumstances [10] intersect in the form of an initiative that is created at that moment, and that serves as a spur to activist participation, always trying to reconcile it with work [3] and studies [5].
In these transcripts, we can clearly see how the biographies of activist commitment intermingle personal trajectories, organisational contexts, the socio-political environment and the participatory practices through which young people express their commitment.
Discussion and conclusions
Youth is a period of accelerated changes that occur simultaneously and have very deep roots and consequences. This means that when we look at the attitudes or behaviours of youth as a whole, the picture becomes blurred. In this article, we proposed to look at youth involvement in activism by attending to this dynamic and its interconnected nature that often goes unnoticed but is an indispensable element in understanding the nature and dynamics of young people’s political engagement.
The notion of engagement biographies acutely emphasises how youth activism, both in its dimension of action and in its identity dimension, is constructed in constant interaction with other spheres of life. The results confirm that in the narratives of the young activists, their motivations and activist experiences are intermingled with circumstances that change very rapidly due to situations in their personal lives as well as in the environment in which they live. These narratives show how engagement emerges through specific biographical experiences, contributes to shaping their personal trajectories and is continuously negotiated in relation to the constraints arising from other life domains. This helps us to understand that this kind of political engagement, especially in youth, is a biographically-based process and, consequently, dynamic, contingent and situated. It is dynamic because it evolves alongside the life trajectories of young people during a period where everything is temporary and short-lived. We also note the contingent nature of many of these expressions of political engagement. Participation in actions, collaboration with collectives or even interest in an issue occur because there is an accumulation of circumstantial elements that on other occasions do not occur and, therefore, do not give rise to participation. We are not arguing that political engagement is merely circumstantial, but rather that its manifestations have a nature contingent with the biography of the individual. Finally, these engagement biographies are situated, in that they occur in a context that causes engagement to crystallise in one way or another, despite being personal. The immediate environment and the social and political context either facilitate or hinder access to the contexts and agencies of mobilisation needed for mobilisation, depending on the biographical circumstances.
In the narratives of the young activists, a reflective vision of their own trajectory and political engagement is accentuated. In most cases, the experience of the activist trajectory is based on a personal journey rather than adherence to an organisation, ideology or even a specific cause. The activist identity is built in this dynamic process full of interactions between life, activism and the environment. There remains much ground to explore in the relationship between the engagement biographies and the construction of activist identity, but we have observed a close relationship between the two in these narratives. In fact, this activist identity is precisely what gives continuity and unity to the trajectory in this changing and contingent context.
The notion of engagement biography not only offers a more complex and nuanced view of the nature of young activists’ political engagement but also complements the understanding of some of the trends identified in the literature on the relationship between new generations and politics. One of these trends is the incorporation of political practices into elements of everyday life, in consumption, social media engagement, food, transportation or lifestyles (Bowman Reference Bowman2019; de Moor and Verhaegen Reference de Moor and Verhaegen2020; Stolle et al. Reference Stolle, Hooghe and Micheletti2005; Vromen et al. Reference Vromen, Loader, Xenos and Bailo2016). More than a fad, a generational trend or an individual preference, the biography of engagement shows that these practices are part of a politicisation process situated in each person’s trajectory.
Likewise, this approach allows us to reinterpret the apparent volatility of youth involvement (Devine and Valgarðsson Reference Devine and Valgarðsson2024) and its latent or standby nature (Amnå and Ekman Reference Amnå and Ekman2014). Rather than understanding it as a sign of disinterest or apathy, the logic of the engagement biography suggests that the cycles of activation and deactivation of participation are determined by life and contextual circumstances and by the way young people negotiate their relationship with the political as an integral part of their personal biography. In this sense, engagement is transformed and manifested according to the opportunities and challenges at each vital moment.
On the other hand, the engagement biography helps us to understand the shift towards less mediated, more individualised and flexible forms of activism (Norris Reference Norris2002; Pickard Reference Pickard2019; Pleyers Reference Pleyers, Kaldor, Selchow and Murray-leach2015). Rather than enrolling in rigid collective structures, many young people articulate their engagement through personalised experiences, tailored to their specific interests and values that mutate in tandem with their personal biographies. This is not a simple rejection of traditional militancy, but a reconfiguration of the relationship between the individual and politics, where organisations and movements function more as circumstantial tools than as spaces of loyalty and permanent ascription.
This study should be interpreted in light of some limitations. As a qualitative study based on biographical interviews with young activists in Spain, the findings are not intended to be statistically generalisable but to contribute to theoretical understandings of the interaction between activism and life trajectories. The Spanish case provides a particularly relevant context, but the patterns identified may differ in other national settings. In addition, the study relies on retrospective narratives, which involve processes of reconstruction and may be affected by memory biases. Furthermore, the sample focuses exclusively on activists and does not capture the perspectives of non-participants or those who disengaged completely. Finally, although the analysis identifies common processes, it does not systematically examine how these dynamics vary according to social position, gender or ethnic background, which remains an important avenue for future research.
Finally, this approach provides clues to understanding the growing distance between young people, party politics and political institutions (Dalton Reference Dalton, Dalton and Wattenberg2000; Henn et al. Reference Henn, Weinstein and Forrest2005; Kostelka and Blais Reference Kostelka and Blais2021; Pickard Reference Pickard2019). Demographic changes and institutional and electoral dynamics have accentuated a shift in the political priorities of parties, institutions and public policies towards the adult population (Bay and Pedersen Reference Bay, Pedersen, Falch-Eriksen, Takle and Slagsvold2021; Berry Reference Berry2014; Stockemer and Sundström Reference Stockemer and Sundström2025). This institutional adultcentrism (Soler-i-Martí and Ballesté-Isern Reference Soler-i-Martí and Ballesté-Isern2024) explains the growing distance between young people and democratic institutions. If political involvement is increasingly linked to everyday life and personal experiences, it is understandable that new generations find it difficult to engage with institutions that do not reflect their concerns or that maintain structures far removed from their realities. In this sense, the biography of engagement not only helps to interpret the transformation of youth participation but also points to possible ways to rethink the relationship between democratic institutions and the younger generations.
Data availability
The primary data for this study consist of qualitative interviews. In accordance with the criteria established by the Research Ethics Committee of the National University of Distance Education (UNED), these data cannot be made publicly available due to confidentiality and data protection concerns. However, all relevant information regarding the research design, fieldwork, data coding and analysis process, as well as the aggregated data, is available in the UNED repository at the following link: https://doi.org/10.21950/WXUGEF
Financial support
This research was carried out with financial support from the Ministry of Science and Innovation (Spain) (Grant agreement: PID2020-117529RB-I00).
Ethics statement
The article draws on data from the YouthActivisms project (Sociopolitical Engagement and Youth Activisms in an Individualized Society: Forms, Meanings, and Transformation Processes, grant agreement PID2020-117529RB-I00). The project has followed all the procedures and criteria established by the Research Ethics Committee of the National University of Distance Education (UNED) to protect the privacy and rights of the participants.
Disclosure statement
The authors report that there are no competing interests to declare.
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