Unruly kids? Conceptualizing and defending youth disobedience
| Author | Nikolas Mattheis |
| DOI | 10.1177/1474885120918371 |
| Published date | 01 July 2022 |
| Date | 01 July 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article EJPT
Unruly kids?
Conceptualizing and
defending youth
disobedience
Nikolas Mattheis
University of Bayreuth, Germany
Abstract
Takingthe ‘Fridays for Future’ movement as its starting point, this article conceptualizes
and defends youth disobedience, understood as principled disobedience by legal
minors. The article first argues that the school strike for climate can be viewed as
civil disobedience. Then, the article distinguishes between various forms of youth dis-
obedience (according to whether they involve child-specific issues or actions). Building
on the democratic rationale for civil disobedience, the remainder of the article argues
that there is a special justification for youth disobedience. To show this, it argues that
children are wrongfully excluded from political participation and that principled law-
breaking can be an important remedy to this exclusion. The upshot is that adults should
engage seriously and leniently with youth disobedience.
Keywords
Children, civil disobedience, democratic participation, Fridays for Future, resistance,
school strikes, youth
Introduction
On 15 March 2019, hundreds of thousands of children took to the streets to protest
inaction on the climate crisis. Many of them did something illegal during the
demonstrations: they went on strike from school, following Greta Thunberg,
Corresponding author:
Nikolas Mattheis, University of Bayreuth, Universit€
atsstraße 30, 95447 Bayreuth, Germany.
Email: nikolas.mattheis@philosophy-economics.de
European Journal of Political Theory
!The Author(s) 2020
Article reuse guidelines:
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DOI: 10.1177/1474885120918371
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2022, Vol. 21(3) 466–490
who was 15 when she first protested in front of the Swedish National Parliament
instead of going to school. The ‘Fridays for Future’ movement that her
actions sparked – characterized by weekly school strikes for climate justice
around the world – has received wide recognition: child protestors are invited to
international conferences, and cities have reacted by acknowledging the climate
emergency. But the movement has also been met with opposition. Some criticism
concerns its contents: many complain that the protestors’ demands are illusory or
that climate protection should concern not children, but ‘professionals’ (CBS
News, 2019). Yet, much criticism in fact targets the specific form of activism
that ‘Fridays for Future’ uses. Some simply complain that school strikes are illegal.
The British government worries that the protestors are wasting resources through
their ‘truancy’ (Steafel et al., 2019). Likewise, Australian and German ministers
suggest that children should protest outside of school hours (Westbrook and
Fraser, 2019).
This is not the first time that children have broken laws and other regulations
for political reasons. American pupils used school walkouts to protest gun laws in
the aftermath of the 2018 shootings in Florida. During the Soweto uprising of
1976, South African pupils’ unregistered protests against Afrikaans being the sole
language of instruction were violently shut down by the police. Children were also
decisively involved in the 1963 American civil rights struggles. As early as
1899, New York newsboys, many of them minors, went on a disruptive strike
for higher wages.
What are we to make of these instances of children’s law-breaking? Are we to
condemn them outright for being illegal? One obvious source for approaches to
this question is the debate on civil disobedience. Yet, here discussions of civil
disobedience by children are lacking.
1
This lacuna is both puzzling and concerning.
It is puzzling because, as outlined, children have long played important roles in
disobedient movements, including those most discussed in the literature. It is con-
cerning because it perpetuates a neglect of children’s political agency within polit-
ical theory.
In this article, I seek to fill this gap by bridging the debates on civil disobedience
with those on children and politics. Long concerned with children’s political par-
ticipation, the field of childhood studies has increasingly focused on informal
political activities.
2
Expanding on this, I draw on resources developed in the dis-
obedience literature to conceptualize and defend youth disobedience. This can help
vindicate disobedient activism by children against popular objections concerning
its illegality.
My main contention will be that there is a strong case for youth disobedience.
By youth disobedience I mean civil (and other forms of principled) law-breaking
by children.
3
By children I mean legal minors, i.e. those who have their political
participatory rights limited due to their young age. And by strong case I mean that
children have especially weighty grounds for disobedient activism not generally
outweighed by competing considerations.
467Mattheis
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