Young people's politics and the micro-territories of the local

In spite of the late modern interpellation of youth as mobile and globally
oriented, and a perception of social and political issues as increasingly
playing out in a transnational arena, young Australians exhibit strong local
and individualised tendencies in expressing politics. They are bounded by
the ‘micro-territories of the local’; that is, their political thinking and acting
takes place within the spaces of home, friendship groups, school and
neighbourhood. This paper draws on an ARC project with nearly 1000
mainly 15–17-year-old Victorians to examine the relationship between
young people’s embeddedness in their local worlds and their views of
themselves as efficacious political actors. It considers how their competency
within such micro-territories opens up neglected sites and strategies for
political expression and engagement while limiting their sense of sense of
political efficacy, and it asserts the significance of considering this age group,
not for what these young people will become in the future, but for their
particular location, socially, physically and politically in the present.