Youth participation in environmental action in Vietnam: Learning citizenship in liminal spaces

Laura Beckwith; Matt Baillie Smith; Oliver Hensengerth; Hue Nguyen; Chamithri Greru; Siobhan Warrington; Tanh Nguyen; Graham Smith; Thuy Mai Thi Minh; Lan Nguyen; Pamela Woolner

Published in ‘The Geographical Journal’

Abstract

Youth participation has become an important element of environmental governance and is also a way that young people learn about the expectations of citizenship. In the global South, young people are confronted with multiple understandings of citizenship as international development organisations may introduce citizenship in a liberal, democratic framing which may differ from national citizenship norms. In Vietnam, state agencies have a history of supporting youth participation linked to nation building and community service. These activities create an imaginary which highlights citizenship as a status and the national scale as being central. More recently, liberalisation policies have opened the door for activities of international organisations which extend imaginaries of citizenship to the global scale and beyond status to a process centred on creating a sense of belonging. Other forms of participation are also flourishing, thanks to the increasing reach of social media. This paper explores how the diversity of this landscape creates liminal spaces of citizenship which young people navigate, working within and between different scales and imaginaries.