Citizenship for a changing global climate: Learning from New Zealand and Norway

Abstract

Young citizens under the age of 25 years make up just under half of the world’s population. Globally, they face new, interrelated problems of dangerous environmental change, including increasing incidence of severe storms associated with a changing climate, and related new threats to human security. Addressing the complex challenge of climate change will require new understandings of citizen rights and responsibilities. In this context, we were interested in comparing and contrasting how young citizens currently conceive their rights and responsibilities in two high-consumption societies with sharply contrasting democratic contexts: New Zealand’s market liberal democracy and the social democratic state of Norway. Discussion reflects on youthful expectations of citizen rights and responsibilities and the implications of their assumptions in a changing climate.

Keywords

Agency Climate Change Neoliberalism Social Democracy Youth

Introduction: New citizenship challenges in a dynamic environment

Young citizens under the age of 25 years make up almost half of the world’s population. Globally, they face new, complex, interrelated problems, including unprecedented environmental changes associated with rising greenhouse gas emissions and unsustainable resource extraction, problems which now threaten human security (Hayward, 2012; Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 2014; Jackson, 2009). To address these issues effectively, young citizens will need capabilities to understand broadly conceived citizenship rights, and a willingness to accept new obligations and responsibilities, not only to other citizens within a nation state, but to distant others and non-human nature (Barry, 2012; Dobson and Bell, 2006). For example, the carbon-intensive lifestyles of many citizens in the global north has significant and wide ranging implications for the lives and livelihoods of people around the world, as a changing climate will increasingly impact on local communities and cultural values (Adger et al., 2013; O’Brien et al., 2010; Young, 2011). Many citizens in highly affluent nations have access to resources to enable their voices to be heard in public debates in ways that can help frame problems and solutions. In this context, it is important to consider how young citizens in these democracies understand their rights and responsibilities to others. Do they see their rights and responsibilities narrowly or broadly?

A number of authors have discussed the importance of understanding citizenship and its associated rights and responsibilities, beyond a set of legal entitlements in a nation state. While rights, duties and expectations (e.g. voting, paying taxes and support from the state in tough times) are significant elements of adult citizenship, this legal framework overlooks the way children and young people are also citizens in the broader sense of identifying with their communities, making demands and contributing to civic life as political actors even in the absence of a full framework of adult legal entitlements and obligations (Hayward, 2012; Lister, 2007).

Many studies of youth citizenship have also rightfully refocused our attention on ways in which citizenship is practised. For example, there has been considerable attention paid to problems of declining youth voter turnout, especially in the United States, Canada, Australasia and Western Europe (Blais and Rubenson, 2013; Catt, 2005; Farrell, 2014; Flinders, 2014; Gallego, 2009; Levine, 2003; Ødegård, 2009; Vowles, 2010). Others have considered new ways citizenship is expressed through communication technologies, ethical consumption, street protest, art activism or identity politics, for example (Bell, 2005; Dahlgren, 2013; Gerodimos and Ward, 2007; Hayward, 2012; Llewellyn and Westheimer, 2009; Norris, 2003; Ødegård, 2009; Wood, 2010). Understanding how youth citizenship is practised and expressed is important, but in this discussion, we argue, attention also needs to be paid to the political-economic and environmental context of citizenship. For example, how do young people understand their rights and responsibilities as citizens of affluent nations with high per capita greenhouse gas emissions? How are these understandings related, if at all, to recognition of the need for political, economic and social change?

In the research reported here, we compare Norwegian and New Zealand students’ attitudes to citizenship. Both Norwegian and New Zealand societies share some similarities. Both nations have been described as small and ‘strikingly’ egalitarian states. But there are also some significant differences. Norway is considered a strong social democracy with a large public sector and a culture of cooperative institutions that merges private with public interests (Østerud, 2005: 705); the state typically is charged with providing security and equality for people through managing the market and redistributing resources. In recent years, Norway has experienced a neoliberal turn, defined here as the introduction of market thinking into wider aspects of public life, often through modified new public management strategies and private–public partnerships in various sectors, including health care, and increasing privatization of key assets including the state oil company and telecommunications (Telhaug et al., 2004; Tranvik and Selle, 2007; Wiborg, 2012). In the case of Norway, young people under 25 years make up 31% of the population of 5 million. Norway’s greenhouse gas emission profile is estimated at 11.1 kilotonnes (kt) of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) per capita, due largely to contributions from oil and gas extraction, manufacturing industry, mining and transport (Statistics Norway, 2014). Research on climate impacts in Norway suggests that young Norwegians face a future with rising average temperatures, more precipitation and milder, more unstable winters (Hanssen-Bauer, 2009).

By contrast, New Zealand is a well established ‘market liberal’ democracy, in which the state has been effectively rolled back from public life through far-reaching reforms over three decades, including radical privatization and deregulation from the mid-1980s associated with a marked growth in income inequality, and concern that values of managerialism are supplanting a tradition of democratic citizenship in the nation where women first won the vote (Bollard and Buckle, 1987; Castles et al., 1996; Dalziel, 2006; Rashbrooke, 2013; Salmond, 2013). In the case of New Zealand, youth under 25 years make up 36% of the 4.4 million total population and include significant proportions who identify as indigenous Maori and/or Pacifica New Zealanders. The country’s greenhouse gas emission profile is estimated at 17.9 CO2e kt per capita, mainly derived from agricultural emissions and transport (MOBI, 2011). New Zealand’s young people will experience, among other changes, a drier east coast of the South Island, greater coastal erosion associated with more severe storm impacts and its implications for coastal cities and cultural heritage sites (Hayward and Selboe, 2014).

Both Norway and New Zealand acknowledge citizenship as an important aspect of youth development in teaching and learning practices (Ministry of Education, 2007; The Royal Ministry of Education, and Research and Church Affairs, 1997). However, there is significant debate in both nations about the relative emphasis that should be placed on citizenship compared to acquiring (and testing) other skills for a global labour market (Bjørnestad and Stray, 2013). While, both nations implicitly value citizenship and critical thinking in school curriculum statements (e.g. citizenship concepts and skills inform the subjects of Social Studies and Physical Education in New Zealand and the subjects of Social Studies, Norwegian, Religion and Ethics in Norway), there are also differences in classroom and school-based experiences of citizenship. A recent survey of 14-year-olds in 38 nations–the Study of Civic Education and Citizenship (International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS)) (Schulz et al., 2010)–revealed that young people interviewed in both New Zealand and Norway displayed similar levels of civic knowledge (both only slightly above average). Nevertheless, of all the surveyed countries, New Zealand had the widest gap in results between high and low achievers in civic knowledge and in youth participation (Lang, 2010; Schulz et al., 2010). By contrast, Norway outperformed not only New Zealand, but nearly all other nations on a range of measures of school citizenship experiences, including active participation in classroom debate, voting for class representative or school parliament, taking part in decision-making about how the school is run, taking part in discussions at a school assembly, and becoming a candidate for class representative or school parliament (Schulz et al., 2010). In these categories, Norwegian students participated at more than 10 percentage points above the ICCS average and ranked as the third highest country on most measures (Plew et al., 2014; Schulz et al., 2010). Moreover, researchers argue that these school-based experiences can influence future participation in society (Ainley et al., 2012).

Will Kymlicka (2001) has described children and young people’s communities as the ‘seedbeds’ of citizenship. He argues that children learn values and virtues which are expected of citizens in these communities. The findings of the ICCS study, however, remind us that young people’s expectations of citizenship are not only a product of their political and economic context; their youthful experience can and does also influence the wider political and social context.

Research approach: Listening to young people talk about citizenship

Given the challenges for citizenship in a changing climate, this research compared how groups of children and youth talk about citizenship in Norway and New Zealand. Each study was conducted independently by the authors. The first study reported here is referred to as the ‘Christchurch case’; it draws from focus group research carried out between 2006 and 2010 with 160 children aged 8–12 years, predominantly drawn from Christchurch, the largest city on the South Island of New Zealand (Hayward, 2012). The insights are also informed by a survey of 132 young adults aged 18–35 years also conducted over the same period in Christchurch and Dunedin (Hayward et al., 2011).

The second study reports from findings of an ongoing ‘Voices of the Future’ project, which explores issues of citizenship, participation and political engagement among young Norwegians. This study draws on 19 focus group interviews involving 123 youth between 13 and 19 years old, attending junior high school (ungdomsskole) and senior high school (videregående skole). Most of the pupils interviewed were from schools in Oslo, the capital of Norway, and the Trondheim/Trøndelag area (seven focus groups respectively), in addition to four groups with pupils in the cities of Bodø, Ålesund, Bergen and Kristiansand. The analysis is also informed by data from individual interviews with 29 young activists aged 15–30 years (Selboe et al., 2014).

The third study, the ‘Trondheim case’, was conducted as a pilot project by a New Zealand graduate student based in Norway in 2013 (Plew et al., 2014). The project involved a study of one junior high school (ungdomsskole) in Trondheim, and included focus group interviews with nine young people aged 13–16 years, supplemented by class observation and wider interviews with teachers, parents and school officials, as part of a wider reflection on how democracy and citizenship are practised within Norwegian and New Zealand classroom settings.

How do children and young people talk about citizen rights in Norway and New Zealand?

While young people may use similar terms when speaking about citizenship, we observed subtle but important differences in the emphasis and meaning that young people attach to citizen rights and responsibilities in the Anglo-liberal context of New Zealand and the social democratic setting of Norway. In the first instance, we note nuanced but striking differences in the way citizenship rights were discussed. In the Norwegian studies, when asked about citizenship, young citizens frequently emphasized rights to contribute to a group; this assumption that active participation with others is a right appears to subtly inform many of the Norwegian respondents’ expectations about the role of the state and the roles that citizens themselves should play. For example, many youth interviewed in the Voices study expressed an awareness of international concerns and talked about poverty, inequality and environmental problems such as climate change. This was described by youths in the Voices study as the need ‘to participate and listen to each other’, and in particular the responsibility they thought individuals, groups and countries that are economically and socially advantaged, like Norway, have to find solutions and to take action’. Norwegian students also talked about their rights to vote at 18 and participate in decision-making and have their voice heard (see also Bjerke, 2011a, 2011b; Kjørholt et al., 2009), and to be part of a community, ‘like your family or religious community’, which ‘provides you with support and safety’, even if your view was not always listened to. Young Norwegian respondents also spoke of the necessity of ‘going together’ to do something and being heard, as well as the need for support from and dependence on others in the pupils’ lives: state, school, associations, family and friends. Older activists spoke of the value of being members of and working through a political party or organization, particularly when they have something ‘serious to say’. Similarly, the younger respondents in the Trondheim case also highlighted the right of citizens to take action with others (Plew et al., 2014).

This emphasis on the right to participate in a collective contrasts with the dominant narrative emerging from conversation with young New Zealand respondents who volunteered descriptions of citizenship rights primarily as individual attributes: rights to free speech and fair opportunities. While being part of a group was valued by New Zealand respondents, the nuanced difference was that fewer young New Zealanders placed significant explicit emphasis on the right to participate with others as a central attribute of citizenship. Moreover, in their focus group conversations, many young New Zealanders offered a contractual view of participation as individuals, arguing that citizens should take action (e.g. to improve the environment) in anticipation that others will act in a similar fashion. As one New Zealand child expressed it, ‘Everybody is just sort of doing their bit, and that is really good because the more people that do their bit that means the less and less waste we have and everybody’s actions count and that sort of thing’. This reasoning is summed up as ‘I will if you will’ views of contractual thinking in market societies and was widely prevalent in the New Zealand focus groups (Dobson, 2010). Nevertheless, Dobson cautions that such reasoning often provides a thin grounding for pro-environmental behaviour, because it implies citizens are not obliged to act if others do not. This problem is illustrated by New Zealand children and young adults who expressed scepticism that because New Zealand was a ‘small country’, it ‘should not have to do as much’ (e.g. to mitigate climate change) because other countries were not ‘doing the right thing’. For example, ‘New Zealand should not make changes because: ‘I don’t think New Zealand is making as much of a problem as other countries. Places like New York have huge factories that make more pollution than we make in New Zealand’ (Hayward, 2012). These young citizens are expressing views condoned more widely by New Zealand political leaders who similarly suggest that as a small nation New Zealand can do little (Manhire, 2014).

Understanding citizenship as responsibility – to whom?

Another notable difference between the reported research was how young people talk about their responsibilities as citizens, and to whom. In the Christchurch study, for example, all participants in the focus groups of children aged 8–12 years spoke of good citizenship as exercising personal responsibility, with significant numbers relishing the role of expectant change agent, believing a good citizen could and should take individual responsibility for fixing problems, or volunteering. Good citizens ‘Don’t bully’, ‘don’t litter’, ‘take care of yourself’, ‘take care of your tribe’, ‘fundraise’, ‘eat right’, ‘help it (the community)’ (Hayward, 2012: 30–31). These children readily identified with the descriptor of ‘Self-Helpers’, a term developed to describe a dominant form of citizenship also observed elsewhere among children in other neoliberal states (Westheimer and Kahne, 2004).

By contrast, while many Norwegian students interviewed in both the Voices and Trondheim studies also expressed that ‘good’ citizens demonstrate ‘responsibility’, it was striking that in the Norwegian context these citizenship responsibilities were often framed as a responsibility towards a greater good (of their local communities, country or the world). For example, many felt that ‘being part of communities’ of friends, family, organizational life or religious groups was an important part of being a ‘citizen’. ‘Following rules’ and norms, and thereby contributing to a well-functioning society, were other key responsibilities of citizens and community members identified in discussion. The responsibilities of citizenship were not only expressed as conformity to rules and group norms however, as many of the youths interviewed in the Voices project also emphasized the responsibility they believed citizens had to ‘challenge the problems you see in society by taking action’; and many maintained that a good citizen needs to ‘engage in society’ and ‘contribute and try to make a difference’. The responsibility of taking care of and respecting other people, and contributing to well-being and justice for all members of society, for instance by ‘paying taxes, giving money to those who need it and being environmentally friendly’, were other responsibilities of good citizenship together with other more specifically individual responsibilities, such as ‘getting an education and employment’ and ‘avoid criminality’. The emphasis on individual responsibility for self, through school work and securing ‘good grades’ (and eventually a further education and a ‘good, interesting and well-paid job’) did seem to be a source of stress and tension for some of the Norwegian students, especially as many faced competing demands of life with friends and being active in sports clubs and other associations, as well as on various social media.

Some Christchurch respondents also emphasized citizenship as responsibility to others in ways closer to the social democratic model of Norway. In particular, students from focus groups within Maori (indigenous language) programmes spoke with pride about their participation and responsibilities as tribal citizens. For example, ‘I would be nothing without my tribe’. Similarly, in a large international school, children discussed how it was ‘cool’ to ‘be able to’ be part of such a diverse school and responsibility to provide whanaunatanga or mutual support (Hayward, 2012). Some students also spoke of responsibility to a sports club or music group. Overall, however, both children and young adult New Zealand responses placed greater emphasis on valued social interactions with family and friends than on wider collective action. In the Voices study, by contrast, many students spoke of a strong sense of trust in and expectations towards the (Norwegian) state, and how the ‘state’, government and politicians should provide for all people living in Norway, as well as take action to solve global issues (i.e. by taking on responsibilities in international forums to mitigate and adapt to climate change and reduce poverty and global structural inequality). At the national level, the Norwegian pupils interviewed in the Voices project suggested and also expected that their state should secure social and health issues, as well as ‘helping people live sustainably’ by creating policies and laws that would provide incentives to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions as well as promote attitude change and practices leading to more sustainable consumption and ways of living.

Supporting the capabilities of citizenship in a changing climate: Reflections for the future

Overall, a comparison of findings based on listening to young people in New Zealand and Norway highlights some similarities and differences in attitudes to citizenship in a changing world. Most respondents in the Norwegian and New Zealand research volunteered that good citizenship was associated with responsibilities and rights, but there was a significant, nuanced difference in their understanding of these terms. This underscores to us that supporting citizenship is not simply a matter of importing programmes and activities for citizenship that work elsewhere, but also paying attention to the underlying norms and social–political context of citizenship.

The influence of social democratic values or market liberal expectations of citizenship is not universal. For example, some Norwegian students interviewed in the Voices study volunteered a variety of ways in which peer norms affected how they engaged and participated. Some commented that environmental awareness and political engagement was encouraged and admired in their classes and schools, while others noted that to be ‘popular’ at their school was more about ‘getting friends’ and ‘not standing out’ (defined in several group conversations as not being controversial, not too good in school, not too actively engaged in politics or organizational life). The role of democratic education (Berge and Stray, 2012a, 2012b; Bjørnestad and Stray, 2013; Stray, 2013) and school environments in supporting opportunities for children and young people to practise citizenship has also been highlighted by the work of Schreiner and Sjøberg (2005) and Schreiner et al. (2005). These authors note the importance of ‘environmental empowerment’ as an essential condition for purposeful action. There are limits to which a school classroom can create this environment in the absence of wider social norms. To learn to act collectively as citizens for a greater good or to create change, young people also need to see this action reinforced in their wider community through various institutions and associations. However, in the New Zealand case, some respondents who had experience of tribal hui or meetings, school fundraisers, sports clubs and a local community protest spoke with greater confidence about the potential for collective action and the value of taking part in public life.

Comparing the discussion findings in Norway and New Zealand suggests communities and classrooms do offer a seedbed of citizenship. Family, friends and local communities reinforce values and norms of the ‘good citizen’. Although the wider norms of market liberalism appear to limit opportunity for public collective action in the New Zealand case, the experience was not uniform. Where respondents had the opportunity to experience collective action, their attitudes to citizenship rights and responsibilities were enriched and resonated with social democratic values of collective responsibility and action. Moreover, the Norwegian and New Zealand respondents noted that teachers can make it ‘safer’ for students to feel they can participate in critical discussions on various themes. Similarly, significant numbers of the Christchurch study reported that they valued team coaches and mentoring adults who encouraged participation, and appreciated the opportunity to take action with efficacious adults and older children on local community issues that mattered to them (Hayward, 2012). These learning moments enrich our understanding of citizenship, reminding us of the importance not only of rights, but also of new responsibilities as citizens that extend beyond our own community or group. In a rapidly changing world, enhancing and extending understandings of citizenship among youth will play an important role in shaping the future.

Footnotes

Funding

The Voices of the Future project is financed by the NORKLIMA programme of the The Research Council of Norway.

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