Relationship between social class and the rise of political participation among post-90s youths in Hong Kong

Abstract

 More and more Post-90s youths go on the street fighting for what they perceived as correct and worth fighting for. Recently, the public think that youths nowadays are too radical but they neither realize the reasons behind youths eagerly participate in political issues nor the background of those participants. There is always a question regarding whether only people from specific social class engage in political activities. Through the in-depth interview with 12 Post-90s youths from different social classes in Hong Kong, it is found that parenting style directly affects political participation of youths through the language used, organization of youths’ daily life and the interventions in institutions. The class reproduction not only influencing youths’ attitude and action towards one’s political views, but also manifesting the way youths get along with their peers. All these are related to the different parenting styles in different classes. Previous researches only stated that youths’ political participation is in relation with family but there is a lack of research examining how they are linked or what is the process in it. This research is a complement of the works done above.