Understanding the impact of responses to climate change on children's political socialization

Objective

What does it mean to grow up learning about politics in a context marked by the climate crisis? What if your first awareness of a political issue was one that politicians seem unable to solve? KIDSONCLIMATE investigates how young teenagers’ awareness of the climate crisis, and the emotions it generates, might impact their (dis)engagement with politics at different levels (national, local, European). It uses existing quantitative data from the IEA International Civics and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS) along with innovative qualitative methodologies with 13-year-olds and their parents in two countries (Belgium and France) to ask: how do the emotions generated by the climate crisis impact young teens’ support for the political system they live in and their feelings of political belonging? What are the social, political, educational, and media factors that influence these emotions? At a time when the effects of the climate crisis are ever more visible and dramatic, and many young people are turning away from institutional politics, or towards populism and the far right, we urgently need to understand how the emotions resulting from this context might impact how young people feel about their political system and their place within it.