Dynamics of Youth Agency

Diverse global youth cultures are strongly affected by exercises of both material and ideological eurocentric power. Such power is maintained and projected through universalising discourse that ignores pluriversal responses to socio-political stimuli. This article explores the quantum dynamics of youth agency through digital and physical spaces as they connect, dialogue, and dynamically assert their voices in response to the universalising power of eurocentric modernity. Solidarities and shared decolonial aspirations across spheres are evident - from Gen Z TikTok content creators lambasting the hypocrisy and short sightedness of Boomer critiques of “youth laziness”, to Kenyan Gen Z protesting the 2024 finance bill, both in the streets and through social media mobilisation. These youths transcend the hierarchical logic and practices of a western modernity and the geo-political power of the west, articulated in structured interactions and neoliberal ideologies, as they resist the material consequences evident in everyday life situations, such as joblessness, domestic and international political conflict, economic and social hostilities.

We, therefore, recognise global youths as diverse in that there is no universal claim to a homogeneous idea of youth while also arguing for the quantum dynamics of the multiple but interconnected decolonising strategies employed to resist neoliberal eurocentric power. We borrow decoloniality’s claim of pluriversalism to locate the world’s youth as existing in multiplicities, situated within their own socio-cultural context, while also experiencing and resisting the globalised forces of eurocentric ideological and material power.

We use the case of the 2024 Gen Z protests in Kenya to explore how Kenyan youths engage with and possibly benefit from decolonising global social and epistemological connections as well as charting out local individuated paths of agency.