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This concluding article of the special issues summarizes the empirical results presented in the previous contributions within a comparative perspective, with particular attention to locate them within previous research on youth mobilizations. From the theoretical point of view, the articles, based on the research conducted in the context of the CRY_OUT project, have tried to bridge some concepts in youth studies and social movement studies. Using the concept of generations in a critical way, we have in fact aimed at deconstructing it by looking at the meaning given to generations by movement activists, to their self-perception in terms of generational identification, as well as their taste in terms of contentious frames and practices. Empirically, we have addressed, in particular, the mobilization of Millennials in anti-austerity protests on issues such as labor and also women's and gender rights, antiracism, environmental protests, and alternative cultural and/or recreational initiatives. Focusing on Europe, we have chosen some paradigmatic cases of protests in the United Kingdom, Southern European Italy and Spain, and Eastern European Poland. In light of the theoretical questions presented in the introduction, this article addresses, in turn, the conceptions of generations in movements, the self-assessment by Millennials, as well as some characteristics of their mobilizations in terms of organizational structures, repertories of action, and collective framing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a racial security state, Britain's black and brown youth have been excluded from the national narrative. Construed as foreign, threatening, and alienated, young people of minority backgrounds have been the prime targets of the state's counterterrorism legislation as well as surveillance, policing, and disciplining programs. At the same time, communities of color are among the most severely affected by austerity measures, suffering from the highest rates of unemployment, shoddy housing, cuts to public services, and closure of community centers. This article reveals how generational identity is tied to racial and class consciousness, dimensions rarely accounted for in the classical sociological work on generations. Shedding light on the mosaic of intersectional struggles, the article scrutinizes how activists of color, marginalized even within traditional leftist movements, carve out their own spaces of engagement, reclaim their terms of speaking, and forge wider alliances and solidarities. In doing so, they combine outward acts of resistance with inward-looking practices of self-affirmation, building community spaces, and preserving memories. Within these various avenues—ranging from university campuses to DIY festivals—young racialized activists depart from the language of civil rights and the politics of recognition, typical for the generation of their parents. Instead, young activists question the multiple exclusions on which citizenship relies, turn away from state projects, and articulate a radical, decolonial vision of social justice, not contained by the nation–state framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introductory article to the special issue presents a theoretical framework built on a bridging of youth studies and social movement studies. Building on some preliminary observations and empirical evidence, the article introduces the interrelated research questions that this issue addresses, based on the work of the CRY_OUT project: What leads a significant number of young people in times of more or less severe crisis to engage in collective initiatives, rather than to remain passive? What are the forms of social commitment that critical young people choose to use, in particular during periods of crisis? Which meanings are attached to these forms of social engagement? What kinds of resources are available to young people for social mobilization? And to what extent do they vary across different degrees of socioeconomic crisis, governmental constellation, and type of conflict, thereby shaping individual-level forms and levels of social participation? To what extent do differences in the impact of the crisis on national contexts, and related political transformations, result in differences in young people's social engagement in terms of motivations and forms? After presenting the theoretical model and research design, the article summarizes some results across three main aspects: the meaning of generations in social movements, the self-definition of Millennials, and their forms of commitment. It then presents the research design and the content of the contributions that follow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Movement for a Better Hungary (Jobbik) qualifies as one of the most successful far-right organisations in contemporary Europe. Through its swift rise in popularity and entry to parliament, the 'movement party' has been able to alter the Hungarian public discourse, existing patterns of party competition, additionally exerting effects on the government's policy agenda. At least part of these effects should be attributed to Jobbik's popularity among the youth; its overrepresentation among those aged below 30 is, by now, an established fact within national politics. The article argues for a broader understanding of youth participation in far-right politics and sets two principal research goals. First, to reconstruct the breeding ground of far-right youth activism at the grassroots level, by unveiling potential links between the subcultural, social movement, and party arenas. The study will chart far-right milieus in Hungary and their overlap with Jobbik: thus, it will introduce supply-side factors that contributed to its popularity among the youth. Second, we seek to investigate Jobbik's appeal through the role of different elements used to justify joining a particular movement. The article uses primary data drawn from interviews and focus groups with students, and in-depth interviews with leaders of Jobbik. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discourses of morality are prevalent in contemporary Hong Kong youth activism. This paper suggests that this moralist disposition is the product of youth frustrations towards Hong Kong's political crisis, whereby the power gap between civil society and the government renders the former incapable of exerting substantial influence over the governance of the city. Rather than ascribe the cause of this power imbalance solely to government policies, this paper reveals that civil society also contributed towards the making of this political crisis. By reviewing the citizen-led pro-democracy movement throughout the decades, it is shown that civil society has been ineffective in implementing political reforms because its actors and organisations harbour a political subjectivity that prioritises economic considerations over democratic aspirations, and are thus inclined to compromise with the government to preserve economic stability than to demand for political reforms. As a result, contemporary youth activists describe Hong Kong civil society as "uncaring" and lacking in moral commitment towards realising democratic reforms that will facilitate the development of a just society. Seeking to reconfigure such political attitudes that currently prevail in civil society, youth activists refashion themselves into political actors embodying a form of moral personhood that embraces notions of responsibility and of wanting to do good for the city, to show that another way of being politically engaged in Hong Kong is possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) is an emancipatory practice that may be used to facilitate meaningful discourse related to exploring post-secondary, college, and career pathways among youth. Through collaborative processes and consensus decision making, youth engage in YPAR as a process that develops collaborative research, teamwork, and shared leadership skills. We describe the applications of YPAR where school counselors work alongside youth to collectively examine constraints and opportunities related to college and career access. Engaging youth in YPAR has the potential to elevate young people's perspectives and experiences and give them a voice in promoting change in their local school communities. Often, outcomes of YPAR projects lead to action taken in the local school community, such as curricula changes and school--community projects. When youth feel empowered through these efforts, they may also feel more connected, thereby enhancing a sense of school community. In this essay and discussion article, we describe YPAR, including implications for school counselor practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at youth activism in Mostar through a specific action occurring in 2016, when an electric substation was overpainted in the neighbourhood of Rudnik. The project highlighted the rights of the miners to emphasize that other than ethnic identities can be brought forward through cultural heritage. The paper aims to broaden the spectrum of heritage values to encompass the concept of dignity. The monument served to induce a sense of dignity on two levels. Firstly, people were given the agency to influence the monument. Secondly, the monument emphasized workers' identity, which is currently silenced in the public space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reveals possibilities to expand the role of youth within ecosocial work practice. The Where I Stand Youth Summit held in Chicago, Illinois, provided a safe space for young people to reflect upon their understanding of, and roles within, social and environmental justice movements. Drawing upon critical youth empowerment theory and participant observation, we note that youth shared experiences of oppression across unique social identities, while displaying authentic communication, acceptance, and desire for solidarity. Re-defining what knowledge matters, along with intention and self-restoration, also emerged as critical to building young people's agency and power to effect social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws upon learning from three action research projects conducted as part of a Europe-wide project exploring young people's social and political participation. Challenging dominant discourses about what 'counts' as participation and what does not, the paper explores how, through the action research projects, young people engaged in knowledge democracy in 'new democratic arenas'. Building upon experiential knowing and creating knowledge and learning through practice, the young people explored their own democratic knowledge production, communication and engagement within a context of shifting discourses of participation, democratic engagement and active citizenship. The increasing preference of young people for more informal forms of participation as lived practice reflects a shift to young people constructing their own modes of participation and 'remaking democracy' in their own vision and according to their own needs. By working outside of the confines of normative assumptions of democratic practice and participation, young people exercised their own 'political' agency in response to their own priorities, interests and concerns and, in doing so, illustrated that new forms, understandings and practices of knowledge democracy can emerge that reflect the promise of inclusive democratic societies more meaningfully. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neoliberal market logic positions youth as either commodities produced and marketed by private institutions or consumers for whose business those institutions are competing, a paradigm that narrows pathways for youth participation in civic and political institutions by restricting youth agency to participation in markets. However, youth organizing groups recast what we imagine as the public domain, how public institutions are governed, and who takes part in this governance. In this life histories study of youth organizers, the participants' organizer identities occupied intellectual, emotional, social, and temporal space in their life worlds, mediating their agentive participation in an increasingly neoliberalized world. This article considers the implications of how youth involvement in social movements shapes identity and agency in a neoliberal sociopolitical context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the importance of social media to contemporary Chinese feminism, in the process introducing two important groups, Feminist Voice and Women's Awakening, who have used social media platforms for their activism in the past few years. Various online strategies have been taken up by their young members to ensure the best outcome for their advocacy. In particular, these feminists use social media to articulate a specific presence, or voice, that would be more difficult to sustain using more traditional modes of Chinese feminism. And they also attempt to cultivate relationships with mainstream journalists, building alliances they hope will encourage more gender-conscious reporting and more positive representations of feminism. While social media does not overcome all the obstacles to feminism that is becoming more visibly influential in China, these media groups stand out as key voices in Chinese feminist and youth activism today, with implications for how we understand contemporary feminism on an international scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Youth self-determination has been shown to be key to supporting youth engagement in school. However, the latent custodial and sorting functions of schooling often interfere with reform efforts that seek to change the nature of the central relationship of schooling—that of teacher and student. While many studies exist of short-term reform efforts, few long-term efforts in the United States have successfully persisted. This study is a longitudinal, embedded case study of a network of high schools, supported by an intermediary organization, committed to elevating student voice. Through a critical examination of the rapid prototyping approach the intermediary organization credits with the long-terms success of its program, I trace the adaptations of student voice theory and practice that occurred across 17 schools over a period of 5 years. I find that key adaptations that buffered organizational pressures—most notably teacher resistance to student voice—also moved the initiative away from the equity-focus that it embraced in early iterations. These findings point to the significance of value clarity in counter-normative reforms committed to developmental change and the challenges of avoiding the trap of only enriching the experiences of the most advantaged students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The struggles of youth and student activist movements of have radically challenged theology. For some (as an act of repentance) Theology, and in particular Missiology, are to be discarded or renamed as Intercultural Theology, for others Public Theology. This article wants to engage these proposals, by firstly affirming the particular agency of young activists, in South Africa, as they remix social activism and theology, but it probes deeper into the contemporary challenge of youth activism against Empire, in order to provide a particular perspective on this renaming. The author argues for a postcolonial theological perspective, or Postcolonial Theology, which takes serious the insights from new social movement theory, in their challenge of Empire. It is from this perspective where interculturality and youth activism, in the face of empire, is remixed towards transformation.

In the wake of the Arab Revolutions, much has been said about the pivotal role that Arab youth played in mobilizing citizens against autocratic regimes in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Less attention has been paid to the role played by engaged transnational Arab youth during this period. Canadian Arab youth offer an excellent case study to investigate the kinds of activities that youth social movements invest in to transnationally mobilize citizenship across borders, and in the process, how they expand forms of autonomy, solidarity, and mutual concern, and thus transform civil society and citizenship capacity-building among diverse networks in society. For this paper, we draw upon a cross-Canada survey conducted with Canadian Arab youth, as well as focus groups with Arab youth in Ottawa and Montreal. We argue, based on their work advocating, networking, educating, boycotting, and physically protesting, that Canadian Arab youth represent a highly diffused and engaged newly emerging social movement whose transnational activism with or for social movements and government, or multi-lateral institutions represent forms of cross-national citizenship mobilization. Canadian Arab youth, as a social movement, are emergent political subjectivities mobilizing citizenship capacities locally and in the MENA. Their impact is not large, right now, as upon supranational institutions, however, the breadth of their activities underscore their hope in their capacity to initiate meaningful change. À la suite du Printemps arabe, il a été beaucoup état du rôle crucial que la jeunesse arabe a joué dans la mobilisation des citoyens contre les régimes autocratiques au Moyen-Orient et en Afrique du Nord (MENA). Cependant, moins d'attention a été accordé au rôle joué par la jeunesse arabe engagée et transnationale au cours de cette période. Les jeunes Canadiens d'origine arabe constituent une excellente étude de cas sur les types d'activités dans lequel les mouvements sociaux de jeunes s'investissent afin de mobiliser de manière transnationale la citoyenneté à travers les frontières et, ce faisant, sur la manière dont ils développent des formes d'autonomie, de solidarité et de préoccupation mutuelle, transformant ainsi la société civile et renforçant les capacités de la société et de la citoyenneté par le biais des divers réseaux sociétaux. Pour cet article, nous nous appuyons sur un sondage pancanadien mené auprès de jeunes Canadiens d'origine arabe, ainsi que sur des focus groups avec des jeunes arabes à Ottawa et à Montréal. En nous basant sur leurs travaux de plaidoyer, de réseautage, d'éducation, de boycott et de protestation physique, nous soutenons que la jeunesse arabe canadienne représente un mouvement social émergent très diffus et très engagé dont l'activisme transnational avec, ou pour les mouvements sociaux et les institutions gouvernementales ou multilatérales représente des formes de mobilisation transnationale de la citoyenneté. Les jeunes Canadiens d'origine arabe, en tant que mouvement social, sont des subjectivités politiques émergentes mobilisant des capacités de citoyenneté aux niveaux local et dans [End Page 25] la région MENA. Leur impact n'est pas important, à l'heure actuelle, sur les institutions supranationales. Cependant, l'ampleur de leurs activités souligne leur espoir de pouvoir initier des changements significatifs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents case study data from a 2-year ethnography of Southeast Asian youth engagement within a grassroots community organization that serves immigrants in North Carolina before, during, and after the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Specifically, this study focuses on the ways in which five adolescent young women, who self-identified as refugees, from different parts of Southeast Asia evolved as they engaged in social justice programming through the Coalition of Southeast Asian Youth (CSAY). Data were analyzed through the concept of critical social capital. Findings reveal the importance of institutional spaces that nurture identities, experiences, and social consciousness and provide networks and opportunities for marginalized youth to mobilize around issues of importance to them. Given growing numbers of immigrant and refugee youth in U.S. communities and a simultaneous backlash against them, it is timely and necessary to examine how community-based organizations shape immigrant youth identities and civic participation in impactful ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines memory activism among the young generation of activists in Serbia, born during or toward the end of the wars of the 1990s. By analyzing the actions of members of the Youth Initiative for Human Rights (YIHR), a Belgrade-based nongovernmental organization, as memory activism, this article aims to deepen the analysis of and discussions about current mnemonic processes in Serbia and to point at a dynamic space of action and engaged citizenship. I discuss the actions and positions of those young activists as related to the contested memories of the wars of the breakup of Yugoslavia and to the legacies of the 1990s. More specifically, I analyze their responses to, and interactions with, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) convicts who returned to Serbia and reclaimed their engagement in public life. The text is based on data collected in several stages of field research since 2010 that included observations of and in-depth interviews with YIHR activists in Serbia. It addresses the following main questions: What constitutes memory activism in Serbia? What new tactics do the young generation of memory activists employ and how innovative are their practices when engaging with the public on issues related to challenging silence and denial in their society? How do they articulate their claims and demands as related to the issue of returning ICTY convicts, and especially of those who are now public figures in Serbia? I conclude that at the heart of memory activism as examined in the case of Serbia stands a regional and even transnational network of mnemonic practices, revolving around similar mnemonic battles, taking place in some of the other successor states of the former Yugoslavia as well. As such, further analysis of memory activism in the postwar post-Yugoslav sphere will require additional empirical and analytical research of this region as a region of memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When students from a North Island secondary school began a petition to Parliament in 2014 seeking a national day of commemoration for the victims of the New Zealand Wars, they sparked a national debate about how, why and whether New Zealanders should remember the wars fought on their own shores. Although the petition attracted significant support, it also drew its share of criticism. This paper considers the subsequent debate through the lens of public submissions to Parliament on the petition. A particular focus is on the nearly three-quarters of submissions that opposed the petition. These are examined within the context of wider Pākehā (non-Māori) unease at the unravelling of settler colonial forms of national identity since the 1970s, and the emergence of more nuanced and diverse kinds of identification. For many Pākehā New Zealanders these developments were deeply troubling. The backlash that followed was one that harked back to what some Pākehā saw as simpler, more homogenous and harmonious times. By contrast, the young New Zealanders responsible for organising the petition highlighted the need for a more honest owning up to the nation’s settler colonial history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2009, a political youth movement known as the Post-80s emerged in Hong Kong to protest against the construction of a high-speed railway. While local academics and government officials framed the motivations of these youth protesters using economic rationales, I argue here that the Post-80s are better understood as conveying their dissatisfaction towards existing political structures in the city. This profile sets out Post-80s criticisms of the entrenched hierarchical dynamics in Hong Kong political culture that has shaped interactions between the government, political parties and the wider population, and discusses how the Post-80s have responded to the representational imbalances imposed by these hierarchical practices in the local political sphere by advocating for a way of doing politics where individual voices (as opposed to the collective) are emphasized, and where horizontal structures are used. I conclude by exploring the repercussions of this critique on recent political discourses and protests observed in Hong Kong. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how the actors of a Chilean public high school navigated the political scenario produced when its students decided to occupy their school to protest a national Educational Reform. Using ethnographic data and interviews with high school students, it proposes to understand this process in the context of a figured world directly linked with youth activism and student contentious politics: that of 'Student Democracy'. The article argues that this figured world is constantly being produced by students, teachers and parents engaging in contentious local practices and that, in doing so, they create new opportunities for political action and citizenship education within school settings. It also argues that, by engaging with this figured world, students are participating in both 'Student Democracy' and the broader societal democracy, learning to be citizens in the present, and to deal with the possibilities, risks, and responsibilities that democratic participation always entails. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Swedish youth organization Fältbiologerna was founded in 1947 with the mission to inspire learning about nature through outdoor activities. Since then, the members have stayed true to their slogan 'keep your boots muddy' through engaging in bird watching and forest excursions; however, in the late 1960s and early 1970s - a period that environmental historians refer to as the 'ecological turn' - the organization's activities were extended to also include political activism. Fältbiologerna increasingly evolved into a fertile terrain for young environmentalists. In this article, we explore how this Swedish branch of modern environmental youth activism came about. Based on a close reading of the members' journal, Fältbiologen, between 1959 and 1974, we identify four key characteristics that were communicated in the journal during the years of study: adventurous, knowledgeable, influential, and radical. We demonstrate that Fältbiologerna took an increasingly radical position and began to engage in environmental debates and actions, while still holding on to ideals of learning through spending time in nature. Participation in these different activities shaped the young members into environmentalists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The year 2017 will go down in history as a key turning point in anti-nuclear activism. The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to ICAN and a ban treaty was adopted by an overwhelming majority of the world’s nations. For young people, never before has there been such momentum for a nuclear-free world. Excited by this progress and wanting to build further momentum, this brief piece provides insights about the importance of feminist analysis and the role that young people are playing by providing a snapshot of anti-nuclear campaigns. By drawing on the perspectives of several young activists, it argues for, and details why the perspectives of young people are significant, and outlines various strengths and strategies of engaging youth, along with complexities and challenges. Overall, this piece provides a timely analysis of the powerful role that young people can play in anti-nuclear activism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we discuss a case study of a feminist society in a girls' secondary school in England, highlighting how teenage girls use social media to combat sexism. Considering the recent growth of feminist societies in UK schools, there is still a lack of research documenting how young feminists use social media's feminist content and connections. Addressing this gap, we draw on interviews and social media analyses to examine how girls navigate feminisms online and in school. Despite their multifaceted use of social media, the girls in our research undervalued digital feminism as valid or valued, in large part because of dismissive teacher and peer responses. We conclude by suggesting that schools need to cultivate social media as a legitimate pedagogical space by developing informed adult support for youth engagement with social justice-oriented online content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores youth activism in the US, not through the lens of collective action, but as the product of personal choices. By drawing on existentialism, and particularly on the work of Jean-Paul Sartre, this article proposes to shift the focus of the debate from youths’ collective action to the self - a conscious self that observes, perceives and makes sense of the surrounding world through personal experience. It is this conscious self that decides how, and whether, to intervene against the ‘wrong’ that the self experiences. In this perspective, it is not only the acts (of citizenship) that matter, but the conscious process through which the self chooses to become political. Such an understanding will ultimately help uncover not only how the undocumented act and how to conceptualise their acts but also how they perceive and experience their current status and who they want to become. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates young middle-class Egyptians’ engagement with the religious and national visions of Resala, Egypt’s largest Muslim youth NGO, and how they come to rethink themselves existentially and politically through this commitment, in the context of the 2011 uprising and its aftermath. I show how their volunteering through Resala, shaped by specific sociopolitical circumstances, paved the way for personal hopes to develop into utopian aspirations. Demonstrating the dynamic relationship between the formation of political subjectivities and how utopias emerge, develop and are sometimes shattered, I argue that while utopic aspirations continue to characterise parts of Egypt’s 2011 youth generation, for others, such aspirations have to give way for other more personal concerns to establish a secure adult life. Therefore, activism and experiments with societal alternatives in contexts like the Egyptian continue to depend on inclusive and less risky spaces for civic engagement outside formal politics and institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Learning about political issues through the new core subject of Liberal Studies (LS) in senior secondary education in Hong Kong has become ‘socially problematic’ amid mounting concern of politicians and pundits who see a link between such learning and the recent waves of student protests. Using data from in-depth interviews with senior secondary students in Hong Kong, we explore how politically disengaged and engaged youth experienced their LS learning and how they perceived and made sense of the relationship between LS learning and political participation or its absence. Our findings indicate that while there appear to be circumstances that give rise to diversified learning experiences, LS has little bearing on youth political participation or otherwise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Young Indonesian LGBT people are currently mobilising against a wave of conservatism and violence in an increasingly anti-LGBT context. Young LGBT people are showing remarkable courage and strategic thinking and mobilising in a range of ways. These include grassroot peer support, advocacy, and partnerships with government, adult-led non-government organisations and the private sector. However, these youth also face multiple challenges. This article highlights findings from a 2016 study of mobilisation by youth LGBT activists, using in-depth feminist qualitative research methods. The aim of the research was to highlight the resilience of young LGBT people in Indonesia, the barriers they face, and to consider what feminists and development policymakers and practitioners can do to support them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article outlines a novel application of meta-ethnographic synthesis in the analysis of multiple ethnographic case studies of youth activism emanating from a large transnational European research project. Although meta-ethnography is used increasingly as an alternative to systematic review for the synthesis of published qualitative studies, it is not widely applied to the synthesis of primary data. This article suggests such a use is not precluded epistemologically and potentially addresses a growing need as ethnography itself becomes increasingly ‘multi-sited’. The article outlines the practical process of adapting meta-ethnography to primary data analysis drawing on the synthesis of 44 ethnographic cases of youth activism and provides a worked example of the translation of cases and resulting ‘line of argument’. It discusses the challenges and limitations of the approach in particular the danger that, in extracting the general from the specific, the key quality of qualitative data – individual differentiation – is diminished. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Occupation, blockage and storming are not rare in social movements a decade after China resuming sovereignty in Hong Kong. The organizers and participants usually involve locally born young people. Some of them are secondary school students in their teens. They are known as the fourth generation or post-1980s born Hongkongers. The paper examines the cultural context of social movements involving these youth activists. It mainly studied the campaign against the Sino-Hong Kong Express Railway development project. The project called for the demolition of the Tsoi Yuen Village, a small rural village located on its designed route. Since then, the role of younger generation in social movements has been generally recognized. Social media are widely employed in all stages of the movements with citizen journalists actively involved. The impressive ‘prostrating walk’ imitating Tibetan pilgrims becomes the symbol of these youth activists. It keeps appearing in other campaigns including Occupy Central in Hong Kong in 2014. This paper argues that the rise of nativism, advancement in ICT technology and shifting towards new social movements contribute to the dominant role of youth in recent social movements of Hong Kong. Collective identity of Hongkonger in response to the top-down assimilation by China, strengthens the movement.