Climate Youth to Power: Coalition Strategy as Social Movement Response to Youth Power Deficits

Abstract

Based on semi-structured interviews, this article analyzes how activists in the Swiss climate movement deal with their youthfulness. The interviewees associate their youthfulness with institutional, discursive, and economic power deficits that reduce their political assertiveness. They respond to this with a strategy that relies on coalitions with “adult” organizations that compensate for these power deficits. These alliances, in turn, shape and are shaped by the political orientation of the movement.