Seeking the Global Generation:A Comparative Case Study of Youth from Canada, Georgia, and Saudi
Abstract
This study explores how contemporary youth understand their lives under today’s context of globalization. It examines and compares perceptions and practice of high school age (15-18 years old) students from Canada, Georgia, and Saudi; how they think about the world and their place in it, and how they take up their roles as citizens of their local, national, and global communities. The study investigates if there are bases to collectively address these youth as a ‘Global Generation.’ By illuminating the core features of this generation it expounds on the implications of the existence of the Global Generation in relation to the hopes of an emerging ‘one-world’ vision.
This study uses qualitative inquiry based on interpretive paradigm, employing a comparative case study (CCS) methodology, with multiple research techniques: e-survey (n=79), individual interviews (n=21), and experiential activities (n=21). Using Biesta’s approach to citizenship learning (CL) as a theoretical framework, allows for the consideration of the interplay between young people’s dispositions, relationships, and contexts in everyday settings, in order toreveal the multidimensional nature of the lives of youth in their particular and broader contexts, including their citizenship learning.
The findings demonstrate that today’s global youth share similar attitudes, understandings, aspirations, and anxieties. They are well informed, skilled in modern technologies, self-reliant, and competitive. They have multiple belongings and identifications, are inclusive of other youth and cultures, have cosmopolitan dispositions, and reject the binary of the concepts ‘local’ and ‘global.’ They consider open-mindedness, tolerance, and solidarity as essential qualities to promote international connections, but foremost, identify ‘common humanity’ as the underlying and binding force of humankind. While being vernacular cosmopolitans youth struggle to apply their values to the world. They lack knowledge and skills to be involved in social movements, and do not see themselves capable of promoting any systemic change, but rather entrusting decision-making to the authorities.
Due to the multiple similarities found among the participants’ ways of doing and being, the study proposes that today’s youth, relationally bound together with technological mediation, can be conceptualised as the Global Generation whose characteristics transcend many national, ethnic, religious, gender, and socio-economic borders.