CULTIVATING SUCCESS: YOUTH ACHIEVEMENT, CAPITAL AND CIVIC ENGAGEMENT IN THE CONTEMPORARY UNITED STATES

Amidst current research on the positive impact of rising rates of youth civic participation, but also indications of a shift in the underlying forms of civic life and increasing socioeconomic disparities in levels of participation, the authors investigate the meaning of civic engagement from the perspective of high-school-aged youth. The authors inductively develop a typology of engagement based on in-depth interviews with a purposive stratified sample of eighty-nine high school students in a Midwestern city. The authors find that youth link civic engagement with ambition and achievement as a means to build capital in a Bourdieuian field of youth achievement. While civic engagement is informed by structural position, youth are actively involved in navigating their positions and choices. Civic engagement emerges primarily through volunteerism as youth struggle to assemble and deploy capital in the achievement field and thus compound class-based disparities in civic involvement.