Features and Prospects of Climate Movement of Schoolchildren

Abstract

The article analyzes the activities of the youth environmental movement “Fridays for the future”, which was founded by a Swedish schoolgirl G.Thunberg in 2018. This movement is not a traditional children's organization created by adults for young people. Its leaders claim that it was created by teenagers who do not have voting rights. At the same time, the agenda and methods of activists are much broader than the traditional competence of minors. This contradiction gives rise to discussions about the existence of adult political forces that actually supervise the movement or use its initiatives for their own purposes. The novelty of the presented work is both in the treatment of this topic and in the scientific approach to it. The media paid great attention to the actions of young eco-wrestlers and especially to the personality of their leader. But “Fridays for the future” and their impact on social and political processes are almost completely not studied in the special literature. The media assess the movement in an extremely emotional and biased way. Meanwhile, the movement, which over the course of a year has mobilized millions of volunteers and attracted the attention of the world's leading leaders and organizations, undoubtedly deserves a serious, in-depth approach. The purpose of the article is to consider the nuances of the movement's program settings and the specifics of its organizational principles. Using the example of cells from Germany and the United States, we will show local differences and common features of global school eco-activism. We will use generational approach, discourse analysis, and organizational theory as research methods. The author concludes that this type of youth movement is radically different from traditional social and political organizations. Their distinctive features are amorphous, lack of a fixed membership, unified programs, and disregard for strict hierarchical schemes. These signs demonstrate the failure of the Association in the usual sense, but create advantages for such a movement, whose members are individuals and groups that do not have full civil rights (in particular, electoral ones).