Youth Climate Activism and the Politics of Future Redistribution: Subjectivity Formation in Digital Publics

Abstract

As the climate crisis deepens, the future can no longer be assumed as an inherited temporal continuum; it becomes a contested domain that requires deliberate governance and protection through collective negotiation. Youth, who are disproportionately exposed to long-term climate risks while remaining underrepresented in existing decision-making systems, are emerging as central actors in contemporary sustainability politics. This studyconceptualizes sustainability as a form of redistributive politics, arguing that climate change reflects structural asymmetries in the allocation of resources, exposure to risk, and authority to define the future across generations. Digital publics provide youth with an initial arena of political visibility in which private concerns are translated into shared problem recognition and collective mobilization. Through protest, policy negotiation, divestment initiatives, and community-based governance, young people develop the capacity to navigate institutional logics, articulate claims in public languages, and propose viable alternatives. Such practices demonstrate a recursive process of “acting to understand, and understanding to act,” through which subjectivity is formed not prior to action but within it. The article contends that youth should not be positioned merely as future beneficiaries of sustainability policies, but as active co-architects of institutional arrangements that shape the conditions of the future itself.