The Power of Care in Youth-Led Commoning

Abstract

The goals of the climate justice movement are to draw attention to how climate change impacts people differently, unevenly, and disproportionately, and to reduce marginalization, exploitation, and oppression, and enhance equity and justice. While a culture of hegemonic masculinity—has been—and is pervasive in major environmental organizations in North America where White men continue to lead these groups, young people, specifically, women in grassroots organizations have emerged as a significant force for encouraging collective action, protesting, representing in decision-making and youth advisory bodies, and partnerships to not just create and advocate for a lifestyle and policy that reflects their shared interests but also cultivate intentional communities. This phenomenon is referred to as “commoning,” where actors create new shared and relational processes, redesign institutions such as norms and rules around a shared interest to serve a common good, as well as develop new imaginaries of sharing and caring. Thus, care unfolds not only as a motivation for climate justice but also embeds itself in commoning to foster a sense of community and support within groups of young activists. In our research on female-led youth groups in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), we uncover the practices of care that emerge at the intersection of commoning and climate justice through the lens of race, gender, immigration status, and sexuality, by applying Fisher and Tronto’s framework of an ethic of care that includes actions of the powerful such as caring about and caring for, and actions of the less powerful such as caregiving and care-receiving. In doing so, we draw attention to uneven power dynamics in female-led youth groups. We find that youth in today's climate movements care about systemic inequalities and environmental justice, and advocate for policies that address climate impacts on marginalized communities. Care for takes the form of inclusive advocacy, promoting sustainable practices, and supporting communities affected by environmental degradation. Caregiving includes not only physical actions such as strikes and protests, but also giving emotional and social support through ‘care committees’ to foster resilience and create inclusive spaces for long-term engagement. However, modalities of caregiving differ across race, immigration status, and sexuality. In comparison to White people who might consider caregiving as participating in radical protesting, people of color and first-generation immigrants employ peaceful caregiving strategies in fear of systemic consequences, such as creating booklets on local biodiversity in different languages to reach and recruit first-generation women of color. More importantly, even though, White members in female-led youth groups might care for inclusive advocacy, racialized people perform laborious caregiving tasks of advocating for implementing practices to create space for people of color and people from the global South, with subsequent attrition of people of color from such groups, indicating the uneven power dynamics operating between those who care for and those who care give. Sexuality also influences how queer individuals adopt caregiving within climate activism. Their experiences with marginalization drive them to validate others' contributions and identities, prioritize mental health and well-being to prevent burnout, and create supportive environments to foster inclusivity and empathy. These findings suggest the reducing influence of hegemonic masculinity within female-led youth groups and highlight the multi-dimensionality and complexity of care through intersecting identities and experiences of young people who are actively developing new ways of fostering resilience and creating inclusive spaces for sustaining commoning for climate justice. At the same time, uneven power dynamics of care between White people and racialized people in female-led youth groups suggest that even the practice of youth-led commoning can reproduce and maintain patterns of marginality.