Making Political Citizens: How Student-Centered Social Movement Organizations Facilitate Political Learning

How do civic associations facilitate political socialization? How and why might some activists become more “politicized” than others? This article builds on longstanding efforts to answer these age-old questions, using student-centered social movement organizations (SMOs) as a window into the political socialization process. Drawing on 550 hours of ethnographic fieldwork across four years and in-depth interviews with 90 members of two organizations in Wisconsin that work with young students of color, I make three contributions. First, I theorize politicization as an ongoing, multi-sited process as opposed to a static trait. Second, I specify various sites of political learning that civic organizations provide access to. Third, I identify three conditions that help transform political learning into politicization: (1) active, (2) sustained participation (3) across multiple mutually reinforcing sites. This research provides practical insights into how student-centered SMOs cultivate political interest among young people to address persistent political inequalities in the United States.