Chain gang conservation: young people and environmental volunteering

Abstract

This chapter examines how young people come to be enrolled and engaged in programmes of unpaid environmental conservation in rural areas. Set within a theoretical debate regarding the nature of unpaid work and its relationship to voluntary and coercive forms of environmental action, the chapter considers the principal pathways through which people between the ages of 14-25 come to be involved in efforts to protect and enhance rural landscapes and locales. Drawing on a combination of extended survey and in-depth qualitative research in the west and south of rural England, the chapter considers the systems of governance that surround the organisation of these unpaid activities and considers how these activities are rationalised and designed as practical and embodied experiences of citizenship. The chapter argues that enhancing participation rests less on fostering more young participants into the conservation sector than structuring these activities in more productive ways. As a result the chapter argues for the need to include young people in designing programmes of environmental work that take into consideration the reciprocity between the natural and the social relations of environmental conservation.