Young people’s lived citizenship and imagined futures in Türkiye: care, critique and action

This study examines young people’s citizenship imaginaries through the lens of lived citizenship, focusing on three interconnected dimensions: care, critique, and civic action. Rather than reducing citizenship to ‘how much participation’, this study examines how young people envision a desirable social order and construct these aspirations through everyday practices. Drawing on data from semi-structured interviews and photovoice, the findings show that young people’s citizenship imaginaries are centred on an inclusive society, a liveable environment, and expectations of political responsibility and accountability as key conditions for achieving these goals. The results indicate that care and critique generate strong ethical–political orientations, whereas civic action often materialises in micro-scale, low-threshold, and risk-sensitive forms due to various constraints and anxieties. Overall, the study demonstrates that young people are not ‘indifferent’; rather, they construct a strong normative horizon around justice, security, and solidarity in their everyday lives. However, under contextual constraints, this horizon tends to translate into cautious and limited forms of engagement rather than high-impact collective action.