Mapping new forms of civic engagement
Civic engagement and participation happen wherever people are fully embracing and actively reinvigorating their own democracy. In the past decade, however, decreased levels of voting and less time spent on activities with neighbors are commonly cited as examples of the decline in civic engagement. But is civic engagement really on the decline? Or have we yet to understand and find the means to measure new forms of civic engagement and reignite the social fabric? I believe that by design, democracy requires new experiments.
Various approaches,
one goal
Through my work but also as a citizen and foreign-resident, I have had many opportunities to experiment, test, and implement different formats of engagement: for example, while working for the Ministry for Europe, Integration and Foreign Affairs, I co-organized a EU Dialogue Tour through Austria’s federal provinces to spark discussions about the European Union. Years later, working for the UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel on Women’s Economic Empowerment, I designed a global consultation – implemented online as well as on-site – with the aim of gathering evidence from citizens across the globe about their views on the world of women and work.
Design approaches present new engagement opportunities through the integration of ethnographic and participatory action research as well as prototyping to get rapid feedback.
More recently in a joint research effort with colleagues Vinay Kumar Mysore and Victor Michud we have taken a closer look at civic participation by non-citizens. Ruling out voting, we were curious to understand the ways and degrees to which immigrants can get involved in the democratic process as academic research indicates a significant difference in participation based on an immigrant’s citizenship status despite the fact that many activities are open to immigrants in the US.
A full summary including details on the process and preliminary findings can be found here.
In Spring 2019, I have joined the First Persons Project – an initiative designed to understand the context for, drivers of, and barriers to participation in civic life – to continue this research with the hope to reveal and explore textures and fibers of engagement to weave a more integrated picture of our social fabric.
