Youth Participation and Socio-Political Transformation: A Comprehensive Bibliometric Analysis

Using 6281 peer-reviewed articles from the Dimensions database, this study provides a bibliometric analysis of the literature (from 2000 to 2024) regarding youth participation in sociopolitical activities and its implications for social and political change. With recent spikes in global youth activism—from climate strikes to racial justice movements—this scholarship has developed its own centre of gravity. Therefore, it needs to be mapped to understand its intellectual development, thematic trends and geographic landscape over the past several decades. Results show a significant increase in the academic attention dedicated to the theme after 2010, mostly related to the expansion of digital activism and forms of grassroots mobilisation and emphasising youth as essential agents of change, not only as subjects of development programmes. Following a mixed method of quantitative bibliometric analysis and qualitative thematic evaluation, the findings of the study reveal hegemonic paradigms and show a troublingly imbalanced Anglo-American research production that reveals a significant research gap in the perspective of the Global South, where almost two-thirds of the world’s youth population reside. Networks of collaboration highlight hubs in North America and Europe as sites of influence, but regional voices are slowly changing the conversation. From health promotion and risk prevention to empowerment, social justice and online political action—these trends mirror broader social movements and the need for responses to 21st-century crises (like the climate crisis and pandemics). In doing so, the study sheds light on the increasing awareness of the importance of youth as critical political and social actors despite the fact of the ongoing challenges, such as the lack of empirical evidence on long-term policy effects, and the uneven intellectual terrain created by language and resources inequities.