Papers

• From the Left and Beyond: Continuities and Discontinuities in Student Activism in the Philippines Juhn Chris Espia University of the Philippines, Visayas

  Student activism in the Philippines dates to the Spanish colonial period and made a major resurgence in the 1960s as a Leftist-nationalist movement under the aegis of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP). Since then, the trajectory of student activism in Philippine politics has been closely linked with its place within the larger CPP strategy and has waxed and waned with the fortunes of the Philippine Left. Both state actors and scholars tend to frame student activism as being part of the Left. In Philippine scholarship, to be a student activist (tibak) is to be Leftist, and to be part of the Left means that one is opposed to the elite-captured state. However, while this identification with the Left remains true for a segment of student activists in the Philippines, several important developments have reshaped student activism in the Philippines after 1986. This chapter aims to present a more nuanced view of student activism in the country and considers contextual and political factors beyond the Left that continue to shape student activism in the country. It argues that there has been a decline in student activism in general and within the student activist movement, a relative decline of the Left. In addition, there has been a growth in the ideological diversity among student activist groups as well as a shift towards online activism as repertoire of protest. This can be attributed to the changing socio-economic structure, changes in the higher education system, continuing state repression, and the availability of alternative avenues for political participation.

• Rerooting and Rerouting: Youth Activism in Post-COVID Philippines Yatun Sastramidjaja University of Amsterdam

  In the Philippines, the COVID-19 pandemic and the closure of schools and universities for two-and-a-half years spurred a revival of youth activism, both online and in organizational settings. It led to a mass influx of digital natives in left-wing youth organizations, who brought with them the ability to turn protest messages into viral content, helping to build public support and engagement. However, sustained recruitment and commitment faded once pandemic restrictions were lifted and physical education resumed, while pre-pandemic cohorts graduated and moved on, causing a sharp decline in membership and active participation. Those that remained active then faced the double burden of continuing the legacy of long-established ideological traditions, while drawing on their own experiences to innovate and expand upon these traditions to convey contemporary relevance to existing and new audiences, hence facing the challenge of incorporating digital activism into left-wing paradigms of “real activism.” They realized they needed to create effective social media content in order to raise awareness, shift the tide of public opinion, and counter the digital hegemony of a repressive regime. Yet, left-wing youth organizations generally remained hesitant to exploit social media’s affordances, using social media mostly as an extension of traditional activist media, with notable exceptions. The mobilizational potential of blending digital and grassroots action was demonstrated, however, in the popular “Save the Jeepney” campaign in 2023, which attested to the capacity of a new generation of left-wing activist youth to simultaneously re-establish rootedness in ideological traditions, and explore new routes for strategic reorientation.

• “The more you repress us, the more we resist you” (makin ditekan, makin melawan): Local rhizomatic youth movement in Indonesia Amalinda Savirani Universitas Gadjah Mada

  In late August and early September 2025 (and in December 2024), street demonstration swept Indonesia in at least 60 spots. Different from previous street demonstrations, which were situated in big cities such as Jakarta, Bandung or Yogyakarta, the last two waves of demonstration were expanded to provincial towns. Scholar identified the movement as ‘new’ form of “rhizomatic” (Sastramidjaja 2025) looking from its basic features as explosive, leaderless, digitally mediated, yet short-lived and vulnerable (as it has jailed more than young 600 activists to date). Why and how this geographic expansion happened and widened up? Are gen Z activists now more aware of their political rights? Do they experience the inequality themselves in their locality? What are the difference between their local movement with the national one? This paper explores youth ‘rhizomatic’ movement from the local perspective, based on intensive fieldwork in January-August 2025 (before the tragedy of Affan Kurniawan), involving 40 interviews. This paper confirms a new form of rhizomatic movement among Indonesian young people at the local level, with more nuances on various issue. First, digital technology is not everything in developing the movement. Second, first hand experience, and emotion/attachment to it drive young activists to become active. Third, there is a degree of connection with classic activist structures (including NGOs networks), and they are not totally “leaderless” as rhizomatic feature argue. Hence, the movement has created both vulnerability but also strength among young people in Indonesia.

• These Are Everyone’s Streets: Student Protest at the National University of Timor Lorosa’e Berta Antonieta Tilman Pereira Central European University

  Timor-Leste is often rated the most democratic country in Southeast Asia, and it has indeed succeeded in institutionalizing a democratic system with regular elections. Yet the story is more complex. Amidst worries about a regression in democratic participation and government by an internationalized elite group present in all political parties, students and young people are increasingly showing disillusion through protest in Dili, the capital city. Tensions over income inequality, continued patriarchal norms and LGBTQ+ equality simmer and employment opportunities seem few and far between. Civil society groups and youth/feminist activists point to increasing willingness to use force, including deadly force, by police officers and to growing restrictions on protest in some parts of the capital city, Dili.
  In this context, students at the National University of Timor Lorosa’e, the largest of the country’s half-dozen universities, launched a series of protests in 2020-2022. They recalled the role of youth protest in the Timorese independence movement of the 1990s and showed keen awareness of protest movements elsewhere in the region. Student protest action was autonomous, but overlapped with the country’s active civil society, with growing feminist groups, and with arts groups.
  This chapter traces the growth of a new generation of resistance and ties it to worrisome signs of growing state and “maun boot” (big man) power relative to civil society, linking both sides of this struggle back to the pro-independence resistance of the period of Indonesian rule, 1975-99. It highlights links between student protesters and Timorese civil society, noting that student-elite tensions parallel tensions between elites and feminist groups, and elites and LGBTQ+ groups. It also notes that UNTL protesters, while centered on their campus and on hyper-local concerns, are also stressing themes of personal autonomy and resistance to growing state power that are evident in other Asian student movements.

• Quiet Activism Under an Absolutist State: The Politics of Youth Participation for Socio-Cultural Changes in Modern Brunei Abdul Mu'izz Abdul Khalid Universiti Malaya

  Over the past two decades, youth and student activism has surged across several countries in East and Southeast Asia. Even Brunei, the last absolute monarchy in the Asia-Pacific region, with its restrictive political climate, is not immune to this regional trend. Unlike other countries in the region, where activism may be more overt, Brunei has experienced a much quieter form of political participation and collective action due to its absolutist system and small size. Similar to Malaysia and Singapore, the line between activism and advocacy is blurred, with activists often adopting the guise of advocates or substituting activism entirely with advocacy to navigate the restrictions of Brunei’s absolutist regime. Drawing on the concept of “quiet activism,” first introduced in feminist literature, and extending its application to political science, this chapter explores this phenomenon in Brunei. Based on archival research and semi-structured interviews, I argue that in the new millennium, the government’s adoption of neoliberal ideas, emphasizing youth for economic development, coincided with the emergence of quiet activism. Furthermore, I argue that Brunei’s form of quiet activism is shaped by the historical interplay between colonial and indigenous royal forces, which shaped a dual status of citizens and subjects. This hybrid positionality, which I term civic subjecthood, compels Bruneian youths to constantly negotiate and make trade-offs with the absolutist state— balancing their status as subjects while expressing ideas of citizenship in the subtlest way possible.

Abstract

Keywords

• Brunei
• CPP
• Gen Z
• Indonesia
• Philippines
• Southeast Asia
• activism
• citizenship
• left
• local rhizomatic movement
• red-tagging
• subjecthood
• youth