Tracing activist trajectories between democratic origins and futures: A biographical approach.

This study examines how activists from different generations recount social and political paradoxes that have accompanied them throughout their life courses. It asks, how do activists at different life stages narrate their life histories of activism? What do these narratives suggest about the democratic and development origins and continuities that shape activist orientations? The childhood, youth, and adulthood experiences of activists are not only events that animate societal and extra-institutional formations that structure behaviour, but also manifestations of contention between normative ideals and reality.

Oscillating between equality and discrimination, freedom and oppression, participation and marginalisation, and transparency and corruption, multiple generations of activists are compelled to contend for their futures. Grounded in the literature on biographical research and youth and generational politics, this paper accounts for differences and similarities in how activists across different generations construct the realities that determine their activism and character. It identifies the threads and discontinuities in the democratic and development trajectories that characterise their journeys. This paper draws on biographic narrative interviews with political activists in Nigeria whose life journeys have involved constant transitions between different realms of contention. By exploring the origins, differences, and sequential gestalt of activist orientations, this study uncovers the contradictions in the lived experiences and orientations of activists within developing democracies, through which they determine and negotiate their futures.