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Youth organisations and the reproduction of nationalism in Britain: the role of Urdd Gobaith Cymru
journal contribution
posted on 2015-11-10, 16:08 authored by Rhys Jones, Peter Merriman, Sarah MillsSarah MillsYouth organizations have long played significant roles in promoting particular forms of nationalism among young people in the UK. To date, however, academic studies of UK youth organizations have been Anglocentric, focusing on youth organizations associated with a hegemonic British state and imperial project. This paper seeks to show how youth organizations have also been used to promote alternative forms of nationalism in the UK, which have sought to challenge a British state and imperial project. Focusing explicitly on Wales, it examines how Urdd Gobaith Cymru – the Welsh League of Youth – has played a significant role over the past 90 years in promoting a Welsh and Welsh-speaking citizenship amongst Welsh youth. Drawing on documentary and archival research, the paper discusses how the organization has fostered particular practices and identities among its members and the way in which these have been challenged in recent years; most notably as a result of a decline in the numbers of Welsh speakers in Wales and changing configurations of the meanings of Welshness. The paper concludes by arguing for the need to take seriously the role played by youth organizations in helping to shape political geographies in a devolved Britain.
History
School
- Social Sciences
Department
- Geography and Environment
Published in
Social and Cultural GeographyCitation
JONES, R., MERRIMAN, P. and MILLS, S., 2016. Youth organisations and the reproduction of nationalism in Britain: the role of Urdd Gobaith Cymru. Social and Cultural Geography, 17 (5), pp. 714-734.Publisher
© Taylor & FrancisVersion
- AM (Accepted Manuscript)
Publisher statement
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Publication date
2016Notes
This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Social and Cultural Geography on 23 Feb 2016 available online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2016.1139166ISSN
1470-1197Publisher version
Language
- en