The Arctic youth - a category of discourse, statistics, and identity

The phenomenon of the Arctic youth has recently attracted more and more attention from the entire circumpolar world, which is reflected in the promotion of various initiatives and projects to develop youth potential and human capital in the northern latitudes. One of the most recent such initiatives was the inclusion of the “The Arctic Youth” thematic cluster in the program of Russia’s chairmanship of the Arctic Council in 2021-2023. Nevertheless, social realities in the form of migration, professional and value-based attitudes among the Arctic youth indicate that these initiatives are not always effective. The reasons for this may be the lack of understanding of who the Arctic youth is and how to implement policies and activities for social support for youth in the Polar regions in a purposeful and meaningful way. The research is devoted to the logical and philosophical systematization of knowledge about the Arctic youth and information from discourse analysis of mainly academic sources on the relevant topic in the form of the development of the category of the Arctic youth as a socio-group community by means of system-categorical methodology. We conclude that the expediency of considering the phenomenon of the Arctic youth in terms of a socio-group community as opposed to a demographic category, reveal the internal contradiction of the formation of the category of the Arctic youth as a socio-group community, and formulate the content of the model and the corresponding concept of the category of this socio-group community. The study represents the first attempt in the world practice to broadly and holistically understand the social category of the Arctic youth and for the first time applies systemic-categorical methods of analysis to its study.