Youth, Citizenship and Empowerment

Helena Helve, Claire Wallace

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351726573
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Civics & Citizenship
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This title was first published in 2001. This book brings together a range of perspectives about citizenship and empowerment from around the globe. It thus approaches these important topics from a wide variety of directions, including different geo-political contexts, empirical studies, theoretical approaches and examples of actual projects to empower youth and how they have worked. The book addresses issues of importance for contemporary young people as well as for social policy and will be of relevance to practitioners, youth leaders and academics.

PART 1

INTRODUCTION

1   The State and Prospects of Youth and Citizenship

HELENA HELVE and CLAIRE WALLACE

The ideas of citizenship and empowerment have become powerful policy concepts in the last years, but their meaning is ambiguous. The articles in this volume represent a range of approaches to both issues. The definitions of citizenship, for example have been broadened from the narrow meaning of political, legal and welfare rights analysed by T. H. Marshall fifty years ago (Marshall 1950). The welfare rights which he predicted would represent the final evolutionary stage of modernisation have in fact been everywhere under attack. Instead, new meanings of citizenship have emerged which stress more the active elements, and this is the connection also to empowerment. Even this active meaning of empowered citizenship can have many elements. For some it means the membership and activity in “civil society”, that is, voluntary and non-profit associational activities which has been on the rise amongst young people. For Robert Putnam, this kind of activity contributes to “social capital” which is an important element of modernisation and economic development (Putnam 1986). For some Eastern Europeans and those in developing countries it also means more than just joining sports clubs and choral societies. It means the active mobilisation of citizens to defend their interests and even to topple unwanted regimes, something in which youth have been very active (Wallace and Kovatcheva 1998). In the words of Ladislav Macháček (this volume) it means the mobilisation of young people as a citizenry as well as a democracy. However, such a citizenry can be demobilised again under changing circumstances. David Everatt, for example, describes the many years of mobilisation of young South Africans as opposition to the dominant apartheid regime, who now prefer different roles as consumers, so that much of the revolutionary energy which had the potential to shape a new youth politics at a national level, was lost.

Another meaning of citizenship is in the sense of rights, usually human rights, which have a transnational dimension, introduced and guaranteed by international organisations which are represented in “civil society” at an international level (Soysal 1996). This sense of citizenship is discussed by Mojibur Rahman in this volume. These rights can be important in introducing formal recognition of the situation of children and young people into states where they are not necessarily respected or even by bypassing the nation states altogether through the networking of international organisations and NGOs (Non-Governmental Organisations) which build partnerships with local organisations to meet the needs of children and young people.

A further meaning of citizenship is the membership of a nation state. This has become ever more meaningful as with increasing international mobility, rich states (including the European Union) try to keep out people from poorer states or to grant them some kind of partial citizenship status as refugees, guest workers and so on. Even this does not prevent the rise in irregular and illegal migration. Many of the articles in this volume describe the interaction between native citizens and these newer arrivals in the culture and mind set of young people. This is the case for example with the article of Leena Suurpaa and also those of Tarja Hilden and Timo Virtanen.

The debates about citizenship and empowerment take place in the context of more general social value-shifts in late modern (or postmodern) societies which include the increasing importance of individualisation and reflexivity. This shapes not just the values and aspirations of young people, but also the policy environment in which issues are dealt with. Kari Paakkunainen deals with the relationship between value changes and policy climate at a more abstract level, whilst Helena Helve and Marianne Nylund look at the evidence for them in more detailed empirical studies.

Young people are not only the passive recipients of rights or holders of values. Many of the articles in this volume describe how programmes in which young people participate in shaping their environment (Liisa Horelli) or in helping in programmes for street children and socially marginalised young people (Mojibur Rahman). The current emphasis of both the Council of Europe and the Directorate for Youth, Culture and Education in the European Commission is upon educating young people for citizenship. In other words ways of incorporating them into decision making structures and encouraging them to become active citizens not just at a local, but also at a European level.

Young people are also empowering themselves, without any help from international organisations, in developing new lifestyles and living arrangements, as we see in the article from Sue Heath and Liz Kenyon. However, there can also be negative, a-social aspects of empowerment. In Finland, as in other European countries, young men who are marginalised in the modernisation process and threatened by international or global changes respond by constructing skinhead gangs which gain their strength from developing a brutal culture of masculinity and attacking people they regard as outsiders (Roma, refugees and asylum seekers and others). This is described by Tarja Hilden and Timo Virtanen.

Citizenship can imply a variety of rights and these rights are subject to different kinds of mobilisation at different times. The women’s movement, for example, has been very active in putting on the agenda women’s rights and pointing out the deficiencies in the idea of citizenship as it applies to women (Summers 1991; Lister 1990). However, one aspect of this is the recognition of sexual abuse and the corresponding right for women to define their own sexuality. This issue is addressed in the article by Sari Nare.

Despite the debates about transnational citizenship, citizenship rights usually inhere to national communities (Bauböck 1995; Joppke and Lukes 1999). However, the definition of this community can itself be problematic. In the many newly forming states around the world, young people have to find a national identity as citizens and this issue is described by Arseniy Svynarenko in the case of Ukrainian young people and Ladislav Macháček for Slovakia. The orientation of young people to European citizenship, on the other hand is tackled by Claire Wallace.

The book is one of the few volumes that brings together a European focus on youth with articles from other parts of the world. Admittedly, there are not many papers from other parts of the world: this is something that will remain a challenge for later volumes on youth research. The main bulk of articles reflect youth research in the Nordic countries, where youth citizenship is most developed and where there has been a well established tradition of research, encouraged by the Nordic Youth Research Network of which Helena Helve is currently the leader. However, the volume also covers the broader new Europe stretching to Russia in the East and Bulgaria and Romania in the south. The volume is organised together with RC34, the Research Committee on Youth of the International Sociological Association, from which the discussants for the different parts of the volume are drawn.

This volume is organised in a number of different parts, with critical discussions and summaries by leading youth scholars. Part 2 provides an overview of the issues with a more conceptually oriented chapter from Claire Wallace and then an empirically oriented chapter showing the forms of citizenship participation in East and West Europe by Reingard Spannring, Claire Wallace and Christian Haerpfer.

Part 3, about citizenship and power, is introduced by John Bynner. It contains chapters about the participation of young people in environmental planning (Liisa Horelli), a theoretical critique of dominant concepts (Kari Paakkunainen), an account of Nordic volunteers and new living arrangements of young people (Marianne Nylund and Sue Heath and Liz Kenyon).

Part 4 is about citizenship and marginality, with an introduction by Lynne Chisholm. It includes two accounts of new skinhead gangs in Nordic countries (Tarja Hilden and Timo Virtanen), a chapter about sexual citizenship (Sari Nare) and about the views of foreigners (Leena Suurpää).

Part 5 concentrates mainly upon detailed analysis of value shifts with a critical discussion by Gill Jones. The chapters are written by Helena Helve and Sakari Karvonen and Ossi Rahkonen who provide a complementary debate about these changes and how to analyse them. This is followed by an analysis of the construction of national identity among young people in Ukraine by Arseniy Svynarenko.

Part 6 is called “New Actors, Networks and Empowerment” and brings in a more global perspective. This is introduced by Pat Allatt. The chapters include a perspective from Slovakia by Ladislav Macháček as well as an account from developing countries (mainly Asia and the Indian sub-continent) by Mojibur Rahman, whilst South Africa is covered by David Everatt.

The issue of young people’s empowerment is deeply political. The chapters of the book focus on the phenomena in societies which differ in their political and economic cultures. The age range covered by the articles extends from street children and child workers in the developing countries to the official definition of youth up to age 35 in South Africa. In a globalising world, the political involvement of young people is ambiguous. Its absence, or apparent absence, is critically linked to people’s circumstances and the changes through which they are living. For instance the fall of Communism has served to push the Slovakian youth off the stage (Macháček in this volume). They have lost their institutionalised role in the former regime as political actors. They are victims of rising unemployment and job insecurity. However the new movements – NGOs, such as environmental groups, show that many of the young are politically aware if not politically active. Yet the political activity of young people may also lead to marginalisation, as we can see in the example of skinhead groups and fringe activities. In a globalising world, the new communications technologies and the opening of formerly closed societies offer new opportunities which have strengthened the political role of NGOs. Perhaps they will be able to draw upon new forms of power as well as reach new groups of young people in future.

References

Bauböck, R. (1995), Transnational Citizenship: Membership and Rights in International Migration, Edward Elgar, UK.

Joppke, C. and Lukes, S. (eds.) (1999), Multicultural Questions, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Lister, R. (1990), ‘Women, Economic Dependency and Citizenship’, Journal of Social Policy, 19(4), pp. 445–467.

Marshall, T. H. (1950), Citizenship and Social Class and Other Essays, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Putnam, R. D. (1986), ‘The Prosperous Community: Social Capital and Public Life’, The American Prospect, 13, pp. 35–42.

Soysal, Y. N. (1996) ‘Changing Citizenship in Europe: Remarks on Postnational Membership and the National State’ in D. Cesarani and M. Fulbrook (eds.), Citizenship, Nationality and Migration in Europe, Routledge, London.

Summers, Y. (1991) ‘Women and Citizenship: The Insane, the Insolvent and the Inanimate?’ in P. Abbott and C. Wallace (eds.), Gender, Power and Sexuality, Macmillan, London.

Wallace, C. and Kovatcheva, S. (1998), Youth in Society: The Construction and Deconstruction of Youth in East and West Europe, Macmillan, London.

PART 2

YOUTH, CITIZENSHIP AND EMPOWERMENT IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

2 Youth, Citizenship and Empowerment

CLAIRE WALLACE

Introduction

Empowerment and citizenship have become attractive concepts for developing changes in youth policies and the welfare state. This because they can accommodate the fragmentation of social groups, the movement from collectivistic towards individualistic beliefs, the retreat of the welfare state and the scepticism of “grand narrative” solutions to social problems which are all part of a general “postmodernisation” of societies (Inglehart 1997; Wallace and Kovatcheva 1998). They promise a participatory and democratic response to problems of social exclusion and marginalisation of young people. However, these terms reflect a range of meanings embedded in different debates. In this chapter I shall develop a critical review of some of these meanings first of citizenship and then of empowerment and consider the ways in which they might be relevant for young people.

Young People and Citizenship

Citizenship is of fundamental importance to everyone because it defines an individual’s legal, political and social relationship to the society of which they form a part. However, it is also an essentially contested concept.

There has been a recent revival of interest in the concept of citizenship for a number of reasons. Firstly, the pressure towards system integration in Europe due to the convergence of economic institutions and the expansion of supra-national political institutions, such as the European Union and the Council of Europe poses the question: what political entity is the European person a citizen of? Secondly, the struggle for political recognition by marginalised groups such as women, ethnic minorities, gays and lesbians and others means that “citizenship” appears to offer the possibility for social integration in diversified societies. Finally, the struggle over the welfare state and criticisms of the scope of welfare (for example in Britain and the USA) has lead to a reconsideration of what “rights” citizens can expect from their state. The developments in East and Central Europe however, add a new dimension to this debate. Since the opening of Europe to the East and the new waves of migration experienced in the 1990s another aspect of citizenship which has become important is that of national identity – to which state one belongs. Although all these debates developed along separate lines, they are also in many ways essentially related, as I shall show. Hence, the next part of the chapter is divided into four categories: European citizenship; citizenship and marginality; citizenship and the welfare state; citizens and non-citizens.

Young people, as new citizens, have a particular relationship to each of these meanings of citizenship. However, many young people are also excluded from becoming full citizens in various ways. Below I shall examine each meaning of citizenship and its relevance for young people.

1. Young People and European Citizenship

Young people in both Eastern and Western Europe are more likely to identify themselves as European citizens. However, they may hold other – local and national – identities simultaneously.

Figure 2.1 (see p. 31, Appendix) shows that for the European Union countries covered by the Eurobarometer of 1996, older people were more likely than younger people to see their nationality only as a source of identity, whilst young people were more likely to espouse a European identity, but alongside of their national identity.¹ In post-communist Eastern and Central Europe, as measured by fhe New Democracies Barometer, in 1998, there was likewise a clear tendency for young people to be more pro-European – the further East and South, the more this is the case ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Part 1: Introduction
• Part 2: Youth, Citizenship and Empowerment in Comparative Perspective
• Part 3: Citizenship and Power
• Part 4: Citizenship and Marginality
• Part 5: Citizenship, Values and Attitudes
• Part 6: New Actors, Networks and Empowerment