Youth Citizenship Research Articles

Social Network Sites and Young Adolescent Identity Development

Social networking sites are a dominant web presence that greatly influence the formation of individual identity through digital communication and interaction. Despite caveats associated with increased usage of such online forums among young adolescents, this article sheds light on how educators can use networking sites, like Facebook, as instructional resources. It reconsiders the potential role of Facebook as a pedagogical tool that can encourage communication among teachers, students, parents, and community members to facilitate greater understanding of curricular concepts, promote ethical online behavior, and support digital citizenship of children and youth. The extensive reach of social networking sites across the globe warrants meaningful research and critical discussions about harnessing the positive impact and mitigating the detrimental effects of Facebook on identity formation among young users.

Children, Citizenship and Environment: Nurturing a Democratic Imagination in a Changing World by Bronwyn Hayward

 2013 Children, Youth and Environments Children, Youth and Environments 23(3), 2013 Children, Citizenship and Environment: Nurturing a Democratic Imagination in a Changing World Bronwyn Hayward (2012). New York: Routledge, 208 pages. $44.95 USD (paperback). ISBN-10: 1849714371; ISBN-13: 978-1849714372. Research and action with respect to children’s civic participation have become widespread over the past 25 years. Bronwyn Hayward’s Children, Citizenship and Environment: Nurturing a Democratic Imagination in a Changing World embodies several distinguishing characteristics, which together build a thoughtful, powerful and timely call for adult investment in meaningful children’s engagement. The author draws attention to ethnicity, class, migration, place and time as factors in the substance of children’s ideas and the civic opportunity structures they experience, with a particular focus on English-speaking, industrialized countries. She considers the ramifications of the dominant neoliberal political culture’s framing of democratic citizenship, and the implications of our children’s need to confront four intersecting challenges: dangerous environmental change, weakening democracies, growing social inequality, and a global economy marked by unprecedented youth unemployment and unsustainable resource extraction. Within this context the author carefully frames terms such as “environment,” “citizenship,” “children’s civic engagement,” and “environmental education.” She does so employing scholarship in the areas of political science, philosophy, child development, children’s participation and environmental education, as well as her own empirical analyses. Her data are drawn from focus groups conducted with an ethnically and socio-economically diverse group of 160 8- to 12-year-old residents in and around Christchurch, New Zealand. Discussion of children’s engagement in the environment is premised on the recognition of children as future and current citizens—people who shape and are shaped by social ecological contexts that include multiple settings (e.g. home, schools, malls, neighborhoods, regions, indigenous lands, nations of residence, countries of origin, etc.) (Bronfenbrenner 1974). Focus group data highlight the socio-cultural, political, economic and physical dimensions of children’s environments, illustrating them as intersecting and increasingly shaped by dynamics playing out not only locally but globally. Like Jacqueline Kennelly (2011), Hayward demonstrates how dominant neoliberal forces have increasingly framed notions of democratic youth citizenship in terms of localized individual practices and responsibilities (e.g., voting, buying “green” products, decreasing their families’ carbon footprints, charitable volunteering). She characterizes this conceptual and action framework as woefully inadequate given Book Review: Children, Citizenship and Environment: Nurturing a Democratic… 195 the scope and scale of human and environmental challenges faced by this generation. Instead, she underscores the need for collective action on systemic issues at multiple scales that places social justice at the center. Hayward’s analysis raises the question of how to foster this orientation toward youth citizenship, particularly in dominant political cultures and educational contexts that are unsupportive at best. In response, she draws upon child development scholarship and her own qualitative data to note that children’s natural inclinations to “make a difference” and grapple with issues of justice and injustice in their environment offer multiple opportunities to do so. However, she cautions that intentional adult support is required to help young people build on these inclinations and overcome barriers such as:  The psychological challenge of engaging complex, long term issues;  Challenges to youth agency (e.g. disciplining responses to collective youth action);  Limited adult interest in youth perspectives (especially those of low-income youth of color);  Limited youth access to adult-driven institutions; and  Limited adult support to cultivate capacities and commitments associated with collective action (67-9). Hayward argues that assisting young people demands alternatives to de-politicized environmental and civic education. She argues for building ecological citizenship through approaches rooted in an alternative conceptual framework: SEEDS (Social agency, Environmental education, Embedded justice, Decentered deliberation and Self-transcendence). Such processes would encourage young people to think critically, politically and creatively about their situations, collectively imagine new possibilities, explore how power is exercised in decision-making, and practice strategies to effect community change. Also identified, although explored in a much more limited way, is the importance of cultivating children’s ability to acknowledge and engage the deep splits in values and understandings that exist in communities. More broadly, Hayward challenges us to address the...

Los que se van y los que se quedan ante la educación: Un estudio comparativo-longitudinal de jóvenes en transición a la adultez en México y Estados Unidos (The Leavers and the Stayers: A Comparative Longitudinal Study of Educational Achievement and Transitions to Adulthood Among Youth in Mexico and the United States)

This paper presents the results of a comparative longitudinal study of educational achievement between two samples of young people: those who stayed with their families in their home town in Mexico, and those from the same place who emigrated to California or were born to immigrant parents in the United States. The few longitudinal studies of the trajectories from adolescence to adulthood of children of immigrants, such as CILS in the U.S. and ILSEG in Spain, compare groups of youth in the same country. This work, the Longitudinal Study of Educational Achievement (ELLE) in Mexico and the United States, employs qualitative and quantitative methods not only to compare the situation of young people and their parents of the same origin in two countries during periods of crisis between 2008-2012, but also compares the outcomes of undocumented, documented and U.S. citizen youth in immigrant families in California.

청소년의 자원봉사활동이 시민의식과 긍정적 자기지각 및 또래관계에 미치는 영향 - 중학생과 고등학생 간 비교 -

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of youth voluntary on sense of citizenship, positive self-perception, and peer relations, which procedures was conducted by being comparison between middle school students and high school ones. This study also use the data given by 2st of the Seoul Education Longitudinal Study(SELS), which subjects were 7,593 youths(3,566 in middles school students and 4,027 in high school ones). The most significant variable for youth's peer relations was sense of citizenship both middle school and high school student, which indicates not only that it is encouraged by sense of citizenship but also that developing and leading the sense of citizenship for youth should be given by the school welfare policy. Positive self-perception in middle school youth influenced the second effect on their peer relations, but high school student's peer relation was impacted by the voluntary service into a secondary effect.

School-aged workers: Industrial citizens in waiting?

While the literature points to significant shifts in young peoples’ labour market participation and the social, economic and political context in which this has occurred, it tells us little about whether and in what sense young people can be considered as industrial citizens. We explored the notion of youth citizenship using data derived from 48 focus groups conducted with 216 young people (13-16 years of age) at 19 high schools in Australia. The findings reveal the ways in which several key dimensions of industrial citizenship come to be shaped and have implications for addressing the vulnerability of youth in employment and informing policy and action.

Citizenship, Leisure and Gender Equality

This article explores the relationship between gender, citizenship and leisure activities for youth. The purpose with the article is to describe, explore and discuss whether meeting places for youth such as youth clubs support their citizenship. Based on a case study of young people place, space and activities are explored and discussed from a gender perspective. To collect data, several study visits have been done during a six month period, involving visiting all of the youth clubs and similar meeting places as part of the case study. As a research method textual analysis of daily diaries written by youth leaders were used. The result of the case study shows firstly that these places are more attractive to boys than to girls. Secondly, they can be places for the development of youth citizenship. Thirdly, visitors are offered the opportunity of taking an active role in their own transition to citizenship.

Using Common Evaluation Instruments Across Multi-State Community Programs: A Pilot Study

In times of diminishing resources to support community programs, it is critical that Extension make every effort to show impact as collectively as possible for the variety of programs being delivered in individual counties and communities. The pilot study reported here (funded by CYFAR, NIFA, USDA award #2008-41520-04810), focused on outcomes in youth citizenship programs in four states. Key factors to consider in the selection of common instruments include length, scope, and validation of instruments. The importance of dosage, specifically intensity and duration, are highlighted in relation to program outcomes.

‘An instruction in good citizenship’: scouting and the historical geographies of citizenship education

This paper examines informal citizenship training for youth and the historical geographies of education over time through analysing the Scout Movement in Britain and its activities in the first half of the twentieth century. In doing so, it highlights the complexity of youth citizenship and the significance of non‐school spaces in civil society to our understandings of young people’s positioning as citizen‐subjects. Drawing on archival research, I demonstrate how a specific youth citizenship project was constructed and maintained through the Scout Movement. I argue that various processes, strategies and regulations were involved in envisioning ‘citizen‐scout’ and developing both duty‐bound, self‐regulated individuals as well as a wider collective body of British youth. This analysis speaks to broader debates on citizenship, nationhood and youth, as well as highlighting how the historical geographies of citizenship education are an important area of study for geographers.

Youth, Participation, Leisure and Citizenship

The purpose with this article is to describe, explore, and discuss texts that ten Swedish local councils present on their homepages from the perspective of leisure, influence and citizenship for youths. Content analysis is used as a method in order to understand the content and structure of texts such as political aims, strategical plans and budgets. The result of the empirical study shows that the picture of youth citizenship is neither uniform nor coherent, but rather complicated and contradictory. On the one hand, the image of young people is that they are presented as individuals who are creative, interested in and willing to take responsibility for matters which concern them. The image of youth is that they need to practice democracy in particular established structures. Young people are seen as individuals who need places to hang around, meet with their friends and have free access to activities such as listening to music, playing games or using the Internet. On the other hand the idea that the young generation needs protection and tutoring, to be watched over, controlled and sometimes guarded by social authorities is also expressed in the texts.

Vulnerability and the neo-liberal youth citizen: a view from Australia

This article develops a critical discourse analysis of Australian youth and community policies, examined through a discussion of theoretical debates about citizenship and vulnerability. Informed by a Foucauldian genealogical approach, it explores citizenship, not in terms of rights and universal categories, but in terms of relational, situated and dividing practices. Two major relationships are examined: the relationship between local communities and citizens, including the relationship between space and citizenship; and the relational construction of virtuous and vulnerable citizens. Vulnerability can refer to negative difference and weakness and it can denote a compassionate disposition and openness to difference. It is argued that in neo-liberal policy discourses vulnerability becomes tied to a ‘conversion narrative’ that renders social–structural marginalisation an individual responsibility and re-inscribes developmental explanations of social exclusion. This analysis of Australian policy discourses opens up questions regarding transnational citizenship and vulnerability that warrant further comparative and empirical investigation; and it invites a rethinking of the theoretical framing of youth citizenship, which has implications for conceptualising and conducting comparative youth studies in education.

Does Citizenship Education Make Young People Better-Engaged Citizens?

Citizenship education has been a compulsory feature of the curriculum in secondary schools in England since 2002. However, its future may be uncertain amid inter-party disputes over the utility of such teaching. Moreover, there are substantial concerns over the breadth, aims and reach of the Citizenship curriculum. There is a lack of clarity over whether good citizenship can be taught and dispute over whether it can or should go beyond bolstering civil engagement (volunteering) and improving civic (political) activity. This article assesses the motivations for the introduction of Citizenship and the extent to which it has become a politicised panacea to a range of emerging policy challenges. Then, using survey data gathered for the Youth Citizenship Commission, established under the previous government to encourage community and democratic participation by young people, the article tests whether citizenship education is making a difference to the engagement of young people in the civil and political spheres. It assesses which categories of young people have been most influenced by – and which remain impervious to – citizenship education.

Supporting refugee students in schools: what constitutes inclusive education?

The worldwide rise in numbers of refugees and asylum seekers suggests the need to examine the practices of those institutions charged with their resettlement in host countries. In this paper, we investigate the role of one important institution – schooling – and its contribution to the successful resettlement of refugee children. We begin with an examination of forced migration and its links with globalisation, and the barriers to inclusion confronting refugees. A discussion of the educational challenges confronting individual refugee youth and schools is followed by case studies of four schools and the approaches they had developed to meet the needs of young people from a refugee background. Using our findings and other research, we outline a model of good practice in refugee education. We conclude by discussing how educational institutions might play a more active role in facilitating transitions to citizenship for refugee youth through an inclusive approach.

Book Review: Liberalization’s Children: Gender, Youth, and Consumer Citizenship in Globalizing India

Book Review: Liberalization’s Children: Gender, Youth, and Consumer Citizenship in Globalizing India

The Party Politics of Youth Citizenship and Democratic Engagement

Young people populate a uniquely strategic position within society in general and particularly in party political debate about the future development of citizenship and the national community. Political parties in the UK have however been historically reluctant to engage with young people or represent their interests in the formulation of policies, instead prioritising older voters. However, the political resonance of issues linked to youth citizenship and democratic engagement has risen recently as political parties have sought to address steep declines in levels of civic and civil activism and the preparedness of young people to vote in elections. This paper explores the emerging party politics associated with such shifts, assessing the extent to which political parties have sought to reform how they engage with young people or reassert traditional modes of citizenship and political participation.

Surfer Girls in the New World Order (review)

Reviewed by: Surfer Girls in the New World Order Robert Bennett Surfer Girls in the New World Order. By Krista Comer. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010. 296 pages, $84.95/$23.95. Krista Comer's Surfer Girls in the New World Order exemplifies the most prominent theoretical trends that are transforming contemporary western studies. Recontextualizing surf culture within a transnational context, connecting surfing to current debates about globalization, and exploring complex interrelations between the local and the global, Comer's analysis of transnational surf culture vividly illustrates western studies' recent critical regionalist, transnational, and post-western "turns." Focusing still more specifically on how surf culture intersects with the gender politics of both traditional and emergent (third-wave) feminisms, Surfer Girls explores how surfing develops what Comer describes as "girl localisms" that connect gender with place (221). While Comer's methods and terminology draw upon some well-credentialed critical precedents, she twists and refocuses these critical discourses to create a unique project that is unmistakably all her own. In particular, what most distinguishes Surfer Girls methodologically is the way that it moves "increasingly toward ethnography" by focusing primarily on unconventional source materials such as extensive personal experiences, interviews with surfers and workers in the surf microeconomy, explorations of rapidly gentrifying international beach towns, short bios of professional surfers, [End Page 337] and detailed descriptions of female-oriented clothing lines, surf camps, and surf shops (29). Stretching from the macrogeopolitics of Hawaii's colonization to the microgender politics of swimwear design, Comer's project sprawls across a vast critical terrain largely of her own making. Reversing decades of critical neglect that produced only a "single scholarly book" on surf culture, Surfer Girls fundamentally challenges critics to reconsider the significant role that surfing's "values and languages" have played in "articulat [ing] some of the most consequential changes in both local and global cultural and economic life" (11, 6). Through a quick analysis of a few canonical surf texts—such as the Gidget novels and films, the Beach Blanket movies, Endless Summer (1966), and Blue Crush (2002)—Comer attempts to re-envision "new forms of contemporary femininity and of surf culture" by rejecting traditional interpretations of the "Gidget phenomenon" as the "height of the nonbright, the noncommitted" and counter-arguing instead that Gidget and her progeny articulate a more radical "ideology of female freedom" and "rebel girl femininity" that "threatened the status quo" (4, 38, 43, 49-50). Later, Comer interprets Luna Bay: A Roxy Girl (starting 2003), a series of surf novels for adolescent girls, commissioned by the fashion industry. She finds that the novels were part of a "multilayered marketing outreach program" which interweaves literature with online book clubs, chat rooms, environmentalism, modeling opportunities, and new clothing lines and a way of helping advertise "surfing as a form of youth citizenship" with "political ecocommitments," "social consciousness," and "global ethics" (80, 113). Challenging Baywatch stereotypes, Comer reinterprets surf culture as resolutely, albeit imperfectly, political, transnational, environmentalist, multiculturalist, and feminist. With these bold reinterpretations, Comer encourages serious reconsideration of—if not outright debate about—surf culture's larger cultural and political significance. Provocatively extending her analysis of the gender politics surrounding surf culture, Comer attempts to create a new "intergenerational conversation" between traditional second-wave feminism and alternative third-wave feminisms that draw upon what Comer describes as "Generation X's ferocity, courage, and willfulness" and "Generation Y's 'girlishness,' girl-gang solidarity, and female pride" (17, 103). Claiming that the "figure of the surfer girl has the potential to teach older feminists much," Comer throws down a critical gauntlet, challenging traditional feminists to embrace new forms of "girlish play" that might threaten their "aversion to frivolity" or sense of "midlife responsibility" but may potentially reawaken the "'bad girls' so many of [the] boomer feminists used to be" (28, 134, 127, 140, 135). Frequently citing the Las Olas surf camp's goal of making "girls out of women," Comer seems to side with, or at least take seriously, the unorthodox values of third-wave feminist youth cultures, advocating an inverted, intergenerational logic that echoes Carla Lonzi and Rivolta Feminile's Italian feminist manifesto "Let's Spit on Hegel" or any number of...

Developing ethical and democratic citizens in a post-colonial context: citizenship education in Kenya

Background: Youth citizenship is now on the international agenda with African countries increasingly interrogating their national perspectives on citizenship andcitizenship education. In this emergent field of research, African scholars arebeginning to challenge the prevailing (Western) theories of citizenship and democracy. Purpose: The aim of this paper is to contribute an African perspective to the study of citizenship education by exploring the political influences and meanings that shaped citizenship education in Kenya, and how these have evolved from independence to the present day. Data and Methods: This article is based on a documentary analysis of key policy-related documents, complemented by an analysis of some critical historical moments in the life of Kenya as a postcolonial nation. The policy-related documents include government policy documents, as well as political statements, speeches, development reports, technical commission reports, media articles, research publications and reports, education syllabi and curriculum documents. Main Findings: Post-independence, the Kenyan government focused on rethinking the colonial concept of citizenship in line with its political–cultural traditions, encouraging new notions of belonging, of civic virtues and of duties in relation to nation-building and economic development. Social Ethics and Education (SEE) programmes in schools were established and then later removed from the secondary school curriculum. Conclusions: This paper yields important insights into the international and national political agendas that shape Kenya's notions of active citizenship. It indicates the tensions which vulnerable and fragile states such as Kenya experience in negotiating their citizenship education agenda, whilst attempting to win foreign investment and aid for their economy, and whilst addressing regional and ethnic inequalities and high levels of poverty.

Framing young citizens: explicit invitation and implicit exclusion on youth civic websites

This paper takes as its focus discourses about young people, intercultural citizenship, voice and participation on a range of youth civic websites surveyed during the project CivicWeb. This was a 3-year, seven-country European Commission funded study of young people, the Internet and civic participation. Specifically, it calls upon evidence from qualitative case studies of three contemporary civic websites in Britain, the UK Youth Parliament, European Youth Portal and MuslimYouth.Net, including textual analysis as well as interviews with key producers and young users of these and other civic sites. In light of current debates around the best means of engaging young people in civic activities on- and offline, the paper seeks to answer questions about the potential benefits and dangers of producers’ pedagogic styles, ideological perspectives and normative choices in relation to young people's civic motivation and efficacy. Finally the paper looks at the match or disjuncture between the sites’ missions for youth citizenship and the actual young people who respond to the sites’ address and ethos and asks how more civic producers can move towards a situated, motivating and inclusive model of communication on- and offline.

From entertainment to citizenship: A comparative study of the political uses of popular culture by first-time voters

This article investigates the extent to which young people use different forms of popular culture to express and make sense of their relationship to politics. We look closely at young people's interpretation of popular culture in order to find out whether, and if so how, it plays a political role, using focus groups and interviews with first-time voters in the UK. We adapt the theoretical framework and method used by David Buckingham in his study of the relationship between news media and youth citizenship. While Buckingham concludes that the nature of news media systematically alienates and excludes substantial sectors of the audience, we find that popular culture offers young people a range of often salient ways of expressing and making sense of their relationship to politics.

K-12 Educational Outcomes of Immigrant Youth

The children from immigrant families in the United States make up a historically diverse population, and they are demonstrating just as much diversity in their experiences in the K-12 educational system. Robert Crosnoe and Ruth López Turley summarize these K-12 patterns, paying special attention to differences in academic functioning across segments of the immigrant population defined by generational status, race and ethnicity, and national origin. A good deal of evidence points to an immigrant advantage in multiple indicators of academic progress, meaning that many youths from immigrant families outperform their peers in school. This apparent advantage is often referred to as the immigrant paradox, in that it occurs despite higher-than-average rates of social and economic disadvantages in this population as a whole. The immigrant paradox, however, is more pronounced among the children of Asian and African immigrants than other groups, and it is stronger for boys than for girls. Furthermore, evidence for the paradox is far more consistent in secondary school than in elementary school. Indeed, school readiness appears to be one area of potential risk for children from immigrant families, especially those of Mexican origin. For many groups, including those from Latin America, any evidence of the immigrant paradox usually emerges after researchers control for family socioeconomic circumstances and youths' English language skills. For others, including those from Asian countries, it is at least partially explained by the tendency for more socioeconomically advantaged residents of those regions to leave their home country for the United States. Bilingualism and strong family ties help to explain immigrant advantages in schooling; school, community, and other contextual disadvantages may suppress these advantages or lead to immigrant risks. Crosnoe and Turley also discuss several policy efforts targeting young people from immigrant families, especially those of Latin American origin. One is the DREAM Act, proposed federal legislation to create a pathway to citizenship for undocumented youth who meet certain criteria. Another effort includes culturally grounded programs to support the college preparation of immigrant adolescents and the educational involvement of immigrant parents of young children.

Getting Girls and Teens into the Vocabularies of Citizenship

This article addresses the invisibility of teenage girls within and outside of feminist theory and citizenship studies from the perspective of girlhood studies. Most often addressed as individuals in need of protection, girls and adolescent females are seldom considered political citizen-subjects. In addition, because they do not fit within existing frameworks of analysis, some of their citizenship practices, including mediamaking, are not acknowledged as forms of political agentivity or political participation. Drawing on my past and current research with Francophone teenage girls in Canada, I highlight and problematize this denial in a way that underlines the need for girlhood studies to politicize its vocabulary so that teenage girls can become part of us rather than women-to-become in feminist citizenship studies and others areas of inquiry in which youth citizenship is being re-theorized. I argue that such politicization broadens what girls' health entails to include their political healthiness.