Rethinking Youth Citizenship After the Age of Entitlement provides a primer for exploring hard questions about how young people understand, experience and enact their citizenship in uncertain times and about their senses of membership and belonging. It examines how familiar modes of exclusion are compounded by punitive youth policies in ways that are concealed by neoliberal discourses. It considers the role of key institutions in constructing young people's citizenship and looks at the ways in which some young people are opting out of established enactments of citizenship while creating new ones. Critically reflecting on recent scholarly interest in the geographical, relational, affective and temporal dimensions of young people's experiences of citizenship, it also reinvigorates the discussion about citizenship rights and entitlements, and what these might mean for young people. The book draws on global research and theories of citizenship but has a particular focus on Australia, which provides a unique example of a country that has fared well economically yet is mimicking the austerity measures of the United Kingdom and Europe. It concludes with an argument for a rethinking of citizenship which recognises young people's rights as citizens and the ways in which these interact with their lived experience at a time that has been characterised as 'the end of the age of entitlement'.

In youth research, conventional notions of the 'mainstream' and of linear transitions to adulthood forged through a straightforward school to work transition have been usurped by the complex and diverse nature of young people's lives. This has increasingly disengaged young people from formal politics and community activity, resulting in a breakdown in structured pathways to adulthood, diminished relevance of formal institutions and disintegration of traditional civic affiliations. This report summarises the key findings from the Rethinking Youth Citizenship: Identity and Connection project. The aim of the project was to gain a greater understanding of the changing nature of citizenship and identity for young people in Victoria. The key findings are that: young people cannot be expected to engage in traditional ways because of increasing life responsibilities and the absence of structural conditions that would support such affiliations; young people today experience social membership through leisure rather than traditional civic associations; young people's political engagement is about having a say in the places and relationships that have an immediate impact on their wellbeing rather than in traditional forums; young people recognise and are concerned about local, national and global issues but struggle to be heard and act on these; family, friends, school and the internet are increasingly important sites for developing civic and political engagement; new methodologies for gauging and generating youth participation need to be developed.

This book explores the relationship between children and citizenship, analyzing international perspectives on citizenship and human rights and developing new methods for facilitating the recognition of children as participating agents within society.

This book challenges readers to recognise the conditions that underpin popular approaches to children and young people’s participation, as well as the key processes and institutions that have enabled its rise as a global force of social change in new times. The book draws on the vast international literature, as well as interviews with key practitioners, policy-makers, activists, delegates and academics from Japan, South Africa, Brazil, Nicaragua, Australia, the United Kingdom, Finland, the United States and Italy to examine the emergence of the young citizen as a key global priority in the work of the UN, NGOs, government and academia. In so doing, the book engages contemporary and interdisciplinary debates around citizenship, rights, childhood and youth to examine the complex conditions through which children and young people are governed and invited to govern themselves. The book argues that much of what is considered ‘children and young people’s participation’ today is part of a wider neoliberal project that emphasises an ideal young citizen who is responsible and rational while simultaneously downplaying the role of systemic inequality and potentially reinforcing rather than overcoming children and young people’s subjugation. Yet the book also moves beyond mere critique and offers suggestive ways to broaden our understanding of children and young people’s participation by drawing on 15 international examples of empirical research from around the world, including the Philippines, Bangladesh, the United Kingdom, North America, Finland, South Africa, Australia and Latin America. These examples provoke practitioners, policy-makers and academics to think differently about children and young people and the possibilities for their participatory citizenship beyond that which serves the political agendas of dominant interest groups.

Offers a more democratic way to think about families, politics, and public life. Public policy often assumes there is one correct way to be a family. Rethinking Sexual Citizenship argues that policies that enforce this idea hurt all of us and harm our democracy. Jyl J. Josephson uses the concept of “sexual citizenship” (a criticism of the assumption that all families have a heterosexual at their center) to show how government policies are made to punish or reward particular groups of people. This analysis applies sexual citizenship not only to policies that impact LGBTQ families, but also to other groups, including young people affected by abstinence-only public policies and single-parent families affected by welfare policy. The book also addresses the idea that the “normal” family in the United States is white. It concludes with a discussion of how scholars and activists can help create a more inclusive democracy by challenging this narrow view of public life.

Wired Citizenship examines the evolving patterns of youth learning and activism in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). In today’s digital age, in which formal schooling often competes with the peer-driven outlets provided by social media, youth all over the globe have forged new models of civic engagement, rewriting the script of what it means to live in a democratic society. As a result, state-society relationships have shifted—never more clearly than in the MENA region, where recent uprisings were spurred by the mobilization of tech-savvy and politicized youth. Combining original research with a thorough exploration of theories of democracy, communications, and critical pedagogy, this edited collection describes how youth are performing citizenship, innovating systems of learning, and re-imagining the practices of activism in the information age. Recent case studies illustrate the context-specific effects of these revolutionary new forms of learning and social engagement in the MENA region.

Like the schools in which it is taught, social studies is full of alluring contradictions. It harbors possibilities for inquiry and social criticism, liberation and emancipation. Social studies could be a site that enables young people to analyze and understand social issues in a holistic way – finding and tracing relations and interconnections both present and past in an effort to build meaningful understandings of a problem, its context and history; to envision a future where specific social problems are resolved; and take action to bring that vision in to existence. Social studies could be a place where students learn to speak for themselves in order to achieve, or at least strive toward an equal degree of participation and better future. Social studies could be like this, but it is not. Rethinking Social Studies examines why social studies has been and continues to be profoundly conversing in nature, the engine room of illusion factories whose primary aim is reproduction of the existing social order, where the ruling ideas exist to be memorized, regurgitated, internalized and lived by. Rethinking social studies as a site where students can develop personally meaningful understandings of the world and recognize they have agency to act on the world, and make change, rests on the premises that social studies should not show life to students, but bringing them to life and that the aim of social studies is getting students to speak for themselves, to understand people make their own history even if they make it in already existing circumstances. These principles are the foundation for a new social studies, one that is not driven by standardized curriculum or examinations, but by the perceived needs, interests, desires of students, communities of shared interest, and ourselves as educators. Rethinking Social Studies challenges readers to reconsider conventional thought and practices that sustain the status quo in classrooms, schools, and society by critically engaging with questions and issues such as: neutrality in the classroom; how movement conservatism shapes the social studies curriculum; how corporate?driven education affects schools, teachers, and curriculum; ways in which teachers can creatively disrupt everyday life in the social studies classroom; going beyond language and inclusive content in social justice oriented teaching; making critical pedagogy relevant to everyday life and classroom practice; the invisibility of class in the social studies curriculum and how to make it a central organizing concept; class war, class consciousness and social studies in the age of empire; what are your ideals as a social studies education and how do you keep them and still teach?; and what it means to be a critical social studies educator beyond the classroom.