IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cog/socinc/v10y2022i2p95-105.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Art of Governing Youth: Empowerment, Protagonism, and Citizen Participation

Author

Listed:
  • Otávio Raposo

    (Centre for Research and Studies in Sociology, University Institute of Lisbon (ISCTE‐IUL), Portugal)

Abstract

This article discusses social inclusion policies for youth from vulnerable socioeconomic contexts, based on the ethnographic monitoring of an associative experience promoted by the Choices Programme (“Programa Escolhas”) on the outskirts of Lisbon. Considered the main public policy directed at poor, racialised, and peripheral youth in Portugal, the Choices Programme is driven by strategies of empowerment and protagonism with a view to engaging youngsters in resolving the problems faced in the neighbourhoods in which they live. Both strategies call for citizen participation but restrict the youth’s field of political action to the rules drawn up by the state, discouraging emancipatory and subversive discourse. The result is biopolitical control and management of marginalised youth, masking a domination that has domesticated their collective action. By recreating the meetings and activities that sought to inspire in these youngsters the virtues of associativism, I discuss how the discourses of empowerment and protagonism are incorporated as new devices of agency and community governmentality. In particular, I question the limits of citizen participation as a means to stimulate the political engagement of youth when this is tied to individualist ideologies distant from a grammar of rights.

Suggested Citation

  • Otávio Raposo, 2022. "The Art of Governing Youth: Empowerment, Protagonism, and Citizen Participation," Social Inclusion, Cogitatio Press, vol. 10(2), pages 95-105.
    • Handle: RePEc:cog:socinc:v10:y:2022:i:2:p:95-105
    DOI: 10.17645/si.v10i2.5080
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/socialinclusion/article/view/5080
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.17645/si.v10i2.5080?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cog:socinc:v10:y:2022:i:2:p:95-105. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: António Vieira or IT Department (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cogitatiopress.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.