Youth is not a universal term; how young people live their experiences depends on several factors such as personality, social context, gender, age, ethnicity, religion, and cultural background, amongst others. They share common characteristics, but as Hart (2009) points out, young people should not be treated as a homogenous group in need of responsibilisation in society nor to be seen as adults; understanding young people means to consider differentials in power, status, knowledge and experience. Despite these differences, youth is as a specific life stage and is therefore inherently transitional (Roberts, 2007).
Conceptualisations of youth as citizens intersects with the idea of individuals who are entitled to participate in society. If citizenship is understood as a condition of an individual given in legal terms, meaning one who is entitled to participate in the society in which s/he lives, through the ‘vote’, then individuals under 18 years of age are not citizens yet. Osler and Starkey (2003) argue that young people are frequently presented as citizens-in- waiting, and youth is often portrayed as threatening yet politically apathetic (Hart, 2009). On the other hand, if it is considered that each person is a citizen because s/he is a human being (cosmopolitan orientation of citizenship) and has the right to participate actively in the community in which they live, then youth are citizens. This second argument leads me to consider in this study young people as citizens, not as ‘people who will become citizens when they are of age’.
Another reason to consider youth as citizens is related to the ideas developed by Staeheli (1999, 65); he points out that:
Liberal and republican theories hold that the rights and responsibilities of citizenship are borne by individuals, but the political reality is that citizenship is extended to social groups. That is, when nation-states set the rules of entry to citizenship, the debate is about the characteristics of social groups, not about individuals who might wish to become citizens. So, while theories of politics may assume individual agents, social groups and perceptions about group members as political subjects are important to understanding who a citizen is and who may exercise the rights of citizenship.
In this sense, youth is a particular social group, and beyond this, young students have more particular characteristics that differentiate them from other social groups. This group of people’s experiences of citizenship are mediated by age (Lister, Smith, Middleton & Cox, 2010). I agree with Hart (2009, 645) on contradicting that ‘young people have yet to reach the age of maturity and develop the appropriate cognitive capacity to participate as citizens…this argument is working from a normative definition of citizenship with fixed assumptions about the capacities that citizens should display’.
The condition of being considered a citizen leads to the discussion about the role of identity and participation as a key goal for citizenship and particularly active citizenship. Concerning identity, Kymlicka and Norman (1994, 369) affirm that being a citizen ‘is not just a certain status, defined by a set of rights and responsibilities. It is also an identity, an expression of one’s membership in a political community’. John Shotter (1993, 115) claims that ‘to be a citizen is not a simple matter of first as a child growing up to be a socially competent adult, and then simply walking out into the everyday world to take up one’s rights and duties as a citizen’. By contrast, it is a status inherent to the human being and what the individual should develop is a sense of belonging to and an identity with a local and national community and, as has been argued in this study, global community. Once agreed that youth are citizens, a second issue related to the status of being a citizen is their social and community participation. Hart (2009), points out that young people are perfectly capable of articulating how they wish to belong and participate. Lister et al. (2007) found out that youth are willing to talk about their responsibilities as citizens, which implies their participation in society; they ‘place a high premium on constructive
social participation in the local community. Such participation represented for many of them the essence of good citizenship’ (251).
A third aspect to be discussed is the misunderstanding of young people as passive individuals. Roberts (2009) argues that young people always play active roles in constructing their own adult lives. To think of youth as passive individuals is one of the reasons why their voice has largely been ignored and their opinion not been taken into account for public decisions. The understanding of them as ‘citizens’ once they turn 18 years of age has led to the notion that it is not important to include them in public consultation. However, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in its Article 12 (The United Nations, 1989) emphasises that:
State parties shall ensure to the child who is capable of forming his or her own views the right to express those views freely in all matters affecting the child, the views of the child being given due weight in accordance with the age and maturity of the child. In this study, a central focus is to hear students’ voice, what their views, opinion, thoughts, and understandings are about the topics to be discussed. Young people have the right to be consulted, they a ‘have a say’, are actively involved within society and, as Lister et al. (2003) point out, young people take seriously the question of their relationship to the wider society. For them, being recognised, respected and listened are important factors in the development of a sense of belonging and engagement within their communities as equal citizens.
In summary, having presented different classifications and issues related to citizenship and reflecting on who is a citizen, the conclusion at this stage is that youth should be considered as citizens. Also, one should reflect that the ideal is that everyone knows that ‘s/he is’ and ‘be treated’ as a citizen, and that has a significant role in the society. In this sense, the role that education plays in promoting citizenship in students is crucial. To reflect on this role, I initially introduce a section that presents characteristics of education for citizenship and CE and that allows narrowing the discussion to CE and its approaches. Secondly, I discuss the cosmopolitan dimension of CE as a key issue to be considered when addressing what the role schools play is in the understandings that students develop about citizenship.