Citizenship defined as the capacity of the individual to defend his/her rights in front of the authorities. The citizenship comes with a legal status as civil, social and political rights and the freedom to act within the borders of law. Moreover, the citizenship is also considers the citizens as political agents who actively participate in the political discussion and a member of the political community that comes from a source of the identity(Leydet, 2017). The legal status concerning the rights of citizens is the main aspect that we have focused on development of strategies as it is highly related with the discourse of the social welfare and social safety nets for the young people.
The citizenship discourse concerning rights goes back to in 1950s’ T.H. Marshall’s “Citizenship and Social Class” proposes the division of citizenship into three different parts and calls these parts as civil, political and social. The civil element is the liberties of the person from owning property to freedom of speech, the social element is the right to have social welfare i.e. social security, education, etc. while the political element is the right to exercise the political power. For T.H. Marshall, citizenship is a status that all members of the society have generic rights and duties but not universal (Marshall, 1950). These three sets of rights are not indivisible such as in the absence of the social rights such as education or social security, the citizens cannot participate in society as full and equal members.
If the citizen cannot participate fully to the society as an equal member, the people start to be marginalised and unable to participate(Kymlicka & Norman, 1994). From the youth citizenship perspective, when young people’s social rights are not provided in an equal basis or are withheld,it can be claimed that the young people will continue to withdraw from society and become marginalised. Thus, social rights are a crucial part of citizenship to be full and equal for young people i.e. young citizens to exercise their civil and political rights as full citizens.
Kymlicka and Norman (2000) changed this approach to three different pillars : legal status, identity and civic virtue. The legal status as the rights and the duties come along with these rights while identity is a based on the class, race, ethnicity, religion, gender, profession, sexual preference and etc., the civic virtue refers to sets of virtues as general virtues, social virtues, economic virtues and political virtues. Moreover, Kymlicka and Norman (2000) argued about the fourth pillar of the citizenship additionally legal status, identity and civic virtue as social cohesion. Thus, they have identified the differentiated citizenship status where the identity of the individual changes the legal status by referring to equality and the existence of invisible classes.
When we take into the account the both citizenship approaches put by Marshall (1950) and Kymlicka & Norman (2000) to the citizenship concepts of young people, one hand; we talk about the transition processes as the social rights of young people is interconnected with the T.H. Marshall’s citizenship approach with the participation of young people, at the other, we talk about the differentiated citizenship status of the young people. Youth citizenship often considered as not the citizens of today but future or as T.H. Marshall defines it that “citizens in the making”. Thus, their legal status i.e. rights are often overlooked and their citizenship should be conceptualized as a practice rather than solely a status. Moreover, the ambiguity of the dimensions of the citizenship have a huge place in the discourse of the youth citizenship(Butler & Benoit, 2015). Thus,the distinctive groups of young people viz youth subcultures plays a role on the youth citizenship.
The differentiated youth citizenship simply differentiates the pathways and their participation practices to the politics, culture and decision-making mechanisms. Youth experience the citizenship through a magnifying glass of social rights due to their precarious situations as they cannot enjoy their rights directly but through a “proxy”. According to the research done by Butler & Benoit (2015) with the young people in government-care, they have concluded that the expressions of the young people with care-experience shows the tensions between their rights, the reasons behind the exclusion and pathways for the inclusion of young people. The young people defines the citizenship as sets of rights and duties rather than simply as the T.H. Marshall defines.
Moreover, the education is one of the key aspects of the youth citizenship. Undereducated young people often positions themselves outside of the “citizen space” which results with their marginalization and poverty(Arnot & Swartz, 2012). The inequalities in the societies impel young people to withdraw from the community and participation while results with their denial of the citizenship. On the other hand, consideration of the young people as not-yet-citizens and developing the policies to push the young people out of the citizenship (Wood, 2017) results with their non-attaintment of the rights comes with the citizenship. Therefore, the education policies focusing on making not-yet-citizens as full citizens promotes this process vis-à-vis make young people not think, feel or act less of a citizen.
On the other hand, the fluidity of the identity is often overlooked. As Kymlicka & Norman (2000) defined the one of the pillars of citizenship as identity of the individual, the young people’s fluid identities should be considered when we take the youth citizenship practices into account. Therefore, we have to seeing these transitions or citizenship not a static but we have to take into the account the dynamic social, cultural and space/time relations into the account(Wood, 2017). According to Walsh et al. (2018), the youth citizenship within policy and public area considers the young people civically disengaged and deficit citizens who are so called apolitical vis-à-vis even antipathetic towards to notion of democracy.
In next we will categorize the similarities of the youth citizenship due to fitting into a theory and contribute to the policy development in a manner that contributes to the citizenship practices of young people and enhance the lives of young people in our countries. However, we have to say that, the citizenship practices of young people are highly relational with young people’s experiences of power, influence and their aspirations about the future though, the young people have ability to adopt or adapt existing structures to reconstruct their own acts of citizenship consecutively(Walsh et al., 2018). Smith et al. (2005) claim that the understanding of the citizenship can be inclusionary or exclusionary for the young people. Therefore, the broader understanding of the citizenship should be employed to prevent the exclusion of the young people who have more disadvantaged than the others due to their identities.
Until now, we have argued that the classical political interpretation of the youth citizenship and the youth discourse and the transition models seeing young people as “future citizens”, “citizens in making”, “people trying to reach the final destination(adulthood)” etc. Above all, we claim that these approach should be changed. Because, the policies considering the young people as citizens in making, results with the exclusion of young people. According Geijsel et al. (2012), we presuppose the young people as already citizens as they involve in a variety of social practices and participate in the community. Due to these participation practices, young people develop a picture of themselves in relation to world with their own preferences and fulfil their duties and enjoy the rights as full citizens. Furthermore, the citizenship practices and policies directly affect on the trust of the young people to the political institutions(Chevalier, 2019). Thus, we have to focus on the implications of the welfare structures through out the magnifying class as it directly impacts on the life of young people, their citizenship practices, their transition periods even their aspirations and hopes towards to the life.
Before, we define the youth citizenship as economic and social, we would like to put an emphasis on two obvious youth cultures as rural and migrant youth cultures. According Geijsel et al. (2012)’s research in Netherlands, the young people who are from highly urban areas scored higher on the knowledge about citizenship concerning attitudes, skills and reflection more than in the rural areas same as the migrant youth scored less than the young people who has Dutch decendents. That shows the relevance of the Bourdieu’s approach to the youthhood as it is more than age and the power relations in citizenship practices that we have explained previously.
Lastly, the young people experiencing the social citizenship practices differs from the other groups even distinctively within the sub youth groups. In this approach, Tom Chevalier’s model on the youth welfare citizenship gives us a clear path for understanding the social citizenship and its relation with the sub youth groups. In his “Varieties of youth welfare citizenship: Towards a two-dimension typology” work, he states that :
Becoming an adult in the welfare state perspective means becoming financially independent, that is, having an income, without relying on one’s family anymore. This independence can thus be achieved either through the market, that is, by entering the labour market and accessing paid employment, or by the state, that is, by receiving social benefits. The state can therefore intervene in two ways that we need to distinguish in order to understand how the transition towards the financial independence of young people is structured by the welfare state: either it provides income support or it tries to ease the transition between education and work (or both). Each arrangement of these policies leads to a certain type of what we call ‘youth welfare citizenship’. (Chevalier, 2016)
From this point, the definition consideration of the young people’s within the magnifying glass of the polices is to make them involved in the labour market through different measures. We do argue that dilemma in here that the young people are not able to enjoy these rights as full citizens but citizens in making. Chevalier (2016) divides youth citizenship into two dimensions as : social and economic citizenship.
Firstly, he defines social citizenship as the support of the welfare state who are not in employment or do not have a job as the income support needed during the period of transition. To do so, he looks at the all social benefits for the young people from education-related benefits, social assistance and family policies and how they are distributed. It is crucial to make the distinction here that the young people who cannot provide for themselves or become autonomous from their families are considered often as children by some scholars which is the case of same welfare states. He uses the following criterias Chevalier (2016,p.6) to distinct the social citizenship of young people : “Image of youth, Maintenance claims for children after their civil majority, Age limitations to access social benefits, Status in social security, Aids for students, Family policy, Student support, Social security coverage, Welfare regime”. He categorizes the social citizenship into two categories:
- Familialized citizenship: The social benefits provided to the young person depends on the income of the family rather than the young person itself. The welfare state considers the family as the main welfare provider rather than state. The young person is still dependent on the family considering their rights and benefits as the family income is the main criterion for the provision of the aid and grants. The social security coverage of young people starts from the age of 20 or later 25 and the social security coverage depends on the social security coverage of the family rather than the individual itself.
- Individualized citizenship: The young people are the adults and they can reach out the social benefits as early as 18 and these benefits are not tied to the family or the income of the family. The social security coverage concerning to familialized citizenship. The state aid towards to education is not dependent on the income of the family, therefore the young people are more independent to make their own choices without the influence of their families.
Secondly, the defines the economic citizenship as the strategy for the integration of young people into the labour market. As the young people who are involved in employment right after education often face with the unemployment or they return back to education or involve in the informal economy and precarious jobs scholars as we have mentioned before(Caroleo & Pastore, 2015; MacDonald, 2011). That is highly relevant with the school-to-work transition and the journey of this transition. According to Chevalier (2016), the support of the welfare state during the transition period, not only providing income or the support to involve in the job placement through upskilling the human development and provides support for the unemployed young people to enter the labour market. He uses the following criteria to distinguish the economic citizenship dimension : “Distribution of skills, Objective of the strategy, Public intervention on the labour market, Function of active labour market policies” (Chevalier, 2016, p.7). He categorizes the economic citizenship dimension within two strategies :
- Encompassing strategy: The skill distribution focus on skills for all. The strategy promotes the low level of school-dropouts and it boosts the participation of the young people to the education for upskilling and enhancing the human capital of young people. The labour market insertion of the young people depends on the supply-side rather than the demand by increasing the young people’s skills to enter the labour market easily by state interventions.
- Selective strategy: The selective strategy focuses on the skill development of young people who are the best. Thus, the education system results with the competitive nature and it leads with the high level of drop-outs in the schooling system. The state intervention is not focusing on the supply-side i.e. young person, but the demand-side i.e. labour market and promotes the low-cost workforce done by the young people which results with precarious job situations of the young people.
Moreover, Chevalier (2016) uses the economic and social citizenship models to cluster the youth citizenship models into the types of citizenship models. He clusters the types of citizenship and their relation with the economic and social citizenship and links with the structures in European countries into the four different types of youth citizenship as second-class youth citizenship, enabling youth citizenship, denied youth citizenship and monitored youth citizenship. Enabling youth citizenship sees the young person as an individual and invest on the young people through their transition period. Second-class youth citizenship uses the individual social citizenship model though persists in the selective strategy for the labour market insertion of young people. Monitored youth citizenship focuses on the labour market insertion of market people through an encompassing strategy that considers the interplay between the state and family as welfare provider. Denied youth citizenship puts family to the main welfare provider and uses a selective labour market insertion.
Denied youth citizenship model is the model that we will focus on the development of strategies for youth grassroots and youth workers in the countries as the model is the example of the citizenship model in Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece in Chevalier’s analysis. Moreover, Yılmaz (2017) classifies Turkey as denied youth citizenship model due to welfare structure similarities, social policy structures and the unequal distribution of labour market skills. Therefore, we will use the model to evaluate the policies in the countries Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece, and Turkey by using Chevalier’s model and Walther’s transition regimes to discuss and find the possible intervention points to develop the policy recommendations.
References
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