Abstract
In this paper, a framework is presented for exploring how youth perform their citizenship through political engagements. The framework provides a way to explore the agency of youthful citizens as imagined by different agents and the ways that youth understand their performances as citizenship. Using interviews with university students and administrators at six universities in Manchester and Glasgow, a distinction is highlighted between agency and the performance of political acts in the production of citizenship, and the implications of this distinction for the development of autonomous citizens.
Acknowledgements
This research was funded by National Science Foundation Grants BCS-0852442 and BCS-0852455; additional support came from European Research Council Grant 295392-YouCitizen. While that support is greatly appreciated, this paper and its conclusions does not represent the view of the NSF or the ERC.
Notes
Under the devolved policies for university funding, students in Scotland do not pay fees.
This is same group mentioned previously for which the university was wary of student involvement.