Youth citizenship: Expanding conceptions of the young citizen

Abstract

While the field of youth citizenship has grown rapidly in the past 2 decades, it still remains a contested idea—not least because of the ‘liminal’ or in-between status that young people occupy between childhood and adulthood. In this paper I propose a conceptual framing that sees youth citizenship at the intersection of youth becoming, being and doing. This framing recognises many of the tensions, complexities and ambiguities of being a young citizen, as well as the potential this holds for understanding the fullness and diversity of youth experiences of citizenship. The paper examines two emerging research streams where youth citizenship researchers illustrate the richness of this conceptual framing in the research fields of youth everyday lived citizenship and digital citizenship.