(Un)governing the poor youth: Inclusive citizenship education in a post-political context This paper is on the intent to include the young poor into democratic practices, in a context where basic needs are not fulfilled. It therefore discusses education, citizenship and social justice and illustrates – based on empirical data – the tensions between the demands for a participatory youth placed on the educational communities and the social contexts within which the education process takes place.

1. (Un)governing the poor youth: Inclusive citizenship
education in a post-political context?
Dr. Nikolina Stanic (nikolina.stanic@phzg.ch)
ECER 2021
Geneva, September 9, 2021

2. 1. Participatory Budgeting
• Emerged in Porto Alegre (Brazil) in 1989
• Participatory Governance promises the inclusion of
subaltern interests and identities
• Participation=the «imperative of our time» (Baiocchi and
Ganuza 2016, 23)

3. 2. Rosario and the socialist party
•O

4. • Participatory tradition: Model for „good governance“ in Latin America
• „Post-political“ context: Entrepreneurial and conflict-evading rationality
• Gentrified city
Slum, Rosario
(Sinmordaza, 2019)
City of Rosario
(elonce, 2019)

5. 3. Case study & research focus
• Presupuesto Participativo Joven (PPJ): Participatory Budgenting for Young
People
• PPJ= ‘technology’ of government, analyzed within the Foucauldian concept of
‘governmentality’ (Foucault 2007a)
• Research questions:
• What kind of citizenship is constructed in this specific context?
• What’s the potential of participatory spaces to empower young poor people
and to deepen democracy?

6. 4. PPJ: How it works
• Aim: to experience a citizenship-building process by critically analyzing
their realities and by building solution-oriented projects.
• How it works:
Phase 1: diagnostic of the neighbourhood’s problems from a youthful
perspective
Phase 2: development of projects based on the analysis
Phase 3: technical and financial evaluation by the mayor and the municipal
cabinet.
Phase 4: project voting

7. 5. Discoursive fragments
a) The “new youthful condition”
• Young people as a socio-political category in its own right,
representing an autonomous “youthful world” – (Bolis 2015, 2).
• Affirmative politics: from “problems” to “projects”
• Middle-class vision of youth
• Youth as plural entity: aim-> the inclusion of marginalized young
people
• “Projects” as solution for poverty and marginalization

8. b) PPJ as imperative
• Participation as a strong moral call & duty
• The core of the socialist narrative of participation: Poverty should be
overcome through participation
• The involvement of the subject itself and the reference to self-responsibility
and self-management=individuation of poverty=expression of neoliberal
governance (Rose 1996a, 1996b, 1999)

9. 6. Effects
Effect on the citizenship offered to the (poor)youth
• Non-citizenship for the poorest youth outside of the formal institutions
due to resistance of the workers and inappropriate methods
• Depoliticized „encounter and project citizenship“ for the rest

10. 7. Literature
Baiocchi, Gianpaolo; Ganuza, Ernesto (2016). Popular Democracy: The Paradox
of Participation. Stanford University Press.
Bolis, Josefina. Jóvenes, política y cambio social: potencialidades
epistemológicas del posestructuralismo para estudiar los sujetos políticos y la
subversión del sentido. Algunas críticas a la juventología neoliberal. Revista
Argentina de Estudios de Juventud no.9 (2015): 1-16.
Foucault, Michel (2007a). Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the College
de France 1977–1978, ed. M. Senellart, trans. G. Burchell. Basingstoke:
Palgrave Macmillan.