Year: 2023
Type: book-chapter
Abstract: In this chapter, I explore how children and youth make use of particularstrategies of self-representationto seek political representation. I do so by taking my point of departure in a group of young Afghan migrants in Sweden and their political mobilization for their right to residency permits. In dialogue with debates in political theory around democracy and representation, I examine how young political actors contest and recast dominant regimes of political representation to claim political space and a voice of their own. Focus is put on the ways in which various actors struggle over the authority to represent and give meaning to the interests, rights, and well-being of young migrants and how these processes of representing children and youth become politically productive. Four different strategies are identified and suggested to constitute a politics of self-representation:Rejecting previous forms of representation;establishing, shaping, and controlling political identity;creating political space;making opponents and allies. Based on these empirical observations, I argue that the mobilizations of young non-citizens against deportation reveal a critical dimension to the politics of childhood, namely, how the strategies of self-representation used by children and youth disrupt current legal and political orders and open up new avenues for political representation.
Source: Studies in childhood and youth
Author: Jonathan Josefsson
Institution: Linköping University
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W4360981925