Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book looks at how youths negotiated their exclusion from formal politics by carving out nonpolitical civil society spaces and defining new forms of citizenship and presents an ethnographic study of public schools where state hegemony is being reproduced. It explores public secondary school’s system of discipline, embedded citizenry, and religious discourses. The book also explores the dynamics of non-formal spaces of citizenship education within public and private universities, respectively. It studies the influences of university-level students’ engagement in local community service, on-campus cultural clubs and organizations, and community service projects abroad. The book focuses on the dilemmas and tensions that shape the lives of child laborers—a highly understudied segment of society— and their families around questions of education and citizenship. It poses the important and thought-provoking question regarding how and when the child laborers learn about citizenship.