ABSTRACT
The United Nations (U.N.) has declared the 12 months from August 2010 to July 2011 to be the “International Year of Youth (IYY).” Since declaring December 2, 1949, the “Day for the Abolition of Slavery,” the global community the U.N. represents has expressed its interest in particular causes through the dedication of ceremonial “Days” and “Years” that are intended to focus international attention and mobilize resources to address the issues in question. This essay uses the 2010–2011 IYY as a point of departure for exploring how the category of youth has both “gone global” and become an object of transnational governance through which proper dispositions and behaviors are specified not just for individuals but also for organizations and other social actors. Many scholars have noted that at least since the end of the 19th century, across the globe, “the child” has been a target of regulation and social administration (often as a subject of transnational reform initiatives); this essay examines how “youth” has also become a globe-spanning object. I also examine how demarcations between “children” and “youth” are established and enforced—distinctions that are not clear-cut even in U.N. documents. Often in academic scholarship these categories are elided, yet attention to the ways that these concepts are mobilized is called for because of the regulative strategies that are therein implemented and disseminated globally.
