ABSTRACT
Citizenship has re-emerged as a central political and academic concept in recent years. Although traditionally understood as a force for inclusion, contemporary citizenship theory tends to emphasise its exclusionary tendencies (Lister 2003). In the UK, the New Labour government has attempted to re-articulate and to promote public debate on its meaning. It is particularly concerned about young people’s relationship to citizenship in the face of perceived apathy and disengagement (Advisory Group on Citizenship 1998, Pearce and Hallgarten 2000). Young people are thus typically represented as deficient citizens. This chapter challenges such representations in favour of an understanding of young people as ‘citizens in the making’ (Marshall 1950:25, Arnot and Dillabough 2000). More than at other points of the life-course, youth is a time when the relationship to citizenship is in a state of flux.
