A self-fulfilling prophecy? Constructions of youth-as-troublemakers in UN DDR processes
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12301162 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Jacqui Cho (0000-0003-2484-6919, swisspeace and University of Basel ,, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 55 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 274-292 |
| Publication date | 2024-02-29 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Security Dialogue (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0967-0106 • E-ISSN: 1460-3640 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/09670106231220117 |
| OpenAlex | W4392354275 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 21 |
Youth as a category that informs international interventions in conflict-affected settings has gained currency in the past decade. This article traces the rising rhetoric of youth in UN Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (DDR) discourse and demonstrates how changes in its dominant representations have implications beyond the matter of semantics. Drawing on post-structuralist traditions, the article highlights how the DDR discourse delineates problems through particular framings that call forth certain solutions, which in turn reinforce the very (mis)understandings that underlie the interventions. A case study from the Central African Republic illustrates how the hegemonic representation of youth-as-troublemakers in UN documents, together with a compelling narrative that naturalized the link between youth, unemployment and violence, made possible and conferred legitimacy to the proliferation of projects with an overwhelming economic focus. The article discusses how the resource landscape, such as opportunities to unlock earmarked funding, incentivizes the reproduction of certain constructions of youth that align with today’s policy panic around violent extremism. In so doing, it puts into question the instrumental approach towards discourse by pointing to surprising ways in which discourses become appropriated by both international peacebuilders and the ‘subjects’ of these interventions
Cognitive reframing · Criminology · Disarmament · Hegemony · Legitimacy · Moral panic · Narrative · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Psychological intervention · Rhetoric · Sociology · Gender Studies · Global Peace and Security Dynamics · Law · Peacebuilding and International Security · Political Conflict and Governance · Psychology · Social Psychology
Youth in Conflict and Peacebuilding
State of Rebellion
Female Soldiers in Sierra Leone
Global Governance and Local Peace
Introduction to the DDR Forum
Where is the War? Explaining Peace in Sierra Leone
Memoirs of women-in-conflict
Return of the generals? Global militarism in Africa from the Cold War to the present
The ‘linguistic ceasefire’
Youth under construction
Gender and Age in the Construction of Male Youth in the European Migration “Crisis”
Ex-Combatants and the Post-Conflict State
Foreign Policy as Social Construction
Hobbes and the Congo
Mercenaries of democracy
Rethinking youth bulge theory in policy and scholarship
Youth and the Social Imagination in Africa
Wars of the Past and War in the Present
Disappearing youth
Youth, the Kenyan state and a politics of contestation
| Highly cited | No |
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