Page 86 - Geopolítica del Mundo Actual. Una Visión Multidisciplinar

GEOPOLÍTICA DEL MUNDO ACTUAL. UNA VISIÓN MULTIDISCIPLINAR: Cultura de Paz, Conflflictos, Educación y Derechos Humanos
HUMAN RIGHTS OF YOUTH IN NOVEMBER 2019 SPANISH GENERAL ELECTION
Onur Tahmaz (Turquía)
Introduction
The Human Rights of Youth is one of the discussion points within the youth discourse over the years. The citizenship of youth depends on the welfare structures of the state along with socio-demographical factors. The welfare state policies affect young people’s lives and hinder their autonomy or empower them to be involved in social, economic, and political life. The welfare state in Spain is based on the Southern Welfare State, where the social right provision depends on the family. (Moreno, et al., 2013) Thus, young people have obstacles to reach out the social rights such as education, employment, housing as their citizenship depends on the family. That results in long-standing high youth unemployment, housing issues, and young people’s withdrawal from rural areas. In this thesis, I have discussed the electoral agendas from the framework on citizenship, welfare states, and human rights of youth scheme provided accordingly the UN Human Rights Council Resolution 35/141 .
Youth Citizenship, Welfare State and Human Rights of Youth
Youth is often mentioned as an age group between 15-29 by EU, 15-24 by UN, 15-35 by AU in policy papers (AUC, 2006; EU, 2012; UN, 2018). That is one of the main approaches while shaping youth policies, although the socio-demographics changes in each country and the policies. The age strata approach comes with the transition approach, which defines the young people as passengers on the road from childhood to adulthood (Perovic, 2012). This approach led young people to be seen
as individuals with deficits (Yentürk, et al., 2008). As being an adult is mainly associated with having a constant income, private living space, having an education, and a job, this path is sometimes not linear as this transition period depends on the individual’s social and economic capital. (Harlan, 2016; Bendit, 2006) Another approach to youth is considering young people as “problems” (Wyn, et al., 1997) or commodifying them as “the resource of the economy” or “assurance of tomorrow” which results in developing the policies concerning youth to prevent to become a problem or to empower them to be the assurance of tomorrow. (Yentürk, et al., 2008) The last approach to youth sees youth as a culture with its own social and cultural practices and experiences (Feixa, et al., 2012) by understanding youth as not an age but a norm constructed socially and a struggle between the old and young.
Youth citizenship practices changes with the approaches to youth and the social rights of youth. During the evaluation of the citizenship discourse, citizenship is defined as an interconnected term between rights and duties. As rights, citizenship consists of three sets of rights: social, political, and civil, and in case of these sets of rights are not practised equally, the citizens cannot participate in equal and full member (Marshall, 2006; Yurttagüler, 2014). Although, these changes with the cultural and social strains within the society. Each person has a differentiated identity, thus comes with differentiated citizenship practices. (Kylimcka, et al., 2000) Thus, youth citizenship falls into this category as the “youth cultures” experiences differentiated citizenship than the general public and their means to reach for social,
United Nations General Assembly ( A/HRC/39/33 ) - Human Rights Council - Youth and Human Rights - Report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights available at https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G18/193/07/PDF/G1819307. pdf?OpenElement
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