Youth civic understandings and participation amidst the quest for peace. The case study of students in Amazonas, Colombia

• In Event: Conflict, peacebuilding, and transitional justice: Colombia and Ecuador

Proposal

Strengthening civic institutions and the rule of law through democratization have been recognized as two crucial tasks to develop a ‘civic culture’ for the reconstruction of conflict-affected societies (Davies, 2004). Unlike other international cases, in Colombia, the project for conflict transformation preceded a formal peace agreement. In fact, educational reforms explicitly aiming to contribute to democratization and peacebuilding started in the 1990s. Since political arrangements have failed in the past, citizenship education has been conceived as one of the most powerful means to shape new democratic Colombian citizens, and with this, contributing to achieve peace (Ministerio de Educación Nacional, 2004). The persistence of educating younger generations into democracy has run parallel to an armed conflict that entails undemocratic practices, thus, endangering the democratic conditions of the country. Despite the normative framing of the ‘good (democratic) citizen’ that is communicated and enforced through citizenship education (Pykett, Saward & Schaefer, 2010), studies have demonstrated that youth develop their own understandings of the civic contract and develop themselves as civic actors (Bellino, 2015, 2017; Mayorga, 2018; Rubin, 2016; Taft, 2006).
Drawing from participant observations and ten in-depth interviews with students in Leticia, Amazonas, this study aims to explore youth’s insights on citizenship. I take Ong’s (1996) consideration of citizenship in the Foucauldian sense of ‘subject-ification’ –the dual process of being-made and self-making. Further, I propose to look at citizenship through the lenses of performativity; these are the acts of citizenship that produce subjects (Isin & Nielsen). This examination aims to address the questions: how do youth in Leticia understand and enact citizenship as in relation to the current peace process? What are their understandings about ‘democracy’, ‘political participation’, and ‘peace’? How their civic understandings and actions can contribute or hinder the aspiration for peacebuilding? Findings shed light on localized experiences and perceptions on a sense of a continuous failing democracy; a ‘far but close’ conflict; and youth’s self-distancing from ‘politics’ to resist to hegemonic practices and policies. Closer attention to youth’s daily experiences and interpretations can provide with more comprehensive approaches for critical peacebuilding. This study aims to contribute to this.


References
Bellino, M. J. (2015). Civic engagement in extreme times: The remaking of justice among Guatemala’s ‘postwar’ generation. Education, Citizenship and Social Justice, 10(2), 118–132.
Bellino, M. J. (2017). Youth in Postwar Guatemala: Education and Civic Identity in Transition. Rutgers University Press.
Davies, L. (2004). Building a civic culture post-conflict. London Review of Education, 2(3), 229–244.
Isin, E. F., & Nielsen, G. M. (Eds.). (2008). Acts of citizenship. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Mayorga, R. (2018). ‘What can one do against democracy?’ The co-construction and destruction of ‘Student Democracy’ in a Chilean public high school. Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 26(2), 197-213.
Ministerio de Educación Nacional. (2004). Estándares básicos de Competencias Ciudadanas. Formar para la ciudadanía… ¡Sí es posible! Lo que necesitamos saber y saber hacer. Bogotá: Ministerio de Educación Nacional.
Ong, A. (1996). Cultural citizenship as subject-making: immigrants negotiate racial and cultural boundaries in the United States [and comments and reply]. Current anthropology, 37(5), 737-762.
Pykett, J., Saward, M., & Schaefer, A. (2010). Framing the Good Citizen. The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 12(4), 523–538.
Rubin, B. C. (2016). We Come to Form Ourselves Bit by Bit: Educating for Citizenship in Post-Conflict Guatemala. American Educational Research Journal, 53(3), 639–672.
Taft, J. K. (2006). “I’m Not a Politics Person”: Teenage Girls, Oppositional Consciousness, and the Meaning of Politics. Politics & Gender; Cambridge, 2(3), 329–352.

Author

• Daniela Romero-Amaya, Teachers College, Columbia University