Social Citizenship Aspirations: An Alternative Line of Analysis of the Social Reproduction of Youth Inequality

Abstract

Lifting the aspirations of disadvantaged young people has been a key focus within youth policies, often constructed as a solution to the complicated problem of achieving social mobility. A growing body of work critiques such policy discourses for their inadequate conceptualizations of aspirations. Particularly, the problematic framing of community culture and the tendency to allocate the problem of low aspirations to individuals’ psyche and cultural upbringing have been critiqued. Despite such critiques, this article argues for the importance of analysing disadvantaged young people’s aspirations, as aspirations play a crucial role in determining outcomes. However, further theorizing is needed to capture a more nuanced view on the intersection between material and social embeddedness and individual agency. The concept of social citizenship aspirations is introduced to develop a framework for understanding the reproduction of youth inequality, which also acknowledges agency as an expression of how young people themselves create meaningful lives.