Youth, Social Contracting and the Postcolony

Social contracts are concerned with the legitimacy of the state over the individual. The social contract offers mutual benefit and reciprocal obligation and is intrinsic to liberalism’s assertion that freedom is normative and encroaching on freedom requires justification. The social contract is both a philosophical idea and a toolkit for defusing conflict and tying participants to core liberal values. Talk of new social contracts, including intergenerational contracts, focus on maintaining a peaceful status quo, not transcending it. For the Global South in general, and youth in particular, the experience is more contract and less social. There seems little opportunity for southern youth to move from the margins to center stage, mimicking the inability of the Global South to do the same. Southern youth bear the brunt of limited economic opportunities, precarious employment, inequality, racism, and violence, compounding their marginalized place in society. What value can social contracting play beyond a short-term band-aid, unless it incorporates a fundamental rupture with the past?