A selection from Stockholm University publication database

• "Youth" making us fit.

  2011. Ulf Olsson, Kenneth Peterson, Benedicto John Krejsler. European Educational Research Journal

  Article

  This article problematizes the construction of youth as a “driving force” in the contemporary configuration of the European Union as an educational and political space. The study draws empirical nourishment out of documents that are central to the on-going formation of the union, be it White Papers, scripts or memos concerning political arenas such as youth and education policies and theBolognaprocess. Theoretically we draw on insights from post-Foucauldian traditions with a focus on mentalities, subject constructions, technologies and practises operating within the ongoing governmentalization ofEurope. Central questions are “who” and “what” the problematization of youth as political technology is about. Drawing on homologies in the coding of citizen, independent of age, we claim that problematization of youth is directed to all of us. We are all, in the name of youth, expected to constantly ‘adapt’ ourselves in compliance with the aim of theLisbonprocess. Furthermore, as the union itself is coded in a similar way we may even claim that the EU literally speaking appears as a youth project in itself. Thus, the notion youth can be seen as political rationality that becomes a powerful driving force in the ongoing European project.

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