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Media Education and Citizenship: An Analysis of the Quebec Preschool and Elementary Education Program (No. 80) Year of publication: 2018 Author: Normand Landry | Chantal Roussel Corporate author: Lien social et Politiques In Canada, the limited level of knowledge on media education content that is conveyed by academic curricula hinders its critical evaluation. This article presents the ways in which media education is introduced in the Quebec Education Program (QEP) at the preschool and elementary level. More specifically, it highlights the connections at work between media education, childhood and citizenship in the program. Our method tracks and extracts a set of statements related to information and communications technologies (ICTs) and the media, then conducts their automated classification into four principal categories: speech, verbs used that reflect the actions undertaken by categories of actors (school, pupils, teachers), learning objectives and suggestions. A subsequent classification allows for the emergence of verbs and learning objectives associated to the notion of citizenship. The latter are then subject to speech analysis. Our analysis intends to demonstrate the message conveyed by the QEP on media and ICTs. It highlights the roles, tasks and responsibilities of its various actors in relation to the acquisition of knowledge and skill development. In addition, it features the actions taken by these actors to operationalize the academic goals of the program. Our conclusion indicates a low subject implementation of the statements associated to media education and citizenship, relevant content, although thematically limited, along with the conception of students as capable of a reflection and critical thinking process. 
Understanding Policy Instrument Choice Concerning Citizenship in Education and Youth Policies: A Typology of Public Tools (Citoyenneté des enfants et des adolescents; no. 80) Year of publication: 2018 Author: Valérie Becquet Corporate author: Lien social et Politiques This article proposes a typology of public action instruments mobilized in the education and youth sectors. Three main ones currently coexist: legislative and regulatory, conventional and incentive, informative and communicational. They favor dimensions of citizenship (legal, political and civil) and are aimed at both pupils and young people. This typology is a tool for grasping the meaning of public action, highlighting the preferences of decision-makers for certain types of devices2 and recalling that heterogeneous devices coexist and structure juvenile experiences. In this regard, the taking into account of these devices in the analysis of careers and youth engagement practices is very uneven in the surveys, even though they constitute markers in the same way as other experiences contributing to political socialization, such as participation in protest actions. Given the development of public systems, this marginalization is not without effects on the understanding of the role of the latter in the construction of juvenile practices. After a general presentation of the typology, the main characteristics of the three identified instruments are analyzed. 
Fostering “Citizenship” in Poor Neighborhoods: The Professionals of Urban Social Development Tested at Children and Young People Year of publication: 2018 Author: Benjamin Leclercq | Jeanne Demoulin Corporate author: Lien social et Politiques This article examines the tensions that govern the injunction to behave like a citizen in the working-class neighborhoods in France. More specifically, it focuses on recruited or appointed professionals of social urban development’s practices by social housing organizations, who fight against antisocial behavior of which the tenants children are made responsible (damages, vandalism and so on…). The social interventions designed by these professionals for children and young people are similar to forms of citizenship education that oscillate between normalization behavior and development of commitment to the common good. On the one hand, they are meant to be encounters that can lead to questioning about living together in the neighborhood. And on the other hand, because they want to keep a managerial approach of public spaces, they find it hard to resist to the simple reminder of the basic norms of living together in a community. To avoid this moral approach to citizenship, agents seek to empower their audience so that it thinks itself about how to solve the problems it faces. According to a capability-driven of citizenship, this participatory work implies to master the rules of civility. Consequently, it is aimed at the most influential young people, the “bigger brothers” with coaching skills. The professionals then seek to give them “codes” to be recognized as partners of the institutions. But this partnership involves acquiring some skills, indeed these young people will have to adapt the ways of doing and saying local politics without publicizing their ordinary critics of the institutional functioning. 
Thinking Today’s Adolescents’ Citizenship through Social Justice Lens: Why and How? Year of publication: 2018 Author: Caroline Caron Corporate author: Lien social et Politiques How do we know what we know about youth citizenship ? This epistemological question has been neglected in the field of youth citizenship and public discourses on youth political apathy. This article draws on the theoretical perspective of social justice studies to unmask the relations of power based on age that have shaped current knowledge about youth citizenship. The analysis draws attention to the epistemic injustices and methodological flaws in the specific field of civic literacy in Canada. It is argued that a difference-centered approach to youth citizenship could help foster a better understanding of youth experiences of civic engagement and political participation. Yet, this potentiel can only be achieved through a self-reflexive inquiry that critically investigates the research process itself in current research trends. Although a dominant approach in the study of civic literacy is limited in its capacity to produce knowledge that is socially just towards adolescents, the concept could be reinvigorated through a critical empirically-grounded examination of youth civic competencies that are evidenced in some of their engagments with new media technologies. Yet, to fulfill this goal also requires that scholars engage in crucial debates about their chosen epistemology and theory of democracy. 
Educating Citizens at School: Individualization and Depoliticization of Citizenship Year of publication: 2018 Author: Géraldine Bozec Corporate author: Lien social et Politiques This text analyzes the features and the figures of the legitimate citizen in the sphere of school, through both official guidelines and school staff’s conceptions and practices. Data from two qualitative fieldwork surveys in French schools are used. The analysis focuses on the political dimension of citizenship: the relationship between individuals and power and their agency in collective and political life. Overall, citizens’ participation is a secondary dimension in school citizenship education, which rather emphasizes the intellectual autonomy of the critical citizen. The school hardly offers tools enabling students to understand political life, its issues, its actors and its concrete processes. The avoidance of political issues that is observed in classrooms is related to a particular conception of school political neutrality, but still more to the objective of cohesion officially attributed to school and recognized by teachers as legitimate. In other respects, citizenship is increasingly intended to be translated into the school life itself, whose modes of organization must move closer to those of adult political democracy. The article shows the limitations of such an analogy between the school and political society and identifies several obstacles that hinder the implementation of this “democratic school”. Lastly, it highlights the gap between the emphasis on the figure of individual citizen in the school space and the relationship to groups entailed by the actual practice of citizenship. 
Citizen Participation in Mali: Between Associative Mobilization and Political Engagement Year of publication: 2014 Author: Mathias Kuepie | Arouna Sougane Corporate author: Lien social et Politiques In this study we examine citizen engagement in Mali. We begin by discussing the concept of civil society associated with such engagement. We then draw on two sources of data (the 2006 light integrated household survey [ELIM] and the national election administrative reports) to analyse involvement in political and community life. The results show that even if most Malians have already taken part in political activities, only a small minority has actually ever voted, which is a crucial form of political participation. Another finding that raises questions is that the advantaged social groups are those that participate more in political activities, whereas the less advantaged are more likely to become involved in community life through associations. Lastly, participation in associations seems to encourage political participation, most probably because community involvement can awaken political consciousness, but also no doubt because involvement in associations can help increase one’s political influence. 
Citizens but not Adults? Injunction to be Responsible and Citizens in Official Coming of Age Rituals in Switzerland Year of publication: 2018 Author: Maxime Felder | Laurence Ossipow | Isabelle Csupor Corporate author: Lien social et Politiques Swiss municipalities organize ceremonies for their residents reaching the official age of full citizenship. In the six studied municipalities, local authorities invite them to a municipal council’s meeting, offer them a dinner or an aperitif, or organize them a show and a debate with role models. Speeches are central to these ceremonies, and authority representatives encourage their audience to be “good” citizens. Call to vote is the leitmotiv, but discourses reveal broader definitions of citizenship, insisting sometimes on a local commitment and volunteering, and sometimes on the necessity to fight climate change and inequalities. Comparing officials’ speeches to statements of young people participating in these events reveals “tensions”. Indeed, authority representatives address young citizens without considering them as fully adult, and they do not consider themselves as such neither. However, some of them are already involved in forms of vernacular citizenship, and are progressively leaving the municipality to study, work or travel. Ultimately, these ceremonies allow officials to stage their interest in the youth, which they consider as both uncompleted and essential to the renewal of democracy. 
Paths Towards Citizen Participation Among Kanak Youth in Koné (New-Caledonia) Year of publication: 2018 Author: Ève Desroches-Maheux Corporate author: Lien social et Politiques Based on an ethnographic fieldwork, this article explores the forms and modalities taken by the civic participation of the Kanak youths living in Province Nord, New Caledonia. Being at the dawn of a referendum on its accession to a full sovereignty, this French territory of a sui generis status is now at a turning point in its history. In preparation for this event, the Nouméa Accord laid the foundations of a New-Caledonian citizenship, situated, for the moment, within the French citizenship. However, this citizenship in construction poses the question of the place given in it to the Kanak, the indigenous people of the territory. Approaching citizenship as a set of “political subjectivation processes” producing a citizenship simultaneously “determined by the state and by the subjects composing it ”, we explore the answers and “negotiation attempts” made by the Kanak youths toward it. Results show that despite some negative representations playing against them, the youths still appropriate possibilities opened up by public policies and programs in hope to make their grievances heard and to implement structuring projects. Furthermore, as those forms of civic practices are used as handles to resist French hegemony in Province Sud by youths that seek above all to strongly affirm their Kanak identities, north youth participation in the public space appears rather embedded in an inclusive approach toward other communities. 
Citizens but Not Adults? Injunction to Be Responsible and Citizens in Official Coming of Age Rituals in Switzerland Year of publication: 2018 Author: Maxime Felder | Laurence Ossipow | Isabelle Csupor Corporate author: Lien social et Politiques Swiss municipalities organize ceremonies for their residents reaching the official age of full citizenship. In the six studied municipalities, local authorities invite them to a municipal council’s meeting, offer them a dinner or an aperitif, or organize them a show and a debate with role models. Speeches are central to these ceremonies, and authority representatives encourage their audience to be “good” citizens. Call to vote is the leitmotiv, but discourses reveal broader definitions of citizenship, insisting sometimes on a local commitment and volunteering, and sometimes on the necessity to fight climate change and inequalities. Comparing officials’ speeches to statements of young people participating in these events reveals “tensions”. Indeed, authority representatives address young citizens without considering them as fully adult, and they do not consider themselves as such neither. However, some of them are already involved in forms of vernacular citizenship, and are progressively leaving the municipality to study, work or travel. Ultimately, these ceremonies allow officials to stage their interest in the youth, which they consider as both uncompleted and essential to the renewal of democracy. 
Understanding Policy Instrument Choice Concerning Citizenship in Education and Youth Policies: A Typology of Public Tools Year of publication: 2018 Author: Valérie Becquet Corporate author: Lien social et Politiques Whether at European or at national level, issues relating to the citizenship of young people are present in public debates and give to the implementation of specific tools. The past and the recurrence of setting up this issue on the agenda invites to reflect on the dynamics of public action. This article presents a typology of the tools gradually developed in two public sectors that concern young people: education and youth. Based on a policy instrument choice approach, it highlights that the choices made by public decision-makers to deal with citizenship issues lead to a multiplication and a diversification of the tools. This proliferation introduces suppose to reflect on the legibility of public action: if those mechanisms can be seen as complementary and as an opportunity for young people, they can also enter into tension. In a context of generational renewal of the electorate, it also calls for reflection on the consequences for young people’s practices and on the building of the perception of citizenship.