Representations of Young People and Neoliberal Developmentalism in the Global South

Negative representations of young people as ‘trouble makers’, ‘idle’ or ‘politically disinterested’ have been commonplace. More recently, ‘newer’ representations have been added to include seemingly positive labels such as ‘change agent’, ‘politically engaged’ and ‘youth entrepreneurs’. This essay explores the politics of representing young people, particularly in the Global South. To understand the politics, attention needs to be given to how young people are represented by political elites and how they represent themselves. It is argued that the neoliberal development model has been used to promote particular representations of young people that, while not silencing or vilifying, them do not serve their interests. Stuart Hall’s work is used to understand how these representations serve to conceal the chasm between the hype about contemporary discourses such as that of the ‘Fourth Industrial revolution’, ‘Youth participation’ and ‘Sustainability’, and the actual lived experiences of young people in the Southern contexts. Hall’s theory of representations also highlights the politics operating between dominant discourses (or ‘hegemonic ideologies’) aimed at co-opting so-called subordinate groups into a shared consensus, and the possibilities of disrupting that consensus.