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To Be or Not To Be Political: An Investigation of Active Youth Citizenship Among Young, Educated Syrians in Beirut to Question International Development Discourse
JOURNAL OF YOUTH RESEARCHES
against the backdrop of international development discourse on active youth citizenship,
also when recalling the alleged global fight against extremist ideologies. A chasm can
be observed here in terms of what is being intended and what is being achieved. The
‘gatekeeping role’ of young, educated Syrians should be reason enough to include them
in development efforts to a much greater extent.
Much of the theoretical literature agrees on the importance citizen identities play for ac-
tive citizenship. Identification is even seen as the indispensable prerequisite of active
citizenship. As a consequence, if the cultivation of citizen identity is prevented, authen-
tic active citizenship cannot emerge. According to a pluralist, democratic conception of
international development – which can be assumed, given the discursive elements of
participation, human rights, and active citizenship – it ought to be a crucial concern of
international interventions to foster the construction of multifaceted, self-determined cit-
izen identities that still allow for political community in a context of diversity and conflict
(cf. Mouffe, 1992; 1995). This was not found to be the case in the case under investiga-
tion. Both the workings of the commodified internationalised aid sector and the politically
intricate circumstances at the local level dispersed political identity formation among
young, educated Syrians. The international community therefore exerts a certain ‘soft
power’ on those young Syrians it claims to empower (cf. Nye after Gaventa and Tandon,
2010, 8). This amplifies the difficulties of reconciling multiple layers of identification some
interviewees raised.
5. Conclusion
This article firstly concludes that the engagements of young, educated Syrians in the aid
sector for refugees from Syria in Lebanon under investigation can be seen as forms of ac-
tive citizenship. The respondents identified with the refugee population and fulfilled their
citizenship obligations as fellow Syrians – mainly in the sense of civil commitment – within
the aid sector. More activist forms of active citizenship, based on an explicit struggle for
rights, were less pronounced. The fact that the respondents referred to values of human
dignity and rights, was interpreted as another layer of identification as global citizens.
This dual identity assigns the respondents a hybrid, ‘gatekeeping’ role. The finding that
the research respondents identified as global citizens practically demands that the in-
ternational community as respective polity equally fulfils its obligations to guarantee citi-
zens’ rights which then correlate with the human rights framework.
A second conclusion derives from the complexities of being political in the research con-
text. Being political is inherent in the concept of active citizenship, and does not nec-
essarily demand political consciousness. The restrictions to the respondents’ political
subjectivity, exerted by local actors as well as the international aid community, however
demonstrate that the active citizenship engagements under investigation are situated in
a highly depoliticising context. It is argued that the dogma of seeming humanitarian neu-
