Children, Youth and Development

Book Review: Ansell, Nicola. 2005. Children, Youth and Development. London and New York: Routledge.

Nicola Ansell’s ‘Children, Youth and Development’ provides a much-needed critical introduction into young people’s experiences in contexts of poverty, ‘development’ and globalisation. Although 90% of young people under the age of 18 and 85% of 15- to 24-year-olds (p. 1) live in the Third World, Ansell rightly points out that insufficient attention has been paid to the ways in which they experience, and are affected by, global processes. This book is a step towards correcting this imbalance, by offering a comprehensive, but succinct and readable, overview.

It adopts a textbook format, with clear explanations, interspersed with boxes, tables and figures. Each chapter contains bulleted lists of principal themes, key ideas, discussion questions and further resources. The book begins with a definition of key terms, and chapters outlining conceptualisations of childhood and youth, global processes of ‘development’ and globalisation, and cultural contexts at local levels. These chapters maintain a careful balance between young people’s common experiences of age-based discrimination, with recognition of diversity due to gender, disability, ‘race’, class, familial contexts, religion, etc. Ansell also manages to highlight the ways in which young people may experience global processes differently than adults, while situating these within multiple relationships and contexts. Although writing in clear, pedagogic language, Ansell does not ‘dumb down’ complex debates, but highlights critical insights into complex issues. In particular, she contextualises and challenges Western ‘exportation’ of childhood and youth ‘models’, as well as development and globalisation processes, into Third World areas.

Chapters 4 to 6 explore three key areas in which young people interact with global processes: health, education and work. Each chapter provides an overview of different conceptualisations of each theme. Ansell then highlights key issues and debates in each area, as they relate to young people. She offers critical analysis of the ways in which international policies affect young people’s access and choices, with particular attention to effects of structural adjustment policies on social service provision, and international legislation regarding children’s work.

Chapter 7 uses UNICEF’s term “children in especially difficult circumstances” (CEDC) to focus on children in war, those with disabilities, children exploited for labour and commercial sex, street children, children affected by AIDS and children in institutions. This chapter marks a problematic departure from the contextualised and historicised approach adopted in the rest of the book. By mirroring UNICEF’s CEDC framework, Ansell implicitly reinforces labels such as ‘street children’, even while problematising them. This is apparent in her change in terminology: from emphasising ‘young people’ as a broad and diverse group, to specifically focusing on ‘children’ and portraying certain circumstances as inherently ‘difficult’. While other chapters situate young people vis-à-vis broader social processes at micro, meso and macro levels, chapter 7 groups together a vast array of different groups and does not allow enough space to interrogate issues in depth. This leads to some problematic generalisations about categories of young people, which detracts from more nuanced arguments made elsewhere in the book.

Ansell’s concluding chapter returns to her more critical analytical perspective in evaluating issues surrounding rights, participation, activism and power. She historicises and critiques the emergence of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and argues that rights are not ends in and of themselves; improving young people’s lives in the Third World also requires broader structural changes. The chapter also provides a good introduction to the potential and challenges of young people’s participation. It concludes with the necessity of political change, recognising young people as actors, but also the structural challenges they face.

At the beginning of ‘Children, Youth and Development’, Ansell sets out four principles guiding her approach: recognising the diversity of young people in contrast to homogenising discourses; focusing on social contexts in which young people live, rather than exclusively on young people themselves; highlighting the importance of young people not only for the future as ‘human becomings’, but also in the present; and, approaching them as actors in their own lives, rather than “merely objects of development or victims of history” (p. 6). With the exception of the shortcomings in chapter 7, the book achieves these objectives and thus provides a timely overview of the diversity of young people’s experiences in complex ‘development’ and globalisation processes in the Third World.

* Christina Clark is a Commonwealth Scholar at the Department of International Development, Oxford University, where she is currently completing research on the political roles of Congolese young people in Uganda.

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