Preparing for war: Citizenship, militarisation and the agencies of children and youth in security politics

Abstract

In this paper, we consider the implications of current changes in European security politics for young people as political subjects, focusing particularly on military work as a grey zone that marks a significant contradiction in liberal definitions of citizenship. Concurring with Brocklehurst (2006), we argue that young people are not simply excluded from security politics, but that it is precisely their exclusion from certain political rights that enables their enrolment in security policies, and thus in the politics of killing and letting die.

Lutz (2002: 723) conceptualises militarization as „an intensification of the labour and resources allocated to military purposes, including the shaping of other institutions in synchrony with military goals. “ In Europe, the current moment marks such an intensification, as states that are not directly involved in the Russian state’s war against Ukraine are nonetheless responding with significant shifts in their security strategies. As is often the case in the ‘fog of war’, urgently needed and long overdue debates about the aims, justification and mandates of military politics are quickly side lined as military strategizing is prioritized. The already existing democratic deficit that also persists in the security governance of many ‘liberal’ states is intensified further when considering the political subjectivities of young people, who are amongst those most affected qua their significance for current and future military work. Young people’s enrolment in the politics of killing and letting die is enabled by a significant citizenship gap that raises questions about generational power relations and inequalities as well as the politics of care and responsibility that are rarely tackled in critical security studies. It points to a form of necropolitics (Mbembe 2003, 2008) in which entanglements between state power and social constructions of age place young military subjects in a place of limbo, where state sovereignty supersedes sovereignty over their own bodies and over the decision to live, die and kill.

In this paper, we seek to contribute to such critical debates by examining how current changes in the military recruitment strategies of several European states are redefining rationales for recruiting young people to military work, which ultimately involves killing and/or a preparedness to kill. We examine how military recruitment intersects with bio-political governance and the forging of particular subjectivities for young people as subjects of in/security. We apply this to an analysis of subject positions produced in and through military recruitment campaigns, asking which subjectivities, related to which geopolitical and future imaginations, are mapped for young people in such campaigns and in the political discourses underpinning them. Based on this analysis, we argue for greater attention to the militarisation of young people’s lives and to ethical and generational justice implications of this.