{"id":160975,"date":"2023-04-24T08:36:51","date_gmt":"2023-04-24T15:36:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/?p=160975"},"modified":"2023-04-24T08:38:08","modified_gmt":"2023-04-24T15:38:08","slug":"members-now-citizens-later","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/?p=160975","title":{"rendered":"\u201cMembers\u201d Now: Citizens Later?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cMembers\u201d Now: Citizens Later? <\/strong><\/h1>\n

America does not appear in the mood to broaden its notion of \u201ccitizenship\u201d for the next while. This fight doesn\u2019t end here, of course, but the current environment is a minefield of political kryptonite and recrimination.<\/p>\n

For several years, however, I have been urging librarians to define YA users (within the context of the particular work librarians <\/em>do) broadly and locally as citizens\u2013not as psychologists (who define youth as \u201cpatients\u201d or research subjects) or the different ways in which police officers, school counselors, or social workers variously define young adults for their own institutions.<\/p>\n

I previously argued that libraries adopt and redefine<\/em> the notion of \u201ccitizen\u201d to include young people in local<\/em>environments, outside and beyond the reach of formal or legal definitions, as citizens of their cities, towns, and neighborhoods. I advanced this argument to help libraries (as local institutions) become more mindful about youth in the here and now,<\/em> instead of how Youth Development\u2019s Grand Agenda does, fixated upon distant futures mired exclusively in privileged middle-class aesthetics and aspirations.<\/p>\n

A recent study of African American youth demonstrates that a broader citizenship vision of youth may be asking too much of this adult culture. The study documents young people in public space peacefully observing a live performance. Immediately they became characterized by police, journalists, and judges as a flash mob,<\/em>\u00a0as terrorists. \u00a0These American citizens<\/em>, exercising their right to a non-violent public gathering, their rights to their city, facilitated by the very digital tools we want them using, attract ire and punishment for simply raising anxiety.<\/p>\n

\u201cCitizens are afraid,\u201d the sentencing judge proclaimed, \u201cto go downtown because [name of city] children are terrorizing them.\u201d Note who gets referred to as \u201ccitizens\u201d and who gets denied. \u201cI\u2019m removing you from civilized society,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

These are not unique circumstances, attitudes, or even consequences.<\/p>\n

Perhaps I\u2019ve chosen my recommendation poorly. Perhaps my timing is off or out of phase with national trends. In any event, this nation does not appear in the mood to explore more expansive or subtle definitions of citizenship. It\u2019s certainly not in the mood to extend the idea for its young people.<\/p>\n

If advocating an LIS definition of young adults as citizens appears untenable at present,\u00a0then what vision ought the field create to represent its young adult users?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an important question.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, the work of Roberto Gonzales comes along at the right time. Gonzales, from Harvard\u2019s Graduate School of Education, recently \"\"published a provocative new study, Lives in Limbo: Undocumented and Coming of Age in America <\/strong>(University of California Press, 2016). Similar to the fears illustrated by the civil authorities referred to above, Gonzales explores the consequences of a society entangled in fear: this time it\u2019s fear of immigrants. Another judgment follows: the destruction of the life chances of the 2.1 million youth permanently trapped, \u201cundocumented,\u201d by careening public policy.<\/p>\n

Gonzales\u2019 thesis is clear: a \u201cdouble-edged\u201d existence for youth without papers. These young people grow up in the United States. While they\u2019re young, he finds, they experience a fairly normal community life \u2013 they attend school, practice their family\u2019s faith, and develop social capital.<\/p>\n

About the time they turn sixteen, however, due to no fault of their own\u2013their worlds split in two. Without \u201cthose nine digits\u201d (a Social Security number), and regardless of school success and staying out of trouble, they\u2019re forbidden from enjoying the benefits of citizenship and encounter exclusion from legitimate employment, housing, and many realms of well-being, including obtaining a driver\u2019s license. For these millions \u201cillegality\u201d assumes the defining feature of their lives.<\/p>\n

Gonzales opens up something libraries can use in meeting their \u201cfree to all\u201d responsibilities and professional obligations. While he rather conflates formal \u201ccitizenship\u201d with \u201ccommunity membership,\u201d libraries don\u2019t need to. His key point highlights the fundamental unfairness current immigration policy holds for undocumented young people living in permanent uncertainty and instability\u2013constantly vulnerable to being identified and deported to places they have never known.<\/p>\n

Libraries do not need to reproduce \u201cillegality\u201d as the master narrative in serving young people locally. Libraries can define the notion of \u201cmembership\u201d wide enough to include all youth<\/em>, embracing even those reviled by national policy.<\/p>\n

On the one hand, as public service agencies located in nearly every community, libraries can build upon this notion of local<\/em> community \u201cmembership.\u201d Library cards and access to materials and services don\u2019t require \u201cthose nine digits.\u201d Libraries don\u2019t play favorites about where one\u2019s parents were born. Libraries don\u2019t place youth in untenable betwixt and between positions\u2013sifting out only the native born for access to resources and respect.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, however, neither do libraries appear interested in evolving away from constructing youth as \u201cstudents,\u201d or as undeveloped pre-adults (\u201cYouth Development\u201d), ever requiring the acquisition of particular and discrete \u201cskills\u201d for some distant future<\/em>. Libraries currently do not exhibit any more interest in defining young people as present members<\/em> of the local community<\/em> than they did in exploring the notion of them as entitled citizens.<\/p>\n

Community membership roots itself in the here and now, not in the speculative future. A community member contributes their current experiences to their local environment and is not ignored because they\u2019re \u201conly\u201d a teenager. A community member participates in current library affairs such as serving on a Teen Advisory Group (TAG), for example, or on a library\u2019s new building design team, or serving as a Summer Reading Program volunteer or library page.<\/p>\n

These opportunities offer young people access to membership in ways that our nation\u2019s immigration policy currently forbids.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re not likely to see our national organization provide the necessary leadership to wean libraries from viewing young people as developmental projects. So librarians at local, regional, and state levels must think through these questions themselves.<\/p>\n

Envisioning young people as entitled and valued present<\/em> members<\/em> of their local communities offers a good place to start.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cMembers\u201d Now: Citizens Later? America does not appear in the mood to broaden its notion of \u201ccitizenship\u201d for the next while. This fight doesn\u2019t end here, of course, but the current environment is a minefield of political kryptonite and recrimination. For several years, however, I have been urging librarians to define YA users (within the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-160975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=160975"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160975\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":160976,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160975\/revisions\/160976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=160975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=160975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=160975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}