Social Science Research Council

With the support of the Johann Jacobs Foundation, the working group on Youth, Globalization and the Law seeks to advance interdisciplinary insights on the ways in which young people have been impacted by shifts in laws, legal institutions and governance practices at local, national and global levels, and how young people have responded to these changes. The working group, chaired by Sudhir Venkatesh (Columbia University) met in Paris in 2002 and New York in 2003.

The group addressed the impact of globalization on the lives of youth living around the world, with participants focusing on a critical but poorly understood dimension of global social processes: the role of legal institutions and discourses as they shape the life experiences of young people. The legal arena is a central sphere in which youth are integrated into the social fabric and through which their possibilities for meaningful transitions to adulthood, active civic engagement, and self-expression arise. In recent years, this arena has been re-aligned as ideas and practices regarding justice, rights, and order maintenance travel the globe. The contemporary promotion and transmission of zero tolerance and retributive justice programs across international boundaries, the near ubiquitous acceptance of United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the transnational migration of street gangs between industrialized and developing countries are some of the most prominent examples of socio-legal practices that reach across societies, cultures and states. While these global legal phenomena are based in the work of courts, police and prison systems, they also directly involve international aid and advocacy organizations (that support practice and implementation), media actors (who disseminate information, create knowledge and shape public opinion), and other institutions that have daily impact on young people's lives - families, schools, political organizations, etc.

An edited volume based on the work of the group is currently under review. Click here for the Table of Contents. An independent journalist, Sasha Abramsky, has also published articles based on his collaborations with the other working group members. Most recently, "One Nation, Under Siege" was published in The American Prospect in April 2005.