Youth's perspective is a concept promoted by youth movements, which seek to make visible the barriers youths face to participate, be taken into account, and exercise their rights due to the scheme of adult-centered oppression on which societies have been built in history. It seeks to insert the realities, problems, needs and opinions of young people into the public agenda from the voices of the youths, to promote intergenerational articulation and eradicate the discourses that legitimize the conditioning of rights.Juventudes LGBTI. Paloma Carreño. 2020.
It identifies adult centrism as a scheme that oppresses young people generating stigmas about who they are and the role they play in societies; a form of age discrimination, known as ageism, that generates asymmetric power relations between the ages, affecting infants, adolescents, and young people by subordinating them to adults who systematically make their needs, problems, experiences invisible; imposing plans, lifestyles; and denying the possibility of weaving bonds of intergenerational solidarity.Juventudes LGBTI. Paloma Carreño. 2020.
In this respect, the youth's perspective opposes adult centrism and does so by changing the way in which young people were historically named. Now they speak of them in the plural "youths",Juventud, juventudes, jóvenes: esas palabras. Verónica Filardo. 2018. recognizing in young people diverse identities, orientations, contexts, and sociocultural expressions.Segura, Ramiro, “La juventud en plural: desigualdades, temporalidades e intersecciones”.
Youth perspective rejects the visions and stereotypes that have been historically built on youths, make visible a problem of structural discrimination due to their age and builds a new vision from where they position themselves as subjects of rights (it implies that all their human rights must be recognized, respected and guaranteed, without being conditioned on their age);Experiencias de participación política juvenil, México. Proceso electoral 2012”». Red de jóvenes por los derechos sexuales y reproductivos (REDLAC),. key development actors (they are not a vulnerable population, but fundamental actors for the development of countries);Iniciativa 165 Millones de Razones: Un llamado a la acción para la inversión en adolescentes y jóvenes». UNFPA Mexico. 2019-06-19. Consulted on 2020-08-11. the present (it is not a stage of preparation for adult life, it is a way of being a person today, valid and respectable); with progressive autonomy (with the ability to decide on their life plans and assume responsibilities gradually, so the responsibility of the State, society and family is to generate the necessary conditions for them to do so).
Methodology The youths perspective allows the identification, development and promotion of social practices and legal and institutional mechanisms that guarantee that young people are recognized as subjects of rights, with agency capacity and with freedom over their life plans.Instituto Mexicano de la Juventud. Perspectiva de juventudes.2019. As a methodology, it has implied a change of paradigm, to stop defining youth from the vision that adults have about them. Lydia Alpízar and Marina Bernal point out that many studies, public policies and laws are carried out by people (adults or young people) who consider that, from their place, they know what young people think, need or feel, without taking into account the opinion of young people.Alpízar, Lydia; Bernal, Marina (2003-11). «La Construcción Social de las Juventudes». Ultima década 11 (19): 105-123. ISSN 0718-2236. Therefore, the youths have positioned themselves so that the perspective of the youths is incorporated in all the things that involve them under the emblem “nothing about youths without youths”Declaración de las Juventudes de ALC 2030. CEPAL. Chile. 2019.
Background Lydia Alpízar and Marina Bernal give an account of the different visions made on youth in history as well as the theoretical approaches with which the concept of youth has been approached.Alpízar, Lydia; Bernal, Marina (2003-11). «La Construcción Social de las Juventudes». Ultima década 11 (19): 105-123. ISSN 0718-2236. doi:10.4067/S0718-22362003000200008. Consultado el 2020-08-11.
Youth as a stage of human psychobiological development. This vision has had a great impact on the collective thinking of youth. It defines youth as a problem, a stage of crisis and with a common presence of pathologies. This perspective has generated that youth is seen as a moment of "risk" or "danger", because it defines characteristics of what is "normal" and "abnormal" in the behavior of adolescents and young people. Youth as a key moment for social integration. It defines youth as a stage in which young people must be trained and acquire all the values and skills for a productive adult life. Youth is seen as a "transition process", which makes the value of youth invisible in the present and reproduces actions of control and guardianship over youth. Youth as a socio-demographic data. It places youth as a group of people who share an age range (which changes by country) that is approached from a population point of view. Although it allows recognizing the importance of youth as a group, it can become statistical data that tends to homogenize them, making invisible the diversity of contexts, needs and realities. Youth as an agent of change. This vision is strongly influenced by historical materialism. Studies carried out from this perspective tend to have a very idealistic view of youth, placing this group as "agents" and as motors of the revolution, highlighting and recognizing their contribution to significant processes of social change. Youth as a developmental issue. This vision defines youth as a developmental problem, due to the high incidence of unemployment, substance abuse, teenage pregnancy, early marriages, etc. While it recognizes the need to generate specific actions and investments in this age group, it reproduces the stigma of youth as a vulnerable group, hiding the fact that it is the structural conditions that place youth in vulnerable conditions. Youth and generations. This vision places the young population on the basis of significant historical events. In this case, youth is defined as a generational group, which is often compared to other generations of young people (who are no longer young). This perspective has generated stereotypes about young people of a certain era, for example, baby boomers, millennials, generation x, generation z.
Youth as a social construct The most recent perspective is based on theoretical approaches from anthropology and sociology developed in the last thirty years, defining youth as a socio-cultural construct. This means that youth is permanently being constructed and reconstructed, historically. Each society defines "youth" based on its own cultural, social, political, and economic parameters; there is no single or always applicable definition. Thus, as a social construction, traditional views of youth can be transformed, deconstructed and reconstructed, and replaced. José Manuel Valenzuela Arce refers to the youth condition as a category and conceptualizes youth as a historically defined socio-cultural construction. He understands youth identities as products of processes of dispute and negotiation between external representations to young people and those that they themselves adopt.Arce, Valenzuela; Manuel, José (2013-08-26). «Modernidad, postmodernidad y juventud». Revista Mexicana de Opinión Pública 0 (11). ISSN 2448-4911. Consulted on 2020-08-11. As for Carles Feixa, he distinguishes youth as a transitory condition, unlike other social conditions such as ethnicity, race or gender.Feixa, Carles (2006). «Generación XX. Teorías sobre la juventud en la era contemporánea». Revista Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales, Niñez y Juventud. 4 num. 2. Consulted on August 10, 2020
However, the youth perspective uses a life stage approach, which means recognizing that all stages of life are transitory so none can justify discrimination and violence based on age and that what happens at one stage has repercussions on the rest.Iniciativa 165 Millones de Razones: Un llamado a la acción para la inversión en adolescentes y jóvenes». UNFPA Mexico. 2019-06-19. Consulted on 2020-08-11.
Age ranges per country “Youth" is not standardized to an identical age range in all countries, but each country defines its own and is determined by the social, ethnic and cultural context. The following table identifies the age range in some Latin American countries, the law, and the institute or ministry with which it was determined: Age rangeCountryLawInstitute/Ministry12 to 29MexicoLaw of the Mexican Institute of YouthMexican Institute of Youth14 to 26ColombiaYouth Law °375 of 1997Presidential Youth Council14 to 29UruguayLaw no. 16170 Ibero-American Convention on the Rights of Young People (Law No. 18270)National Institute of Youth15 to 24ArgentinaIt is in the billNational Institute of Youth15 to 29ChileLaw 19.042 on the regulation of the youth instituteNational Institute of Youth (INJUV)15 to 29PeruNational Youth PolicyNational Institute of Youth (SENAJU)15 to 30GuatemalaBill 3896, the National Youth Law, is in Congress but has not yet been passed.National Youth Council (CONJUVE)15 to 29Bolivia Youth Law °342Plurinational Directorate of Youth in charge of the Ministry of Justice15 to 29VenezuelaThere is no youths law in VenezuelaMinistry of Popular Power for Youth and Sports18 to 29EcuadorGeneral Law of Youth of EcuadorNational Directorate of Youth and Adolescence in charge of the Ministry of Economic and Social Inclusion12 to 30Costa RicaGeneral Law of the Young PersonNational Council of Public Policy for Young People
National Youth System On the other hand, ECLAC publishes the number of young people by country.JUVELAC - Población Joven». dds.cepal.org. Consultado el 2020-08-11.
Demographic bonus Latin America and the Caribbean have 165 millions of young people between 10 and 24 years old, according to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), representing the largest demographic bonus, that is, the population of young people has reached its highest level,165M». UNFPA América Latina y el Caribe (en inglés). 2019-03-28. Consulted on 2020-08-11. so young people have and will have a very important role in the direction of countries, governments, economies, cultural practices, etc.
Intersectionality
The youths perspective uses intersectionality to identify other conditions such as gender, class, ethnicity, sex-affective preference or orientation, physical or mental condition, among others, which generate differentiated youth experiences that can lead to increased social disadvantage.Agenda Nacional de Juventudes. Juventudes al Sur. ELIGE. 2019.
LGBTTTIAQ+ youths Young lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, transsexual, transvestite, intersex, asexual, queer, etc. people are victims of a society based on cis-hetero-patriarchal hegemony and gender binarism that, added to an infantilization towards youths, results in stigmas and prejudices that invalidate their identity and cast doubt on the capacity for self-identification, impeding the right to free development of the personality and their sexual and reproductive rights.
Afro-descendant youth