Critical Theories and the Future of Child and Youth Empowerment: A Genealogical Perspective

Dear Colleagues,

We welcome you to contribute to this Special Issue on critical theories of youth empowerment from a genealogical perspective. Critical approaches understand child and youth empowerment as a structural, political, and collective process through which young people contest power relations and act to transform the conditions shaping their lives (Ginwright & Cammarota, 2002). Rather than emphasizing resilience or individual competence, these frameworks foreground sociopolitical development, redistribution of power, and youth–adult partnerships that recognize young people as co-theorists and co-producers of knowledge (Jennings et al., 2006; Kope & Arellano, 2016). Contemporary work underscores the need to attend to intersectionality considering how race, gender, ableism, migration status, and related forces shape unequal access to participation and power. We therefore call for analyses rooted in community-based practice, participatory methodologies, and policy interventions that expand young people’s capacity not only to navigate systems but also to alter them.

A genealogical perspective invites contributors to interrogate youth empowerment as a historically produced discourse rather than a neutral or universal concept. Such an approach asks how particular meanings of empowerment emerged, whose interests they advance, and how they delimit the horizons of youth agency (Freire, 1970). It traces shifts from liberal, individualized models toward collective, justice-oriented frameworks, while also identifying moments when empowerment has been co-opted into neoliberal, managerial, or risk-oriented agendas. At the same time, genealogy highlights counter-movements including youth activism, Black and Indigenous resurgence, and community-rooted practices and how these reclaim empowerment as a vehicle for structural change and cognitive justice (Ginwright, 2010).

The purpose of this Special Issue is to advance theoretical and empirical work that redefines youth empowerment by uncovering the historical, political, and epistemic forces that have shaped it. We aim to bring together scholarship that exposes the limits of dominant empowerment discourses, illuminates emancipatory alternatives grounded in community and collective agency, and offers forward-looking visions of what empowerment could become when freed from surveillance, tokenism, and neoliberal constraint. In this Special Issue, therefore, we seek to deepen critical understandings of power, knowledge, and youth agency, and to chart new directions for research, practice, and policy that support more just futures for children and young people.

Examples of themes considered include the following:

• Critical empowerment in youth policy;
• Racialized and colonial histories of child and youth empowerment;
• Youth activism;
• Queer and Trans youth;
• Youth development;
• Intersectionality and the limits of universalized child and youth empowerment;
• Institutions, surveillance, and the governmentality of young people;
• Cognitive justice and plural knowledges of empowerment;
• Participatory research and the politics of voice;
• Imagining future empowerment beyond the state;
• Forced migration and precarious mobility.

We request that, prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and an abstract of 200 words summarizing their intended contribution. Please send it to the Guest Editors (doriskakuru@uvic.ca) or to the Genealogy Editorial Office (genealogy@mdpi.com). Abstracts will be reviewed by the Guest Editors for the purposes of ensuring their proper fit within the scope of the Special Issue. Full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer-review.

References

Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. Herder & Herder.

Ginwright, S. (2010). Black youth rising: Activism and radical healing in urban America. Teachers College Press.

Ginwright, S., & Cammarota, J. (2002). New Terrain in Youth Development: The Promise of a Social Justice Approach. Crime and Social Justice, 29(4), 82–95.

Jennings, L. B., Parra-Medina, D. M., Hilfinger-Messias, D. K., & McLoughlin, K. (2006). Toward a Critical Social Theory of Youth Empowerment. Journal of Community Practice, 14(1–2), 31–55. https://doi.org/10.1300/J125v14n01_03

Kope, J., & Arellano, A. (2016). Resurgence and critical youth empowerment in Whitefish River First Nation. Leisure (Waterloo), 40(4), 395–421. https://doi.org/10.1080/14927713.2016.1269293

Dr. Doris M. Kakuru
Dr. Shemine Gulamhusein
Dr. Thulani Andrew Chauke
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Genealogy is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.