Preparing for war: citizenship, militarization and the agencies of children and youth in security politics

Abstract. This paper examines how military recruitment intersects with biopolitical governance and the forging of particular subjectivities for young people as subjects of (in)security. It considers young people's enrolment in the politics of killing and letting die as a form of necropolitics (Mbembe, 2003, 2019) that is enabled by generational injustice and the complex positioning of children and youth as political subjects within liberal governmentalities. It is shown that closer attention to the interrelations between sovereignty, discipline, and government is needed, considering also questions of authority, lethality, and coercion, in order to comprehend young people's contradictory subjectivations in and through military logics and practices. Based on the analysis of the three case studies of military recruitment and citizenship in France, Sweden, and Latvia, the paper argues for greater attention to the militarization of young people's lives and to the ethical and generational justice implications of this.