My (perhaps polemic? we'll see!) opinion: you cannot be a scholar, policymaker or advocate who genuinely believes in the political & social capacity of youth for positive change AND use the term/theory ‘youth bulge’. They are anathema to each other. #ISaidWhatISaid 🧵
Youth bulge is a simplistic, ageist, racist, sexist framing. It scapegoats youth as ‘the problem’ while hiding the structures & leaders who've failed youth. Using it reproduces narratives of deficit & danger, securitises youth, & reinforces ideas of youth as risky 2/
Let me break it down a bit. 1⃣st: youth bulge discourse—the claim that large # s of youth is a proxy/indicator for potential unrest—was popularised in 90s & 00s in the context of the War on Terror. It strengthened framings of youth, particularly young men, as potential threats 3/
Such a framing was a political move. You have to ask: whose interest did it serve? Whose interests does it continue to serve to use it in contemporary contexts? (Hint, it's not young people & their allies) 4/
Anne Hendrixson, back in 2004, in a much overlooked piece, called this out; and shows how young men of colour were positioned as angry (against 'veiled young women's' vulnerability) & a domestic & intl security threat to the US thecornerhouse.org.uk/resource/angry… 5/
2⃣nd: evidence shows that the claim is demonstrably untrue. While some conflict contexts have large youth populations a substantial majority of countries w populations indicating a youth ‘bulge’ have not recently been sites of civil conflict (ie: doi.org/10.4119/ijcv-2…) 6/ 
In fact, it erases a multitude of intersecting factors that research shows influences the likelihood of violence incl lack of economic opps, lack of access to education, inequality, resource scarcity & poor governance (see my work w @CaitlinMollica link.springer.com/referenceworke…) 7/
3⃣rd: these racialized & gendered frames of youth, underpinned by biologically essentialist assumptions, have had a pervasive negative effect on efforts to institutionalize & include youth in peacebuilding. On this read @LesleyJPruitt in @IAJournal_CH doi.org/10.1093/ia/iia… 8/
To recap: The concept of a ‘youth bulge’ was popularised as a political tool used for geostrategic benefit, the evidence does not actually support it being a thing(!), & its continued use actively harms the possibilities to meaningfully include youth in peace & security 9/
Defenders of the concept say it just describes a demographic reality—shorthand for flagging a large youth population. BUT # s aren't neutral & naming something always has power. We can resist & unpick these pernicious narratives. But we have to stop reproducing the lie first 10/
Let's instead draw attn to what is erased when we use ‘youth bulge’ discourse.What if we paid attn to chronic underinvestment in education rather than saying ‘bored youth are violent’?Or looked at poor governance practices of ruling elite rather than blaming dissenting youth? 11/
So instead of youth bulge let’s call it a "state-underinvestment-in-employment problem” or a “gerontocratic power grab” or an “imperialist vision of the majority world”. The possibilities are many, varied, and more accurate 12/
As scholars & advocates we shld be alert to the realities of contexts youth navigate. But we don't need the broken dangerous idea of a 'youth bulge'. We can start elsewhere. If we truly believe in youths’ capacity we have to stop lazily reproducing violence against them /end rant
I want to add this isn’t a subtweet of any particular person! Just a reflection on a trend I’m noticing in both academic & policy pieces recently!
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