State and Ideology: Youth Public Policy in Ontario

As global youth unemployment and youth led social movements become increasingly widespread, states have begun to consider youth a policy concern. In this thesis, I ask how youth experience being a policy concern. Ontario is the site of analysis, where the provincial government has recently released numerous public policies that draw on contemporary trends in youth research. Through policy analysis and semi-structured interviews, I connect the experience of Ontario’s young people to the theoretical principles of the state's policy approach. I focus on the tension between the individual and the social: between the idea of youth as described in public policy, and the actual social conditions of the youth who participated in this program. The experiences of individual youth, whose lives are socially coordinated by state policy initiatives, are a window into understanding the consciousness and learning that arises for a generation brought up in economic instability and austerity.M.A