Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

The problems of employment and exclusion of youth have become a true challenge for the public policies and action of the civil society. For a long time, programs and diverse strategies are implemented and that, to a great extent, share an unspecific diagnosis on the background of the problems in the area of employment which are also called «deficits» of formation. These approaches are limited ahead of the complex plot of structural, institutional, familiar, individual and subjective dimensions that place youth, in particular the poorest, in disadvantaged situations. The present article is set out to raise the discussion one of these aspects in particular: the institutional level; in order to reflect on the forms in which the institutions try to take part in the youth transition, facing the processes of individualisation and institutional weakening. In this way, two cases of organizations in Argentina have been selected who set out to generate an intense impact on the subjectivities of these young people, through approache which take into account the «constellations of youth disadvantages», in an ample way. The analysis of two institutions that give preferential rise to the subjective approach, opening the way for reflection on institutional possibilities to provide new collective supports and to contribute to the individualization of the subjects and the development of their own strategies.

The legal-institutional foundations that organize the policy —acknowledged here as regulated practices through which the subjects participate in the direction and government of the society in which they are members— exclude children and adolescents based on their minority. From the reconstruction of the work in two differentiated contexts —the Program the legislature and the school of the Legislative Power of the Independent City of Buenos Aires and student centers of middle class schools— problematic aspects regarding the contents and methods of the participation of the young people in the public space are analyzed. The practices documented by our investigation make known the tension analyzed in a contemporary literature aspect to the sense given to the policy and what can be understood like as the politician, whose light focuses on the concern and debates that circulate amongst youth. The reflection deepens on the direction of the construction of the communal property which are formulated, and the forms of the participation politics which are conceive as legitimate, jeopardizing in the analysis the effects that these could imply for a possible democratization of the school.

This endeavour examines the policies applied in relation to Peruvian youth after the last democratic transition was produced, at the end of year 2000, after the fall of the regime of President Alberto Fujimori. This work focuses attention on the analysis of the initiatives undertaken during the management of President Alexander Toledo and the present management of President Alan García. It analyzes the process followed in the creation and later decontamination of the National Council of Youth, and evaluates its character of mechanism of «participating inclusion» of youth, indicated during the management of President Toledo. Furthermore, it indicates the present work of the National Secretary of Youth, as part of the workings of the Ministry of Education, arisen from the reformation process of the State implemented by President García. It emphasizes the impacts that the policies of liberalization of markets have caused in Peruvian youth after the democratic transition was produced.

The present article gives account of some of the results obtained from an investigation that´s central objective is to generate a conceptual frame which contributes to the description and the analysis of local policies of social inclusion in favor of the youth in Santiago. The material that is presented here was made by interviews from experts in this specific field and corresponds to an analysis and discussion of present concepts of youth in the national public policy. As far as the results are considered, it is set out to find the existence of the considers that establishes a strong association between youth as young-beings and youth as students; it also discusses what this means in terms of youth policies. Later some nuances are analyzed that the concept of youth in the public policy acquires which includes a discussion about the criteria that define the young individual, the perspective youth with rights, the fact that the youth are rather objects than subjects of the public policy and the problem of not being considered members of the State. Finally, trying to shed light on the entailment which the youth establish with respects to the public policy.