Summary
The underlying basis of the master’s thesis has been a questioning of the conflicting political motion concerning new age limits that the youth have been subjected to these past few years. On the one hand we see political motions to lower the age limits, and on the other hand a wish to enforce a new age limit or raise a current limit. Based on these conflicting tendencies we have found it relevant to adopt a critical position towards the articulation of the youth category. In other words we wish to study how youth is articulated in the different political motions, and furthermore which societal developments and initiatives that contribute to the understanding of youth.
The political motions which are to be studied in this master’s thesis are the age of criminal responsibility, the right to vote, the legal age of purchasing (strong) alcohol and the enforcement of a new age limit (of sixteen years) concerning the use of solariums.
The methodological basis of the master’s thesis is Norman Faircloughs critical discourse analysis in which we both process a linguistic level and a wider social context. The empirical data consists of parliamentary discussion of the different motions.
The different understandings of the youth category show us that the understanding of this group is highly depended on the political field, in which it is articulated. The motions studied concerns questions of health and crime, and the understanding of youth is produced in these settings. The way in which these fields produce and understand a specific problem and how a given problem is solved, is contributing to the development of different strategies of handling the youth.