Recruiting Young People for the Armed Forces: Perspectives from Governance Studies to Children’s Rights

In times of increasing global militarization and ongoing conflicts, recruitment strategies of armed forces are shifting. States in the Global North that employ voluntary recruitment plans are partly considering (re)introducing conscription strategies to enlarge the cadre of military personnel. This open session invites interdisciplinary scholars focusing on global case studies of recruitment strategies of armed forces. Drawing on governance approaches (from biopolitics, to social citizenship, to children’s rights), the session aims to explore how recruitment practices of armed forces function and are currently transformed in light of intersectional categories such as gender, age, citizenship, body, sexual orientation, and socio-economic belonging. Particular attention is given to minors in military recruitment campaigns, preparedness programs, and defense-oriented public discourse. The session invites contributions from childhood studies to military studies that critically analyze how youth are addressed as future defenders of the nation and how military institutions shape ideals of citizenship, masculinity, resilience, and sacrifice, but also if and how they regard children’s rights. At the same time, the session foregrounds the voices and experiences of young people themselves. The session is open to empirical contributions that investigate the tensions between willingness to defend the nation and practices of refusal, resistance, or conscientious objection. Empirical results that detail how young people perceive war, conflict, and security today and which alternative visions of peace and conflict resolution emerge from their perspectives are welcome.