Growing up : risky business?

Young people today increasingly cause adults anxiety. This anxiety translates into a raft of interventions and strategies and programs that target young people. These imaginings reflect and constitute a range of anxieties about the dangers posed by some young people, or to some young people, and how these risks might be economically and prudently managed. These processes can have a range of often negative consequences (intended or otherwise) for individuals and populations of young people. I argue that Foucault's work on disciplinary, sovereign and governmental forms of power provides a generative framework for analysing why growing up is often seen to be a risky business for contemporary populations of young people.