Bordered citizenship: National identities, transnational lives and the limitation of the UK’s National Citizen Service

This article offers a critical look at the UK Government’s flagship youth citizenship policy the National Citizen Service (NCS). It draws upon contemporary European research, debates and policy agendas around youth democracy and social integration to provide a contextual background for analysing why some EU nation states citizenship programmes fail to reflect young people’s lives today. It asks the question: What type of citizenship model is needed? It argues that there is a disparity between national identity, and the desire of young people to embrace democratic change through non-conventional means. It presents an understanding of youth in late modernity which encompasses global realities, emerging cultural identities to illustrate their role as ‘active citizens’ on their own terms. It appraises the limitations of the current NCS programme and its failure reflect the changing global realities of young people’s lives, transnational and hybrid cultural identities in order to project a ‘cosmopolitan perspective’ on to the latest citizenship debate.