Are youth challenging participation? A relational analysis of the Participatory Process of the Public Policy of Youth in Bogotá, Colombia

This paper explores the different struggles, discourses, practices, representations and power relations involved in the first two stages of the Participatory Process of the Public Policy of Youth in Bogota, Colombia. I examine the discourses and practices of the policymakers and the youth representatives that took part in this process as a way of building a relational anal-ysis of this participatory exercise. At its core, I argue that participatory processes with youth produce and reproduce governmental strategies that manage the youth and, at the same time, young people produce transformative and reflexive strategies. By building a dialogue between theory and practice, I conclude that these strategies are constantly dialoguing and reshaping the youth and the participatory processes itself.