Syncing citizenship education in The Hague Southwest

Citizenship education is adopted in the Dutch school curriculum because it is important to inform youngsters about their status and position in society. This impacts how youngsters are perceived and treated by polities and how they perceive their value within society. Nonetheless, there remains a lack of understanding of whether this curriculum matches the citizenship perceptions of youngsters who experience macrostructural disadvantages and live in heterogeneous adverse neighbourhoods. This study counters this problem by describing the political, social, cultural, and moral citizenship perceptions of youngsters residing in The Hague Southwest and professionals representing Stichting Vreedzaam who educate and inform youngsters about their position in society. Sequentially, these descriptive citizenship perceptions between these two groups are juxtaposed through a comparative analysis. By doing this, the main research question of this study can be answered: To what extent do the citizenship perceptions diverge or converge between youngsters and Stichting Vreedzaam in the region Southwest in The Hague? Civil society and street culture are applied as lenses to gain insights into how these perceptions are shaped. After comparing the findings between the two related groups, it can be indicated that citizenship perceptions are largely converging despite being shaped in divergent manners. Exceptionally, political citizenship perceptions compared to the other citizenship dimensions are largely divergent due to a lack of trust youngsters experience and convey towards politics. This study recommends recovering youngsters’ trust, engaging more in dialogue with them, and investing more in local integral collaboration so that more suitable and effective citizenship education can be provided for youngsters residing in heterogeneous adverse neighbourhoods such as The Hague Southwest.