Iran exposes our youth policy dilemmas

The Iran elections in June, which returned an authoritarian government amid myriad allegations by supporters of reform that votes had been "stolen", threw this issue into relief. Whether the issue is the political arrangements of a so-called democratic country or the daily practice of youth and community work, the fundamental challenge remains the same: how one balances authority and control with autonomy and self-determination.

The relative weight of each side of the balance, for all groups of people - but perhaps especially young people - will depend very much on where individuals have come from, their current situation and their future aspirations.

In the mid-1990s, I recall a young woman from the Czech Republic, Michaela, telling me that the only thing that mattered in her life was "freedom"; conversely I was once shocked by David, a black young man in South Africa, when he told me that perhaps the old regime (apartheid) was "better". The critical difference was that Michaela was well-resourced - through family background, personal qualifications and emerging connections - to take advantage of the freedoms that had only recently become available to her.

By contrast, David's new freedoms were no more than theoretical: the dreams and hopes he had in the post-apartheid rainbow nation had been shattered as he coped with the death of his parents, unemployment and an environment of crime and violence. He craved more structure, certainty and security in his life, almost on any terms.

In Iran, the cries for greater freedoms have come from the educated middle-classes in the cities, especially those who are young and seeking greater opportunities to travel and debate. It is they who have attracted international media attention. Little has been said of the people from rural areas who voted in huge numbers for the status quo, because President Ahmadinejad has given them better roads and clean water. Bigger freedoms of mobility and expression are little more than illusionary ideas to them.

It is this balance between "discipline" and "freedom" that torments the development of youth policy and the practice of youth work. We know that while there is one group of young people that seeks space and resources within which to exercise their own decision-making and direction, another group wants to be guided and instructed to take particular pathways.

The psychologist Abraham Maslow's "hierarchy of needs" springs immediately to mind. Clean water has to come first. But does discipline have to precede freedom? Perhaps it is impossible to satisfy both camps with a path between the two.

Howard Williamson is professor of European youth policy at the University of Glamorgan