Global Citizenship Advocacy: Empowering Children Through Community Holidays and Outdoor Adventures as Global Common Goods
摘要
This chapter explores the advocacy for community leisure activities and outdoor holidays for children as global common goods. Historical movements for reduced working hours have highlighted the importance of rest and leisure for both adults and children. In 1938, the founders of the French National Federation for Secular Works for Children and Teenagers’ Holidays emphasised the educational benefits of community holidays and camps, fostering children’s health, social skills, cultural and environmental awareness, and open-mindedness. French NGOs mostly rely today on Jeunesse au Plein Air (JPA), a recognised public utility organisation, to advocate for children’s access to these experiences, promoting them as essential for training active citizens and social cohesion. The chapter focuses on the hybrid nature of JPA, as an umbrella organisation, and on its strategic communication initiatives. Through discourse and semiotic analysis of communication materials, interviews, and ethnographic research, the authors examine the framing of children’s community holidays as global public goods, highlighting challenges such as public programmes’ financial constraints as well as the compensation of territorial and socio-economic disparities. This frame of reference is compared to the theoretical criteria defining general interest, public goods, and global common goods. The analysis distinguishes between lobbying and advocacy, demonstrating how JPA navigates intricate legal and political contexts of democratic representation crisis and the growing influence of far-right parties. It shows how JPA uses the global common goods argument to enhance its advocacy initiatives.