Since the end of the Sierra Leonean civil war, successive governments have designated youth as a priority area of policy intervention and proposed numerous programmes to deal with the so-called ‘idle’ youth problem in the country. This focus on youth as objects of policy concern partially owes to contemporary discourses about the relationships between youth and conflicts, and especially, the idea that the existence of a large youth population represents a threat to domestic and international security, and thus functions as part of a larger global governance mechanism that targets societies as part of a liberal interventionist and conflict containment strategy. This paper uses the Sierra Leonean example to stage a broader critique of these interventionist and conflict containment strategies and the ideological schemas that make them possible. It suggests that these programmes are circumscribed epistemically by evolutionist preconceptions that construct the targeted populations as objects of power to be reproduced as neoliberal cosmopolitan subjects as a way of transcending the purported threat they represent. However, that these policies are incapable of transforming the structures within which the so-called ‘idle’ youth problem is produced. Rather, they reproduce, in other guise, the very conditions of precarity that they aim to address.

自从塞拉利昂内战结束以来，历届政府都将青年列为政策干预的优先领域，并提出了许多方案来解决该国所谓的“闲置”青年问题。对青年的关注是政策关注的对象，部分原因是由于有关青年与冲突之间关系的当代论述，尤其是由于大量青年人口的存在对国内和国际安全构成威胁，并因此而成为青年的一部分的想法。作为自由主义干预主义和冲突遏制策略的一部分，针对社会的更大的全球治理机制。本文以塞拉利昂为例，对这些干预主义和冲突遏制策略以及使之成为可能的意识形态图式进行了更广泛的批评。它表明，这些计划是由进化论者的先天性在观念上加以限制的，这些先入之见将目标人群构造为作为新自由主义世界主义主体再现的权力对象，以此作为超越它们所声称的威胁的一种方式。但是，这些政策无法改变产生“闲置”青年问题的结构。相反，它们以另一种方式再现了他们旨在解决的不稳定状况。这些政策无法改变产生“闲置”青年问题的结构。相反，它们以另一种方式再现了他们旨在解决的不稳定状况。这些政策无法改变产生“闲置”青年问题的结构。相反，它们以另一种方式再现了他们旨在解决的不稳定状况。