Contrasting portraits of war: Youths' varied experiences with political violence in Bosnia and Palestine

Abstract

This article illustrates some of the complexity of youths' experience with political violence as a means of cautioning researchers, applied professionals and policy makers against overly-simplistic conclusions and interventions when attempting to understand and serve the large populations of the world's youth who endure conflict. A variety of forms of data and their analyses from one research program are utilized to show how distinctly two cohorts of youth (Bosnian and Palestinian) experienced their respective conflicts, including: types and frequencies of political violence exposure; degree of involvement in political violence; perceptions of the meaning and efficacy of the conflict and their willingness to engage in it; its perceived impact on their psychological, social, and civic lives; as well as the implications of all of the above for their identity development.