By Erika M. Macedo and Silvana Carranza

Independent consultants and activists

In a fair race, the idea is that everyone starts from the same starting line. However, the reality for Mexico's youth of opportunity is different: they start much further back, carrying a heavy burden of inequalities accumulated from previous generations.[1]

Today, young people aged 15 to 29 constitute the largest population group in the country. Of these, half are in a situation of exclusion that begins even before they are born. These are the youth of opportunity, young people who face a set of structural disadvantages that limit their development possibilities.

Imagine that every day when we wake up, instead of carrying only our backpack or our usual responsibilities, we have to put on a vest full of stones. Each stone represents a barrier that young people have faced throughout their lives.

The first hurdle is placed at birth, when many of these young people grow up in an environment of poverty and precariousness. The second hurdle, which is added during the first years of life, is chronic malnutrition, a problem that mainly affects children from 0 to 3 years old. Then, between 6 and 12 years old, poor educational performance due to the low quality of schools in rural and peripheral areas adds a third hurdle to the burden.

At age thirteen, another critical barrier appears: dropping out of school. This phenomenon is intensified by the accumulation of domestic responsibilities and unpaid care, especially for girls and young women; and in the case of boys, the responsibility and pressure to begin providing financially for the home. Finally, the last and perhaps heaviest of the stones is precarious work, a constant for those who do not have access to formal employment opportunities and even opens the door to insertion into criminal activities.

Now, once this rock vest is on their backs, young people with opportunities not only have to compete in the same race, but they do so on an uphill track. Other barriers are added to the initial barriers, derived from discrimination regarding their physical appearance, ethnicity, disabilities, experiences of violence, teenage pregnancies, illnesses (often the result of untimely and insufficient medical care) and other conditions that reinforce their exclusion.

This is the reality of half of the young people in the Metropolitan Zone of the Valley of Mexico (ZMVM),[2] a territory that includes the 16 municipalities of Mexico City, 59 municipalities of the State of Mexico and one municipality of Hidalgo. An environment that, far from offering equal opportunities, exacerbates these disadvantages.

Faced with this situation, during a year of work and reflection, the members of the Youth Opportunity Advisory Group (GAJ) in Mexico City have identified that a Comprehensive Care System that integrates and considers the perspective of young people is not only urgent, but essential to transform their realities and try to level the career ladder by removing obstacles. Likewise, this population group has been left out of the discussion on the care agenda. For this reason, the GAJ has decided to take this banner as a priority in its advocacy strategy.

The Constitution of Mexico City, in its articles 9 and 13, recognizes the right to care for all people, prioritizing care for the most vulnerable population groups (children, older adults, people with disabilities or dependent situations). However, this right can only be effective if it is built from a logic of social justice and with a focus on trying to level the playing field for all people, especially for those who have suffered from backwardness and structural exclusion. A logic based on equity, equality, recognition of diversity, and the ability of people to shape their own lives.

In this sense, the GAJ has begun its work by organizing workshops aimed at youth from non-central areas of Mexico City and the State of Mexico. In these spaces, youth have recognized themselves as subjects of care and grounded concepts, recovered their own experiences and listened to those of other young people, managing to define concrete proposals to contribute to the public discussion of the Comprehensive Care System in Mexico City. Its focus has been clear: a care policy cannot be effective if it does not include the voices of those who face the greatest inequalities on a daily basis.

This effort has been very interesting because it not only allowed young people to share their experiences, but also to reflect on the situations that exclude them and identify why, due to inequality, they have to work much harder every day to overcome the obstacles they face in their daily lives.

In this sense, positioning the voices and experiences of youth as a central axis in the construction of a Comprehensive Care System is not only necessary, but also an act of social, gender and intergenerational justice, since young people with opportunity provide innovative perspectives and solutions that respond directly to the problems they experience every day. To do so, the first step has been to reflect on how young people with opportunity have experienced care on a daily basis and whether there has been any impact on their lives from people who receive care or are caregivers.

In the coming weeks, the GAJ will publish the results of this advocacy process, along with its position on the minimum elements that a Care System must include from the perspective of youth. This document will be accompanied by a roadmap designed to amplify its proposals in key decision-making spaces.

Laying the foundations for a Comprehensive Care System is a collective effort that must include all generations. Let us imagine a future where the 543,000 young people in the City who are excluded,[3] of whom 384,000 are women, can access learning opportunities, decent employment and personal development. This future is not a distant ideal; it is an achievable goal if we act today so that their voices are heard and their needs are met.

Young people have the creative and transformative potential that is essential for building solutions. Investing in them is not only fair, it is also the key to building a more equitable and resilient City, where all people can start from the same starting line and have the same opportunities for development and access to the full exercise of their rights.

[1] Social mobility, that is, the opportunities that a person has to improve their socioeconomic conditions, is still low in Mexico. It is estimated that 74 out of every 100 Mexicans who are born in poverty will not be able to escape that condition (Report on Social Mobility in Mexico. Towards regional equality of opportunities, Espinosa Yglesias Study Center, 2019. Consulted online: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iBmOrUJpDv1xBhTAM5botUJ3qgTizMRz/view).

[2] It is estimated that 2 million 351 thousand young people live in the ZMVM.

[3] Data taken from the presentation “Youth Opportunity of the City: our voice, our work, our impact.”