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Since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, youth researchers have reported increased inequalities between young people, but the social processes that drive these changes are not well understood. In this paper, we draw on rich longitudinal interview data following the same participants from a year before and into the midst of national lockdown during the pandemic in Norway to explore the unfolding of classed and gendered responses that were triggered in young people across the class spectrum. We find that advantaged, ambitious youths engaged in self-resourcing practices with support from their family that could make them even better positioned after the crisis. Youths that were socially vulnerable before the pandemic dealt with the situation alone and in highly gendered ways that seemed to amplify their insecure position in the peer group and community. Thriving youths from working-class communities engaged in lockdown practices that connected them deeper to the family and resourced them for gender traditional, local lives. Illuminating how a crisis prompts practices that increased emerging differences along classed and gendered lines, the paper shows that to grasp inequalities in the making, researchers must consider the importance and changing nature of resources – including relational resources in the family – over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the risks to Early School Leaving (ESL) as perceived by young people who are Early Leavers or at-risk of Early Leaving, and their educators in one region in South England. It draws on 38 interviews and focuses groups with 39 young people and 53 adults working in various roles across 11 educational settings including mainstream and specialist schooling, alternative learning provision and vocational education and training, as well as the local authority. Guided by a holistic framework to examine risks to ESL [Brown et al. (2021. "A Conceptual Framework for Researching the Risks to Early Leaving." Journal of Education and Work 24 (7–8): 723–739. )], the paper analyses findings according to five different categories of risk: personal challenges; familial circumstances; social relationships; institutional features of school/work and structural factors of policy, economic disadvantage and the educational system. The findings highlight that while educators focused upon structural factors and personal challenges, young people themselves identified social relationships and institutional features of school as the most significant influencers on ESL risk. The contribution of this paper is two-fold; firstly, in presenting a comprehensive analysis of the multiple risk factors to Early Leaving; and secondly, in reflecting on the difference in emphases between young people's perspectives of the key constituents of risk and those of the educators who support them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The context for this paper is a shift in the way citizens engage in democratic processes which has received increasing attention in the literature. Building on previously conducted research, this paper contributes to the conceptualisation of citizenship activities in terms of young people below the voting age from rural communities. Based on reviewing current research, seven emerging contexts that can assist with exploring young people's citizenship activities are proposed, namely unofficial, individual, glocal, sporadic, online, issues-based, and justice-oriented. These contexts were translated into a framework which is introduced and explored in this paper. To explore this framework, focus groups (n = 26) and a qualitative questionnaire (n = 106) were conducted with young people aged 13–16 from a secondary school in Germany. The proposed framework extends previous conceptualisations of emerging citizenship contexts by looking beyond citizen types and taxonomies to explore the spaces, modes, goals, and the frequency of participants' citizenship activities. Results indicate that the proposed framework was useful in exploring multiple emerging citizenship contexts. Focus group and questionnaire participants were particularly engaged in glocal, unofficial, sporadic, and issues-based contexts and to a lower degree in individual, online, and justice-oriented contexts. A key challenge is achieving conceptual clarity around the seven contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Covid-19 pandemic and the intensified digitalization of life-worlds has especially affected younger generations, also in Austria. In this paper, we approach digital practices of 43 young adults between 16 and 18 years in a frame-analytical perspective to understand forms of politicization during the Covid-19 pandemic. We analyze memes in order to make sense of youth's life-worlds during the pandemic. The memes were created by youth as a result of a workshop series with the researchers. Our research shows that memes have provided a means for engaging and dealing digitally and emotionally with Covid-19-related problems. We show that the respective youth address educational, social and democratic issues by problematizing 'homeschooling as overburdening', a 'lack of planning' and 'social divisions'. Moreover, meme-creation offers a perspective on how youth express and create a 'sense of community' through digital practices. During the pandemic youth have increasingly come to understand and represent themselves as a group with shared experiences in digital space, going along with a positioning as 'younger generation' vis-à-vis older generations. We argue that the fact that the pandemic has affected youth heavily and the fact that they do not see their issues and needs represented by political representatives or media shows the potential and limits of digital spaces for younger generations to connect (politically). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Critical youth studies understands contemporary youth transitions as an interplay between long term changes in labour markets and state approaches to welfare and the regulatory presence of societal norms about the 'right kind' of transitions and the 'right kind' of young adult citizens. This work is intersectional, with emphasis given to class, gender and race and ethnicity. However, in comparison less focus is given to disability, even though it shapes youth transition possibilities. This paper highlights the problems created by paying insufficient attention to disability, alongside making the case that there are conceptual tools useful to critical youth studies within disability studies. (1) Disability studies approaches to inequality help make the case that material inequalities are still an important factor in young people's lives. (2) A focus on disability supports arguments that as forms of state support dwindle, family is increasingly significant – and problematic – as a resource in youth transitions. (3) Critical disability studies can help explore the significance of normative embodied markers of transitions for young people making their way towards adulthood. (4) Collaboration can encourage deeper recognition of the relational quality of transitional processes and move away from a linear understanding of time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Young vocational graduates face many expectations related to the norms of worker-citizenship when entering the labour market. Due to contemporary uncertainties and the new realities of adulthood, meeting these expectations may not be easy. These expectations might also conflict with young adults' desires. This paper examines how vocational education graduates position themselves in the labour market and what kind of worker-citizenship they produce in their working-life stories. The study is based on 32 individual interviews with 18- to 25-year-old vocational graduates with different positions in the Finnish labour market. The findings support earlier research on the importance of assuming the position of worker-citizen for these graduates. In new adulthood, they aim but are also forced to shape their worker-citizenship when, for some, vocational qualification has not redeemed its promises. Based on empirical findings, the article argues that ideals maintained in vocational education may need to be shaped within the unpredictable realities of new adulthood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on the creative group and individual interviews with young people aged 11–18 years old in England and Wales in 2018, this paper assembles data that addresses the changing nature of intimacies in young people's digitally-networked lives. Informed by Lauren Berlant's work (2008, viii), it maps how platforms such as Instagram and YouTube circulate certain 'fantasies of the good life' that orient young people towards heteronormative future imaginaries. It argues that publicising intimate relationships on social media works to both reify and unsettle fantasies of monogamy, marriage and domesticity by highlighting their inherent precarity. It also illustrates how smart technologies such as the virtual personal assistants Alexa and Siri reconfigure the good life fantasy. Moving beyond simplistic moral panics that seek to discipline young people's digital intimacies, this paper aims to engage with the nuances of young people's digital sexual cultures. Overall, this paper argues that attending to this complexity can enable practitioners to better attune to and support young people to navigate contemporary digital relationships and sexuality issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the relationship between young individuals that are Not in Employment, Education or Training (NEETs) and regional resilience across the Mediterranean European Union South. It attempts a significant contribution to the literature since academic readings on youth studies have partly overlooked potential interlinkages with regional resilience, while regional studies have neglected to assess the resilience of the young cohorts of the labour force. The paper builds on a geographical political economy approach and employs a mixed-research method, calculating regional resistance and recovery indices and drawing upon informed expert interviews. It scrutinises labour market resilience in terms of youth employment and NEETs against the 2007/08 crisis and documents which regions have been (less) resistant to youth unemployment and inactivity. Thereupon, it locates four factors of low resilience in regional youth labour markets, namely structural deficiencies, path-dependence, labour market segmentation and informal practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last 20 years, the Italian labour market has seen increasing unemployment, job contract instability and lower wages as a result of the global economic crisis and the policies fielded by successive governments to reduce labour market rigidities, regarded as the primary cause of high unemployment, for young people and women in particular. This paper analyses young workers' job satisfaction. Job satisfaction is relevant for workers' well-being, but it has also been shown to affect workers' productivity and hence firms' performance. We analyse overall job satisfaction and satisfaction for two job dimensions, stability and pay. We contribute to the existing literature by investigating whether job stability can compensate for a lower wage and whether the opposite is true, i.e. if a higher pay can compensate for job instability. Our findings show that overall job satisfaction is affected only by pay level. However, when we consider satisfaction with stability and pay satisfaction jointly, the type of contract seems to be more relevant than the pay in determining the probability of being either satisfied or dissatisfied with both dimensions. Therefore, if different dimensions of satisfaction are considered, both stability and pay are relevant, and there appears to be no compensating effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Young people form the primary target demographic of new 'buy now pay later' (BNPL) and digital credit services. Despite consistent data showing young people as a cohort are particularly vulnerable to unsustainable levels of indebtedness, little is known about how young people define and make sense of the experience of being in debt through consumer credit services. This paper explores how indebtedness is experienced and understood in relation to wellbeing through a qualitative study using interviews alongside arts-based participatory methods of bodymapping and sandboxing with 24 young people in the Hunter region of NSW, Australia. These methods enabled particular attention to the embodied and affective elements related to the experience of indebtedness to understand debt's significance for wellbeing for young people. The embodied and affective registers of indebtedness are integral for understanding the conditions informing how wellbeing is negotiated and felt in this context. This study considers the role of BNPL services in young people's economic lives as part of broader processes of financialisation, and the significance of extended and ubiquitous forms of credit for young people's wellbeing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Legal definitions of sexual consent emphasise 'freedom' as central to valid consent; however, power inequalities may complicate freedom. This paper discusses findings from a two-stage focus group study with young people (aged 13–23) in England exploring the implications of power inequalities for sexual consent. In Stage 1, 77 participants explored and ranked the types of power inequalities they felt were common within young people's sexual relationships, with age, gender and popularity being identified as the most common power inequalities. In Stage 2, 43 participants discussed power inequalities using scenarios based on the Stage 1 findings and considered their implications for sexual consent. Thematic analysis of the data produced two themes: powerless and powerful roles in consent communication and power inequalities implicitly constrain freedom to consent. Consent communication was constructed as a unidirectional process whereby those with more power initiate, and those with less, gatekeep. Such roles require deconstruction to position consent as mutual and actively negotiated by partners. Further, since power inequalities were seen to place implicit constraints on freedom to consent, we advocate for an explicit exploration of power and privilege within Relationships and Sex Education to equip young people to recognise, challenge and negotiate these constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following recent critiques of the metrocentric nature of global youth studies, this paper explores the role of place in current research on youth political action in Sweden. Drawing on Agnew's [2011. "Chapter 23: Space and Place." In Handbook of Geographical Knowledge, edited by J. Agnew, and D. Livingstone. London: Sage] concept of place and using qualitative interpretive review as our method, we examined three sets of research publications on three different aspects of youth political action in Sweden. Our analysis found that place was addressed differently in each set of publications: youth political socialization and civic engagement were approached as placeless, street protests were examined as place assumed and urban justice movements were studied as place-based. The first two sets of publications contribute to reproducing a metrocentric understanding of youth political action, where urban areas are constructed as the key settings for political action among young people, while rural or peripheral areas are assumed to work in the same way or are depicted as non-political. By contrast, the publications on urban justice movements offered an alternative by exploring political action as place-based. The need to study the place-specific ways that young people do politics is discussed, with its potential to further the understanding of how young people do politics from where they are. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Part of a larger ethnographic study on Italian youth mobilities, this paper investigates the transitions to adulthood of young returnees who have gone back to Italy after a period of living and working in Australia. Adopting the 'mobile transitions' approach, we illustrate the ways in which mobility affects transitions to adulthood. We suggest that upon return these transitions unfold like a palimpsest, where the old texts are layered over with new ones, unsettling conventions about adult life and disrupting assumptions that return is a final stage in the transition process. New meanings around adulthood emerge in these young Italians' mobile experience that continue also after return. We explore this through their aspirations for the future and their renegotiation of family relationships. Return for these young movers means bringing home a new perception of their current and future selves and especially of their role within their family of origin and Italian social and political culture. This is significant if we consider that Italy is the 'country of the long family' (Cavalli, A. 1997. "La lunga transizione all'età adulta." In Giovani del nuovo secolo. Quinto rapporto IARD sulla condizione giovanile in Italia, edited by C. Buzzi, A. Cavalli, and A. De Lillo, 38–45. Bologna: Il Mulino), where the youth condition is characterized by a delayed acquisition of autonomy and the consequent late assumption of responsibility and adult roles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines young women's experiences of early motherhood focusing on their aims and goals for the future. Young mothers face a particularly complex set of life circumstances by virtue of entering parenthood outside the normative age of motherhood and are likely to experience discrimination, stereotyping and economic disadvantage. We report data from a small-scale qualitative study designed to gather evidence about the experiences, goals and aspirations of young mothers. While the main programs supporting young mothers in Australia focus on education and employment support, we find that young mothers prioritise mothering and focus on the importance of providing full-time care to their children. We find evidence that parenthood is potentially a catalyst for transitioning to more rewarding employment, but this is a secondary goal after motherhood priorities. We also find evidence of active resistance to stereotyping and the challenges these women face as they navigate motherhood outside the standard normative age for this transition. Our findings highlight the need for longitudinal work that can provide evidence of journeys through motherhood, heterogeneity in outcomes, support programs that cater for changing needs and greater recognition of the value of unpaid mothering and care work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Automating workplaces that results in a loss of jobs has become a topic of public debate and study but has paid little attention to differential impacts on age groups. This paper applies OECD data on the risk of jobs being automated to Australian longitudinal survey data following 15 years old students over a ten-year period as they enter the job market. Whilst in the early stages of their working lives, these young Australians often worked in jobs projected to be at high risk of automation, they gradually moved into jobs and occupations projected to be less exposed to automation. Young Australians were also less likely to work in jobs at risk of automation than the average Australian. Besides socio-demographic factors, including educational attainment but also domestic wealth, the incidence and kind of computer use at home were associated with working in jobs at a higher or lower risk of automation, as were young workers' type of employment contract and whether young employees changed employers. Whilst suggestions of large-scale job losses owing to automation may be exaggerated, the socio-economic divide that extends to exposure to at risk occupations ought to be a matter of policy concern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates to what extent the likelihood of young people being long-term NEET can be explained by low literacy skills, how this varies across advanced countries, and how this cross-national variation can be explained by education and social policies. We use PIAAC data and include macro-level indicators on education and social policies. We analyze the likelihood of being long-term NEET versus being in employment or in education/training among some 34,000 young people aged 20–30 from 25 countries. We find that low-literate young people are more likely to be long-term NEET. While NEET risks are associated with countries' institutional characteristics, this does not mean that these characteristics and policies always work in favour of low-literate young people. Although high levels of (enabling) ALMP generally reduce the risk of being NEET, they do so less for low-literate young people. Additionally, young people living in social-democratic welfare states are less likely to be NEET, but low-literate young people seem to profit less from this. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The historical relationship between youth subcultures and mainstream media has long been the subject of debate. Some researchers have proposed that, after mixed panic and hype, the media quickly coopts and commodifies subcultural threats. Conversely, others have argued that negative media coverage keeps subcultures coherent and thriving, while positive coverage is the 'kiss of death'. Despite its continued importance, few studies have closely examined this topic and none has quantitatively examined changes in subcultural media representation over time using archival data. This paper addresses this gap though a computer-assisted content analysis of 735 newspaper articles about punk subculture spanning three decades of publication. The results provide mixed support for both theoretical predictions, but fit neither perfectly. Overall coverage is ambivalent in tone, but becomes more positive and less radical over time. Punk takes far longer to commodify than cooptation perspectives predict. It survives positive coverage, but becomes increasingly coherent. The results call into question previous claims about media representation, highlight the need for more synthetic theories of the media's relationship to subcultures, and illustrate the utility of text-mining methods for historical youth studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Young people arriving alone in the UK due to forced migration face significant hardships including, but not limited to, their history of experiences, current and future uncertainties, and cultural differences. This paper took a critical perspective of current dominant theories of refugee youth through in-depth exploration of lived experiences of coping. Following the authors' involvement in a community youth project and consultation, five young people took part in individual interviews. The participants were living in semi-independent accommodation in or near London, and were all male, while four identified as Muslim and one as Christian. Using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), a culturally relative understanding of coping was developed. These young people were found to be taking active roles in managing their lives in the context of extensive loss, and gaining independence through connection to others. Religious practices were important, with young people making sense of their experiences through worldviews shaped by religious beliefs. While religion was described predominantly in a positive and beneficial light, an area for further investigation is the experience of religious struggle, and how this may impact experiences and coping. Implications for support for young people both from services and in communities are suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hip Hop has been shown to influence the identities of Black youth (Love. 2012. Hip Hop's Li'l Sistas Speak: Negotiating Hip Hop Identities and Politics in the New South. Peter Lang). However, for Black girls, Hip Hop has a complicated relationship as some representations of Black girls and women are objectified and hypersexualized while others reflect strength and empowerment (Richardson, 2016). The present study examines Hip Hop, Black girlhood, and identity by exploring how Hip Hop influences the gendered racial identity developmental processes of Black early adolescent girls. Further, this study explores how Black girls navigate environmental stressors such as racism, sexism, bullying, and stressful home environments using Hip Hop. Using a Black and Hip Hop feminist lens, this paper utilizes two semi-structured interviews from 6, twelve year old Black girls from the southern region of the United States and participants in a Hip Hop based after school program. Utilizing thematic analysis, the following themes were found: (1) acknowledging identities of strength, independence, and resilience in Hip Hop helps create meaning for gendered racial identities and (2) Hip Hop as a mechanism for healing and therapy against social and environmental stressors. This work follows notable Hip Hop feminist theories and praxis and provides an alternative framework for exploring intersectional identity development for Black adolescent girls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how collective capabilities at a neighbourhood level can support youth voice and empowerment. By applying Ibrahim's 3C collective capabilities model in a new context with young people, we propose that it offers a useful framework to demonstrate the existing value and extend the social justice potential of youth work practice. Our findings aim to address the concern that youth work in Scotland supports individual but not collective transformation. They offer a framework to analyse the development of collective youth capabilities, with the potential to hold policy makers to account for commitments to youth decision-making such as The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (Incorporation) (Scotland) Bill. The 3C model conceptualises three key processes in the development of collective agency as conscientisation, conciliation and collaboration. The model recognises the personal and group processes of engagement that lead to grassroots action, but also prompts analysis of power relations between grassroots actors and the institutions that govern public decision-making. Drawing on a case-study example, we highlight the ways in which youth work practice might extend its social justice potential, highlighting the need for collaboration and power sharing with policy institutions in order to support meaningful youth empowerment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]