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The pronounced increase in the number of young people struggling with mental health and wellbeing continues to puzzle researchers, politicians and practitioners. Discussions around this seem to fluctuate between individualizing understandings of the problem matter and more structural, institutional and cultural ones, calling for research exploring the role of the latter. In this paper, we present analyses of how broader societal frameworks linked to acceleration, performance and psychologization affect the wellbeing of young people. Based on a longitudinal qualitative study in Denmark with 37 young men and women between the ages of 16 and 24 struggling with wellbeing, this paper unfolds structural, cultural and institutional influences on mental health issues experienced by young people. The analyses are produced using a social-analytical lens of ‘diagnosis of the times’ to explore how young people’s subjective everyday life experiences of wellbeing and wellbeing struggles must be understood as interlinked with broader societal frameworks and expectations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how Australian youth climate activists experiencing ecoanxiety overcome obstacles and frustrations in their climate action initiatives by exercising meaningful political agency in the marketplace. It briefly outlines how their concerns about climate change inaction galvanised and continue to drive their engagement in climate politics, reflecting fears and anxieties about their own and the planet’s future. Despite this growing interest and engagement in climate politics, however, the efficacy of political consumerism as a strategy, particularly among young people, remains largely unexplored [Micheletti, M. 2010. Political Virtue and Shopping Individuals, Consumerism, and Collective Action. New York: Palgrave Macmillan], with limited research on their consumption habits and behaviours [Kyroglou, G., and M. Henn. 2022. “Young Political Consumers between the Individual and the Collective: Evidence from the UK and Greece.” Journal of Youth Studies 25 (6): 833–853. https://doi.org/10.1080/13676261.2021.2012139]. Thus, this paper investigates how young activists in the study, despite their vulnerabilities and experiences of ecoanxiety, endeavour to address structural imbalances linked to climate change through political consumerist initiatives. Utilising in-depth interviews and a photo-elicitation exercise with ten participants aged 18–35, the 2022 Australian study examines youth activism and the interplay between political consumption, views on hope and sustainable lifestyle choices. It reveals that environmentally conscious consumption patterns such as buycotting, boycotting, engaging in discursive actions, and embracing lifestyle politics that young activists engage in serve as a source of hope for them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers an exploration of how race shapes the migration trajectories and labour market experiences of Black African youth who migrated to deindustrialising Newcastle, a traditionally White working-class city. The paper draws on qualitative data gathered from interviews with 20 Black African youth (10 males and 10 females) residing in the city in 2018. Their ages ranged between 18 and 30 years and they migrated to Australia under different circumstances as students or dependents of their carers who travelled to Australia as skilled migrants or as refugees. These young people migrated to Australia from different African countries including: The Republic of Guinea-Bissau, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Burundi, Kenya, Nigeria, Liberia, Uganda and Ghana. Theorising their experiences through decolonial theory and Critical Race Theory, this paper explores how these young migrants imagined Australia pre-migration in contrast with how they experienced Australia post-migration. With this, the paper forwards the argument that pre-migration Black African youth draw on modernist notions of development associated with Whiteness to position Australia as a developed place, and they have the expectation that once in Australia these experiences of development would be available to them. Post-migration, these young people negotiate being racialised on the labour market while looking for work and working, meaning that these experiences of 'development' are not available to them. The paper concludes by reflecting on the importance of accounting for how other processes like racialisation impact on young people's experiences of migration and labour market engagement in deindustrialising localities like Newcastle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses a gap in the literature on youth justice in England and Wales by examining disaggregated patterns of juvenile court processing (i.e. proven offences) and custody. It provides new evidence to show that gendered effects are best observed over time. Looking at juvenile justice data over time allows us to see the effects of policy that are obscured in the short-term. This is especially important when considering small and specific populations, such as girls. It is often assumed that policy impacts smaller groups in the justice system (in this case, girls) in the same way as the larger group (in this case, boys), with boys' experiences representing the norm. In this paper, we call into question that assumption by considering female and male proven offences and juvenile custody over time in England and Wales and show why gendered impacts should be given proper consideration. We also examine changes in the gender gap in proven offences and juvenile custody over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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 study approached the issue of youths’ digital agency by analyzing the ways in which youths talk about their use of Internet technologies for recreational purposes outside of school. Using interview data from young people (n = 28) born in 2005 and 2006, this paper approaches youths’ speech as culturally embedded discourses that express their strategies for making their digital practices understandable and acceptable to adults. By doing so, the paper addresses the need for ongoing research that explores youths’ digital engagement with Internet technologies within a wider social context that positions them as ‘digital natives’. The study results were organized into 11 discourses under four themes: benefits, harms and risks, person-based networking, and Internet skills. The identified discourses reflect the ways in which young people articulate and negotiate their digital agency with social norms, assumptions and expectations of them as tech-savvy youths. By focusing on youths’ speech and discourses, this study advances current research on digital inequalities among young people. It also highlights the need for young people to be supported and empowered in developing skills that enable critical and safe engagements with Internet technologies. [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]

Mobility is high on the agenda in both policy and research and being mobile is a positive descriptor, not least for young people. The downside of the focus and value placed on mobility as the path to success is that 'immobility' has clear, negative associations: being immobile equals being 'stuck', a 'failure' and not being aspirational. In this paper I seek to problematise dominant representations of decisions to stay in regional and rural locations as 'immobility' that indicates a lack of aspiration or agency. More specifically, by exploring how the participants in this study negotiate belonging and aspiration in ways that are both classed and gendered, the paper contributes to more nuanced representations of the lives of young people living outside of urban spaces. The paper is based on a qualitative study of the everyday lives and imagined futures of young women with interrupted formal education, focusing on a disadvantaged location in regional Victoria, Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The focus on geographical mobility is consolidating within youth studies. Mobility now increasingly characterises contemporary youth, and seems to play a crucial role in marking the transition to adulthood, conveying the complexity of youth cultures. Moving abroad represents an opportunity that fuels the transition to adulthood, by enabling young people to experience cultural diversity, experiment with practices of cosmopolitanism and reframe their sense of belonging in terms of places, times and relationships. The paper draws on a qualitative study of young Italians who have recently moved to Berlin, and explores the relationships between the transition to adulthood, mobility, cosmopolitanism and sense of belonging. It highlights the deep structural and cultural roots of their mobility practices: mobility is present from an early age in their desires, regardless of their class of origin or educational qualifications. Their mobility practices also involve a daily reworking of their sense of belonging, which sees them navigating family and friendship bonds, and new relationships of intimacy that 'make home' and often arise in the context of a cosmopolitan generation on the move. The paper shows how these young cosmopolitans piece together this mosaic of belonging and explores its link with the coming of age process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Space and bodies have been conceptualized as products and producers of social relations. They are woven together to shape identities, belongings, and cultures. This paper links culture to the mutual construction of space and bodies to spatialize the embodied lives of rural Chinese boys. Stories from a qualitative study of two middle schools illustrate how these rural boys experience embodied exclusions during the making of a learning space. These students also redefine the dominant meaning of the school space through an embodied-discursive construction of their lives. They shift their interests away from academic learning and move to emphasize social knowledge that focuses on social relations and social abilities. However, their re-appropriation of the space is interpreted as a gendered expression of noncooperation, which leads to their further marginalization within the academic-oriented space. This analysis examines in which body and which space is the rural boys' resistance produced. Turning to spatiality and embodiment provides an alternative interpretation of the counter-school culture of rural Chinese boys, which helps us more fully recognize the need for re-placing rural bodies in the Chinese education system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we draw on the outcomes of a place-based scenario planning project in Melbourne's (AUSTRALIA) inner northern suburbs that was titled COVID-19 Recovery Scenarios for Young People in Melbourne's Inner North. As part of that project, we conducted video interviews with 53 young people during what became an extended second lockdown period in Melbourne as the city dealt with a resurgence in COVID infections. In this paper, we present the stories of three young people – Rosie, Ash and Astrid – that are illustrative and inclusive of the uncertainties and hopes that young people in Melbourne's inner north gave voice to. We situate these young people's stories in what Rosi Braidotti (2019) has identified as the convergence of the fourth industrial revolution and the sixth mass extinction. Our aim is to situate the pandemic, the social, cultural, economic and political responses to the pandemic, and the challenges and opportunities that this public health crisis produces for young people's health and well-being, their education, training and employment pathways, and their sense of belonging, connectedness, even community, in the broader, unfolding crises of global capitalism, of earth systems, and of biodiversity that is heralded by the Anthropocene. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper lays the groundwork for a research agenda on the formation of young people as workers, and therefore as subjects that are produced, valorised and devalorised within transnational movements of capital and labour. Theoretical development in the study of youth and work takes place primarily through the study of biographical movements through the labour markets of the global north. This agenda has marginalised the role that young people play in the dynamics of labour and value in changing industries, and the transformation of youth labour forces in the global South. In this context, this paper explores the valorisation and devalorisation of youth subjectivities as part of processes of labour force formation within the diverse spaces of contemporary global capitalism. The paper shows how changes in the nature of labour forces transform the nature of youth, which is characterised by new productive capacities through becoming a part of economic change. In this, the paper suggests a future agenda focused on how youth subjectivities are formed within the dynamics of labour, value and production in a global context, and therefore offers a new agenda beyond the contemporary focus on transitions in the global north. [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 focuses on the social reproductive labour of one group of young people - university students who hold hostile jobs. Engaging in paid work while studying full-time has become common for university students. Despite the desire for high-quality work-integrated learning opportunities, many working undergraduate students face precarious working conditions in service sector jobs. Full-time undergraduate students at two Canadian universities who engaged in term-time paid work participated in focus groups, life mapping, interviews, and audio diaries. The data revealed that more than half of the students experienced hostile work that is characterized by precarious conditions, intensified working pace, erratic scheduling and discrimination. We explore three kinds of social reproductive labour done by young working university students in hostile jobs – the labour of navigating their job conditions, the labour of juggling work and study, and the labour of striving for control and well-being. Our analysis suggests the need to broaden the recognition of the work of working students and to ensure better quality work for young people. Conceptually, the paper is informed by feminist political economy, particularly debates on social reproductive labour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Student employment is on the increase in many European countries. It takes many forms, from full-time employment to various types of flexible work, which involves short-term, non-standard and informal work. Despite its relevance and complexity, the connection between higher education and concurrent employment has been only partially explored in scholarly debate. This paper investigates the differing patterns of employment for university students, focusing on the role played by parental background, educational choices (i.e. field of study and residential status) and access to benefits. The analyses apply to the Italian higher education system and are based on data collected through a survey carried out among students enrolled at the University of Bologna, which has a highly developed student grant system and a large number of away from home students. Using multinomial logistic regression, the paper shows that students native of Bologna from lower socio-economic backgrounds and enrolled in the humanities and social sciences are more likely than their peers to be in employment. The findings on Right to Study are hence particularly important from a policy perspective, as they highlight the different roles that scholarships and tuition fee waivers play in employment choices whilst at university. [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]

This paper investigates unauthorized practices of sticker art that usually understood by scholars as political acts and yet narrated as apolitical by the sticker artists themselves. In order to analytically explore this contradiction, the article examines how and why representatives of youth culture (de)politicize their practices and present themselves as (non)political subject. The concept of (de)politicization is utilized as a tool enabling researchers to analyze what actions and intentions actors wish to present as claims for social change and what not, and the rationale for this. Using ethnographic data on the sticker artists’ community in St. Petersburg, Russia collected in 2016-2021, I scrutinized the nexus of the ethics, esthetics, and politics of youth culture in order to reveal how certain combinations of ethics and its visual manifestations are connected to the young people’s (de)politicization of practices in a given socio-political environment. Through the example of sticker artists, the paper discusses the alternative types of claims that do not follow the logic of resistance and shows young people’s complex work of politicization and depoliticization, which contributes to their liberation from subordination and provides them with an opportunity to live a meaningful life in their own manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper reports on an empirical study of Chinese international students' experiences of personal safety and security at universities in a UK city. After locating these concerns in relation to current political, social and epidemiological contexts, it reviews the developments that have taken place in our understanding and theorisation of 'safety' and, in particular, 'security' of international students, noting the powerful implications of Marginson's most recent conceptualisation of the issues. The paper proposes the addition of Giddens's notion of ontological security to this developed conceptual framework. Findings from the empirical study make it clear that many students in the study remain concerned over their safety and security, and feel that their concerns are not fully appreciated by the 'authorities' to whom they might be expected to turn for support. For information and support on matters of personal safety, therefore, these Chinese students' first recourse is to compatriot fellow students, reinforcing a sense of inter-dependence based on shared subjective identities. Rather than treating this 'in-community' solidarity as potentially undermining wider cross-cultural contact and communication, this paper proposes that a strengthened sense of 'ontological security' provides a foundation for cross-cultural functioning that does not entail cultural assimilation and a 'subaltern' status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research including trans-Himalayan children and youth experiences of circular migration is often amalgamated under wider migration discourses. From 22 semi-structured interviews and three focus group sessions with 22 trans-Himalayan children/youth, this paper examines intersections of embodiment, agency, and circular migration in Nepal through what this paper frames as embodied circular migration. It then delves into this by addressing the question of how young people periodically returning for work in trans-Himalayan villages contribute towards their educational security in Kathmandu. The paper outlines how young people's agency towards choosing to engage in circular migration for work, circumvented structural challenges of not having identity documents (citizenship/birth certificates) needed to legally work or pursue higher studies in Kathmandu. Secondly, circular migration patterns that young people embodied reflected spatio-temporal aspects of migration that differed from their previous generations based on relationships to education/work, citizenship, and gender expectations. Lastly, this paper found that youth circular migration was complicated by the Maoist Insurgency, which greatly (re)structured education/work, circular migration, and family relationships in the trans-Himalayan regions. Overall, this paper connects migration and youth studies by bringing embodied lived experiences of young people from a disparate region of the world to the foreground of this ethnographic study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kinmen, located in Taiwan's remote border area, has become increasingly embedded in the global economy by opening its border for trade and tourism with China. Previous rural youth studies mainly focus on decisions and experiences of migration while neglecting the experiences of those who stay in their hometown. This paper aims to fill this gap by investigating the experiences and subjectivities of young people who stay in the periphery for adulthood transitions. Based on our ethnographic data gathered in Kinmen, it shows how the enlarged employment with the new markets supported by Chinese tourists bring hope for the youth. At the same time, our findings explore how the highly dependent tourism economy and the overdependence on a single source of tourists bring them worry and uncertainty. Analyses of the paper highlight spatial elements in the economic, cultural and political processes of structuring young people's lives and subjectivities under globalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At first glance, the physical design of a setting ostensibly seems routine and neutral. However, it tends to powerfully govern who goes where and who can access certain places. Much of the literature on exclusion within education settings often overlook this significance. This paper therefore seeks to rectify this by examining exclusion by design and allocation of physical space at The Site, a fictional name used for the large general further education (FE) college in England's East Region. Adopting a case study approach over two academic years (2013–2015), qualitative research was undertaken with seven tutors and twenty-six so-called NEET and disengaged youth. Drawing on Wacquant's theoretical concept of the ghetto, my key findings demonstrated territorial exclusion by design: this employability course was delivered in Q-Block, a temporary prefabricated building positioned out of sight and primarily used to deliver programmes for disabled, mature and disengaged youth on the fringes of education. This article concludes that, whilst existing research on policy and outcomes is useful in understanding the negative educational outcomes of stigmatised youth, a sharper focus is needed on wider social processes and exclusionary continuities in seeking to elucidate how governance processes contribute to their social and spatial marginalisation in education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Young people's everyday lives are not just social and cultural environments, but also political arenas (Kallio and Häkli. 2011. 'Are there politics in childhood?' (Space & Polity 15 (1): 21–34, 2). A methodological approach is proposed that emphasizes young people's knowledge, while accepting the power and privilege of the researcher. By way of illustration, this paper demonstrates how an approach to co-creation of the method, inspired by the idea of a remix or a bricolage, can provide creative tasks as stimuli for the discussion of politics but also legitimizing mechanisms for young expertise and co-creation in the research site itself as a political arena. Specifically, this paper examines how young participants responded to a digital photography task by subverting the task itself, a process which allowed them to remix the model, making them simultaneously in control of the task and dependent upon it. This complex outcome was constructive as a way to stimulate participants as they explored their everyday lives as political arenas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Youth political disengagement continues to be a major issue facing contemporary democracies that needs to be better understood. There is an existing literature on what determines youth participation in terms of socio-demographic factors, however, scholars have not given much consideration to the macro-level determinants. In this paper, I outline an empirical analysis of what determines political participation among young people using the Eurobarometer 375 survey data from 28 European Union countries. I argue that while socio-demographic factors are crucial for youth political participation, context matters in shaping levels of political participation among young people. The results from the logistic regression analyses indicate that democratic maturity influences patterns of political participation among young people in the EU. The results show that youth engagement in different modes of political participation varies significantly across distinctive democracies, where individuals situated in established EU democracies are more likely to be politically active. The findings raise fresh concerns about existing levels of young people's engagement in politics in advanced and new democracies. This paper also contributes to the comparative research on young people's participation in politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

School-based mentoring (SBM) programs are seen as a way of preventing the disengagement of young people from education. However, existing research points to a complex relationship between SBM programs and improved engagement outcomes. There is therefore a need for greater understanding of the pathways through which SBM leads to outcomes for young people. This paper addresses this complexity, examining the nuanced ways in which SBM may lead to positive outcomes for young people. Drawing on the qualitative perspectives of 15 young people engaged in an Australian SBM program, the findings point to two types of pathways to outcomes. First, direct pathways go to the heart of young people's engagement, by prioritizing educational performance and achievement as the focus of the mentoring relationship. Second, holistic pathways see mentors seeking to influence young people's broader thinking about the value of education, their wellbeing and their communication skills, to in turn address issues that may otherwise present barriers to young people's engagement. The paper discusses the policy implications of the findings. It highlights the importance of acknowledging and measuring incremental steps to improved educational engagement, in a context of young people experiencing non-linear and complex pathways to engagement outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Youth can be described as a transitional phase for the formation of identity. As young people often hold taken-for-granted assumptions regarding their future, disability may pose a challenge for their identity development. This paper analyses the retrospectively written autobiographical narratives by three young women who became disabled during their adolescence. The structure of the narratives is approached with sociologist Arthur Frank's typology of illness narratives and identity through data-driven content analysis. This paper suggests that chaotic stories may hinder the development of identity, as the identity is described as delayed, hidden, silenced or neglected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent decades have seen important changes in education to work transitions in the UK. For secondary and further education leavers there are extensive challenges in accessing jobs with prospects. Recently, policy makers have renewed their focus on this middle grouping who are not bound for HE or NEET. However, there is a relative paucity of research into the experiences of these young people and surprisingly little youth researcher engagement with vocational pathways and their framing in policy. The paper interrogates changing experiences and opportunity 'in the middle' and linked policy framings and interventions. Policy remains framed in individualising terms which focus on young people's capacities and positions them, and represents their interests, in very specific ways. School mediated employer engagement is an interesting exemplar here, and is contrasted with alternative interventions which seek to restructure opportunities more fundamentally. The paper argues for a new agenda for youth research which would hold a mirror to experiences in the middle, critically interrogate assumptions embedded in policy and practice and enhance understanding of differentiated pathways and prospects for young people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adult care leavers who have spent time in 'out-of-home care' during childhood face many educational challenges. While some care leavers may manage to adhere to 'normal' timelines within their educational progression, others may experience delays in their educational journey or a longer-term 'resignation' from education during their care/post-care journey. In this paper, we offer a fuller understanding of what drives underachievement in this population, as well as what helps care leavers to re-engage with education. Using a case study approach, we explore the potential of the life course principle 'linked lives' for better understanding barriers to re-engagement and the processes through which key actors may promote the (re)development of learner identity, and educational re-engagement among adult care leavers, over time. We draw on analysis of data from two studies of positive educational outcomes for adult care leavers - one in education, one in the workplace. Using a linked lives lens, this theoretically-informed paper presents the concepts of support, learner identity, and educational memories as candidates for deepening our understanding of educational re-engagement of care leavers – and comparable populations facing educational challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Foregrounding the voices of young women in a deprived coastal context in the UK, this paper explores the intersection of place, class, gender and marginalisation. Drawing upon participatory qualitative research, the paper focuses on the following key themes: (1) how young women navigate perceptions of ‘risk’ through the everyday realities of the locale, (2) experiences of sexual violence and abuse (3) and finally, how normative depictions of ‘risky behaviour’ correspond to the accounts of women’s (sexual) agency. By rooting the analysis of place-based inequalities through a gendered lens, the findings help illuminate the complex relationship between structural context and the regulation of gender and sexuality. The paper also draws attention to the structural factors that reproduce class-based stigma for people who are deemed ‘at risk’ in places that are characterised as ‘left behind’. In doing so, the paper provides alternative agendas for policy and practice that aim to support young women who experience place-based marginalisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we begin to explore the connections between Indigenous LGBTIQSB+ young people’s intersecting identities and their everyday practices of constructing viable alternative lives in settler-colonial Australia. Drawing upon a series of in-depth narrative interviews and workshops with Indigenous LGBTIQSB+ young people that occurred across a four-year period (2019–2022), the paper discusses the core ways in which Indigenous LGBTIQSB+ young people are actively engaged in collective and individual processes of remaking their lifeworlds in efforts to realise viable socially inclusive and just communities of belonging and welcome. The article first briefly introduces key concepts and summarises the broader concerns of the young people involved in the research, as articulated during in-depth narrative interviews. The young people identify key areas they believe need to be seriously taken up for consideration in building alternative Indigenous LGBTIQSB+ futures. Young people collectively articulated these as enabling alternative futures of pleasure and desire, creating opportunities for gender, sex and sexuality education and, finally, collectively creating safe spaces for Indigenous LGBTIQSB+ gathering, welcoming and belonging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper rejects the cases made in recent volumes of this journal for incorporating political economy into youth studies. A brief review of young people's transitions from education into employment in the UK during and following the 2020 and 2021 lockdowns shows how youth transitions research engages routinely with changes and continuities in politics, state policies, the economy and labour markets. It is argued that the main weaknesses in current transitions research arise from our lack of an up-to-date class scheme within which to locate subjects' childhood origins and adult destinations. However, the paper illustrates how young researchers occupy a privileged position from which to identify emerging, consolidating and declining social classes. The conclusion is that youth studies must necessarily foreground young people, that it must engage with the outcomes of political and economic processes but has no need to 'dig deeper' into political economy for alleged underlying root causes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The political participation of youth is growing in importance with the proliferation of youth parliaments, councils, and online campaigning. Yet, these sites are not accessible to all youth, especially those from minority, or refugee communities. Activism by these types of youth is often denounced or reduced to dehumanising narratives of their experiences. This paper aims to explore alternative spaces for and political participation of refugees through participatory art and exhibition spaces, which are critical for devising policies for pre-emptive peacebuilding and challenging potential intercommunal conflict. In this paper, we draw on a Photovoice project in Istanbul, Johannesburg and a refugee settlement in South-West Uganda (Oruchinga) that brought youth from FDPs and host communities together to reflect on their everyday experiences. All these sites are marked by increasing anti-refugee sentiments and xenophobia, where the voices of refugees are often denied and misinterpreted, making them compelling cases to elaborate on alternative participation methods and spaces for the political participation of refugees. The paper engages with the idea of epistemic (in)justice and resistance as an overarching condition to explore how the youth developed collective political voices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholarship on Muslim youth is increasingly recognising the different ways they negotiate fluid, hybrid and individualised identities alongside minoritised identities that stem from a politics of mis-recognition. However, less attention has been directed towards understanding how these seemingly contradictory processes might simultaneously arise within culturally diverse societies that have defined frameworks for managing diversity. Drawing on qualitative data from a larger comparative international study on Islamic religiosity in the West, this paper suggests that for the Australian Muslim youth studied, a neo-liberal dictum of self-responsibility pervaded individualised attempts to move beyond the other-ing effects of mis-recognition. The paper argues that while these individualised responses to oppression enabled young Muslims to transcend othering discourses to an extent, they also reflect the emergence of a less visible form of surveillance in the form of self-policing. This paper explores this link by considering Ghassan Hage's concept of mis-interpellation, Ulrich Beck's writings on religious individualisation, and Lori Beaman's concept of deep equality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers across an array of disciplines are focused on measuring the potential of specially designed programs – sport, movement, and/or arts-based – for supporting the recovery of youth in contexts of conflict and disaster. Yet, few such projects engage youth directly to capture their experiences of trauma and recovery, and too many continue to assume youth are 'victims' requiring 'our' (adult-designed) versions of support. This paper seeks to move scholarship, policy and practice beyond the 'deficit model' by providing space for local voices and prioritizing the creative grassroots strategies devised by youth to support their own recovery. Drawing upon three case studies and a multi-method approach (interviews with digital ethnography) it reveals the social and cultural benefits of grassroots informal sporting activities, particularly in providing youth with opportunities for valued forms of physical self-expression and escapism, social connectedness, and possibilities to redefine physical and emotional geographies. In so doing, this paper reveals informal sports as critical resources taken up by youth within situations and systems where their specific needs are too often marginalized. It also highlights the opportunities in alternative methodologies – i.e. longitudinal research, sustained digital observations – for building relationships and amplifying the voices of youth in conflict and post-disaster geographies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper calls for renewed consideration of the way research subjects are selected in the study of subcultures. All too often, subcultural researchers limit themselves to the use of one or two of the orthodox sampling designs, such as 'convenience sampling' (selecting subjects who are readily available) or 'chain referral sampling' (selecting a readily available subject who refers the researcher to other subjects). While these designs certainly have their merits, especially in the early research phase of negotiating access and acceptance, they may impede insight into the diversity that exists within subcultural groups. Based on ethnographic fieldwork among punks and graffiti writers, this paper introduces a supplementary design, that of 'negative chain referral sampling', which consists of using group members' categorisations of subcultural anomalies as an opening to explore subcultural variation and tensions. This design is one that flips the logic of conventional chain referral sampling: if we are encouraged not to speak to certain subjects, for instance, due to their lack of authenticity or status, this forms the motivation for doing exactly that. Closer examination of subcultural anomalies may deepen our understanding of the boundary work, identity-making and social exclusion that occurs in all subcultural groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainable Development Goal 8, Target 8.6, represents a direct commitment to improving the dramatic labour market situation of young people by substantially reducing the proportion of young people Not in Employment, Education or Training (NEET) by 2020. This deadline has now passed, and while progress has been made in most EU countries, the situation of young people categorized as NEET in Sub-Saharan Africa has worsened over the past ten years. In this paper, we review the existing literature on youth employment in Africa and analyse the reasons for stalled progress. We debunk five myths of youth unemployment and underemployment, which have hampered understanding and progress. These are that: (1) education and training systems are defective, (2) youth micro-entrepreneurship and self-employment offer a panacea, (3) the informal sector is part of the problem and not part of the solution, (4) care work equates to inactivity, and (5) the agricultural sector has little potential for job creation. We recommend more research on the supply side of the African labour markets to provide a more nuanced understanding of the structural barriers to youth market entry and call for a concerted international effort to battle the youth employment crisis through job creation. [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]

Criminally exploited young people are often found with tangible evidence of criminality, challenging traditional notions of the victim offender dichotomy. This paper presents criminally exploited young people’s narratives regarding their lived experiences in Wales. It offers a nuanced perspective of victimhood by drawing on their personal accounts of how they were offered a false sense of hope by individuals who manipulated their unmet needs and limited resources to garner their trust. Young people appeared resigned to exploitative relationships and violence because of their powerlessness and lack of opportunities but rationalised their involvement rather than acknowledging themselves as victims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Perfectionism has been a popular topic of interest in psychological research over the last three decades, with research focusing on youth emerging in the early 2000s. However, the term ‘perfectionism’ is rarely used outside of a psychological framework. Despite lexical differences, girlhood studies researchers have employed a sociocultural lens to study ‘supergirls’: teenage girls who strive to have it all, at all costs. Although these literatures seem to explore a similar phenomenon, they tend to remain disparate. Consequently, this paper argues for the utility of a multidisciplinary framework for studying youth perfectionism to bridge these two seemingly opposite, yet mutually informing, literatures. First, disciplinary understandings of youth who strive for perfection in psychology and girlhood studies, respectively, are summarized. In the following section, a multidisciplinary reading of the extant literature is applied to offer a nuanced account of who a teenage perfectionist may be and how perfectionism might manifest among diverse youth. This article concludes with a call for researchers from both psychological and sociocultural backgrounds to embrace a multidisciplinary framework for research with perfectionistic youth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Young people in residential alcohol and other drug (AOD) services build meaningful relationships with workers during their stays. In this paper we use an ethics of care framework to explore what young people said about care, how it was delivered and what they valued about it. Drawing on three waves of longitudinal interviews conducted with 38 young people over 12 months, we discuss our findings according to two overarching themes – opportunities enabled by care and limits to care. Young people’s descriptions highlight the potential for care to challenge stigma, enhance self-worth and wellbeing, enable respectful staff-client relationships, and foster positive relationships crucial for maintaining engagement. At the same time, young people described challenges around providing both individual and collective care, coproducing care in structured environments, and facilitating care as young people transition out of residential services. These findings shed light on the delicate balance between care provision and contextual constraints within AOD settings. This emphasises the need for ethical relationships built on clear communication, mutual respect, and ongoing forms of care. Recognising the value of care work, especially in transitions out of acute treatment services, is essential for reshaping funding approaches to prioritise meaningful and continuing care. [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]

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]

The housing independence of young adults has become more complex and uncertain in Europe over the last decades. Previous research suggests that patterns of independent living and housing demand have become more differentiated and socially stratified, especially since the Great Financial Crisis (GFC). The decline in homeownership and the availability of social housing has been accompanied by an increase in private renting and shared accommodation. Moreover, young adults have increasingly relied on their parents for both material and non material support to overcome constraints and achieve independent living. This paper examines how the relationship between parental background and both young adults' leaving home, and their first housing tenure changed during the GFC in different European housing contexts. Using longitudinal data from EU-SILC (2008–2018), the results show that parental background still plays a significant stratifying role in the housing independence of young adults from the pre – to the post-crisis period, particularly in terms of first tenure status rather than home-leaving. The influence of the housing context on both housing market opportunities and the role of parents in young adults' independence shapes the shift from co-residence with parents to living independently in either homeownership or rented accommodation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital sharing of sexually explicit imagery is a social and emotional phenomenon with at least three actors: A sender of an intimate image who is sexting with a consensual receiver – and a third party, who might non-consensually view the image later. In this paper, third parties are conceptualized as bystanders and it is analysed first, how non-consensual sharing makes the bystanders feel and secondly, how sexters feel about the potential bystanders. Data consists of 25 interviews with 18–25-year old Danes, who had experiences with sending, receiving and viewing intimate images digitally. Their narratives are analysed using Arlie Hochschild's sociology of emotions to understand how young adults work with changing and expressing emotions in digital intimacy. Findings suggest that bystanders experience non-consensual sharing situations as awkward, uncomfortable and ethically problematic 'oversharing'. Rather than intervening, bystanders manage their conflicting feelings by resorting to 'surface acting'. In sexting, 'deep acting' and cropping technologies are used to reduce the emotional harm of bystander viewing. The role of bystanders constitutes an important research gap in relation to the affective complexities of sexual image exchange. The paper's findings are applied in a critical discussion of campaigns advising young people to 'sext safe' and 'speak-up'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The last decades have seen an increase in mental health problems among young people in Western countries; this has been tied to increasing educational achievement pressure and body dissatisfaction. The purpose of this paper is to explore how young people talk about reaching educational and body ideals, whether there are shared cultural imperatives underlying youths' drive to reach educational goals and body ideals, and how such imperatives relate to young people's mental health. Based on interviews with 15–18-year-old boys and girls (n=53), this paper identifies a cultural imperative permeating boys' and girls' talk about how they work towards their educational aims and their ideal body: with duty, grit and self-discipline. What also unites the fields of educational achievement and body ideals is that the qualities deemed necessary to achieve their goals in either field seem to also be potentially harmful to some young people's mental health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Africa is one of the most vulnerable continents to climate change (CC), warming at 'double the global average rate'. The southern African region is already a CC hotspot with climate variability exposing stark societal and biophysical ecosystem vulnerabilities. South African and southern African youth are beginning to claim their place at various CC negotiation tables adding to the voices of government and various civil society groups. In this paper, written by a group of youth activists, civil society organisation leaders, educators and climate scientists, we track the journey that a group of young change-makers and local government officials (in the age range 15–24) have taken in securing a seat at the policy table. The challenges, caveats and course corrections that have been taken in the Johannesburg Youth Climate Action Plan (YCAP) process and the wider country, are interrogated. This YCAP Johannesburg experiment provides a useful learning exercise for subsequent CC policy and practice engagements in the country and elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates young people’s mobile practices of ‘making do’ as they negotiate work, study and play in the home during the COVID-19 pandemic. Focusing on Singapore, and drawing on original empirical data derived from online journaling by twenty participants, the paper elaborates on their practices of ‘making do’ when working from home. Using an interdisciplinary approach spanning youth, cultural and architectural studies, the paper considers new formations and appropriations of domestic time and space. Critically situating the home as a hybrid domestic characterised by its porous public-private space and multiple-disjunctive time, ‘making do’ is evident in a range of spatial tactics: from occupying temporary mobile spaces to altering physical spaces with objects and devices, to time-sharing, to developing practices that affirm and contest ascribed social roles. Through switching objects and roles in the hybrid domestic home, our study participants not only created new mobilities within the immobile constraints of the pandemic home, they also transformed the spatial and temporal norms of study, work and play. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we draw on the findings on teens' transmedia practices from the research project Transmedia Literacy carried out in eight countries from Europe, Latin America and Australia between 2015 and 2018. An ethnographic approach that combined different research methods, including questionnaires, participatory-creative workshops, interviews, media diaries and online community observation, was used to explore what teens are doing with media. In this article we focus on how teens perform their digital identity on Instagram. This social network is notably popular among young people, and the practice of taking, editing, selecting, hiding and sharing photos and videos through it is part of teenagers' everyday lives and online interactions. We argue that this curating process encompasses several aspects that are central to teenagers creating a digital persona on Instagram, including content creation, validation through 'likes' and 'followers' and socio-technical automation. This curation can lead in certain profiles to a professionalized use of the platform, so that the self becomes an object of marketing and promotion for career and business purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding what youth aspire is widely considered to be a critical step towards recognizing further changes in societies. This article explores young people's aspirations, including personal and collective desires, in a less-studied social setting, Yazd in Iran. This paper also examines the differentiating roles of gender and family income for the importance and chance of accomplishment attached to these ambitions. The data for this study comes from an initial explanatory phase followed by a survey comprising 2700 youth in Yazd. Our findings suggest that marriage-based and political aspirations are the most and least important dimensions, respectively. We also found that the importance given to aspirations and chance of their realization are generally, but not consistently, different in terms of gender and family income. Accordingly, young women, compared to young men, commonly attended more to their ambitions but perceived them as less reachable. In most cases, youth from low-income families considered their desires less accessible than others. Drawing an importance-expectation matrix for each gender group, 'having a healthy body and soul in aging' was introduced as a critical aspiration with the widest gap. We discuss the results and implications vis-à-vis contextual and structural conditions in which the youth are embedded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]