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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 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]

This paper analyses the ‘gangster’ subculture of boys aged 15–18 years in a secure care unit for young offenders in Denmark. By drawing on a specific case from a 2-month field study, the paper demonstrates how three boys teach a new boy to become a ‘real gangster’. This learning process not only reveals central elements in what constitutes the ‘gangster subculture’ in the secure care unit but also shows constituents of the subculture in which the boys live their everyday lives outside secure care. Learning to be a ‘gangster’ involves both short- and long-term learning processes. The short-term process is closely linked to learning the specific ‘gangster style’. The long-term learning is closely connected to experiences of growing up in areas of ‘advanced marginality’ and life on the streets celebrating values of respect, loyalty and crime, all subcultural values formed by the intersections of class, ethnicity and gender. The paper suggests that understanding the ‘gangster’ subculture calls for taking its cultural expressions seriously in terms of the intersection of class, ethnicity and gender formed in everyday practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the rejection of subcultural collectivity by postmodern scholars in the field of youth studies. The fluidity of neo-tribes does not fully reflect the lived experiences of many young people today whose subcultural being is neither transient nor irrelevant. Moving away from the notion of spectacular subcultures, this paper identifies cultural knowledge and creative engagement as significant factors in youth group affiliations. This inevitably causes problems for the researcher as such identifiers of subcultural belonging are almost impossible for an 'outsider' to appreciate. An attempt is made to incorporate the term subculture back into academic discourse whilst also investigating aspects of agency within hip-hop and grime cultures. Qualitative research was undertaken in five sites in and around the south-east of England. This work identified variations within a cultural form that is often homogenised by scholars. Distinctions are made between the relative passivity of consumers of youth culture, here termed 'peripherals', and those at the centre of their localised musical scenes. The 'purists', as they are identified in this paper, exert significant degrees of autonomy over their cultural participation and openly reject mainstream sensibilities in favour of claiming a sense of ownership and connection to their personalised variant of this globalised form. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Folk devils have to date been significantly overlooked in previous studies of moral panics. While several studies have called attention to this problematic (Thornton and McRobbie 1995, De Young 2004, Lumsden 2009), no specific theoretical framework has been proposed for reading this dimension of a moral panic. This paper argues that a moral panic erupted over the gothic subculture following the horrific Columbine High School massacre of 20 April 1999. This paper subsequently offers a theoretical model for understanding how goths as folk devils reacted to their representation by the mainstream news media after this tragic event. Until the early 2000s very little scholarship had been produced on the gothic subculture. Instead researchers interested in the study of youth chose to focus on other subcultures, such as punk and club cultures. Although studies by Hodkinson (2002) and Brill (2008) have contributed comprehensive insights about goth to youth and subcultural studies, the subject of how goths have been the subject of moral panics has not been addressed in significant detail. This paper seeks to address this neglect, while also providing researchers interested in moral panics and youth culture a conceptual framework for better understanding folk devil reactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental policies and practices have maintained a high status internationally, nationally and locally, but limited literature relates to the perspective of social disadvantage in England, with a particular under-representation of young people. The research presented in this paper has been driven by the supposition that a lack of knowledge and research into the views of socially deprived young people, and a lack of engagement with them at a policy level perpetuates the notion that such groups not only have a lack of environmental concern, but may also be seen to be part of the problem. However, exploring the local environmental comprehension of young people allows the assessment of their potential value in local decision-making processes. This research is of continuing relevance, as environmental issues are increasingly highlighted as a major concern for those who experience social disadvantage. This paper presents the findings of a research project conducted in 2008 with socially disadvantaged young people in a youth club setting and makes use of environmental images based on a range of themes. The core aims of this paper are to increase understanding about the environmental views, concerns and knowledge of socially disadvantaged young people, to contrast this understanding with existing evidence relating to socially disadvantaged adults, and then to consider any implications for participation strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to explore the complexities involved in young people's attempts to move away from criminal activity. This paper draws on qualitative data from a study that aimed to identify how young people negotiate transitions away from offending. The paper argues that an analysis of the subtle shifts in young people's perceptions and interpretations of their situation sheds light on the complex nature of desisting from crime. To do so, the paper focuses on the role of relevance in order to explore how these subtle shifts in thinking enable young people to reinterpret their lives and move towards desistance. By way of undertaking this analysis, this paper draws on Alfred Schutz's phenomenological approach to the nature of relevance to explore how young people shift between their known world of 'doing crime' and an unknown world of being 'straight and legitimate'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper challenges the orientations and assumptions underpinning policies for disadvantaged young people (DYP) in Australia. We argue that policy interventions for young people generally exhibit a binary divide, some policies fostering leadership and creative endeavours targeted on 'high-functioning' young people, especially within educational and arts milieus, while other policies, focusing on DYP, take a remedial orientation. The basis for this binary divide is, we argue, flawed social constructions of young people, constructions that pathologise or privilege behaviours, attitudes and lifestyles. The consequences for DYP are that remedial policies, designed to get and keep young people 'on track', are often ignoring deeper developmental needs. Using recent research findings from arts programmes for young people, the paper argues for a broader policy orientation, including developmental needs, to strengthen remedial policies and programmes and open the potential for pathways to resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 'Rust Belt' city of Geelong in Victoria, Australia, discourses of young people's enterprise and innovation provide a counter-narrative to the prevailing material and symbolic consequences of industrial decline, job losses, and the growing insecurity of employment and income. GT Magazine is a weekly, large circulation magazine in Geelong with a significant focus on the activities and aspirations of enterprising young people. In this paper, we examine, by utilising techniques of content analysis and discourse analysis, the particular ways in which young people's innovation and enterprise are framed and enacted in GT Magazine. Our analysis reveals that 'youth' and 'enterprise' are, in GT Magazine, given an embodied form that is powerfully marked by aestheticised, normalised enactments of gender, class and race. In doing this work, we make productive contributions to three key themes in contemporary youth studies: new work orders and the youthful self as enterprise; the gendered and aesthetic dimensions of affective labour in these new work orders; and the emerging spatial turn to examine young people's embodied, place-based experiences of employment and enterprise. We seek to make problematic the sense that solutions to multiple disruptions and crises in capitalism and the environment are to be found in young people's enterprise. Particularly when that enterprise is given form in ways that are aestheticised, gendered, classed, individualised and responsibilised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper reports on a mixed methods study that sought to analyse determinants of youth labour market and educational disengagement in Peru. It begins by questioning the widespread focus on NEET – youth not in employment, education or training – as a measure of youth vulnerability in countries with extensive informal labour markets where labour precarity can be as problematic as unemployment for young people's futures. A broader category of 'urban vulnerable' youth, including both NEET and precarious workers, is proposed and used as the basis for analysing the factors that influence young people's trajectories. Key factors and shocks in youth trajectories are identified through qualitative life histories, and are tested using cross-section and panel survey data. Findings from the study have implications for the analysis of youth labour market vulnerability in the Global South, as well as for the policies that seek to address this problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on youth homelessness has documented the unique and complex ways that youth relate to one another on the street and engage with their social environments. This work draws from a varied set of concepts, including concepts from subcultural theory, the youth geographies literature, and Bourdieu's practice theory. However, little work to date considers how to integrate these different conceptualizations and perspectives on how young people experiencing homelessness engage culture and organize themselves socially in the course of their time on the street. This paper explores this question by using interviews and fieldwork with a group of 39 homeless and street-involved young people in Canada. Through this analysis, I outline a multilayered and practice focused perspective that focuses on the active way that young people engage and navigate the diverse social and cultural landscapes of street life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is burgeoning literature on cities that host major cultural events. However, there is surprisingly very little empirical research focusing specifically on young people and cities of culture, so we have limited knowledge in terms of how young people actually experience and interpret cultural events. Given this, we offer an important and timely contribution to such debates. Our spatial focus is Derry/Londonderry (D/L) in Northern Ireland. During 2013 D/L was the UK’s inaugural City of Culture (CoC). The bid document and legacy plans for CoC stated that young people would be ‘cultural assets’ during 2013 and the ‘ultimate beneficiaries’ of the CoC legacy [Derry City Council 2010.Cracking the Code. City of Culture 2013. Derry: Derry City Council, 2013a.Our Legacy Promise. Building on the Success of 2013. Derry: Derry City Council, 2013b.Legacy Plan 2013–2023. Derry: Derry City Council]. This paper unpacks and analyses the extent to which young people in D/L related to and engaged with CoC and, arguably more importantly, how CoC affected their plans and aspirations for the future. Our research problematises the claim that young people were the ‘ultimate beneficiaries’ of CoC; most strikingly, it shows that young people, despite offering very positive views, both expect and desire to live in cities other than D/L. As such, the debilitating long-standing trend ofeconomic migrationof young people will continue raising important issues for local stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper weighs in on discussions contemplating the current state of arts programing targeting ‘at risk’ youth as handmaiden to a strategic neoliberal cosmopolitanism. I examine a City of Toronto, Canada, youth governance initiative that sought to link graffiti abatement, neighborhood beautification and gentrification through mural production, and ‘at risk’ youth civic engagement and crime prevention. While these coordinates were designed to harness racialised youth within a matrix of disciplinary practices concerned with risk mediation and economic productivity, program participants and youth workers drew from the aesthetics of multiculturalism as resource to navigate the governance dictates of the Grafitti Transformation Project. I focus on one particular incident that unfolded over a week-long period at a youth serving agency located in one of Toronto’s designated ‘Priority Neighbourhoods’. The incident illustrates in granular detail a politics of multicultural citizenship and belonging articulating at the limits of what was conceived for the project. I then consider analytical and practice lessons to be learned about the political aesthetics and ‘cultures of youth praxis’ by examining the workings of power leveled in such moments of tension, and by assessing the contours of an alternative multicultural sensibility forwarded when disruption occurs. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Debates concerning hip-hop have tended to centre on controversy. For example, critics of hip-hop have focused on its association with bads such as violence, misogyny and drug use, gangsta culture, and the vandalism associated with graffiti art, while hip-hop's defenders have celebrated the enactment of goods such as youth expression and empowerment. Increasingly, practitioners and educators have sought to mobilise particular forms or activities of hip-hop in order to draw on the potential of hip-hop in youth work. This article draws on an ethnographic study that explored how hiphop activities were produced across a range of youth work sites in Christchurch, New Zealand. Using Actor-Network Theory (ANT) the study traced how hip-hop controversies were negotiated within youth work sites of practice, illustrating the collective editing work that was undertaken in order to handle these controversies (bads). The ANT approach to consider what is sometimes referred to as the 'mess' of social reality [Law 2004, 230 After Method: Mess in Social Science Research. New York: Routledge] was well suited to the study's goal of understanding the complexities involved in using and assembling hip-hop in youth work contexts. This paper provides 'snapshots' of the study's findings, to reveal the collective work in the editing of hip-hop music to avoid hip-hop bads. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how much we can learn about youth music and style groupings from the detail of the spectacular content and practices which most obviously distinguish such groups. First, I consider an apparent revival in theoretically driven interpretations of subcultural style, music and content in recent work on the goth scene, arguing that, for all their sophistication, such studies seem liable to reproduce some of the difficulties of earlier studies of spectacular symbolic meanings unless their findings are connected with other kinds of evidence. The paper then examines recent calls for greater focus on the minutiae of participants' sensory experience of distinct subcultural practices. I discuss case studies of promising work in the area, while emphasising the need to avoid reducing subcultures to the specificities of selected spectacular experience. Drawing the two parts together, 1 suggest many elements of subcultures are neither imprinted in spectacular sounds and texts nor discernable from the immediate sensations spectacular practices give rise to. In order to enhance our overall understanding it is important, therefore, that our examination of the distinct and extra-ordinary features of subcultures is contextualised in relation to broader understandings of a range of other properties and patterns which may be less distinct, unique or extra-ordinary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the aspirations of a group of young women in a remote Aboriginal community in the Northern Territory of Australia. It examines how their hopes and expectations are influenced by the reality of their everyday lives and the extent to which they are able to influence the course of their lives and become agents for change in their own communities. As with adolescents in lower socio-economic groups, the majority of young women in River Town have not developed life goals or clear strategies of how to achieve these goals. The choices that young women have are constrained by their narrow range of experience, which is characterized by early pregnancies and the potential threat of male violence. However, young women have articulated specific domains where they are able to control and structure their lives. This paper discusses the experiences of young women in this remote Aboriginal community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the manner in which web-based punk subcultural micro-media utilized the forum of the album critique in discursively negating the 'authenticity' of the American punk act Against Me! following their decision to sign with the major Sire record label. Conceptualizing punk subcultural collectivities as Bourdieuian 'fields' of consumption, a discourse analysis methodology is utilized to demonstrate that the impetus of the band's emergent stigmatization as 'sell-outs' stems less from anxieties surrounding punk's mainstream co-optation than the processes through which subcultural knowledge producers strive to authenticate proper conventions of taste - and distaste - in accordance with a symbolic economy of 'subcultural capital.' This paper also considers the manner in which Against Me!'s debut album with the Sire label strove to initiate a dialog critiquing the contemporary utility of punk subcultural conventions of proper artistic production. Demonstrating how this initiative contributed to differential accounts of the band's authenticity within the oppositional fields of 'restricted' and 'large scale' knowledge production, I argue that this case study reinforces Bourdieu's notions regarding the overarching function of authenticity claims within the wider field of cultural production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores normalised drug use as an aspect of young people's leisure careers. Qualitative data generated by 24 single-sex focus groups with 153 (85 males; 68 females) 15-16-year-olds attending seven schools in north-west England and north-east Wales revealed that young people's drug use tended to be both heterogeneous and situation specific. Indeed, rather than being actively sought out, 15-16-year-olds' drug use was often characterised by propinquity - either in terms of place (e.g. parties), relationships (in particular, friends and peers), similarities of outlook and style (e.g. engagement in drug-oriented leisure) and time (in the sense of age cohorts) - and by sociability - especially as a means of enhancing friendships - as well as a search for pleasurable excitement in the company of others. Thus, the paper concludes that the illicit use of drugs by 15-16-year-olds can only be meaningfully understood when viewed in light of these leisure preferences that are among the social processes through which drug use can become normalised in some young people's leisure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper revisits the work on youth cultures and subcultures that emerged from Birmingham's Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (hereafter CCCS) during the 1970s. I engage with a number of recent critiques of the 'youth sub/cultures project', including Thornton's influential work on rave and club cultures and its troubled engagement with class. I argue that the focus of the youth sub/cultures project on mediated cultural practices through which young people constitute themselves and their (gendered, classed and racialised) positions remains of value, especially the emphasis on a 'symptomatic reading' that locates these processes in a 'conjunctural analysis'. I end by exploring the legacy of this project for understanding youth, class and culture in contemporary late modern society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been much debate about the study of British youth cultures, often involving the analysis and critique of two dominant theoretical frameworks: the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) 'subcultural' position and the 'post-subcultural' position. This paper, will engage in this debate by offering an alternative set of arguments, drawing attention to the early empirical contribution made by the Chicago school of sociology to the study of youth, and the inadvertent role some of their work played in developing the first model of 'subculture'. To demonstrate this, the work of Cressey (1932), who explored the 'social world' of young female taxi-hall dancers, will be considered, and in highlighting its relevance to the study of contemporary youth cultures, his work will be discussed in relation to a recent ethnography of lap dancing in which a hierarchical occupational subculture of dancers has been identified. Both Cressey's (1932) 'social world' of taxi dancers and the subculture of the contemporary lap dancers, share similar features that define the unique, enclosed worlds of which each respective group is part. By drawing on Cressey (1932) and this recent study of lap dancers, not only are mainstream notions of youth culture questioned, but it is suggested that modes of work, as well as leisure, may hold 'cultural' significance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of a 'death' of class in popular and policy discourse, this paper argues that social class is still a major force at work in young people's lives, particularly in the context of schooling. We argue that young people's subcultural groups are classed, in the way in which they are constructed in discourse. Drawing on a data set of 68 interviews with white, middle-class young people in three different cities in England, we argue that class can be seen and felt in young people's constructions of the 'chav', where white, working-class young people's ways of being and doing in the context of schooling, stand in stark contrast to the normative middle-class subject, and become pathologized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The local neighbourhood has an enduring significance for British urban, working-class youth in relation to their transitions, cultures and leisure practices. This paper examines these interrelated issues by drawing upon ethnographic research undertaken in 'Manor', a deprived, multi-ethnic East London neighbourhood. It explores the transitions taken by black, white and mixed-parentage young males (and some of their female peers), transitions that were formed by the interaction of paid work opportunities with youth cultures and leisure practices ('road' and 'grafter' cultures), ethnicity, gender and social networks. Even within a single deprived and stigmatized neighbourhood such as Manor, a number of transitions could be identified. These include 'grafting' at manual, masculine 'dirty work' in the construction industry; going to college allied to 'clean', service-sector work; and an 'alternative' route of 'working on road' by undertaking a variety of low-level, illegal money-making activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There have been many debates in the literature about the extended transition to adulthood many young people are experiencing in late modern times. However, not all young people make this prolonged transition and, for some, resources within their family and community networks are insufficient to enable an extended transition into stable, independent adult roles. The findings presented in this paper are drawn from a large participatory research project investigating the impact of decriminalisation on the health and safety practices of sex workers in New Zealand. This paper utilises the talk of 17 street-based sex workers who entered the industry under the age of 18 years, as well as using data from a survey of 772 sex workers in New Zealand. For young people entering the industry prior to the age of 18, the period of adolescence was short-lived and their inability to gain support through either their family or the government meant that they opted to work in the sex industry to survive. Unsupported transitions into adulthood are characterised by a high degree of risk with limited employment options. This research highlights the need for policy-makers to develop holistic, multi-sectorial policies for young people which are not based on age-specific frameworks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on life history interviews with young adults in the UK to consider Manuela du Bois-Reymond's claims about the increasing prevalence of 'trendsetter learners' across Europe. Du Bois-Reymond has argued that certain groups of young adults are at the forefront of developing new forms of learning in response to what they perceive to be the failings of formal education - namely the disjuncture between theory and practice within the education that they are offered and a lack of respect from many of the teachers with whom they come into contact. These young adults, she contends, are the 'trendsetter learners', creating youth cultural capital that helps them to realise self-determined ways of living and learning. In considering some of these claims, this paper draws on data from the 'Young Graduates and Lifelong Learning' project funded by the UK's Economic and Social Research Council. Between September 2005 and January 2006, 90 in-depth life history interviews were conducted with graduates from six higher education institutions. Our findings suggest that the degree of autonomy, freedom and creativity in young people's patterns of learning that underpin du Bois-Reymond's analysis is over-stated. We argue that, while du Bois-Reymond's work makes an important contribution to conceptualising the ways in which young Europeans engage with learning, her dichotomy between 'trendsetter' learners and their 'disengaged' counterparts overlooks: complexities inherent in this relationship, the social status attached to particular forms of more traditional education and training, and the structuring nature of much workplace learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with exploring how in late modernity the 'youth question' is being addressed by public policy and what impact this is having on understandings of childhood and youth. Historically the youth question has been shaped by adult anxieties over youth delinquency and their problems of social integration. In late modernity, this is still the case but new approaches to tackling social problems are emerging. Public policy influenced by the emerging 'science of prevention' has developed new forms of interventions, which are seen in the expansion of risk factor analysis in prevention policy. This paper explores the development of this new approach to the youth question, highlighting its history, its influence and its underlying assumptions. The concluding discussion will show how this area of public policy development is leading to greater levels of regulation and intervention and is widening the net in terms of defining young people as the future problem generation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that young people's subcultural styles and identities are closely bound up with social class. We show that youth subcultures have been explained in a number of ways since emerging as a subject of serious study in the second half of the twentieth century, and that these explanations are located within a broader social scientific discourse. Fieldwork data collected through interviews with young people in Edinburgh and Newcastle indicate that, rather than being a free-floating lifestyle choice, young people's membership of subcultural groupings is largely determined by social class. In particular, the study shows that young people labelled as ‘Chavs’ or ‘Charvas’ should be understood as a subcultural group with specific social class affiliations. The paper concludes by considering some implications of these findings for theory, for further field research and for practical action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The language of young people is often viewed very negatively by some sections of the mainstream media and by some social commentators in the UK. While this is nothing new – older generations routinely despair of how the youth of today are ruining the language – what is different now is the added element of ethnicity, whereby young people of various ethnicities are perceived as using some kind of ‘ghetto grammar’ or ‘Jafaican’ which carry often explicit connotations of ‘sounding black’. This paper challenges the mainstream view by firstly introducing the linguistic take on this emerging Multicultural Urban British English, and then exploring the views of young people themselves on how they use language by taking qualitative data from a linguistic ethnography project involving 14–16-year-olds in a non-mainstream urban educational setting. The young people provide insights into their language that are in complete opposition to the views so often expressed in the media, and which instead suggest that linguistic features that were previously strongly associated with specific ethnicities are being used in new and innovative ways. Refreshingly, it would appear that for many young people ethnicity is simply not a consideration, at least in relation to language. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, I examine how young selfie sharers engage in intimate edgework in the visual social media site tumblr. Originally devised by Stephen Lyng, edgework is defined as the purposeful engagement in risky behaviour as a result of the seductive character of the experience, and the rewards of doing so brings. The article is based on data gathered from in-depth, online interviews with 25 young people who post naked self-photographs to their tumblr blogs, and participant observation between mid-2014 and late 2015. Through their online practices, I show how young selfie sharers gain a range of benefits similar to those leveraged by people engaged in archetypal forms of edgework – such as skydivers – without the threat of physical danger. Young people negotiate the societal boundaries of morality/immorality and order/disorder; prepare and deploy specific skills in their edgework; and maintain a perception of control. Through being naked on the internet, young people feel a sense of well-being and belonging, thus engaging in ‘intimate edgework’. This article answers the call for further development of a feminist model of edgework that uproots its original hegemonic masculine ideals by elaborating on how individuals negotiate emotional edges in the digital age. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Comedy Central’sSouth Parkhas proved a bone of contention for traditional guardians of youth culture. From the denunciations of pressure groups on one hand, to academics attempting to claimSouth Parkfor various political positions on the other, it is ironic that a show addressing the failure of official pedagogy has had so little attention paid to its young fans. Academics argue over the ‘message’ ofSouth Park, in a socio-political sense, or denounce it for irresponsibly embracing post-political cynicism. Yet as Mendes et al. have argued, to draw a false division between youth entertainment and some pre-conceived notion of the political realm is a fallacy: young people’s engagement with and meaning-making practices derived from popular culturearepolitical in themselves. This paper uses a politically informed conception of discourse analysis developed from Laclau and Mouffe to code the top-ratedSouth Parkfanfics from Fanfiction.net, a site whose primary demographic is teenagers, in pursuit of the messages young people perceive and make of the show. This project prefers concrete data over impressionistic views of ‘young people’, and attends to what teenage fans make of and do with the text, rather than imagining them as passive consumers absorbing inherent messages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Young people engaging in graffiti are often portrayed as the anti-thesis of the ‘good citizen’. As politicians and the media fight the ‘war on graffiti’, these young people are tagged as criminals and misfits, overlooking the ways this arts practice reclaims their ability to tell stories and unhinge traditional ways of practicing citizenship. Using ideas from Michelle Fine et al.’s social psychology of spatiality as a conceptual lens, this paper explores the tensions, contradictions and binaries these young people find themselves caught between, particularly; art or vandalism, professional or amateur, artist or criminal, and legitimate or illegitimate citizens as young people and transgressors of ‘normal behaviour’ in public spaces. Using multiple methods, including ‘hanging out’ and participatory visual methods, this study explores how young graffiti artists’ experiences in and out of a legal ‘street art’ programme, speak back to ‘normative’ conceptualisations of citizenship. Their experiences of differential belonging and contested citizenship, which are played out in public spaces (and beyond), highlight the importance of alterative arts programmes and the creation of sanctioned spaces in negotiating young people’s ‘right to the city’. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

While African youth now feature among the most-researched phenomena in African Studies and Africa-focused social sciences, scholarship continues to shy away from the field's most daunting challenge. As the oversized analytical category ‘youth’ cannot tame the diversity and the ambiguity of the phenomenon ‘youth’, it remains difficult to develop tangible theories and reduce the fuzziness that characterises the current debate. In this paper, I review the most recent advances in the field of African youth studies and outline three comparative approaches to respond to the methodological challenges of diversity and ambiguity. Demonstrating how these comparative approaches can be used for youth-specific inquiries on different levels, I argue that comparison is effective in urging researchers to connect theory, methodology and empirical data more explicitly, to pay particular attention to the respective contexts that mark young people's attitudes and behaviour, and to address diversity as a puzzle rather than a ready-made answer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Artefacts containing national or ethnic symbols, such as flags and maps, are frequently used by 14-year-old youth in a multiethnic, suburban municipality in Stockholm. Appearing as ornaments or trinkets to outsiders, to the initiated they are distinctive group markers displaying multiple political and ideological affiliations. As visual symbols these artefacts invoke communicative, but non-verbal, processes: they interpellate viewers who answer with their reactions. Thus these objects serve to both banally reproduce nationalism and ethnicity and to serve as identity markers. These identities are primarily inclusive and non-aggressive. The symbols do not seem to be a sign of resistance to mainstream Swedish society in line with much work in the field of youth culture. Instead, they are used as a proud, visual display of additional identities complementing a Swedish identity. Ethnicity research often covers linguistic markers or ethnic and national identities. In contrast, the area of youthconsumptionof nationalism, in the form of objects featuring national, ethnic and religious symbols, is as yet not well documented. Based on a year-long fieldwork in a junior high school, this paper documents ways in which minority group students handle material artefacts and what these symbols involved mean to them. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

According to the ‘normalisation thesis’, drug use has become an ‘unremarkable’ feature of contemporary life for young people. Previous quantitative research, however, neglects to assess the extent of variation in young people's social accommodation of drug use. This paper uses data from a purposive survey of young people who frequently attended clubs in a major night-time entertainment district in Brisbane, Australia to assess group differences in attitudes towards drug use. Using social interaction models, we find evidence of significant variation in views about drug use even among the sample of frequent club goers. We also demonstrate an endogenous – or social interaction – effect where young people's views are associated with the views of others who prefer to attend the same clubs. Overall, our results support the recent calls for a differentiated understanding of drug normalisation. We conclude that locations and social processes are important for understanding group differences in the social accommodation of drug use. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

According to a series of recent accounts, the sex industry is now a key facet of youth culture and sexualised imagery has infiltrated both the public imagination and the most private of practices. Unsurprisingly, there is greater concern over the implications of this new ‘raunch culture’ for young women, than young men. Rather than resisting, it is argued that young women are conforming en mass to soft-porn imagery and practices and in doing so, have lost touch with their own desires. To highlight some of the problems with these accounts, in this paper I draw on interview data from research into young Australian men and women's interpretations of sex and sexual risk. However, to pursue my key argument I focus only on the young women's accounts. Findings show that rather than being saturated in raunch culture, young women are exposed to multiple, often contradictory cultural discourses relating to gender and sex, which they differently incorporate, transform and sometimes reject as they construct sexual narratives. I conclude that the raunch culture literature is couched in a series of damaging generalisations which ignore youth diversity and position women as agents of their own oppression but not of their own desire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Young people's relationship with contemporary politics is complex and often problematized. They are often chastised as the apolitical harbingers of an incipient 'crisis of democracy' while simultaneously heralded as the authors of sophisticated new forms of politics, most notably within electronic realms. Previous literature examining young people's political participation falls into either extreme of this binary; either a disengaged paradigm - which sees young people as passive and devoid of political interest - or engaged paradigm - which sees young people as actively political in new forms. Both models are limited because they fail to comprehensively explain youthful political participation. Instead, this paper argues that a more helpful conceptualization requires moving beyond the claim that young people are either politically engaged or disengaged, to acknowledge that both engagement and disengagement are simultaneously occurring. Reframing young people's political participation this way would empower young people's aversion to politics without condemnation - it would see them as radically unpolitical. The current response to the 'problem of youth participation' - which typically entails enticing and assimilating young people into stale political processes and/or translating these stale processes into interactive websites - is inadequate for unpolitical young people. Rather a change in the very substance of the political agenda, its spheres and forms, is required. This article explores the disengaged and engaged paradigm and the policy responses, and explores the proposed radically unpolitical model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the results of an exploratory, small-scale qualitative research enquiry into the perceptions and experiences of young people in communities afflicted by deprivation in Glasgow, Scotland's largest city. The context within which we address this focus contains a culture reputed to involve sectarianism, territoriality and gangs. Glasgow has a reputation for being a 'hard place'. The official crime statistics are consistent with comparatively high levels of violent crime impacting upon this culture. We adopted semi-structured interviews in order to explore young people's perspectives as well as those working with them in youth venues. Most of the data collection took place in 'youth centres' close to the two stadiums of the major Scottish football clubs, namely Rangers and Celtic. Social capital theory is incorporated into the analysis of the results. The findings suggest that territoriality is the dominant parameter shaping their experience of and perceptions regarding neighbourhood areas, a conclusion endorsed by recent research about religious intermarriage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Space is a good starting point for ethnographic study into youth, as it sets the stage in which dramas unfold. The paper will argue that space should be considered as a character itself - a member of the group whose actions should form part of data collection. For space acts as initiator: in space other issues can evolve and occur. In space, risk-taking behaviours transpire. Space bears witness to crime and conceals drug use. In it, embodiment is progressed - it endorses transition. It also portrays and signifies the social exclusion and marginalization of youth. This article will highlight that the space and place of the street or park is instrumental in the establishment of youth identity. Nightscapes and leisure spaces form an essential character in youth history, acting as creator of memory and enabling transition from one state to another. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Australia, Indigenous young women are more likely to become pregnant while in their teens than non-Indigenous young women. Factors such as poverty, educational outcomes and unemployment play a major role; however, there is little understanding of the attitudes of young women themselves with regards to pregnancy. This paper explores young women's decisions regarding their sexual relationships and pregnancy in a remote Australian Aboriginal community, called River Town. It focuses on young women's motivations to pursue sexual relationships and the information about sex and male behaviour to women that informs their decision-making. 'Walkin' about at night' is the term that River Town residents use to describe the nocturnal activities of adolescent females. The focus of this activity is for a young woman to find and maintain a relationship with a boy. Although it is considered by the young women to be one of the most exciting parts of their lives, it carries with it the risk of pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease. Young women are very aware of the first of these risks, if not the second, as teenage pregnancy is the norm in the community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the types and prevalence of Finnish students' civic and political online participation such as posting, commenting, sharing or liking social media posts. We focus particularly on the use of Facebook like and share buttons for civic and political purposes, which we conceptualize as 'nano-level participation' and discuss in light of the debate on 'slacktivism'. Our data comes from a classroom survey among 194 Finnish university students of social and political sciences and philosophy in 2017–2018. The data thus describe the using habits of a social media vanguard – young Finns who live and breathe social media and who are interested in social and political issues. Our results reveal the persisting importance of Facebook as a platform for youth engagement and emphasize the prevalence and significance of nano-level participation as a neglected form of youth online engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article proposes a Marxist political economy (MPE) of youth to explain the material conditions of young people in developed economies. Central concepts of capitalist accumulation, labour-power and value are utilised to historicise and situate young people in relation to wage labour under capitalism. The article conceptualises how contradictory processes of capitalist accumulation impact young people through an analysis of the actions of private capital, labour and the state. The theoretical approach is supported with UK data which illustrates how young people have experienced challenges in education, labour market transitions, and work and employment conditions. The article reveals how a combination of structural economic change, state regulation and low-road employer business strategies which generate poor quality work have all contributed to the decline in the value of youth labour-power in the UK. The article also provides methodological insights for using the MPE approach in future youth studies research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This qualitative study examines two contexts shaping circumpolar Indigenous young people's contemporary lives. In Arctic North America, the recent, rapid experiences of colonization are linked to disproportionately high rates of youth suicide. It is important to understand how different contexts, central to identity narratives, enhance or challenge resilience: the negotiated capacity to overcome hardship. We examine two settings: school and the land using thematic analysis. School settings occupy significant time in the lives of Indigenous youth from which parents and Indigenous traditions are largely removed. In contrast, the deepening of relationships, spiritual grounding and traditional practices in which Indigenous families engage on the land, signify and amplify cultural and family strengths. Using youth narratives about their lives, we contrast these two settings and the ways they influence young people's wellness through their perceptions of themselves and society. We recommend how schools can better support strengths of Indigenous cultures, including close relationships with family and the land. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Media plays an important role in shaping public perceptions of youth. Previous studies have shown consistently negative images of youth in news media through a heavy focus on crime, accidents, and moral decay. Most research in this area has only collected data over short timeframes, which makes it difficult to register possible changes in modes of representation. The present study has sought to overcome this short come by emphasizing long-term data collection, by focusing on how newspapers have portrayed youth in the period 1953–2003. On the basis of quantitative content analyses of Danish newspapers, we find a strong emphasis on crime and accidents; however, culture takes up almost as much space. Furthermore, we cannot confirm a tendency toward increasingly negative media representations regarding young people. Our data show more neutral portrayals and an increase in news items quoting young people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Internet cafe (wangba) continues to enjoy high popularity among urban Chinese youth, mostly members of China's only-child generation, despite the derogatory connotations the wangba carries, official control and widely diffused access at home. Based on observation at wangbas and in-depth interviews with urban youth, I explore from the Internet cafe goers' perspective what wangba going is all about. The study shows that the wangba serves as a heterotopian third place for the goers. They are there, often against the will of various authorities, for a sense of freedom, relaxation, community, and equality as well as fun, which can hardly be found elsewhere in their lives. The meanings they assign to the wangba are closely related to their social-biographical situations as urban only children typically under great parental expectations in a society characterised by sharp social stratification, fierce competition, lack of security, consumerism, corruption and unfairness in the distribution of resources. In this sense, the wangba is seen as a necessary space for existential reasons, in sharp contrast to the negative portrayal of the wangba as a mere den of iniquity in both official and popular discourses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Young men tend to be constructed as being at low risk of harm and able to extract value from sexting, compared to young women. Drawing upon findings from a qualitative study exploring practices and perceptions of sexting among 14–18 year-old participants in southeast England, I discuss the meanings and norms surrounding young men's sexting practices. I outline how these meanings and norms underpinned perceptions regarding the value available to young men through sexting. Young men were not, however, equally able to extract value and social capital through sexting, and participants discussed examples of the social shaming of young men who sext. I discuss how young men took up diverse positions with regard to masculine heterosexuality within youth sexting culture, in which they reworked and challenged the ideals and assumptions inherent to 'hegemonic masculinity'. I draw two conclusions: firstly, it should not be assumed that young men are inherently able to gain value through sexting; secondly, narratives of risk and shame may mean that while young men distance themselves from sexting, gendered assumptions and inequalities regarding bodily and sexual expression remain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shortly after leaving Leicester for Scotland Andy Furlong began to wrestle with the complexities of school to work transitions as captured by the 1986 sweep of the British Cohort Study (BCS). His analysis was published as Schooling for Jobs. Although a relatively short text, this book was vitally important as it documented in detail, for the first time, the changes to career preparations of British secondary school children at the mid-point of a decade where the impact of deindustrialising processes, coupled with the neo-liberal policies of the political right, had ravaged the UK economy and decimated the youth labour market. The mid 1980s were a turning point that marked a shift to 'individuals' having responsibility for future career successes and the blaming of young people themselves for any perceived labour market failings. Central to this process was the Youth Training Scheme (YTS). Based on recent collaborations with Andy exploring YTS we have two main aims here. First, we revisit the BCS data to update the story and answer three interrelated questions: (i) what happened to the YTS participants from Furlong's analysis?; (ii) what were the long-term career and life 'impacts' for those who participated in YTS during the 1980s?; and (iii) were these job substitution schemes or gateways to real and meaningful work? Second, we conclude by reflecting upon this aspect of Andy's legacy and the shape of future research on youth training schemes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the digital divide among young people in Spain by examining four traditional socio-demographic variables (gender, age, education and employment situation). It proposes the concept of 'technological capital' as a means to put people's socioeconomic conditions of existence into relation with the different forms of accessing and using Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). Methodologically, a quantitative approach is taken, based on the National Statistics Institute's survey of ICT Equipment in households, which makes use of both bivariate and multivariate analysis. Finally, a typology of young users of the Internet is proposed (1 – Digitally Excluded; 2 – Basic Users; 3 – Users in Mobility; 4 – Cyber Consumers; 5 – Cyber Experts) which takes into account the importance of technological capital, the socio-economic position and cultural resources of subjects in their incorporation of ICTs into their daily life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on intoxicating substances and gender has developed considerably in the last 30 years, especially in the social sciences as feminist scholars highlighted the contradictory discourses about young women's intoxication. Nevertheless, there still remain significant gaps if we are to fully understand the role and meaning of intoxication for all young people and not merely for heterosexual, cisgender young people. As a way of exploring the possible limitations of this legacy, we will examine the qualitative data from 52 in-depth interviews with self-identified LGBTQ young people. Our analysis explores the relationships between meanings of intoxication and sexual and gender identities, drinking spaces, and the extent to which notions of masculinity and femininity influence alcohol consumption and drinking practices among LGBTQ youth. As gender expressions among young people, especially those who identify as LGBTQ, become increasingly nuanced and fluid, understanding the role of social and cultural practices of alcohol consumption in the performance of sexual and gender identities may increase our understanding of the ways in which sexuality and gender influence alcohol consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using ethnographic and interview data, this article explores hopes for the future of young Indonesian musicians. The young people are seen to consider their future trajectories in multiple, hierarchical music fields. The article also takes into account the ontological insecurity of jobs as a professional musician, arguing that there is continuous reproduction of adoxa, namely ‘survival of the fittest’ in Indonesia. Yet despite abundant risks to livelihoods, young Indonesian musicians expressed optimistic views about the future. The analysis of data below bridges the gap between the traditionally separate youth studies fields of youth transitions and youth cultures. Our interpretation critically contextualises the dialogue between these two fields based on the experiences of young Indonesian musicians as a part of the Global South. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this article, we explore what had become a predominant focus on the body and on shaping and refining the body through frequent, intensive workout and strict, controlled diets among a group of young people engaged in strength training in fitness gyms in Denmark. Theoretically and analytically, we draw inspiration from French sociologist Loïc Wacquant’s ethnographic study of professional boxers in Chicago around 1990. First, we use the concept of bodywork to explore and understand the meaning of the young people’s exercise and diet practices. We argue that the young people’s bodywork can be understood as the building up of bodily capital. Second, we aim to explore the social implications of this bodywork. We explore how and in what ways the young people’s bodily capital can be converted into other resources, or forms of capital, that are essentially social: social relations and sense of connectedness; knowledge, expertise and future plans; and recognition, self-worth and identity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this study, using a three wave qualitative longitudinal data set, we explored patterns of change in gambling behavior among a sample of young Danes. A total of 48 informants participated in all three sweeps of interviews. The overall aim was to explore the complexities and social contexts, as well as the subjective meanings that underlie gambling behavior changes. We identified four different types of gambling pathways, each illustrating different types of movement over time: intensification; reduction; stability, and those that were non-linear. Our overall finding was that transitions or oscillations in behavior are more common than a progressive linear gambling pattern, and that these changes are affected by a number of contextual factors. The implications for further research and policy are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]