Search

This paper draws on a study of the life course of 40 young people (aged 18–35) in Bologna (Italy), who are active in eight different political organizations. It explores whether the political organization, given that the city’s political context is the same for all participants, affects the variation of their pathways. It does so by answering the following question: which phases in the lives of young participants are interconnected with the political organizations they are engaged in? To evaluate the impact of the organizational context on young participants, we will take into consideration three dimensions: the degree of bureaucratization, forms of action, and political orientation. Situated at the intersection of youth and social movement studies, this paper aims to advance our understanding of the connections between primary and political socialization processes in shaping young participants’ mobilization and sustained participation within different political organizations. Our empirical findings show that, if the degree of bureaucratization was constantly salient in the two phases, on the other hand political orientation was more salient during participants’ mobilization and the forms of action during participants’ sustained participation. In the conclusion, the paper critically discusses the empirical findings of our analysis of the respondents’ narratives.

© 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. 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.

This paper uses empirical evidence to explore the nature of employment transitions for a cohort of marginalised young people in England. The findings presented reveal the importance of past experiences, largely determined by prevailing opportunity structures, in shaping the present and reiterate the need to see transition as a historical process. Longitudinal data collected as part of an evaluation of a youth employment programme called Talent Match provides the evidence for the paper. The routes participants took in terms of securing and sustaining employment are examined. The paper develops a typology of different transitional groups to explore these routes based on the movement (or lack of) into and out of employment. The relative importance of different factors in explaining the groupings are assessed, with results underlining how the ongoing change participants were encountering in the present was inextricably linked to their past. In response, this paper suggests a reemphasis on understanding youth as both a stage of ‘being’ and ‘becoming’, seeing youth as both a condition in its own right but also part of the life course process, and calls for a more dynamic understanding of youth transitions among policymakers and those designing youth employment programmes.

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.

The conventional view since the early 2000s has been that participation in higher education (HE) is a risky pathway for disadvantaged young people in England; the social risk of entering an alien environment combines with the financial risk of rising costs and questionable long-term returns. This riskiness has been constructed as a major barrier to participation. However, national administrative data cast doubt on whether this analysis still holds true. Despite significant rises in tuition fees, the proportion of disadvantaged young people entering HE has continued to rise, with advantaged groups seemingly being more price-sensitive. Data from recent qualitative studies has also suggested that young people are now less attuned to risks. This paper considers whether circumstances in wider society have shifted perceptions of risk. The volatility resulting from the global financial crisis appears to have repositioned HE as a less risky option than early entry to the labour market, especially with more jobs becoming ‘graduate’, while the social risk has declined as HE has diversified. The paper draws on theoretical perspectives from Beck, Boudon, Simon and Kahneman to argue that many disadvantaged young people now view HE as a form of ‘insurance’ against an uncertain future.

In countries worldwide, Outdoor Education (OE) offers rich possibilities for learning. OE has been researched for many decades; however the field lacks an integrating framework for its different historical, geographical and disciplinary conceptualisations. The outcomes of OE programmes are well documented and appear diverse, yet also have common attributes suggesting there is scope for unifying approaches. Although substantive barriers to the conduct of OE programmes have been identified, these have seldom been synthesised. This paper offers a narrative review of the literature addressing three key questions designed to look rearward at where OE has come from: (i) how is OE conceptualised, and what theoretical models have been used in OE? (ii) what evidence exists regarding the effectiveness of OE programmes? (iii) what are the barriers to conducting OE programmes? The paper then advances onward with an integrated framework for reconceptualising OE and providing insights into how the field may be strengthened and augmented.20124

The paper seeks to makes a contribution to a recent debate in the Journal about what a political economy of youth might look like. The paper will take up aspects of Sukarieh and Tannock’s [2016. ‘On the political economy of youth: a comment.’ Journal of Youth Studies 19 (9): 1281–1289] response to the initial contributions by Cote [2014. ‘Towards a New Political Economy of Youth.’ Journal of Youth Studies 17 (4): 527–543, 2016. ‘A New Political Economy of Youth Reprised: Rejoinder to France and Threadgold.’ Journal of Youth Studies.] And France and Threadgold [2015. ‘Youth and Political Economy: Towards a Bourdieusian Approach.’ Journal of Youth Studies], and will take the form of three ‘notes’: Capitalism: From the first industrial revolution to the third industrial revolution; Youth as an artefact of governmentalised expertise; The agency/structure problem in youth studies: Foucault’s dispositif and post-human exceptionalism.These notes will suggest that twenty-first century capitalism is global...

Young people are increasingly called upon to invest in educational qualifications, experience opportunities and other character forming activities in order to stand out from the crowd. This fetishizing of generic distinctiveness is promoted throughout education in England, and particularly Higher Education. This paper considers the policy and theoretical implications of the quest to enfranchise distinctiveness in English HE. From a policy perspective the universal promotion of distinction reflects how recent neoliberal reforms in HE have been moderated by a commitment to a liberal ethos of equality of opportunity. Theoretically the mantra of standing out from the crowd is emblematic of the entrepreneurial self as a tool of governmentality. The expectation of compulsory distinction encapsulates the duality of individualisation and regulation that is central to the project of governmentality. This duality is also implicit in the activity of enterprise and how it is calibrated by competition. Being entrepreneurial stimulates innovation but the uncertainty of competition may simultaneously stimulate isomorphic behaviours. The paper concludes by reviewing what the promotion of generic distinctiveness infers for young people and how the promotion of distinction is also bound up with the mantra of confidence.

In recent years a plethora of arts-based projects and interventions targeting marginalised children and young people have emerged a number of which have focused specifically on music-making. Resulting research has often highlighted the social, psychological and emotional benefits involved (see, for example, De Viggiani et al, 2013) although few studies have explored the connections between music-making and mentoring with young people in educational contexts. This paper comprises a small-scale, qualitative study of one such intervention in a secondary school in the South of England. Analysis of transcripts from one-to-one interviews with participants (pupils) aged 11–17 years reveals various ways in which music-making facilitated positive change such as increased confidence, improved attitudes towards teachers and peers, feelings of calm, and better communication skills. The paper concludes by suggesting that music-making activity may confer significant psycho-social benefits for young people, particularly when combined with mentoring support.

Recent work on youth participation has mobilised a ‘DIY’ or ‘individualised’ framework to explain the nature of contemporary participation, particularly amongst minoritised religious youth. This paper examines this conceptual framework in light of concurrent claims that contemporary participation can be better conceptualised using a ‘doing it with others’ (DIWO) approach, which emphasises the collaborative nature of participation. In light of these claims, I analyse the participation experiences of 22 young adult Buddhist practitioners who are located within a neo-liberal Australian context, yet simultaneously have access to religious teachings and practices which challenge distinct notions of selfhood. This paper shows that both ‘DIY’ and ‘DIWO’ conceptions of participation find expression in the participation experiences of participants from the study, and that both DIY and DIWO approaches can additionally be seen as mutually reinforcing rather than distinctly contrasting. I propose a new concep...

Online social interaction has become integral to contemporary social life, adding new dimensions to how young people learn, interact, and perceive themselves and one another. This paper presents theoretical insights from a year-long ethnographic study within a Scottish secondary school, where participant observation and qualitative interviews were used to explain pupils’ informal social relationships. Here, pupils aged 11-18 constructed and negotiated a hyper-surveillanced social space within which many became (or strived to become) visible and ‘known’ amongst others and where online presentations of self were highly important. This facilitated a celebrity-esque culture amongst the pupil population whereby pupils learnt from and emulated macro celebrity culture and often framed social interactions as entertainment. Central to these practices, was a continual desire to “make gains in distinction” by demonstrating high social status amongst peers. The paper explores the resulting implications for teaching, learning and pupil wellbeing within contemporary educational environments.

Young people’s transition from education into the labour market are diverse: sometimes direct from school to work or inactivity, sometimes characterised by stop-starts and combinations of different activities. This paper explores the association between transition pathways of Australian youth and their outcomes, in terms of earnings, perceptions of employment opportunities and debt. It builds on analysis by Fry and Boulton [2013. Prevalence of Transition Pathways in Australia. Canberra: Productivity Commission Staff Working Paper] who identified five pathways most typically taken by 15–24 year old Australians over a 10 year period, including quasi linear transitions from education to work with and without study, combinations of work and study, multiple churning between labour market statuses, and transitions into prolonged periods of inactivity. The present study adds four more years of panel data that have since become available, and compares the labour market outcomes of the different pathways a...

Post-Fordist employment is characterised by the demand for new forms of labour in which workers are expected to make personal investments in their work and to mobilise their embodied subjectivities in the practice of labour. Whilst employment insecurity is well documented in the sociology of youth, theoretical development in this area has yet to contend with the role of changes in the nature of labour itself in the production of youth. This paper draws on theories of labour under post-Fordism to explore the practice of ‘affective labour’ amongst young people performing ‘front of house’ bar work in a large metropolitan service economy. The paper theorises the role of youth subjectivities – including capacities for relationality and leisure, gendered embodiment, and tastes – in the practice of contemporary labour. The paper describes how young people doing bar work contribute to the production of affective atmospheres, or sensations of ease, pleasure and enjoyment that are offered to clientele of bo...

Persistent simplistic binary discourses of young people’s citizenship portray them either as civically deficit and disengaged citizens or the creators of new democratic modes and approaches. This paper draws on field research with two groups of young people in Australia to better recognise the nuance of young people’s experiences of citizenship, power and influence. The study investigated the extent to which different groups of young people believe that they have the power to influence society; the ways in which they seek this influence; the current barriers to their influence; and what would enable them to have greater influence. Our analysis in this paper draws on Lukes’ concepts of power [2005. Power: A Radical View. 2nd ed. London: Palgrave Macmillan] and Arvanitakis’ framework of citizenship engagement and empowerment [in Arvanitakis, J., and E. Sidoti. 2011. “The Politics of Change: Where to for Young People and Politics.” In Their Own Hands: Can Young People Change Australia?, edited by L. ...

In the UK, there has been growing concern about young people’s understanding of sexual consent, with the views of young people themselves often lost in academic and educational policy debates. However, the focus on high rates of sexual violence has meant a lack of attention on the everyday negotiation of consensual heterosexual activity, leading to assumptions being made regarding young people’s lack of understanding of sexual consent. This paper emerges from a wider study of over 500 young people which sought to uncover their understanding of the issues. Drawing on data from workshops and the open text responses to an on-line survey the findings presented in this paper show that the majority of heterosexual young people understood the complexity of sexual consent as an embodied process, which can be difficult to define, talk about or practice uniformly. This complex understanding, in which sexual consent is a continuum rather than a dichotomy, has implications for sexual education initiatives. We argue that it is only by providing a closer understanding of how - within consensual sexual activities - young people understand and enact sexual consent through a range of embodied communication strategies that education surrounding sexual assault will become meaningful.

The effects of neoliberalism on young people and youth workers through outsourcing government services has attracted critique from multiple sources. Post-structural analysis interrogates subjectification effects of these policies on youth. However, this kind of analysis of the governmental formation of youth ought to consider the interaction between the knowledge of youth underpinning neoliberal social policy, and those employed by non-government agencies implementing them. The interaction between these two shape the reciprocal governing activity within the young person and youth worker power–knowledge relationship that, this paper will argue, is an important factor in the critique of neoliberal social policy. Young people are governed by a diverse array of knowledges developed by government, youth studies, NGOs and young people themselves. These knowledges interact, reinforce and contradict discourses of youth work. This paper focuses on a neoliberal social policy (FLO) which constructs youth as ...

Prior research has found that persistently delinquent youth or more violent youth were less popular than their less delinquent peers (Young, 2013). However, recent research has also found that weapon carrying is associated with being more popular in adolescence (Dijkstra et al., 2010). The present paper examines the perceived popularity of adolescents who carry weapons in comparison to those who both carry and use weapons in acts of violence or threatened violence. Data consist of two waves from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health. Analyses use OLS regression with lagged predictors. This paper found no differences in number of friends between weapon carriers and weapon users. However, among both male and female gang members, those who did not use or carry weapons (abstainers) named significantly fewer friends than weapon users. Among females, weapon abstainers both named and were named by significantly more people than weapon users. These differences were not observed for males. Implications of these results and directions for future research are discussed.

In recent years sport-based interventions have been implemented as a mechanism via which to target marginalised youth in relation to the development of social inclusion. Much of the political rhetoric surrounding social inclusion programmes highlights engagement with education, employment, or training, as key metrics. This has led some scholars to observe that conceptualising social inclusion in this way can act to further marginalise young people who fail to engage with these metrics. In contrast, this paper seeks to employ an alternative understanding of social inclusion, which uses the concepts of recognition and acceptance, to infer how participation in sports-based programmes may enable marginalised youth to meet mainstream societal expectations and aid with social assimilation. Drawing upon findings from two small-scale studies of sport-based interventions located in three UK cities, this paper places participant accounts at the centre of the analysis to explore broader notions of pro-social development in relation to recognition and interpersonal acceptance. The paper concludes by suggesting that within contexts in which young people are able to generate strong interpersonal relationships with key personnel (such as coaches), and which are built upon trust, recognition and developing self-worth, there is clear potential for sport-based programmes to incubate social assimilation.

This paper focuses on the everyday lives of young people with a severe mental illness living temporarily at a social psychiatric housing facility in Denmark. In the paper we take a temporal approach to the analysis of this and we draw on Henri Lefebvre’s work on rhythm analysis to investigate the differences between the rhythms of everyday life within the institution and the rhythms of what is perceived as the everyday life of ‘ordinary’ youth. We also show how digital technologies play a central part in these institutionalised everyday lives by creating connections as well as disruptions between different time-spaces. Centrally, we point to the positive and negative consequences this has for the young peoples’ sense of self. Empirically, the paper is based on a four-month ethnographic fieldwork at the housing facility in 2014.

This paper reports findings from research conducted in six Romanian residential care homes. The aim of the paper is to examine the views held by young people, currently living in residential care, about the importance of their biological families and the option and challenge of reintegration. The data reflect the ideas and perspectives of 44 young people captured through a narrative interview approach using social mapping activities. The results indicate that most children and young people know at least one birth parent and maintain contact on their own initiative; most do not place a high level of importance on such relationships which are generally characterised by lack of confidence, low security and a presumed limited capacity on the part of the biological family to meet their needs. Family reintegration is considered to be a viable option for a small number of young people; others do not see it as realistic because of the impact of long-term separation and the likelihood of experiencing poore...

Drawing on a five-year qualitative study on the impacts of the Olympic Games on homeless and marginally housed youth in two host cities (Vancouver 2010 and London 2012), this paper explores the instances of ‘symbolic violence’ perpetuated by the institutional infrastructure associated with the Olympics. Following Pierre Bourdieu’s use of the term, symbolic violence refers to the manner in which the young people turned dominant notions of what the desirable Olympic city looks and feels like into a sense of their own non-belonging and/or inadequacy, experienced bodily and emotionally. Feeling pressured to vie for elusive Olympic jobs and volunteer positions, and to be less visible to the thousands of tourist-spectators for the Games, youth in both cities reported a defiant mix of frustrated indignation and resigned acceptance that they did not ‘fit’ the image of the global Olympic city that organizers were trying to convey. The paper argues that this social harm, difficult to measure yet real noneth...

This paper will detail youth political engagement in one of the most important activist organisations that the Mexican city of Puebla (the fourth largest in the country) has known in its recent history. In particular, the paper will focus on the leadership of two of the leaders of this organisation, who were also lovers. As we will see, the relationship between these two activists proved to be very important for this organisation, so much so that when the couple broke up, the entire collective collapsed. In this sense, the theoretical challenge I am interested in is the one of inserting the study of the affective dimension of youth political practices in the social and political contexts in which these practices make sense. It is hoped that by studying this case in a rather explorative way, we will gain a better understanding of how youth politics and engagement interact with interpersonal affect.

Events related to bullying are so complex that they require a much broader examination than is usually available from a single disciplinary point of view. The purpose of the present paper is to offer new ways of examining this complex phenomenon. We will argue that transdisciplinarity (henceforth TD) could bring a more comprehensive analysis and a deeper understanding to the current state of bullying research. As a way of emphasizing the benefits of a more pluralistic and integrative approach, we will use TD based examples to describe the general context and process we used to develop a new definition of bullying, one that provides a sharper distinction between bullying and general aggression, thus offering the possibility of more targeted intervention strategies. The present paper is divided into three sections, namely, a selected review of the TD literature, an application of TD inspired ideas and tools that examine bullying from a number of interrelated perspectives, and an outline of a concept...

This paper considers how ‘participation’ features as a key concept in contemporary approaches to research, policy and interventions to promote young people's experiences of safety and well-being in digital society. In particular, it examines the potential of participatory design (PD) methodology as a way of expressing, surfacing and supporting engagement with youth perspectives in research and design projects. In doing so, we explore how the language, materials and processes of a PD approach can help reconfigure the aims of research beyond the production of ‘products’ towards fostering ‘youth-inclusive publics’. Drawing on the concept of ‘infrastucturing’ and ‘attachments’ [Le Dantec, C. A., and C. DiSalvo. 2013. “Infrastructuring and the Formation of Publics in Participatory Design.” Social Studies of Science 43 (2): 241–264. doi:10.1177/0306312712471581], the paper reflects on an Australian research project to develop online campaigns to promote youth safety and well-being in digital society. Fr...

Mobilities of money, symbols and young people themselves are central to the formation of the contemporary youth period. While rural young people remain marginal to theoretical development in youth studies, this paper shows that mobilities are especially significant for rural youth, who experience a kind of mobility imperative created by the accelerating concentration of economic and cultural capital in cities. Drawing on theory and evidence from contexts including Europe, Australia, Africa and South America, this paper explores the mobility imperative for rural youth and offers a new theoretical framework for understanding rural youth mobilities. The framework understands mobilities across three dimensions: the structural, the symbolic and the non-representational. These dimensions refer to material inequalities between rural and urban places in a global context; symbolic hierarchies that concentrate the resources for ‘youthfulness’ in cities and the affective entanglements between embodied subjec...

This paper draws upon international research evidence that suggests a relationship between protest masculinity and the manifestation of violent crime among young males, and that criminal desistance may be linked to (inter-) subjective processes such as the reconstruction of masculine identity. The paper considers the potential that pugilism (the art and practice of boxing) may have on enabling young, disadvantaged minority male gang members to find avenues for alternative identity construction and to gain transitional experiences which trigger self-confessed desistance actions. Drawing upon an ethnographic study conducted in a boxing rehabilitation centre on the outskirts of Copenhagen, Denmark, the paper reports on data gleaned from participant observation and qualitative interviews with 22 ethnic minority young men. Findings suggest that the masculine context within the rehabilitation programme provided the young men with a safe space to perform broader versions of locally dominated views on masculinity and to reflect on their current situations and dilemmas. The young men were clearly in transition and their desistance journeys were characterized by hope and ambition but also disappointment and despair. In some cases it appeared that the young men's dogged attempts to desist from crime became a new way for them to ‘do masculinity’. The authors draw upon the findings to make recommendations for policy, practice and research.

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

This paper examines the current youth transition system in Poland focusing on the role of industry partnerships with vocational upper secondary schools. On the example of the aviation cluster in the south-eastern Poland, this paper assesses the strong industry-led partnership established in 2007 with local schools and authorities in delivery of aviation-specific programmes, and its impact of local youth transitions to labour market. In contrast to Poland's national trend towards weak cooperation between industry and the vocational education sector, three major dynamics regarding the aviation cluster's influence on vocational education are observable. The region benefits from: strong leadership from local industry in influencing the supply of particular skills by local vocational education and training (VET) schools and universities; a high level of willingness of local government authorities at the mayor's and municipality's offices to support the aviation cluster's influence on VET; and a free-market mod...

This paper uses political generations theory to examine the main youth mobilisations during and since the twentieth century: pre-1939 fascist and communist movements; the student movements of the 1960s and 70s; movements that challenged colonial and neo-colonial rulers in less developed countries and young people's involvement in the revolutions that saw the end of communism in East-Central and South-East Europe in 1989. Conclusions from this review of the past are used in considering the likely significance of subsequent outbursts of political activism among young people: the ‘colour revolutions’ and other instances of youth mobilisation in former Soviet republics and other ex-communist countries; the Arab Spring and the series of movements that have challenged neo-liberalism – Anti-Globalisation, the Indignados and the Occupy movements. The paper notes that youth mobilisations that have led to the formation of new political generations that have changed their countries' politics then transformed the cou...

This paper aims to better understand the relationship between young people's aspirations towards education and jobs, and the context in which they are formed, especially to understand better the role of disadvantaged places in shaping young people's aspirations. Policy makers maintain that disadvantaged areas are associated with low aspirations and there is support for this position from academic work on neighbourhood effects and local labour markets, but evidence is slim. Using a two-stage survey of young people in disadvantaged settings in three British cities, the paper provides new data on the nature of young peoples’ aspirations, how they change during the teenage years, and how they relate to the places where they are growing up. The findings are that aspirations are very high and, overall, they do not appear to be depressed in relation to the jobs available in the labour market either by the neighbourhood context or by young people's perceptions of local labour markets. However, there are significa...

New media applications such as social networking sites are understood as important evolutions for queer youth. These media and communication technologies allow teenagers to transgress their everyday life places and connect with other queer teens. Moreover, social media websites could also be used for real political activism such as publicly sharing coming out videos on YouTube. Despite these increased opportunities for self-reflexive storytelling on digital media platforms, their everyday use and popularity also bring particular complexities in the everyday lives of young people. Talking to 51 youngsters between 13 and 19 years old in focus groups, this paper inquires how young audiences discursively constructed meanings on intimate storytelling practices such as interpreting intimate stories, reflecting on their own and other peers' intimate storytelling practices. Specifically focusing on how they relate to intimate storytelling practices of gay peers, this paper identified particular challenges for que...

International research consistently shows that high-stakes exams are a significant source of stress and worry for students within secondary education. Existing research focuses on individual variation in exam-related stress levels among students with very little attention given to the influence of school context on student stress. Using data from the Irish Post-Primary Longitudinal Study, a mixed methods study of secondary students, this paper examines both individual and school level factors influencing the levels of stress among students preparing for the nationally standardised Leaving Certificate examination. The paper presents new findings which highlight the potential role of schools in ameliorating student stress. Findings show that student stress is not only influenced by individual-level factors but that certain aspects of the schooling process impact on stress levels. In particular, the quality of student–teacher interaction and peer relations within the school are found to have a significant im...

The journey out of care and towards independent living is a challenge for many care-leavers. There has been little research into the social processes involved in this care-leaving journey. This paper presents the results of a grounded theory investigation into the care-leaving journeys of nine young men who had, several years previously, been in the care of Girls & Boys Town in South Africa. Working from a resilience perspective, with an ecological emphasis, four central social processes emerged that together explain the care-leaving experiences of the participants. These processes are striving for authentic belonging; networking people for goal attainment; contextualised responsiveness and building hopeful and tenacious self-confidence. These four processes are located within contextual boundaries and at the social environmental interface. The paper presents these processes in detail, drawing on selected narratives of the participants and integrated with additional theory. It is hoped that this paper may...

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

This paper explores young women’s expectations on future work-family reconciliation in Finland, a Nordic country well-known for the promotion of gender equality. Utilising Sen’s capabilities approach, we content-analysed thirty individual interviews to identify differences in women’s expectations and their perceived capabilities in future work and care. The results showed that irrespective of their labour market status and educational attainment, the women’s expectations were contradictory, reflecting a current Finnish gender culture that embraces both the ideal of shared parenthood and the primacy of maternal care. Between-group differences were also found. The employed women perceived themselves as having the capability to balance work, family and, personal time in the future. The women who were studying and had higher education- and career-related expectations perceived themselves as capable of combating gender inequality in their future working lives. In contrast, the unemployed women perceived their capabilities in both their future work and care as limited, thereby constraining their agency to realise their choices in work-family reconciliation and family decision-making. These findings indicate that Finnish women’s expectations on future work-family reconciliation are shaped by institutional, societal and individual socioeconomic factors. peerReviewed

Dominant debates and digital upskilling strategies in Scotland have been long underpinned by the notion that engagement with technologies can transform young people’s lives. This paper offers a critique of such dominant understandings and contributes to the scarce research on the impact of technologies on disadvantaged young people’s life chances. It reports on qualitative fieldwork exploring everyday lives, transitions and technology use amongst 22 NEET-identified Scottish young people aged 16–24, drawing on thinking tools from Bourdieu. Findings show that participants followed ‘accelerated’ transitions towards vocational pathways, whilst technologies played a liminal role in making occupational choices. Furthermore, processes underpinning the post-16 transitions policy field were found to strongly shape the young people’s trajectories, directing them towards the least valuable options in terms of work and training. Concurrently, uncertainties about how to navigate the realm of work and perform the self in relation to the labour force constituted a common feature of participants labouring subjectivities and these were reflected in the ways they used technologies while looking for opportunities. However, even when the young people acquired digital employability skills, these had little impact on their transitions as the old social divisions were a much stronger influence.

There is a well-documented association between histories of state care and housing instability. This paper examines care leavers’ experience of securing housing during the transition out of care th...

This paper explores the temporalities and emotions of youth left-behind by migrant parents by using Jennifer Lois’ temporal emotion work as an analytical lens to foreground youth’s management of co...

This paper interrogates how three key concepts in youth studies – ‘transitions’, ‘the enterprising self’ and ‘mobilities’ – have historically centred the experiences of white/Anglo young people in ...

Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in 2019 with secondary school students in Kigali, Rwanda, this paper aims to shed light on the stance of Rwandan youth on recent policies and discussions ...

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...

Using longitudinal data from the China Education Panel Survey (CEPS), this paper employed a set of techniques to investigate the mechanism through which participation in structured extracurricular ...

This paper presents an examination of ‘frexting’ (‘friend’ + ‘sexting’), which is defined as the exchange of personally-produced intimate images among friends. It draws upon accounts of frexting sh...

Whilst the number of children in custody declines, the complex needs of many of them have increased. A review of the youth justice system stated that education needs to be the central pillar in preventing offending. Research suggests that education fails children, by prioritising reputation and the standards agenda over providing care and education that meets individual needs (Runswick-Cole. 2011. “Time to End the Bias Towards Inclusion.” British Journal of Special Education 38 (3): 11). This paper explores this failure for children prior to and in custody itself, and relates this to a theoretical model that combines children’s need and self-efficacy. It suggests that until children are guaranteed an environment where their basic needs are met, there is little hope of either education or training helping them to access a life free from crime, whatever other policy changes in custody are implemented. This research shows that current provisions, for children in custody, fail to support children’s needs around safety, belonging and self-esteem. Thus, it is no surprise that children in Secure Training Centres fail to self-actualise their educational abilities, as they lack the self-efficacy to successfully engage with education.

Drawing on empirical data from two individual research projects, this paper extends the literature on child and youth incarceration and offers a previously unexplored analysis of experiences and tr...

In the UK, transition to university has become regarded as the ‘normative’ next step for young people following completion of their post-16 education. This paper examines the views of 23 young peop...

Little attention has been given to young workers’ uses of private employment agencies as part of their job search and this paper seeks to rectify this omission. It does so by presenting a critique ...

This paper examines interview data from 20 young Muslim environmentalists in Indonesia. The data comes from a much broader research project on how people in Indonesia become environmentalists. The ...

This paper features stories about disharmony and social cohesion collected via interviews and focus groups conducted with teachers, school leaders, students, parents and the principal in a multicul...

This paper demonstrates how young people make sense of religion through local places in the urban context while moving from youth to young adulthood. We draw on in-depth interviews–including a mental map-making exercise–with twenty-four young Muslims (18–30) from a wide range of cultural backgrounds living in Metro Vancouver (Canada). Their narratives reveal young people ‘live’ religion in various local places and how spatialities of lived religion change over time. We highlight how making sense of religion is reflected in the changing meaning of the mosque and relates to the increased salience of places shared with young Muslims in which our participants negotiate religion in the context of their everyday lives in the city. While many studies on Muslim identities have established the complexities and dynamics of negotiating religion at specific local places, we argue for a focus on relations between lived religion at various local places over time. These spatiotemporal complexities are able to capture how making sense of religion is spatially and fluidly manifested in the urban context of Metro Vancouver.