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

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

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

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

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

Against a backdrop of increasing cultural visibility of people who identify across, between or beyond the categories of male and female, young people have been positioned within the wider social imaginary as radical trailblazers for a new, progressive gender order. This paper provides original insights that empirically ground and interrogate such claims. Drawing on findings from focus group interviews held with 136 young people (aged 16–24) in the UK, the paper demonstrates how young people's understandings and narrations of gender diversity both support and contest linear progress narratives. We show how young people position their acceptance of gender diversity in contradistinction to older generations. However, this narrative of generational progress was undermined and complicated by tensions and ambiguities within young people's talk. Our findings suggest that, alongside being accepting of gender diversity, young people also experience confusion and misunderstanding which may mean that they are more comfortable with stable and binary forms of gender diversity. Moreover, some young people express ideological resistance to gender diversity, informed by wider debates around 'identity politics'. Overall, we stress the importance of situating young people's gender talk amidst multiple discursive constellations through which increasingly politicised struggles around the meanings of 'gender' are currently playing out. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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 shared by teenage girls during a 2016 study investigating sexting conducted in Surrey, England. Frexting is theorised as a form of homosociality among girls and explores the extent to which and how it reflects, reproduces and subverts the dominant gendered social order within youth digital intimacies. The analysis suggests that while frexting involves intimate self-representation away from the male gaze, it reflects and reinforces a post-feminist cultural landscape characterised by (self-)scrutiny and regulation of girls' bodies and bodily self-representations. Frexting worked to demonstrate an authentic, relaxed, carefree and confident but, importantly, non-sexual sensibility, with implications for who and what constitutes legible participation. While subverting normative interpretations of girls' bodies as inherently, and problematically, sexual, frexting did not fundamentally trouble the post-feminist cultural landscape within which the girls were operating. The paper concludes by arguing that for frexting to become a truly emancipatory endeavour, it is necessary to dismantle the socio-cultural context that restricts and regulates girls' abilities to relate to and represent their bodies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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 conflicting feelings by reworking particular experiences of time. We extend Lois' concepts of 'sequencing' (strategic ordering of emotions and time) and 'savouring' (intentional maximizing of specific times) to include a contextualized, gendered angle, while also engaging with the additional concept of 'supressing'. The work draws on qualitative interviews conducted in 2017 with left-behind youth from migrant households from rural migrant-sending villages in two districts in Java, Indonesia. By highlighting youth's shifting temporal emotions and how aspirations and experiences of left-behindness are affected, our research reveals gendered strategies of temporal emotion work. Young women enact 'sequencing' and 'savouring', aspiring to stay as a means of restorative, temporal-emotional justice for their families. Conversely, young men are more inclined to enact the 'suppressing' of emotions while aspiring for migration. Among a generation that has grown up in the wake of parental migration, most youth conform to traditional gendered scripts within an older culture of masculinized circular migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite a growth in analysis of women and conflict, this has tended to overlook the specific experiences of young women. Likewise, in research on youth, conflict and peace, the term 'youth' is often short-hand for young men. Young women's experiences are regularly absent from research and policy discourse, and as a consequence, also absent from public understanding and practice responses. In this paper, we prioritise the views of and on young women to forefront their experiences of one specific form of conflict-related violence – paramilitary violence. We demonstrate that forefronting young women's experiences, and adopting an understanding of violence beyond that which privileges physical violence, unearths the multiple ways in which conflict-related violence is experienced. We further demonstrate how adopting an intersectional lens that prioritises age and gender can surface the specific experiences of young women, and the various ways in which these become silenced by cultures that omit, coerce, reduce and minimise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper forms part of a discussion with scholars working in the field of criminology and youth crime, in particular those who are interested in sport, gender, and desistance from violence. Furthermore, this paper challenges previous work into the sport of boxing and desistance from violence, and therefore argues for a more nuanced approach, by incorporating more feminist epistemologies, and inclusive masculinities into this complex phenomenon. Drawing upon contemporary research, this paper discusses prior literature on sport and desistance from violence, and further develops the concept of sport as a tool for reduction in violent youth crime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While research on youthful drinking is extensive, the literature has been geographically skewed towards urban settings. As a potential corrective to this, our focus in this paper is on youthful drinking in rural Denmark. Based on 22 in-depth interviews with young drinkers, this paper explores the drinking practices of rural youth. More specifically, drawing on Antonsich's [2010. "Searching for belonging–an analytical framework." Geography Compass 4 (6): 644–659] notion of place-belongingness, we examine how sentiments of belonging relate to locally embedded drinking practices. We highlight the extent to which rural drinking places are characterized by the participation of young men, whose educational and professional aims are predominantly tied to the local community and activities within it. In so doing, we show that these contexts are primarily associated with 'drinking a single', as opposed to drinking to intoxication like their urban peers. We argue further that these 'lighter' but frequent forms of alcohol use, which we term 'congenial drinking', are related to accomplishments of place-belongingness and stand out as a gendered, classed and place-bound phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines individual, peer and societal factors associated with young people's instigation of physical, sexual and emotional abuse, including abuse and control through new technologies, in their intimate relationships. The mixed-method research included a survey of 4564 young people aged 14–17 across five European countries. Young people's advisory groups were convened in each country to work alongside the research teams. Across the European sample, 38% of boys and 45% of girls stated they engaged in some form of emotional violence, 10% of girls and 6% of boys reported the use of physical violence and 20% of boys and 4% of girls reported using sexual violence (pressure and/or physical force). A range of intersecting factors, including wider experiences of violence and abuse, gendered attitudes and consumption of online pornography, were associated with the use of intimate violence, although these differed by gender. The research provides new European insights through measuring the association with three discrete forms of IPVA as well as exploring perpetration by both males and females. A Prevention and intervention programmes seeking to respond to violence in young people's relationships need to develop effective strategies to address the interplay of these factors across young people's lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous studies have found that although young adults are arguably less constrained by gendered norms and expectations than previous generations, they have nevertheless continued to imagine their biographical futures in highly gendered ways. In this paper I draw on an analysis of 28 in-depth interviews in which 16 women and 12 men (aged 18-34) were asked to discuss their expectations for both the biographical and social future. The results of this study largely confirm the findings of previous scholarship, with young women often viewing childbearing and caring responsibilities as compulsory, while young men largely viewed these commitments as complementary to their chosen careers. This paper extends existing findings in this area by examining, firstly, whether these perceptions of the biographical future are mirrored in the participants’ views of the long-term, social future, and secondly, what implications such views may have when they are extended into this register. In so doing it ultimately finds that the gender norms that shape young adults’ expectations for their own futures are echoed in their outlooks upon the social future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores various dimensions of ‘gender’ and ‘mobility’ among immigrant youth from a transnational perspective in an era of economic crisis. The extent and parameters of continuity, contestation and change in migrant youth identities are analysed and we suggest that neither gender nor identity are stable categories but are embedded in sociocultural particularities both in the country of residence (Greece) but also in the country of origin (Albania). Through in-depth interviews with 52 participants, all second-generation Albanian immigrants in Greece born to two Albanian parents, the paper addresses youth identification in relation to gendered representations of belonging. The narrative accounts that we have selected and analysed reflect the emotional challenges, constraints and creativity of Albanian youth. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Romance in modern societies is undergoing a two-fold process of transformation: on the one hand, traditional gender relationships are being revised and criticized; on the other, new digital communication technologies are making possible to initiate, sustain and end romantic relationships through a set of practices that mix physical co-presence and online interactions. Using a qualitative approach (N = 48), this paper explores how young people (ages 18–29) in Chile conceive of romantic relationships in this social and technological context. Our results show that romantic relationships are a significant terrain in which gender is negotiated through digitally mediated practices of courtship and maintenance of established romantic relationships. These mirror the power dynamics involved in the existing gendered normativity, but also provide some leeway to transform it, depending on the resources that individuals bring to the technological milieu. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Middle-class young adults in the United States increasingly face insecurity around social class. This situation is especially fraught for women, whose economic and social gains are still not equal to men's. Using interviews with 20 heterosexual- and LGBTQ-identified women from middle-class backgrounds, this paper investigates the gendered and classed messages in women's communications with friends and family regarding romantic intimacy choices. Women's accounts suggest that family and friends monitor their choices in the interest of protecting class privilege. However, classed messages sometimes conflict with gendered expectations, creating ambiguity for women. Women's accounts also illustrate the importance of heteronormativity to the classed project of adult womanhood, posing a dilemma for LGBTQ women in particular. Despite increased individualization in Western society, women's accounts suggest continued influence from friends and family in the interest of upholding class and heteronormative gender privilege among middle-class women. However, this classed project ultimately comes at the expense of limiting women's intimacy options and maintaining class inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How much do young people's daily activities differ according to where they live? As a global generation, young people are disproportionally subject to the risks and insecurity of globalization. However, countries differ in their support for young people's inclusion through economic and social participation. Using time use surveys from Australia, Italy, Finland, France, Korea, Spain, the UK and the USA (n = 23,271), this paper investigates national differences in the amount of time young people (20–34 years) spend on paid and unpaid work, study and leisure in each country. Gender gaps in market work and non-market work were widest in the Anglo and southern European countries. In France and Finland, gender differences in daily market and non-market activity were narrower. Young women spent more daily time in study than young men in all countries except Korea, where study time was highest. Young men and young women in social democratic Finland had more leisure time than young people elsewhere. Results suggest that young people's experience of the consequences of globalization is not universal, but that nation-states remain relevant in determining their welfare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I examine the ways in which governing bodies at the Finnish national and also European Union levels talk about young people and our shared future in Finland. I use their youth policy documents as material for critical discourse analysis. My argument is that, besides presenting visions of a desired future, these papers also produce and reproduce divisions between young people that reflect gender and class positions. Young people are divided into those who have potential, those who will take care of others' needs, and those who are at risk of marginalisation. I also argue that the Nordic policy tendency to conceive of youth as a resource rather than as a problem is not consistent. Finnish youth policy has changed, firstly because of the changing economic environment - the politics of austerity - and secondly because of Europeanisation. [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]

Since the 1990s, young women in the West have been addressed as ‘Top Girls’, symbols of social progress and emblems of a new meritocracy. The 2008 financial crash and subsequent implementation of austerity measures have further called into question the realisation of such promise and potential as evidence suggests that the young and women have suffered disproportionately within the post-crash landscape in the UK and beyond. This paper draws on longitudinal data to interrogate the promises and failures of neoliberal and post-feminist articulations of aspiration and meritocracy as these are lived and negotiated by young women making transitions in the midst of the ‘crisis’. Attending to the biographical accounts of two participants occupying different class locations, I explore their transitions and perceptions of the uncertainties and risks characterising ‘austere times’. I demonstrate how, despite similarities in their experiences of a stunted graduate labour market, social class shaped how they responded to and made sense of the pressures and predicaments they encountered. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Existing research explores safety among young adults as a complex phenomenon in diverse social spaces. Nonetheless, it largely approaches perceptions of unsafety and safety strategies as discrete individual action. In this paper, we show how safety is created through the social interactions between young activist groups and their main target or audience, young adults. Our study aimed to explore how young adults created meanings and actions of safety within their activism. Grounded Theory method was use to collect and analyze qualitative interviews with young adults of ten social change groups located in two medium-size cities in Sweden. To interpret our findings, we drew upon interactionist concepts of shared definitions and joint action [Blumer, Herbert. 1966. "Sociological Implications of the thought of George Herbert Mead." American Journal of Sociology 71 (5): 535–544]. Shared definitions challenged narrow notions of unsafety by identifying uniform categories and harmful stereotypes as the source of the problem, and thereby locating constraints upon the capacity of different groups of young adults to define situations as (un)safe. Joint action combined an immediate response of moving to where young adults were with an enduring response of being there for young adults. Combined, these constituted an overarching social process of collective caring, which we linked to Isabel Lorey's [2015. State of Insecurity. London: Verso] concept of practices of caring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In much of Africa, teenage sexualities are often understood through the optic of danger, violence and disease without much attention to love within relationship dynamics. There is a strong case to be made for the continued focus on African teenage sexualities within unequal relations of power. However, whilst focusing on the structural factors that expand sexually aggressive masculinities and limit teenage women's sexual agency, the expression of teenage love in the daily battle for power remains neglected. Drawing on an interview study of teenage Africans, aged 16–17 years, in the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa, the paper focuses on the micro-dynamics of love, sex and gender. Teenagers account of love highlights changing discourses and include relationships based on care, negotiation and agency showing potential for equality. Such constructions however sit in tension with teenage women's vulnerability in relation to the sexual economy and money, masculine power and gender hierarchies. Intervention programmes that address teenage sexuality must pay careful attention to how love matters in their conceptualisation of relationships and requires consideration of the social and economic context within which they are located. The challenge is to build on equality, address gender hierarchies and ideologies within relationships which create vulnerability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores perceptions regarding family and paid employment expressed by university students in Chile, based on the analysis of quantitative data from the Maule region (southern Chile). We argue that the increasing unpredictability of labor markets has eroded the role paid employment historically has had as the lynchpin of individual’s – particularly men’s – life project, altering the expectations about both work and family life. Likewise, changes in gender roles have shaped youngsters’ ideals about family life. This seems to be the case especially for women, who strongly affirm their economic independence and personal projects, departing from traditional family views. We conclude that young people are demanding a new balance between life (understood mainly as personal and family time) and work. There is also a strong affirmation of the individual project, including a demand for greater gender equality. Although still at the level of projected visions of the future, these findings signal changes in the way the relation work–family is traditionally organized, bringing new challenges for public policy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Within lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) research there is increasing health-related scholarship on trans lives, with a growing awareness of the impact of health inequalities on trans well-being. The aim of the paper is to provide greater understanding of transgender young people’s views of what is needed to promote their emotional well-being and resilience by undertaking specific analysis of data collected as part of wider research with young people (n = 97). The study utilised participatory qualitative methods with a cross sectional design generating data via a focus group with trans youth (n = 5), followed by thematic analysis. Findings suggest that both individual and collective capacities or resources enable and sustain resilience and well-being for trans young people. The adversity trans youth face is present in school, the community and in healthcare, but they are able to find places where they feel safe and connected to others. Practitioners, teachers and school nurses are well positioned to facilitate structural change in alliance with trans youth to promote resilience. Research results were utilised to inform health improvement, commissioning and service delivery. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The geographies of the current generation of young people are markedly distinct from previous generations by virtue of their access to a virtual playground. The vast majority of young people now engage in video gaming as a leisure activity. Drawing on findings from the 2009/2010 WHO Health Behaviour in School-aged Children study this paper set out to investigate the factors that might be associated with higher levels of video gaming. Information was collected from 4404 school students aged 11, 13 and 15 years, using anonymised self-completed questionnaires. Higher usage was defined as game play exceeding two hours a day. Separate analyses were conducted for boys and girls. For both genders higher levels of game playing was associated with early adolescence, opposite sex friends and minimal parental mediation. Bullying and going to bed hungry were associated with higher usage for boys only, while life satisfaction and family activities were linked to girls’ game playing only. Parents were identified as effective mediators of young people’s video game usage. The study identified gendered motivations for higher levels of game play, suggesting different interventions for boys and girls may be required in order for young people to create a balanced approach to video gaming. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper aims to advance debates in youth studies about the contemporary relevance of social structures of class, race and gender to the formation of youth subcultures. I demonstrate how drawing on a cultural class analysis and education literature on learner identities and performativity can be productive in theorising the continued significance of class, and indeed also race and gender in young people's lives. In examining school-based friendships and (sub)cultural forms through empirical research in urban schools, I argue that not only are young people's subcultural groups structured by class, race and gender but also they are integral to the production of these identities. By examining the discursive productions of two school-based subcultures as examples: the ‘Smokers’ and the ‘Football’ crowd, I further argue that these identity positions embody resources or capitals which have differing value in the context of the urban school and thus demonstrate how race, class and gender privilege are maintained and reproduced through youth subculture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sex education and relationship strategy of the U.K. allows parents to withdraw their children from sex education, which has left many young people especially those from Black Minority and Ethnic communities with low or no sex education. Similarly, the government's policy environment enables faith schools to teach these subjects under the tenets of their faith. This empirical research was carried out in South-West London using 12 qualitative interviews with women and men (ages 18–20 years) discusses young women's experiences of their first sexual encounter who navigate their reputations, relationships as well as negotiate safe sex in the absence of appropriate relationships and sex education. Sex education not only brings into focus sensitivities around gender but also tensions around religion in the U.K. Evidence from the study suggests that despite the importance placed by the Indian community on maintaining virginity, young women asserted that religion and culture did not prohibit them from exploring their sexuality. In this study, the priority is to present young women's voices and experience of sexual encounters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most young people in the UK now stay on in education or training when they finish school. Numbers will continue to increase following the implementation of raising the participation age. Despite an upward trend in further education participation, young people's pathways continue to be shaped by class and gender. This paper explores the choices and decisions made by young people in their final year of compulsory schooling and describes how these class and gender inequalities are reproduced. We also spoke to parents about their own trajectories and their involvement in guiding their children's next steps. Our concern is with young people in ‘the middle’: not most at risk of social exclusion, but certainly not the most privileged. The decisions at this key transitional point are socially embedded. Processes of class reproduction and class mobility are dependent upon both structural context and access to advantageous resources. The opportunity structures for our participants were very different for the two generations. We note the wider role that social resources play at this moment, and the classed differences between the children of parents who had experienced some upward mobility and those who had remained in working-class positions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic focused public attention on youth non-compliance with restrictions, but the social and health factors underpinning this behaviour were overlooked. Hereby, we considered the complex relationships between age (16–29 vs. 30+), non-compliance, socioeconomic vulnerabilities and poor mental health using a gender perspective. Data were derived from the 'Survey on the impact of COVID-19', fielded on 11–15 April 2020 in Catalonia. In a non-probabilistic sample of 14,123 individuals, we performed gender-stratified mediation analyses using Structural Equation Models. The results suggest that youth was related to non-compliance among men, but not among women. Nonetheless, young women were more frequently fired than older women, which enhanced their likelihood of non-compliance. Mental health outcomes were poorer among young people but did not relate to youth non-compliance. Finally, adverse socioeconomic situations related to non-compliance and poor mental health, but this was not an idiosyncrasy of young people. Lessons from the first COVID-19 wave suggest that young age intersects with gender and socioeconomic factors in determining non-compliance. This highlights the need to incorporate a gender and socioeconomic inequalities perspective in the design and evaluation of policies that tackle non-compliance among young people. Only by using this holistic approach will we effectively manage future public health crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Young women and girls in Uttar Pradesh (UP), India, face gender inequalities, which threaten their health and well-being. This study used body mapping, a visual participatory research method, to learn from adolescents ages 15 to 17 living in Lucknow slums about how gender norms affect their daily experiences. Forty adolescents participated in body mapping. Their body maps and narratives about those maps demonstrate that starting in adolescence, family and community members strongly enforce divergent gender norms for girls and boys. Girls face restrictions on their clothing, mobility, and education, whereas boys have comparative freedom in these domains. Girls experience persistent public harassment by boys and men, severely constraining their ability to move freely in public spaces. In contrast, the school was a setting where adolescent girls and boys experience more relaxed gender norms. Overall, this study describes the link between gender norms, health, and well-being for adolescents. It also illustrates the value of participatory and adolescent-friendly research methods for exploring gender norms among adolescent boys and girls in India. Finally, it indicates that multi-system approaches are needed to address gender-related inequalities in health and well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adolescents' aspirations are important for a healthy transition into adulthood. Knowledge about girls' aspirations and their formation in a low-income context is scant. Framed within life course theory, this qualitative study aimed to understand adolescent girls' life aspirations, with a specific focus on school, work, family life, health and diets, and explore how aspirations are shaped within girls' everyday life context, in Nawalpur and Parasi, two districts in the plains of Western Nepal. Data collection involved interviewing 17 adolescent girls (11–19 years) using creative elicitation techniques: timeline drawing and network mapping. Thematic analyses revealed unique aspiration profiles of younger, older, and married adolescent girls. While younger girls were present-oriented and aspired high, older girls balanced aspirations with reality and in turn, adjusted their aspirations. Married women had mostly resigned themselves to their present lives and transferred their lost aspirations onto their children. Findings underscore how girls' feelings, others in their daily lives, gendered norms, and structural factors, are related to different domains of aspirations during different stages of adolescence. Results give direction to integrated policies and programs that aim to sustain and cultivate adolescent girls' aspirations at specific stages of adolescence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transformations of gender cultures are among the most powerful cultural and social processes of our age: at different speeds, these changes are affecting all societies in the world. Feminist thought and struggles, LGBTQ+ movements and new masculinities are eroding the pillars of patriarchy. Changes of this magnitude, destined to overturn centuries-old systems and power relations in public and private life, have been met with widespread resistance. Even the most progressive societies have experienced backlash, and gender-based discrimination and violence are still topical phenomena. This research investigates how today's young people are living this phase of tension between opportunities for change and the persistence of traditional mentalities. Specifically, what awareness do 20-year-olds have of the gender revolution underway? What influences do the family and the school exert? What conceptions do they hold, what practices do they follow? The strength of the research lies in its empirical corpus: it includes about 300 gender-focused social autobiographies, written by young Italian university students, men and women, and analysed with a qualitative method. This study offers an important insight into contemporary gender cultures in Italy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rural labour markets for youth are an interesting research area for labour force transition studies because gender differences begin to appear with the out-migration that leads to a shortage of young women in Europe. Whilst existing studies provide insight into this migration flow, little is known about the young women and men who remain in the labour force in rural areas. The aim of this study is to provide insight into the determinants of job access after leaving education in Germany among the young population aged 15–29 based on the Labour Force Survey of 2002–2009. First, an empirical analysis of student to employment flow in rural areas with respect to social position (degree discipline, age, and socio-professional category) has been conducted. Second, gender-specific multinomial logit models are used to estimate the determinants of access to a first job without a long-term unemployment spell. The results suggest that there are substantive differences in student to employment flow between female and male samples for the variables urbanisation degree of residence (rural, urban, and peri-urbain) and marital status. Contrary to our expectations, living in rural areas does not suggest a significant negative effect in accessing a job within a year. In line with previous studies, being married has a negative influence on female graduates but is positive for their male counterparts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship with place has been recognized as a significant dimension of rural youth leisure, both through the discursive constructions of place, but also as affective and embodied dimensions. This study captures these processes by applying the concept of place-making as a set of recurrent discursive processes, analyzing how girls in Northern Sweden engage in place-making alongside, beyond, and in contrast to dominant discourses on leisure, rurality and wellbeing. The study draws on data from photo-elicited focus groups with girls from two sports organizations. The discursive psychology analysis resulted in three interpretative repertoires. The first repertoire describes the sharp contrast between discourses of the 'rural dull' and how stressful the participants constructed their own places of leisure. The second illustrates the gendered discourses around what is considered to be productive and respectable leisure. The third shows how the participants are made responsible for the survival of their leisure. Through place-making, the participants shape places of leisure, affecting both themselves and their rural community. They engage in, conform to, and challenge place-making within discourses of responsibility and precariousness, creating space for their own initiatives, which are simultaneously shaped by the material conditions under which these practices take place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As young people attempt to adapt to a rapidly changing society, how they experience school and work has undergone significant changes in recent decades. Youth researchers attempting to understand these changes have drawn heavily on the concepts of agency and structure. In the process, researchers often end up taking a ‘middle-ground’ approach and in turn have critiqued the theorizing of Ulrich Beck for being too focused on agency. This article engages with this debate by examining young people's understandings of the social structures shaping their lives within the constantly changing environment of a boomtown. Drawing on qualitative in-depth interviews with high school students, post-secondary students, and young workers, it was found that most young people were able to recognize how class had shaped their lives, only Aboriginal young people discussed how race/ethnicity had shaped their lives, and only young women understood how gender had shaped their lives. The findings suggest that the specific local context that young people experience their school and work lives within is important in their reflexive understandings of their biographies. In this case, the boomtown environment helped to highlight difference and make only certain social structures visible to particular young people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Limited research has been conducted exploring students' motives for choosing certain career pathways, aspirations and goals in Atlantic Canada. This study examines data from a province-wide survey of students in grades 7, 9 and 12 to better understand gender and grade differences as students start to develop ideas career goals and their futures. Our results indicate that female students are more likely influenced by family members and teachers, and are typically more interested in the medical profession, whereas male students are more likely to be influenced by their friends and the internet, and are typically more interested in STEM fields (such as skilled trades), and law enforcement. Furthermore, the results indicate that as grade levels increase, students are more likely to view visiting post-secondary campuses as an important step in exploring post-high school goals. In summary, we found significant grade and gender differences amongst students when it comes to their career explorations, career drivers, and career goals. These results greatly expand our understanding of how students make decisions about what they want to do after high school and should be used by key influencers as they guide and support students during this transitory, and often stressful, time in their lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although measurement and prevalence of digital dating abuse (DDA) in young people's relationships is of growing research interest, youth perceptions of the behaviours and the impact on victims are yet to be fully understood. This study explored thirty-eight (16–24 year old) youth's perceptions of DDA behaviours and descriptors of the emotional impact of the behaviours on victims. A predominant theme of gender differences emerged, with five subthemes: (a) men tend to engage in sexual-related behaviours, (b) men and women undertake different controlling and monitoring behaviours, (c) the role of reputation shapes the impact on men, (d) serious negative emotions characterise the impact on women, and (e) some men misconceive the severity of the impact on women. Findings move discussions beyond DDA prevalence and frequency to reveal that young people perceive DDA to have significant emotional consequences for victims and that there are gender differences in the perpetration and impact of DDA. These perspectives provide a valuable contribution to the development of gender-sensitive DDA measures, DDA prevention initiatives and support programmes for youth experiencing DDA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The issue of incapacitated sexual assault (ISA) among youths has received increased attention among researchers. Still our understanding of the phenomenon is so far limited. Most research to date departs from an underlying 'perpetrator tactics' framework in which ISA is understood as acts of deliberate exploitation of vulnerable victims. Our analysis suggests that this framework represents an overly narrow understanding of how ISA happens among youths. Based on analyses of short written descriptions of ISA experiences from a nationally representative survey among 18- and 19-year-olds in Norway, we propose that ISA unfolds through two distinctly different interactional dynamics; either stemming from tumultuous and confusing sexual interactions that defy a clear allocation of culpability or from an assailant's more or less deliberate tactics. Girls are more at risk and experience both types of ISA assaults, while boys mostly experience tumultuous 'drunk sex' situations and more often redefine the situation in a way that masks their victimhood. The separation of the two situational dynamics furthers the understanding of how ISA unfolds and of gendered vulnerabilities for sexual violence linked to youth drinking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alcohol consumption can be an important marker of transitions. In this article, we focus on the process of becoming an adult drinker, to which 'maturing out' of earlier drinking styles is central. Drinking style also plays a part in the construction of gender, and we explore how age and gender interact in young adult women's accounts of maturing out of binge drinking practices. The analysis is based on qualitative interviews with 19 Norwegian women (27–34 years old). The participants performed age and gender through their accounts of drinking, by 1) Creating intimacy through drinking, 2) Monitoring their drinking and 3) Re-contextualising pleasure from drinking. The participants' performance of age entailed accounting for their drinking largely in terms of conventional femininity. However, by simultaneously emphasising pleasure in their alcohol consumption, the participants retained independence and empowerment even when facing demands to become more conventional (in terms of femininity) as they matured. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores young people's imaginations of their future family life. Based on qualitative research among young people in North Bohemia, it considers social reproduction and change within the domain of gendered labour and parenting. This is done on the backdrop of post-1989 transformation of Czech society, where drives towards individualisation and diversification of the life course stand against discourses and policies supporting separate gender roles. Through the analytical lenses of gendered relationality, combined with Yanagisako and Delaney's concepts naturalisation/de-naturalisation, we uncover multiplex structures of imaginations and their specific regional–historical conditioning. While preferences for gender separate roles are quite strong among both young men and young women, there is also a willingness to cross gendered boundaries and share tasks, in particular when it comes to household labour. For childcare, the gendered boundaries appear more rigid in young people's imaginations; infant care is deemed female and the image of the father as main or equal caregiver is rejected. However, the male main or equal caregiver is not unimaginable. Although undesirable, he is definitely present in the imaginations of both genders, something that leads us to argue that social transformation may also be on its way within this domain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the importance of free-time activities in building the identity of Spanish young people who neither study nor work. The initial point is that the situation of unemployment, inactivity and precarious work that affects many young people leads to changes in the construction of their identity. Low employment and job insecurity accentuate the loss of centrality of paid work in their life project, and the use of free time reflects the traits that identify them in a specific context. The relationship between free time and training and/or working time was therefore investigated using a qualitative methodological strategy to analyse the structure, meaning and content of free time according to young people's situation in relation to education and employment, their gender and their region of residence. The results suggest that the symbolic centrality of working time persists alongside changes in the meaning and content of free time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the reversal of gender differences in educational attainment, women continue to be underrepresented in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) occupations. Yet comparative studies indicate that the male advantage in STEM fields varies across countries. To understand how these country variations come about, this study analyzes the gender gap in adolescents' STEM expectations. While previous research mainly focused on the role of the cultural environment and the education system, this study contributes to the literature by investigating the opportunity structures of the labor market. We study how employment opportunities in science and technology, the post-industrial restructuring of labor markets in both low- and high-status occupations, and women's success in graduating from STEM fields might explain the gender gap in STEM expectations. Empirically, we analyze 15-year-old pupils' occupational expectations from the OECD's PISA 2015 study linked with macro-level indicators in 35 EU and OECD countries by means of two-step multilevel models. Results indicate that the gender gap in STEM expectations is larger in countries with a more pronounced post-industrial restructuring of the labor market. However, rather than steering girls away from the STEM sector, post-industrial restructuring increases boys' STEM expectations and thus seems to strengthen their gender-typical tasks preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Young people's financial lives have undergone change, with delays and struggles attaining stable employment, home ownership, and financial independence. Despite such change, research on the future thinking of young adults suggests the persistent significance of such financial milestones. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 36 young adults aged 18–32 in a mid-sized, prosperous Canadian city, inquiring into their goals and perceptions of their future financial lives in light of their current situations. Findings revealed young adults' overarching desire for financial security, notably through goals of a steady job, debt reduction, and home ownership. These findings affirm that during this transitional time of life, many young adults are involved in a search for security, hoping to attain financial independence and stability in a conventionally linear and upward fashion. This search for security and stability manifests differently across sociodemographic positions (namely age, gender, birthplace, and socioeconomic status), reflecting differing experiences of precarity, cultural representations of the life course, and positions along financial trajectories. Participants' visions of their financial futures also appear to connect to factors in the local context, including its relative prosperity, persistence of traditional gender roles, and a relatively modest cost of living compared to other urban centres in Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At a time of growing expectations about educational attainment, young people who did not complete upper-secondary schooling can easily be 'left behind' to face risks of social exclusion. Being able to make a rapid and successful transition into a first significant job is crucial for long-term labor-market attachment. We approach the question of continuity or change in school-to-work transitions by comparing the experiences of four birth cohorts of early school leavers in Italy, where they still constitute a sizeable group as of today. Italy makes for an interesting case study due to the length of school-to-work transitions and the extent of gender differences in this phase. In an era of educational expansion and increased female activation, studying changes in low-educated women's labor-market access brings into focus the question of who is really left behind. Using data from the 2009 'Multi-purpose Survey on Household and Social Subjects,' we use discrete time logistic regression models to estimate the probability of transitioning to the first significant job for early school leavers born between 1954 and 1993. We find that gender differences are strikingly persistent across birth cohorts, even after controlling for sociodemographic variables as well as for time-varying fertility and partnership histories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present an analysis of young masculinities based on young peoples' perspectives derived from a project on sexual bullying. Our qualitative data are based on 41 focus groups with 253 young people (male and female) aged 13–18 across five European countries (Bulgaria, Italy, Latvia, Slovenia and England) as well as questionnaire responses. The data were analysed using thematic analysis (Braun, V., and V. Clarke. 2006. "Using Thematic Analysis in Psychology." Qualitative Research in Psychology 3 (2): 77–101). Our analysis pointed to the prevalence of sexist and homophobic behaviours among young men, who were themselves concerned with their 'masculine' reputations by appearing physically tough, (hetero)sexually active and emotionally closed. The young women in our sample also depicted many young men as immature, naïve and superficial. At the same time, the young men were portrayed as more calm, rational and resilient compared to their female counterparts, with young men insisting that any 'problematic' or 'bullying' behaviour amounted to harmless fun. Our analysis suggests that young men are performing gender and sexuality under the influence of conventional norms which prioritise homosociality, humour and status, which shy away from challenging sexist or homophobic practices, and which inhibit reporting themselves as victims of bullying. The implications for young masculinities and social change are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the NEET phenomenon in a longitudinal perspective, by examining the case of Italy, a country experiencing one of the highest and increasing NEET shares in the EU. We exploit the longitudinal sample of the 2008-2011 EU-SILC data, providing self-declared information on individuals' educational and occupational status on a monthly basis for 4 years. Firstly, we propose a classification of individual histories in education, employment and the NEET states. According to our estimates, more than 40% of the Italian young people report being NEET for at least 13 months out of 48, and more than 10% for (almost) the entire period. Secondly, we examine the composition of the NEET groups and draw a long-term NEET risk profile for individuals from different sociodemographic groups. Thirdly, we examine the longitudinal histories by distinguishing between unemployment and inactivity spells. Our findings show that the NEET phenomenon among Italian young adults is largely an issue of unemployment. The only exception is represented by Italian older females with children, the majority of which portrays themselves as inactive. Still, a sizable portion of these women define themselves as being mainly 'unemployed' instead of 'performing domestic tasks', indicating an unsatisfied wish or need to work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Enhancing the entrepreneurial spirit of young people is a means by which their employability and future potential as well as economic growth, the core goal of national policies, are incubated. Consequently, individuals performing entrepreneurial mindset are seen to possess the most future potential. We sketch the contours of this mindset and develop the idea of 'tuning' the entrepreneurial mindset with other discursive elements, or 'ingredients', available in society in order to make the overarching idea of entrepreneurialism more manageable, bearable, and even enjoyable at the individual level. The ingredients with which the mindset is tuned are non-depressiveness, happiness, and gratefulness. This tuning of the mindset is itself necessary and difficult mental work, even though it is invisible. Our analysis is based on 40 interviews with 18–30-year-old women and men from Tampere, Finland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article studies illicit street art and graffiti subculture among women in Helsinki, taking feminist subcultural theory into account. In previous studies of illicit street art and graffiti, women's participation has been overlooked partly due to lack of data and through the tendency of seeing them as one unified marginalised group. Through ethnographic fieldwork, using edgework as the methodological approach, and interviews with eight women painting street art and graffiti in Helsinki, this article presents a critical perspective on how these women negotiate their positions in the subcultures from different positions. Particularly, it examines the performed gendered distinctions between street art and graffiti, and the negotiations of subcultural subjectivity. [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]