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The sexual health of people, particularly young people, in Northern Ireland is currently poor. Yet there has been little research conducted on sexual attitudes and lifestyles. This paper is based on data from the first ever major research project in this field in Northern Ireland. Using quantitative and qualitative methods, it targeted young people aged 14-25. A combination of a self-administered survey questionnaire, focus group discussions and one-to-one interviews was found to be most suitable for the collection of sensitive data on sexuality in a country where the social and moral climate had previously prevented studies of this nature. Information was collected on sexual attitudes and behaviour generally. This paper focuses on one crucial issue: the age of first sexual encounter. It explores the attitudes of young people to that experience and the use of contraception. Many of the findings match those of similar large-scale surveys in England and Wales, including the modal age of first sexual encounter and the influence of peer pressure on decision-making about first sex. There were significant gender differences in both behaviour and attitudes. It is hoped that the research results will influence future education and health policy, which has all too often been based on ignorance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on young people leaving the parental home has tended to focus most closely on charting and explaining the age at which young people leave, and exploring the incidence of returning after a period of living either 'semi-autonomously' or independently. The majority of these studies have been quantitative and fairly static in approach. This paper develops an approach to the topic that is more qualitative in its orientation and that views housing biographies as essentially dynamic. Using primary data from the United Kingdom, the paper constructs five 'ideal' typical housing pathways followed by young people: a chaotic pathway, and unplanned pathway, a constrained pathway, a planned (non-student) pathway, and a student pathway. The paper then gives particular consideration to the characteristics of the student pathway, and compares the experience of students studying away from the parental home with the long-term housing biographies of their non-student peers. The paper concludes that the typical student housing experience--including a supervised leaving of the parental home and a 'sheltered' spell in the private rented sector--constitutes an essential education in housing that enhances the housing and labour opportunities of graduates compared with other young people who have not studied away from the parental home. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Home is a space that consists of physical places, social practices and mental meanings. All these aspects are evoked when young people plan or dream about moving away from their parental home. Young women and men have manifold hopes concerning finding space, peace, agency and independence that moving to a place of your own seems to promise. There are a range of fears and uncertainties in their thoughts about this transition as well. Starting work, getting into further education and establishing partnership have an impact on young people's dreams as well as on their practical possibilities of establishing their own household. Material, cultural and social resources at young people's disposal are embedded in their dreams and plans. They vary according to their social background and gender. In this paper we discuss reflections of young women and men on moving away from the parental home. We first met these young people when they were 13 years old, in an ethnographic study in secondary schools. This paper, then, draws from an ethnographically grounded life history research 'Tracing Transitions--Follow-up Study of Post-sixteen Students'. In the project we have re-interviewed the same young women and men at around age 18 years, and again at around age 20 years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Until the 1990s, the literature on youth leisure characterized that of females as home-based, passive and largely absent from male-dominated subcultures. Contrasting with this, over the course of the 1990s, evidence emerged of increasing public visibility, reduced restrictions on activities and relatively greater increases in health-risk behaviours among females, together with suggestions of a domestification of leisure among males This paper uses data from two cohorts of 15 year olds in the same geographical area (the West of Scotland), separated by 12 years (1987 and 1999) to examine changes in the gender patterning of young people's leisure, use of public space and risk taking (as represented by substance use) over this time period. Gender differences in 'street-based' (previously more males) and 'conventional/safe' (previously more females) leisure disappeared over this period while male excesses in watching sports and playing computer games increased. At the same time, female levels of drinking and experience of illicit drugs reached, and those of smoking overtook, their male counterparts. Additional analyses showed that changes in leisure activities over time accounted in part for the changing gender patterns in substance use. The paper discusses how greater public visibility and increased risk-taking behaviours among females have resulted from the lifting of constraints of respectability on young women's life- styles. These changes have been rapid and have significance in both social and health terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores recent shifts in the meaning and culture of adolescent drug use, contrasting developments in the United Kingdom and Australia. Of particular interest will be the claim that drug use has become a normal feature of young people's life-experience. The paper draws upon Howard Parker's 'normalization thesis', arguing that Parker's approach has some value in accounting for the changing nature of adolescent drug use in Australia. Available epidemiological evidence indicates that young people's consumption of illicit substances has risen dramatically in Australia in the past decade, although not at quite the rates recorded in the United Kingdom. The paper also draws upon contemporary debates in sociology and cultural studies in an attempt to explain these shifts in adolescent drug use. I conclude that greater attention to consumption and identity formation within youth cultures offers important new ways of understanding recent changes in the culture and meaning of drug use for young people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper details the participatory behaviour of Australian young people through an examination of the relationship between gender, awareness of time constraints and participation. It engages with existing feminist critiques of how participation is conceptualized and recent research that looks at the effects of both structure and agency in the lives of young people. The paper is based on an original survey of 18-year-old 34-year-old Australians and shows that rather than this age group having homogeneous (or even negligible) participatory experiences, four distinct participatory typologies emerge. These four typologies are labelled as Activist, Communitarian, Party and Individualistic. Two participatory types, Activist and Communitarian, are differen tiated by gender, with women being more participatory. I argue that an understanding of the complex relationship between gender and participation is enhanced when parent ing commitments, paid work commitments, and the awareness of the relationship between time and participation are included in analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Feminist writers have identified young women's engagement with their appearances as a source of alienation from their bodies. There are now concerns that 'feminization' of youth behaviour will lead to similar difficulties for young men, and this papers sets out to examine whether they too are experiencing levels of identity damage from this. The contemporary context of identity construction will be briefly considered. That for boys and girls practices of consumption can offer group affiliations but can lead also to exclusion and isolation is discussed. That boys are under pressure to produce bodies that are sporty, strong and 'hard' is then argued. The paper concludes that there are similarities in the pressures on boys and girls to 'do looks', but that the failure to do this and the experience of being excluded and/or devalued that this may produce may have more to do with class, 'race' and poverty than with gender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on material from 30 interviews with Toronto-area teenage girls and their grandmothers, the present paper reviews five discourses of adolescence: storm, becoming, at-risk, social problem, and pleasurable consumption. I explore how these discourses are invested, deployed and experienced in relation to each other and as they span academic texts, popular discourses, and interviews. I contend that these discourses make up a powerful discursive framework in which activity undertaken by adolescents can be swept up into these discourses, and consequently dismissed. At the same time, tensions or contradictions within and between these discourses, and within the entire category of adolescence as a stage, can in fact undermine the weight of these discourses as truth statements. I end the paper with some reflections on how each discourse constructs potential for agency, and/or resistance among teenagers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on a longitudinal study of higher education choices to suggest that, for many of the young people who took part in the research, engaging in the decision-making process with regards to higher education highlighted, often for the first time, important differences between friends. Differences in academic attainment, higher education institution and, for some, proposed course of study at higher education and future career were not seen as value neutral. In almost all friendship groups, differences in these areas were explicitly or implicitly ranked. Recent theorizing on the nature of friendships would suggest that, as the young people became aware of such differences in social location, the equality of their friendships would come under increasing pressure and, in such circumstances, would be likely to change. However, there is compelling evidence from this research that, although the portrayal of equality became difficult for many of the young people, their friendships did not change in this way. Indeed, the stability of many friendship groups over the two-year period was notable. The paper argues that, instead of forging new friendships more congruent with their emerging social locations, the students used a variety of strategies to manage their existing friendships. After describing these strategies, the paper goes on to explore the likely reason why they were deployed and the implications this may have for our conceptualization of friendship. It will consider whether similar strategies are practised in other friendships over the life course, as an attempt to manage difference, or, alternatively, whether they are they symptomatic of the perceived 'transitional' nature of friendships in the years immediately preceding higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an era when governments are keen to adopt 'quick-fix' solutions to the problems of social exclusion, there is particular need to reclaim the more 'enabling' aspects of socially inclusive policy interventions aimed at young people. In the context of debates concerning social exclusion, the present paper asks: How can we judge if policy interventions are working towards the social inclusion of young people in an empowerment sense? How might we conceptually explain and empirically examine the connection between such interventions and their potentially empowering effects on young people? The paper seeks to advance our understanding of socially inclusive policy interventions within a structurationist framework, particularly in terms of how they seek to mobilize young people's 'resources' as defined by Giddens. To demonstrate the substantive issues entailed within such an analysis, the present paper makes use of empirical evidence from an 'enabling' education/training programme for 'unqualified' rural youth (mainly early school-leavers) in the West of Ireland known as 'Youthreach'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theories of the life course are increasingly taking into account conditions in late-modern societies that make it necessary for people to undertake the process of individualization in the transition to, and through, adulthood. In this paper, strategic responses to this requirement of late-modernity are described in terms of the identity capital model. This social-psychological model postulates that, net of structural obstacles, those who are more agentic in investing in their adult identities are better equipped to negotiate individualized life-course passages. Although some theorists use the individualization thesis from a post-structuralist point of view, arguing that agency is more important than structural factors like social class, this paper shows that it is not necessary to take such a position when using the individualization thesis. For example, those from middle-class origins attending universities must compete with each other and adapt to late-modern circumstances if they are to improve, or even maintain, their social class origins. Thus, when only middle-class experiences are examined, the basis of differential occupational attainment and life-course fulfillment is difficult to explain from either a structuralist or post-structuralist perspective. Using longitudinal data, this paper explores the extent to which the identity capital model can account for variations in the timing of, and satisfaction with, later middle-class life-course trajectories in the transition to adulthood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper tackles the question of how we might begin to re-conceptualize contemporary youth cultural identities in the context of social divisions created through different transitional pathways, by reference to some recent ethnographic work on young adults and nightlife. Traditionally, there has been a historic divide between analyses of youth cultures on the one hand, and studies of youth transitions on the other. This has led to charges that transition studies are not only somewhat mechanical and structurally biased, but rather dull and positivistic in their orientation. At the same time, recent analyses of youth styles have been pre-occupied with more post-modern readings of club-cultures, post-subcultures, neo-tribal patterns of activity and lifestyles, and have often failed to address questions of inequality, segmentation and spatial separation amongst differing consumption groupings. This paper critically interrogates these two traditions, and seeks to advance the debate by looking at the complex relationship between labour market divisions and cultural identities in the night-time economy. It argues that while minority elements of 'hybrid' forms of identity and consumption exist, they are overshadowed by the dominance of a 'mainstream' form of nightlife provision that exploits existing cleavages in the youth population, and segregates young adults into particular spaces and places. The paper concludes by suggesting that while individual scholars may continue to work primarily in one of these two areas, transition studies need to aspire to become more culturally rich, while studies of youth cultures need to become more aware of the existence of spatial divisions and socially segmented consumption patterns among different youth groupings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Car theft for the purpose of joyriding (for short-term transportation or non-utilitarian purposes) has almost exclusively been the domain of young male perpetrators. Accordingly, existing research has primarily focused on the relationship between males and automobiles as an expression of their masculinity or as a rites of passage to adult status in society. However, there are few studies that examine young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders' Indigenous involvement in joyriding behaviour. This paper focuses on the outcomes of a 2-year research project that examined the motivations of Indigenous youth who stole cars for the purpose of joyriding. The perceptions of these young offenders highlight that joyriding can be understood as a distinct culture that allows youth the space to resist forms of governance. The paper concludes with an examination of alternative measures for diverting young offenders away from custodial sentences in a bid to decrease the high numbers of youths who steal cars for the express purpose of joyriding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that youth studies should return to the political. It does so through emphasizing the importance of age in youth to the state and to the political management of capitalist social relations. Through a process of critique, this paper argues that the neglect of age to contemporary orthodox youth studies is a consequence of its misplaced and unsustainable concern with youth as a process of 'growing up'; and that where connections are made between the state, age and youth, these remain incoherent and poorly developed. By way of mapping out the basis for an alternative, this paper advocates the need to derive age and youth from their broader significance to the political management of the social relations of production and, more specifically, to the changing form of the capitalist state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The issues of young people and drug taking have a long history, although recently the topic has been debated more intensely than ever before. Of key importance here has been the dramatic rise in the availability, range and consumption of illicit drugs, a factor that, in part, has been linked to the popularity of dance/club cultures. These changes have been interpreted by some, both within and without academia, as being indicative of a process of the 'normalization' of illicit drug use. This paper reports on qualitative research data that explored young people's youth cultural identification and experiences while also enquiring into how such experiences may be related to the use of illicit drugs. This paper critically examines normalization theory and draws attention to weaknesses on both an empirical and a theoretical level. It is suggested in this paper that, as it stands, normalization theory presents an overly simplistic account of young people's drug use. This paper argues instead for a more differentiated understanding of normalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how offensive language is socially constructed in ways that serve to criminalize the street activities of young indigenous people in Australia. The first part of the paper describes the general relationship between young indigenous people and the Australian criminal justice system. This is followed by a discussion of how indigenous young people are policed in public spaces. The paper then provides an extended exploration of the nature and dynamics of swearing, and how offensive language offences are drawn on by police in their interventions in the lives of indigenous young people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is increasing concern that information poverty will soon become a key indicator of social exclusion, with those unable to use and access new technologies marginalized from key aspects of economic and social activity. This concern, at present, focuses primarily on adults, as young people are predominantly represented in media, academic and political discourse as naturally competent computer users. In contrast, this paper focuses on those young people who are self-described 'low or ambivalent' users of computers, exploring the links between family cultures, access and attitudes towards computer use. Drawing on a questionnaire survey of 855 children and group interviews with 46 young people, this paper identifies key themes emerging from interviews with low users of computers: difficulties accessing computers; a lack of relevance of computer technology to these children's daily lives; and the potential of formal educational environments to exacerbate inequalities in access and anxieties around computer use. This paper concludes that, if we are not to embed information inequality at the heart of the digital revolution, a radical rethink of the prevalent image of the child as 'cyberkid' is needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of 'foyer', to break the 'no home, no job; no job, no home' cycle of exclusion, has intuitive appeal for housing policy makers and practitioners. The foyer industry has fed this appeal by producing a small body of literature that demonstrates the apparent benefits of foyer, thereby justifying the expansion of the 'model' and suppressing the publication of critical findings. This paper attempts to overcome this imbalance in the literature by presenting a critical ethnography of residents' experiences of everyday life in two (out of three that were studied) foyers, in the North West of England. In doing so, I will not only critically examine how the case study foyers were constructing, rather than combating, social exclusion among young people, but also the manner in which the research commissioner then sought to suppress this. The paper is therefore intended as a critical commentary on the politics of the research industry as much as it seeks to provide a critical insight into the part of the foyer industry studied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Youth partnership accountability is a particular approach to youth participation that appreciates and reflects upon the accountability of adult workers to young people in the process of partnership work. In this work young people have significant control over their personal situation, a service or a project with adult workers taking up positions as supporters - they still take action or make decisions, but with the explicit permission of young people. Youth partnership accountability directly addresses the realm of relationship requiring an exploration of trust, respect and reciprocity, and therefore, ethics. Any approach to human services work needs to clearly identify the theoretical threads that inform it, articulating both epistemological standpoints and defining concepts. There is also the need to examine praxis through a process of critical reflection. This paper takes praxis, in the Freirean sense (Freire, 1970, 1994), as the meeting place of theory and practice, the juncture at which words and actions meet and discourse and experience merge. Therefore, after a description of youth partnership accountability this paper articulates key theoretical threads that inform both its principles and practices. Finally, it considers the implications of this way of working for worker relationships with young people, as well as identifying some of the wider political implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the structure of British young peoples' values concerning sexual experience and parenthood within a social context of individualization. Drawing on a conceptual framework derived from the work of Bourdieu, it introduces the idea of a 'logic of sexual practice', arguing that differences in attitudes towards sexual experience and early parenthood can be understood in terms of the particular economy of values of a community. The paper draws on data collected for the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)-funded study 'Youth values: identity, diversity and social change', a multi-method investigation of the moral landscapes of young people aged 11-16 years living in five contrasting areas of the UK. Using data from questionnaires, focus groups and individual interviews, the paper develops two in-depth case studies that document the logic of sexual practice for young people living in an affluent middle class commuter belt town and a deprived public housing estate. The paper explores the part played by sexual values in the development of adult identities and competing understandings of maturity, experience and success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focusing on street-frequenting youth, this paper explores the ways in which young people link spaces and selves in city and suburban environments. In much current youth studies research there is an emphasis on the marginalization of young people, particularly in their use of public spaces. Drawing on space/identity theory, this paper reconceptualizes these issues, highlighting young people's understandings of themselves and the subversive spaces they construct. Through an empirical analysis of the construction of space and self, the paper stresses a need to explore the process of subjective interpretation, undertaken by young people, in order to more sensitively understand the culture of street frequenting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critically examines recent explanations of youth and their risk-taking. Literature in this area has traditionally been dominated by psycho-dynamic explanations of social action in which risk-taking is claimed to have linkages to biological and psychological developments in 'adolescence'. While more recent writers in the disciplines of psychology have aimed to distance themselves from deterministic positions, more recent discourses on youth risk-taking have remained grounded in a series of assumptions about the meaning of adolescence and transition that still see biology and psychology as key influences to behaviour. Alternative critical approaches exist within sociology and anthropology that provide an opportunity to develop a fuller understanding of the diverse and complex social processes that influence young people's behaviour in risk-taking. To conclude, this paper identifies gaps in our sociological understanding of youth and risk-taking, and highlights areas of further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is based on two ESRC research studies involving longitudinal engagement with a small cohort of young people from 1995-99. The studies 'followed' these young people from their last year in secondary school through three years of post-compulsory education, training and (un)employment. Each of the young people was interviewed several times about their 'career' and life 'choices' and family and social lives. The paper presents the 'time-space biographies' of three of the young people - Michael, Wayne and Rachel - and discusses their participation in the 'new' urban economies, their spatial horizons and their different experiences of post-adolescence. We argue that the 'new' urban economies generate new and compound old inequalities and present new risks and possibilities as young people 'struggle for subjectivity' (McDonald, 1999). A number of interpretational possibilities are 'tried out for size'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the start of the 21st century the Liberal democracies, including Australia, are characterized by profound social, economic and cultural transformations. Community, policy and academic discourse is marked by widespread adult anxieties about today's young people. Representations of youth in the institutional domain of 'youth studies' can be conceived as artefacts of the activities of diverse forms of expertise. This paper will focus on the institutionalized processes of abstraction which construct these truths, and the roles played by these processes of abstraction in the restless problematization of 'youth' as the object of countless competing and complementary governmental programmes. There has been, in recent years, increased debate about how to do youth studies and how to represent youth. The paper will argue that any rethinking or reassessment of the modes of representing youth ought to take some account of the institutional and abstract nature of these processes of representation, and of the implication of these processes in the regulation of populations of young people; populations which are rendered knowable in all their diversity only through these processes of representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transitions from school to work were, in a less reflexive modernity, relatively simple processes to manage for large populations of young people. The concept of youth, as a transitional process, emerges as a truth which dominates governmental horizons when these transitions become problematic, and when the practices for regulating these transitions become problematic. Contemporary recompositions of youth transitions can be understood in terms of the structuring influences of global Information & Communication networks. This paper argues that one consequence of these transformations is increased uncertainty and anxiety in relation to the regulation of large populations of youth. In a material and metaphoric sense, certain populations of youth occupy 'wild and tame zones' in the governmental spaces of the contemporary Liberal Democratic nation state. Drawing on the Australian context, this paper argues that the emergence of a Vocational Education and Training agenda in schools can be conceived in terms of governmental attempts to regulate the inhabitants of these wild zones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses how young mothers in London, a mid-size city in Canada, utilize a drop-in centre service while attending an alternative programme to acquire secondary school credits. The central arguments made here are informed by key concepts in the field of girlhood studies. With its attention to the interconnections between gender, age, and generation as well as other aspects of social identity, girlhood studies provides crucial insight into the lived experiences of young mothers who straddle the space between girlhood and adulthood. We interpret the experiences of the young mothers who participated in this study in light of shifting meanings and expectations of girls and girlhood in the neoliberal era. Drawing on the concept of the ideal neoliberal girl subject embodied in the 'can do' and 'at risk' girl, this paper highlights the tensions in accessing a drop-in centre, which functions as both a site of security and surveillance, for a group of young mothers receiving social services. The findings revealed how girls who are mothers struggle to live in the present to assert a legitimate maternal identity even as they are prepared for the future through neoliberal public policies and other disciplinary practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on a recent research project undertaken in the UK that investigated how young people negotiate their identities and relationships online, including how they experience interventions by adults. Drawing on qualitative interviews with young people in two schools and a voluntary youth organisation in England, we argue that young people engage rather successfully in practices of self-governance. Our findings based on this sample of young people’s agentic practice and care for their peers challenge some dominant perceptions of young people’s online practices as risky and/or harmful to themselves and/or others. Furthermore we found a lack of evidence concerning the effectiveness of, and need for, interventions orientated around surveillance and zero tolerance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been increasing media and political questioning of the national loyalties and identities held by young British Muslims, with a particular focus on those seen to separate themselves through strict and religiously observant dress and lifestyles. This paper draws primarily on research focusing on the meanings of ‘Britishness’ held amongst a group of visibly observant young Muslim adults. Empirical evidence is provided to demonstrate that although these young adults demonstrated an explicit and visible sense of Muslim identity, this co-existed without any conscious conflict with their British identity. The young adults’ acknowledgement of their religious attachment developed from a positive and proactive identification with Islam rather than one in opposition or rebellion against a British identity. Therefore, in a wider context, their lives must not be analysed only through the lens of religion, dress and appearance as this has repercussions in relation to national policy formation and subsequent perceptions of wider society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although several criminologists and social scientists have drawn attention to the high rates of mental and cognitive disability amongst populations of young people embroiled in youth justice systems, less attention has been paid to the ways in which young people with disability are disproportionately exposed to processes of criminalisation and how the same processes serve to further disable them. In this paper, we aim to make a contribution towards filling this gap by drawing upon qualitative findings from the Comparative Youth Penality Project - an empirical inter-jurisdictional study of youth justice and penality in England and Wales and in four Australian states. We build on, integrate and extend theoretical perspectives from critical disability studies and from critical criminology to examine the presence of, and responses to, socio-economically disadvantaged young people with multiple disabilities (complex support needs) in youth justice systems in our selected jurisdictions. Four key findings emerge from our research pertaining to: (i) the criminalisation of disability and disadvantage; (ii) the management of children and young people with disabilities by youth justice agencies; (iii) the significance of early and holistic responses for children and young people with complex support needs; and (iv) the inadequate nature of community based support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Arab Mediterranean countries (AMCs), insecurities and a lack of opportunities have continuously kept young people from becoming independent and being full, active, and integrated members of society; a process commonly referred to as social exclusion. This paper explores the driving factors of youth exclusion in Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, and Tunisia. It is argued that not only the extent but also the structure of social exclusion varies across countries. Based on the social exclusion framework developed by the UNDP [2011.Beyond Transition – Towards Inclusive Societies. Bratislava: United Nations Development Programme], we construct a social exclusion index that takes economic, social, and political factors into account. The results obtained indicate that the share of young people suffering from social exclusion is highest in Tunisia (46.7%), followed by Algeria (43.4%), Egypt (42.1%), and Lebanon (33.2%). In contrast to the prevailing assumptions on social exclusion, we find that economic exclusion does in fact play a minor role. The strongest driver of youth exclusion in all Arab Mediterranean countries is the exclusion from social and political life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Youth involvement in community decision-making is considered a core principle of both youth advocacy and progressive governance. Yet, in many communities formal roles for youth remain limited. This paper presents data from a youth-led participatory budgeting process in Boston, Massachusetts (US). The City of Boston has institutionalized a formal process through which numerous youth can contribute ideas and vote on capital projects to receive city funding. A smaller group of youth are engaged in even greater depth. They are trained and work to facilitate submission of ideas, turn ideas into proposals, and encourage youth voting. We use data to identify concerns expressed by youth, their ideas for solutions, and the movement from ideas to funded projects. Implications for further development of participatory budgeting as a mechanism for youth civic engagement are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While discourses that define and demarcate young people such that they become legitimate targets of negative practices of marginalisation and exclusion have not disappeared, these are no longer the dominant discourses and modes of governing youth. Constructions of youth as self-determining subjects and empowerment polices of youth participation increasingly animate contemporary approaches to governing young people throughout the West and beyond. Until recently, the dominant critique of such developments consisted of accusations of failed attempts to realise certain principles in practice or of their ideological functions. There is however an emerging critical youth studies literature that analyses such developments drawing on the work of Beck and Foucault’s notion of ‘governmentality’. In this paper, I argue that while these studies challenge some of the assumptions upon which such developments rest, they are yet to challenge the extent to which these contemporary ways of constructing and governing youth are new. Using Foucault’s genealogical method my research traces an unacknowledged nineteenth century history of these common ways of constituting and governing youth today. To conclude I consider the strategic usefulness and ramifications of these findings for critical youth studies and policies of youth participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Active participation in organised youth arts activities is generally considered ‘good’ for young peoples’ social and emotional wellbeing. There is, however, less known abouthowyouth arts participation helps to create wellbeing benefits. This paper details a retrospective narrative study that sought to understand not only what wellbeing benefits 17 participants attributed to youth arts activity, but more specifically, how these outcomes occurred. The concept of liminality, within a spaces of wellbeing approach, is used as a framework to explore and understand participant’s stories of their time at Corrugated Iron Youth Arts, in Darwin, Australia. A pattern of transformation involving three phases emerged through an analysis of participant stories. This involved (1) joining in, (2) developing skills and gaining experience, and (3) becoming a ‘real’ performer. These stages have strong resonance with contemporary conceptualisations of liminal experiences, and provide further evidence for the value of youth arts activity as a space for the development of social and emotional wellbeing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the ‘everyday’ politics of social change-oriented (SCO) youth. We apply aneveryday network of youth politicsapproach in order to explore the lived experience of politics for SCO youth, accessing how they understand, negotiate, and actualize youth politics. Our study demonstrates that SCO youth negotiate politics through everyday, localized, and relational networks. Utilizing a youth-led participatory action research model, we present qualitative findings drawn from interviews conducted by SCO youth-researchers among their SCO youth peers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to explain why Hong Kong youth have become unhappier than older people in recent years. We test in this connection six hypotheses, using random effects ordinal logistic regressions with a combined macro-micro dataset from official statistics and a longitudinal opinion survey project from 2000 to 2014. The results show that the decline in the happiness level in recent years is more significant for Hong Kong youth than for older people. We also find evidence of age heterogeneity in the impacts of both macroeconomic conditions and the housing price on happiness. GDP per capita has a weaker positive effect on youth’s happiness than it does on older people. The positive correlation between housing price and happiness is valid for older people only. Rapid economic growth and the rise in the price of housing have made older people happier than youth since the early 2010s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we analyze the transition from vocational education to a first significant job for Spanish young people. The data comes from the Survey on Education and Labor Market Transitions, targeting various collectives who finished their non-university studies. Discrete duration models are estimated to identify the determinants of the time-to-first significant job. The main results show that, contrary to what is expected, there are no significant differences for students graduating in intermediate or in advanced vocational training. Nonetheless, vocational education is characterized by a high specialization by gender, which is translated into differences in the transition to employment. Furthermore, previous professional experience in precarious jobs does not improve access to quality employment, whereas internships performed within studies, when evaluated by the young as satisfactory, have a positive impact. Other subjective aspects, such as a high value assigned to work or family or a priority focused on achieving a stable job lead to a smoother school-to-work transition. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper argues for a renewed research agenda on the transnational mobility of young people across both youth studies and migration studies. We review key literature across these fields, before arguing for a new conceptual framework that helps to further extend the emerging interdisciplinary space of ‘youth mobility studies’ (Raffaetà, Baldassar and Harris 2016). Our central proposition is that mobility has become an important marker and maker of transitions for youth in many contexts globally. We argue that a conceptual advance is required to understand the unique circumstances of a generation ‘on the move’ as they navigate diverse and non-sequential social, civic and economic practices of ‘adulthood’, and propose the conceptual framework ofmobile transitionsas a timely new agenda. ‘Mobile transitions’ describes transition pathways under conditions of mobility but also emphasises two key claims around the further development of transnational youth mobility research. The first is the importance of an orientation towards spatio-temporal complexity, multiplicity and fragmentation of both ‘youth transition’ and ‘migrancy’ as scholarly concepts and lived experiences. The second is an argument for understanding ‘mobile transitions’ in relation to three intersecting domains – economic opportunities, social relations and civic practices – rather than through linear notions of the achievement of economic and social autonomy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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

This paper examines the experiences of belonging of young Chinese internet users through an analysis of their online identity practices. Drawing on a qualitative research project about online citizenship practices of 31 young Chinese citizens from mainland China, I explore their experiences of belonging on two online platforms (Weibo and WeChat) and the identities formed and sustained through these experiences. The results show that young people experience different senses of belonging in different social media spaces. Their strategies in navigating these experiences are informed by (a) their perceptions of online spaces as private or public, and (b) using online identity performance as a supplement to or escape from identities in physical life. I argue that young Chinese internet users experience different senses of belonging by flexibly appropriating the affordances of social media platforms for communication and networking; these senses of belonging play a key role in forming and sustaining their identities, and are crucial for their wellbeing. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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

A successful democratic consolidation of post-socialist societies depends, among other things, on their citizens’ political culture, younger generations included. Moreover, youth civic engagement today and in the future is a guarantee of the continuity and development of democracy, which means that scientists need to gain insight into young people’s political culture. In this paper we look at political values, institutional trust and participation as relevant components of the civic political culture. The analysis is based on quantitative data collected in the empirical studies of Croatian youth, carried out between 1999 and 2013. Based on longitudinal study results, a downward trend is identified regarding selected political culture indicators: acceptance of liberal-democratic values, trust in social and political institutions, interest in politics and party preference. However, there is a simultaneous increase in participation in various types of organizations, especially political parties. The interpretation of established tendencies is placed in a broader context of an inherited democratic deficit, economic recession and social crisis. Current trends are both indicators and consequences of young people’s inadequate political socialization as well as weaknesses of political institutions and various actors during the transition and consolidation period. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper concerns young men who drive motorcycle taxis in Kigali, the capital city of Rwanda. Through an ethnographic account of the livelihoods of these motari, it seeks to account for their continued presence in a city whose authorities are openly hostile to their business, yet in which they remain a significant social force. I argue that it is not either by the exercise of 'agency' that motari achieve a social presence in Kigali, but through the social relations in which they are engaged. These relations immobilise them and effectively prevent them from mounting any concerted political challenge to hostile city authorities. However, I suggest that this lack of agency is one reason for their significance, since it makes them available as a resource for the schemes of others. I use this case study to argue for a rethinking of the notion of agency in the anthropology of youth. Rather than celebrating autonomous action or the creative, subversive play of the young, I propose instead a relational understanding in which the capacities and opportunities presented by groups of people in social relations grounds their social significance. It may be the very fact of young people's domination that makes them socially significant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the evolving social identities of young adolescents in regard to alcohol and drinking culture in Norway. Detailed analysis of 29 focus group interviews and 32 individual interviews with 12-13-year-olds reveal a thorough negative attitude towards alcohol, especially when enjoyed by young people. Young adolescents found young people to be too irresponsible and immature to drink, while adults were portrayed as capable of enjoying alcohol without losing control or experiencing other negative effects. Through symbolic boundary work, they distanced themselves from adolescents who drank. The young adolescents rejected the idea that drinking alcohol was a sign of maturity; instead, they exhibited maturity by distancing themselves from drunk adolescents. We discuss how these findings reflect the participants' socio-cognitive development, and how symbolic boundaries are often drawn against those closest in social distance. We conclude that boundaries between 'adolescents' and 'adults' are fundamental when understanding emerging adolescent social identities, especially when it comes to drinking and drinking culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

Portrayals of young people as either victims or perpetrators of errant, aberrant or even dangerous attitudes, desires or behaviours may be criticised for obscuring the relations of power within which young bodies are socially and physically located. However, notions of ‘resistance’ to power within these critiques remain under-theorised. In this theoretical paper we take a new materialist approach to explore the affectivity of young bodies, and the flows and intensities that produce and reproduce power and resistance, and what young bodies can do, feel and desire. To illustrate young bodies’ resistances, we offer the example of the transgressive pro-ana movement that resists both biomedical and social definitions of anorexia. We conclude there is a need to focus upon ‘resisting’ as an affective movement of becoming, rather than upon ‘resistance’ as an agentic act, with consequences both for young bodies, theory, research and activism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This review of qualitative research examining young Indigenous Australians’ sexual health highlights the profoundly social nature of young people’s sexual lives. Nineteen peer reviewed published papers were identified for inclusion. Findings reveal efforts made by some young Indigenous Australians to control their sexual lives, mitigate risk and maintain their sexual health. The review identified factors which are conducive to sexual health risks and vulnerability, including incomplete knowledge about STIs and safer sexual practices; gossip and ridicule concerning sexual activity and its consequences; damaging expectations about male prerogatives with respect to sexual relationships; limited inter-generational communication about sexual health issues; inadequate school-based sexual health education; and tensions between Indigenous and biomedical explanations of sexual health issues. Future research priorities include a focus on young Indigenous people in cities and towns across Australia, and in regional and remote settings in New South Wales and Victoria; understanding how Indigenous cultural values support young people’s sexual health; young men’s sexual and service-based practices; and the experiences of same-sex attracted and gender diverse youth. This research would inform the design and delivery of culturally safe and acceptable sexual health services and programmes, underpinned by an understanding of factors in young Indigenous Australians’ everyday sexual lives. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The new 'youth mental health paradigm' (IAYMH. 2015. "International Association for Youth Mental Health." Accessed February 15, http://www.iaymh.org/) promotes the need for youth-friendly mental health options. Music therapy initiatives offer innovative modes of working towards young people's recovery in ways that align with the ethos of these services (McCaffrey, Edwards, and Fannon. 2011. "Is There a Role for Music Therapy in the Recovery Approach in Mental Health?" The Arts in Psychotherapy 38 (3): 185-189). This paper details a participatory research project investigating how and why promoting young people's musical identities can facilitate their recovery from mental illness. Young people accessing a music therapy programme in a youth mental health service in Australia participated in collaborative qualitative interviews that were analysed using constructivist grounded theory techniques. Cycles of action and reflection resulted in a grounded theory explaining the recovery of musical identity, and mapping young people's community-based music needs for wellbeing. We propose that promoting young people's musical identities facilitates recovery through: the construction of a health-based identity; facilitating meaning-making; and supporting social participation. Findings are discussed in relation to recovery literature and social justice issues that arise in response to findings about young people's needs for appropriate music access. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study is to explore intersections between religion, faith and social identity with regards to their impact on either promoting or preventing sport participation amongst selfidentified British Asian Muslim males living in Birmingham (West Midlands of the UK) aged 16-25 years old. The research questions around this topic of study are to explore how interpretations of Islamic faith promote or prevent sport participation amongst young Muslim males. Secondly, the paper will examine the perspectives of Muslim male participants in relation to sport to identify factors determining sport participation. Finally, the study will consider implications for policy and practice in sport development. The study drew upon seven in-depth, semistructured interviews with Muslim males aged 16-25 years old and applied a thematic analysis and coding methodology to unpick the key dimensions and findings from the data. Findings from the study indicate the complexity of young Muslim male sport participation contexts, dynamics in decision-making, family influence and perceptions held about other communities and their own. The study draws out key implications for agencies in sport development that seek to encourage sport participation cutting across school, community, local government and national governing body partnerships specifically considering Islamic faith communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research demonstrated a strong influence of personal narratives on emotions linked to memories. However, few studies considered shared narratives and the role of listener's behavior, especially in adolescence and emerging adulthood. This paper aims to explore the impact of listening attitude on emotions related to memories in adolescents and emerging adults. A total of 157 participants were asked to choose a memory: in the experimental conditions (Attentive Listening, AL vs. Detached Listening, DL), they narrated it to a listener, in the Control Group, they internally reflected about it. Emotions linked to memory at the first time, to narrative/ reflection, and to memory after 15 days were measured, as well as the perception of listener's behavior. Results showed that participants perceived the differences of the listening, although adolescents perceived less listener's detached stance. Moreover, among adolescents, positive emotions increased after narrative for both experimental conditions, instead, among emerging adults, only AL condition participants increased their positive emotions. Moreover, adults maintained the positive effects of narrative also after 15 days. Authors discussed the role of an empathic context and the adolescent egocentrism in shared narratives about personal memories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]