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In "The Corrosion of Character" Richard Sennett contends that the storied nature of human experience is stunted by "conditions of the new economy". He argues that individuals are unable to develop "coherent life narratives" in the absence of job security. Thus, continuous employment somehow provides coherence: at least, enduring relationships with a single employer--which were possible under the auspices of organised capitalism--facilitate continuity in adult life more broadly. This paper draws on Linde's typology of "coherence strategies" and in-depth interviews with young adult workers to demonstrate that young Europeans construct coherence by piecing together episodes of employment, unemployment and education in their biographies. Thus, the unfolding of the narrative is perhaps less likely to be enhanced by a sustained relationship with a single employer than discontinuous episodes of employment as part of the reflexive "project of the self". Nonetheless, the degree to which young adults reflexively engage in life as a project is structured by their position within social hierarchies. This paper puts forward contrasting reflexive strategies, which are discursively appropriated by young adults depending--in part--on their labour market experience, in order to construct coherence. (Contains 1 table and 3 notes.)

A whole flurry of new thinking and research about young people in the USA has been stimulated by Jeffery Arnett's theory of 'Emerging Adulthood'. This argues for recognition of a new stage of the life-course between adolescence and adulthood reflecting the extension of youth transitions to independence brought about by globalization and technological change. Although the perspective aligns with developmental psychology's conception of "stages of development", its appeal extends across the social science disciplines and policy domains. However, the rich theorizing of the same manifestations of social change in young people's experience in European Youth Studies appear to have been largely overlooked by Arnett. This paper attempts to redress this balance by drawing into the framework of Emerging Adulthood a wider set of theoretical concerns with structural factors and exclusion mechanisms to which (late) modern youth are subjected. The argument is exemplified by age-30 cohort comparisons across three British longitudinal studies starting in 1946, 1958 and 1970, demonstrating rising opportunities accompanied by increased social inequality. The paper concludes with a re-appraisal of the concept of youth as a phase of the late modern life-course in which the properties Arnett attributes to Emergent Adulthood are just one significant feature. (Contains 4 figures, 1 table and 1 note.)

This paper presents the findings from a project investigating the circumstances, experiences, perspectives and service needs of young people caring for a family member with a disability or long-term illness. Using qualitative methods, our research explored the experiences of two cohorts of young carers--younger carers aged 7 to 17 years and young adult carers aged 18 to 25 years. The concept of "bounded agency" offers an explanation for the way that younger carers' and young adult carers' decisions and aspirations can be shaped by the barriers and contexts in which they find themselves. The study compares the impacts of caring on the participants' education, employment, health and social life. Important differences are identified, particularly relating to young adult carers' future aspirations as they approach key normative transitions into young adulthood. The paper concludes with implications for services and policy for young carers. (Contains 1 table.)

Although children of parents with an alcohol or other drug (AOD) issue appear to assume a range of caring responsibilities within their families they have, until recently, been excluded from the growing body of young-carer research, policy and practice. This is problematic, as this group may experience greater levels of social exclusion whilst experiencing similar negative impacts of care as their caring peers. This paper discusses the findings of an exploratory qualitative research project conducted in Canberra, Australia which attempted to further understand these young people's experiences and to consider how they might best be supported. The paper challenges the way that young caring has been conceptualised and suggests that unless a number of conceptual, structural and organisational changes are made, young people caring for a parent with an AOD issue may remain relatively unsupported. (Contains 2 notes.)

A common theme in the literature on care-giving is the issue of "hidden" carers, that is, people who undertake caring roles and responsibilities, yet do not identify themselves as carers. One reason people do not recognise themselves as carers relates to the nature of the caring relationship. When providing care for a family member, intra-familial bonds of love and reciprocity do not encourage parties to view the relationship as anything other than a "normal" familial relationship. The lack of self-identification amongst young carers is complicated further by societal norms surrounding care-giving. Whereas adults are expected to provide care to other adults and children, young people are not expected to be care-givers but rather care recipients. As a result, many young carers remain "hidden" and beyond the reach of services and supports designed to help them in their caring role. This paper draws on qualitative research with young carers and service providers to explore the issue of self-identification amongst young carers. The paper concludes with recommendations for identifying and supporting hidden young carers. (Contains 6 notes.)

This paper draws on a series of 45 interviews with recipients of social assistance between the ages of 16 and 24 to offer a critical assessment of the language of "risk" and "resilience." After briefly tracing the development of this vocabulary and approach in youth research, this paper argues in line with existing critiques (Kelly 2000, te Riele 2006, France 2007) that neither risk nor resilience is an appropriate way of coming to understand young people's past, present, or future lives. Moreover, the authors argue that the language of risk and resilience commits a form of "symbolic violence" (Bourdieu 1999, Frank 2002, Zizek 2008) against young people whose lives are presumably captured and finalized by this conceptual language. Instead, the authors propose that, when dealing with young people and the future, a focus on narrative and the "desirable futures" interviewees envision for themselves is a more humane, and in many respects a more fruitful way of approaching the study of young lives. (Contains 12 notes.)

A Gap Year is a break in an educational career, principally taken between leaving school and beginning university. Previous research on the Gap Year has suggested it is a form of social class positioning or forum for undertaking transitions in identity during young adulthood. This paper extends this research into the context of higher education itself. The paper illustrates, by a detailed analysis of interview data, that significant identity work is undertaken by young people in their accounts of their Gap Year. It demonstrates that this identity work, involving talk of confidence, maturity and/or independence, is related to two forms of distinction: a life course distinction and a social distinction. The paper discusses the significance of this identity work for our understandings of the Gap Year, its place in young people's transitions to adulthood and for future research. (Contains 3 notes.)

This paper concerns the declining role of the welfare state in supporting young adults. The literature on new social risks concentrates on the incapacity of institutions to respond to a new social situation, and has so far largely neglected the capacity of alternative systems or institutions to fill the vacuum created. The focus in the paper is on the situation of young adults in a Nordic welfare state, in which social security benefits have developed unfavourable. Perusal of Finnish data on welfare-state programmes and financial transfers across generations, and of the literature on new social risks, reveal that young adults living on the basic level of social security, such as basic unemployment benefit, a student grant or child home-care allowance, are in a particularly vulnerable economic position. On a more detailed level, the article shows that the proportion of people receiving financial support from their parents has been increasing at the same time as the welfare state's ability to provide support has been diminishing. The overall conclusion is that there is an invisible compensatory mechanism offsetting the economic vulnerability of many young adults. (Contains 5 notes, 2 tables, and 1 figure.)

In this paper we draw upon our findings from a project in the South West region of England. The research involved a collaboration between a group of university researchers and Connexions service personal advisers and mainly comprised interviews with young people, who were in "jobs without training" (JWT). A key aim of the research was to explore the experiences of this group of marginalised and socially disadvantaged young people over a period of 1 year, as they moved into and out of work. In this paper we address the main findings and questions raised by the research. We challenge some commonly held assumptions about young people in JWT and their perceived needs. We end with a number of policy and practice-related suggestions and recommendations. (Contains 3 notes.)

Environmental policies and practices have maintained a high status internationally, nationally and locally, but limited literature relates to the perspective of social disadvantage in England, with a particular under-representation of young people. The research presented in this paper has been driven by the supposition that a lack of knowledge and research into the views of socially deprived young people, and a lack of engagement with them at a policy level perpetuates the notion that such groups not only have a lack of environmental concern, but may also be seen to be part of the problem. However, exploring the local environmental comprehension of young people allows the assessment of their potential value in local decision-making processes. This research is of continuing relevance, as environmental issues are increasingly highlighted as a major concern for those who experience social disadvantage. This paper presents the findings of a research project conducted in 2008 with socially disadvantaged young people in a youth club setting and makes use of environmental images based on a range of themes. The core aims of this paper are to increase understanding about the environmental views, concerns and knowledge of socially disadvantaged young people, to contrast this understanding with existing evidence relating to socially disadvantaged adults, and then to consider any implications for participation strategies. (Contains 1 table and 2 figures.)

In this paper we present our experiences of conducting focus groups with young people as part of a participatory approach to research design and participant recruitment. The research is a prospective, 10-year, qualitative, longitudinal project investigating young people's daily lives, relationships, and identities, and the ways these change over time. It adopts a multi-method approach in which each participant has a choice about which methods to be involved with. Part of the project planning and recruitment was completed through focus groups held in schools across metropolitan and rural West Yorkshire with young people aged 13. The focus groups enabled us to recruit participants from a variety of backgrounds. They were also an important medium through which to elicit the views of young people (which were perceptively and constructively critical) about project design, methods development, and dissemination events. The paper focuses on what we learnt from these focus groups and considers the value of engaging participants in designing qualitative research. (Contains 4 notes.)

Equal participation in paid employment is regarded as a basic entitlement within human rights discourse. Recent organizational studies highlight how the workplace can operate as a socially divided space for queer (or non-heterosexual) workers, depicting the workplace as a problematic site of sexuality-based discrimination and abuse. The aim of this paper is to locate the experiences of young queer workers as newcomers to the Australian labour market and to shed light on how young queer people negotiate sexually exclusive and inclusive workspaces. The findings from this qualitative study were developed from a series of interviews with 34 young people (18-26 years old) who primarily identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual or queer (LGBQ) and were employed in a diverse range of industries. Based on their stories, this paper will argue that workplaces can function as both sexually exclusive and inclusive spaces. Within exclusive spaces, young people experienced a series of symbolically and materially violent practices that reinforced the boundaries of sexual normalcy in the workplace. Within inclusive spaces, young people gave weight to everyday "micro-practices" of inclusion over wider workplace policy and procedures. Findings from this research hold significant implications for informing organizational change. (Contains 1 table and 3 notes.)

Despite a growing concern about gangs in Britain, academic research that focuses on gangs remains scarce. Drawing on data from the ESRC-funded ethnographic research YOGEC (Youth Gangs in an English City) project, this paper explores the negotiation of space and place by young people living in inner-city areas affected by gangs. Using a combination of fieldwork observations and focus group and interview data, this paper charts the experiences of non-gang-involved young people living in known gang areas. These young people's restricted use of space, arising as a result of gang rivalries and the policing of inner-city areas, results in exclusion, marginalization and victimization. We illustrate how young people are identified as "high risk", and how they continually negotiate a range of risks bound up with the territory that they inhabit and subsequent spatial boundaries that are formed. In doing so, we provide an understanding of the lives of young people who reside in places and spaces inhabited by gangs. (Contains 10 notes.)

This paper presents evidence from the biographies of samples totaling 1,215 young adults in Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, who all reached age 16 between 1986 and 1992, and whose subsequent life histories coincided with their countries' transitions from communism. The evidence is used to examine whether new classes are being created in the new market economies and, if so, where the new divisions lie. Economic classes are defined as aggregates with typical and distinctive labour market and work situations. The evidence points to the creation of two such groups, a middle class and a lower class. Corresponding social differences in family and leisure careers are identified. The paper points out that these emergent class formations are different from those in the West, and gives reasons why they are less likely to become politically efficacious than were classes in the West's more mature market economies during the twentieth century. (Contains 12 tables.)

The purpose of this paper is to explore the complexities involved in young people's attempts to move away from criminal activity. This paper draws on qualitative data from a study that aimed to identify how young people negotiate transitions away from offending. The paper argues that an analysis of the subtle shifts in young people's perceptions and interpretations of their situation sheds light on the complex nature of desisting from crime. To do so, the paper focuses on the role of relevance in order to explore how these subtle shifts in thinking enable young people to reinterpret their lives and move towards desistance. By way of undertaking this analysis, this paper draws on Alfred Schutz's phenomenological approach to the nature of relevance to explore how young people shift between their known world of "doing crime" and an unknown world of being "straight and legitimate". (Contains 9 notes.)

This paper seeks to explore how we might understand young people's agency in sexuality research using visual methods. It is concerned with troubling the perception that power is held by the adult researcher and denied to youthful participants who simply submit to their authority. Rather than attempting to cast moments of young people's agency as examples where the relations of ruling are reversed, this paper endeavours to tease out the nuances inherent in young people's agency. This examination is undertaken in relation to selected episodes from research investigating the sexual culture of secondary schools using photo-diary and photo-elicitation methods. To elucidate the mechanisms of young people's agency, Butler's and Davies' work on the process of subjectification is drawn upon. Using a post-structural theoretical framework, it is argued that young people's agency involves a simultaneous mastery and submission, which is a consequence of the process of subjecthood. (Contains 5 notes.)

There have been many debates in the literature about the extended transition to adulthood many young people are experiencing in late modern times. However, not all young people make this prolonged transition and, for some, resources within their family and community networks are insufficient to enable an extended transition into stable, independent adult roles. The findings presented in this paper are drawn from a large participatory research project investigating the impact of decriminalisation on the health and safety practices of sex workers in New Zealand. This paper utilises the talk of 17 street-based sex workers who entered the industry under the age of 18 years, as well as using data from a survey of 772 sex workers in New Zealand. For young people entering the industry prior to the age of 18, the period of adolescence was short-lived and their inability to gain support through either their family or the government meant that they opted to work in the sex industry to survive. Unsupported transitions into adulthood are characterised by a high degree of risk with limited employment options. This research highlights the need for policy-makers to develop holistic, multi-sectorial policies for young people which are not based on age-specific frameworks. (Contains 2 tables.)

This paper draws on life history interviews with young adults in the UK to consider Manuela du Bois-Reymond's claims about the increasing prevalence of "trendsetter learners" across Europe. Du Bois-Reymond has argued that certain groups of young adults are at the forefront of developing new forms of learning in response to what they perceive to be the failings of formal education--namely the disjuncture between theory and practice within the education that they are offered and a lack of respect from many of the teachers with whom they come into contact. These young adults, she contends, are the "trendsetter learners", creating youth cultural capital that helps them to realise self-determined ways of living and learning. In considering some of these claims, this paper draws on data from the "Young Graduates and Lifelong Learning" project funded by the UK's Economic and Social Research Council. Between September 2005 and January 2006, 90 in-depth life history interviews were conducted with graduates from six higher education institutions. Our findings suggest that the degree of autonomy, freedom and creativity in young people's patterns of learning that underpin du Bois-Reymond's analysis is over-stated. We argue that, while du Bois-Reymond's work makes an important contribution to conceptualising the ways in which young Europeans engage with learning, her dichotomy between "trendsetter" learners and their "disengaged" counterparts overlooks: complexities inherent in this relationship, the social status attached to particular forms of more traditional education and training, and the structuring nature of much workplace learning. (Contains 4 notes.)

This paper examines how young people living in a violent neighbourhood construct understandings about danger, violence and safety. Reporting findings from a qualitative study that investigated these issues with 8-14 year olds in a South African neighbourhood, the paper identifies how young people attempted to stay safe through reliance on adult protection, avoidance and escape, peer support and retaliation. Through close examination of three discussions between the young people, the paper considers tensions and troubles in their talk about violence, risk and safety, and discusses the complex ways in which they managed these tensions, the implications for their safety and vulnerability, and how these changed over time in gendered ways. Finally, the paper considers the implications for interventions that aim to keep young people safe. (Contains 1 note.)

This paper reports on a qualitative research project that explored the influence of basic skills on the school-to-work transitions of young adults. Large numbers of young people have poor skills yet it is a neglected area of study. We document how skill competencies act as barriers to learning and labour market opportunities, illustrating that some individuals are "reticent" about accessing opportunities and that individual decision-making and agency are important to transitions. The paper illustrates the relationships between decision-making and the structuring effects of prior learning experiences and indicates therefore how structural conditioning and agential processes are linked and together shape transition routes. (Contains 7 notes.)

Forty years ago, between 1962 and 1964, fieldwork was carried out on the research project "Adjustment of Young Workers to Work Situations and Adult Roles". Using archived materials relating to the little known Norbert Elias project, this paper has two aims. First, to introduce this largely unknown aspect of Elias's work to a wider audience. Second, to explore in detail Elias's contributions to the project by piecing together his ideas and hypotheses from archived materials. During the early stages of the research, Elias suggested that the transition from school to work constituted a "shock" experience and that young people would experience initial difficulties in adjusting to their new role. He suggested that difficulties would emerge in their relationships with older workers, with family and with their new income. For the first time this paper presents Elias's "shock" hypothesis, and his thoughts on school to work transitions. The paper concludes by reflecting on the value of the shock hypothesis and the possible impact that the "Adjustment of Young Workers to Work Situations and Adult Roles" project may have on Elias's standing in British sociology. (Contains 1 note.)

This exploratory paper seeks, first, to offer some critical sociological comments on the common-sense, or rather ideological, claims surrounding two supposedly emerging "crises": namely, the alleged poor health and declining sport and physical activity participation levels of young people. In this regard, it is suggested that while young people are, in fact, doing more sport and physical activity than at any other time in the past, this process has, and continues to, co-occur with other prominent social processes (e.g., rising levels of overweight, obesity and sedentariness). Second, the paper begins to make sense of this seemingly "irreconcilable paradox" by arguing for the need to make use of a sociological perspective that views the complexity of young people's lives "in the round" and by locating them within the particular social interdependencies or relationships in which they are inescapably involved. (Contains 1 note.)

This paper uses two cases studies to analyse what has happened to young people and their life-stage transitions in those parts of the former communist bloc where all the main industries stopped when communism ended and remained shut-down over 10 years later. Our evidence is from two such places--Telavi in eastern Georgia and Vanadzor in north-central Armenia. Interview surveys gathered information from samples of 200 25-29 year olds in each of the cities, focusing on their experiences while in transition to adulthood. The respondents' life-stage transitions had been roughly co-terminous with their countries' transformation into independent states, market economies and multi-party democracies. Information was also obtained from documentary sources and interviews with key informants--regional and city council officers, and education and labour office personnel. The paper describes how approximately two-thirds of the young adults who were surveyed were unemployed when interviewed and had never held proper jobs. As a result, cash incomes in both cities were extremely low, as were rates of participation in most forms of out-of-home leisure that cost money. Family transitions--into marriage and parenthood--were occurring at older ages than in the 1980s but these were still happening. This leads into to an examination of the young adults' typical responses to their circumstances. There were two main responses; patience and migration away. In conclusion, it is argued that, all other things remaining equal, the most probable future trends in places such as Telavi and Vanadzor are gradual population decline until the numbers of residents are compatible with the shrunken economies, and socio-cultural regression to quasi-traditional ways of life. (Contains 7 tables.)

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

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

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

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]

The context for this paper is a shift in the way citizens engage in democratic processes which has received increasing attention in the literature. Building on previously conducted research, this paper contributes to the conceptualisation of citizenship activities in terms of young people below the voting age from rural communities. Based on reviewing current research, seven emerging contexts that can assist with exploring young people's citizenship activities are proposed, namely unofficial, individual, glocal, sporadic, online, issues-based, and justice-oriented. These contexts were translated into a framework which is introduced and explored in this paper. To explore this framework, focus groups (n = 26) and a qualitative questionnaire (n = 106) were conducted with young people aged 13–16 from a secondary school in Germany. The proposed framework extends previous conceptualisations of emerging citizenship contexts by looking beyond citizen types and taxonomies to explore the spaces, modes, goals, and the frequency of participants' citizenship activities. Results indicate that the proposed framework was useful in exploring multiple emerging citizenship contexts. Focus group and questionnaire participants were particularly engaged in glocal, unofficial, sporadic, and issues-based contexts and to a lower degree in individual, online, and justice-oriented contexts. A key challenge is achieving conceptual clarity around the seven contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

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

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

Drawing on the creative group and individual interviews with young people aged 11–18 years old in England and Wales in 2018, this paper assembles data that addresses the changing nature of intimacies in young people's digitally-networked lives. Informed by Lauren Berlant's work (2008, viii), it maps how platforms such as Instagram and YouTube circulate certain 'fantasies of the good life' that orient young people towards heteronormative future imaginaries. It argues that publicising intimate relationships on social media works to both reify and unsettle fantasies of monogamy, marriage and domesticity by highlighting their inherent precarity. It also illustrates how smart technologies such as the virtual personal assistants Alexa and Siri reconfigure the good life fantasy. Moving beyond simplistic moral panics that seek to discipline young people's digital intimacies, this paper aims to engage with the nuances of young people's digital sexual cultures. Overall, this paper argues that attending to this complexity can enable practitioners to better attune to and support young people to navigate contemporary digital relationships and sexuality issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

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

Until recently, children and young people's experiences of international migration and mobility have received minimal attention. Young migrants are either neglected in migration and childhood/youth studies or depicted in theoretically essentialist frameworks as model or problem ethnic minorities. This paper focuses on a neglected issue with respect to an invisible ethnic group in the British context by examining the subjective meanings of crossing borders among young Turkish migrants into Britain. This study's empirical component is based on semi-structured interviews with 12 participants (six male and six female) between 16 and 21 years old. A narrative-based qualitative method was used to analyse interview transcripts, and particular attention is given to the content of participants' stories. The following three themes were chosen to re-present these young people's experiences on moving to the UK: the process of decision-making, initial experiences in the UK and family relationships after migration. The findings are discussed with reference to the relevant literature, policy-making and possible means of supporting young migrants. (Contains 1 table.)

In most advanced countries, young people are now expected to remain in education until the age of 18 and, in a context of poor opportunities for those who leave at an early stage, there are concerns about those who are being left behind. In this paper we use comparable survey data to focus on the destinations of young people in two contrasting societies, England and Wales and Japan. We compare the destinations of 19/20-year-olds in the two countries, with a strong focus on those who leave education at an early stage, and go on to explore the extent to which young people's socio-economic backgrounds and their orientations to education explain their post-school experiences. We argue that, in both societies, those who enter the labour market before the age of 20 face severe difficulties irrespective of their social background. (Contains 9 tables and 6 notes.)

Refugee adolescents resettling in a new country face many challenges, and being part of a supportive family is a critical factor in assisting them to achieve wellbeing and create positive futures. This longitudinal study documents experiences of family life in the resettlement context of 120 young people with refugee backgrounds living in Melbourne, Australia. Family instability was a core feature of the early settlement period. In this paper, we focus specifically on changing household composition, and levels of trust, attachment, discipline and conflict in family settings during young people's first years of resettlement. Our results suggest that while families are central to the wellbeing of these young people, changing family dynamics can also pose a threat to wellbeing and successful settlement. We argue that youth focused settlement services must explicitly engage with family contexts in assisting refugee youth to achieve wellbeing and successfully resettle. (Contains 3 figures.)

Jones' (2002) discussion of polarised transitions and the "fast and slow lanes to adulthood" espoused by Bynner "et al." (2002) are good examples of how dualistic language often permeates youth transitions discourses. This often results in transitions research concentrating on a dichotomy of experience during the youth phase. The primary purpose of this article is to develop the argument for the inclusion of detailed documentation and analysis of the transitions of intermediate groups who fall between the lines of this dualism. These young people constitute a "missing middle" in relation to youth studies and UK educational policy. To support this argument, the paper turns to the results of a qualitative study of 18-24-year-old, male, front-line, retail employees in the South-East of England to illustrate how some young people do not find themselves neatly situated on one side of such categorical cleavages. These young men are following neither a NEET (not in education, employment or training) pathway nor a "tidy", government preferred, route through post-compulsory education. Thus, studying such seemingly ordinary young people can contribute towards developing a more holistic understanding of youth in the contemporary period. (Contains 1 table, 1 figure, and 14 notes.)

In this paper, I compare socio-economic experiences and community perceptions expressed by socially and economically disadvantaged young people with those of university students living in the same post-industrial community. I consider markers of distinction among these young people in relation to their family and educational experiences. I also critique overlaps in their perceptions of their community with specific focus on recreational infrastructure and physical environment. Youth insights suggest that the downturn in the economy has had an impact on their families' ability to provide the traditional kind of support expected of working-class families. The resulting gaps in local cultural and social capital influence school successes and ultimately, economic life chances for youth in already marginalized communities. Despite varying life chances, all participants held similar perceptions of their community. Their shared views beg the question: can collaborations among fractions of young people strengthen efforts to advocate for social and economic security and comfort for all youth within and across disenfranchised communities? (Contains 9 figures and 1 note.)

In moving the first significant steps into a meaningful graduate career, young adults need to elaborate strategies, which consist in identifying and activating what seems useful in one's own context of reference. Specifically looking at the meaning of being young adults in two countries belonging to different welfare systems and thus diverging regimes of transitions to adulthood, i.e. Italy and England, this paper analyses how two groups of early career professionals conceive of and forge the specific position they occupy in the life cycle in the course of developing particular strategies of career construction. The findings of 60 in-depth interviews compare and contrast a first dimension of young adulthood accounted for as a favourable condition to delimit, emphasise and be collocated within in order to maximise its potential. This is the case of young adults based in England, who 'squeeze' their youth to enact career strategies. The second dimension is constructed as a penalising condition not to be associated with, in an effort to reduce the discomfort it causes. It is the case of young adults based in Italy, who work out their strategies while feeling caught in the blurred and indefinite condition of youth. (Contains 17 notes.)

Young people's relationship with contemporary politics is complex and often problematized. They are often chastised as the apolitical harbingers of an incipient "crisis of democracy" while simultaneously heralded as the authors of sophisticated new forms of politics, most notably within electronic realms. Previous literature examining young people's political participation falls into either extreme of this binary; either a disengaged paradigm--which sees young people as passive and devoid of political interest--or engaged paradigm--which sees young people as actively political in new forms. Both models are limited because they fail to comprehensively explain youthful political participation. Instead, this paper argues that a more helpful conceptualization requires moving beyond the claim that young people are either politically engaged or disengaged, to acknowledge that both engagement and disengagement are simultaneously occurring. Reframing young people's political participation this way would empower young people's aversion to politics without condemnation--it would see them as radically unpolitical. The current response to the "problem of youth participation"--which typically entails enticing and assimilating young people into stale political processes and/or translating these stale processes into interactive websites - is inadequate for unpolitical young people. Rather a change in the very substance of the political agenda, its spheres and forms, is required. This article explores the disengaged and engaged paradigm and the policy responses, and explores the proposed radically unpolitical model. (Contains 1 figure, 1 table and 1 note.)

This paper examined the concept of emerging adulthood as proposed by Arnett, in a purposive sample of Welsh young people (n=38) aged 17-20 years who were working or unemployed (i.e. not in higher education). In this exploratory study, young people were questioned about their lifestyles and their perceptions of "being adult" in semi-structured interviews lasting about 40 minutes. Results indicated that Arnett's emerging adulthood stage held good for only one subgroup of those interviewed. Other developmental trajectories to adulthood were noted. Further, many claimed to perceive themselves as adult and to be perceived by others as adult. The value of Arnett's stage theory to young people in a European society was discussed in the light of present findings, and an alternative approach was offered. (Contains 3 figures.)

In the context of a "death" of class in popular and policy discourse, this paper argues that social class is still a major force at work in young people's lives, particularly in the context of schooling. We argue that young people's subcultural groups are classed, in the way in which they are constructed in discourse. Drawing on a data set of 68 interviews with white, middle-class young people in three different cities in England, we argue that class can be seen and felt in young people's constructions of the "chav", where white, working-class young people's ways of being and doing in the context of schooling, stand in stark contrast to the normative middle-class subject, and become pathologized. (Contains 6 notes.)

While much has been written on national identity in Northern Ireland, the identity preferences of adults and the young have rarely been compared directly. This paper addresses this omission by examining the relationship between national identity and community relations within both the adult (aged 18 years and above) and the young adult (aged 16 years) population. This study used the 2006 Life and Times Survey, and the results show that the adoption of a Northern Irish identity and a positive view of community relations is increasingly common among Protestants. Nevertheless, this change does not herald a new era in community relations; rather, irrespective of whether differences both within and between the two religious communities are considered, among those who adopt a Northern Irish identity, it is young Protestants who are least positive in their views. One tentative explanation for this finding is the much lower levels of cross-community contact among the young Protestant population. (Contains 5 tables, 5 figures, and 5 notes.)

While entitlements are often expressed as universal and linked to the rights citizens should have, young people's access to them is shaped by their social positioning, meaning that whether, and in what sense, they are citizens is pertinent. If citizens have access to universal entitlements, does this position certain young people who do not have such access as "lesser youth" because their entitlements are reduced and citizenship diminished or non-existent? This paper examines whether and how young, separated migrants wanting refuge may be positioned as "lesser youth". It draws on a sample of them and multisector professionals examining qualitative data on accessing health care, sexual exploitation and rebuilding lives. The data suggest that the legislative and institutional framework they face militates against their enjoying the "universal" entitlements of citizens. This reflects their positioning as "lesser youth" excluded from the full rights citizens are entitled to. Such a positioning is in large part underpinned by contested notions of nationhood, belonging and entitlement central to communitarian citizenship but which exclude them. We argue that a meaningful citizenship for these youth requires a contestation of restrictive communitarian ideas and practices in ways forwarding a more inclusive and socially just multicultural UK. (Contains 1 table and 7 notes.)

In popular and policy framings in the USA, traffic accidents and fatalities involving teens are typically treated as having their own facticity. Much like other social phenomenon, teen driving accidents are regarded as though they are part of an objective reality external to a set of ideational or discursive processes and social organization of knowledge. Treated as such, teen driving accidents and fatalities are uncritically classified, counted, and compared with rates of accidents and fatalities among other groups of drivers with the purpose to direct public policy decisions and give authority to specific legislative agendas. Examining the rhetorical practices through which an event or an object appears as a factual given, "as if" belonging to an objective and unproblematic reality, this paper examines how teen driving and the teen driver are social created through a public problems discourse, fueling panic among parents, policy officials and legislators, educators, and risk and safety experts. Significant consideration is given to the uses and misuses of statistics about teens and driving in various media outlets and by various claims-makers in the construction of teen driving as a public drama with specific policy and legislative outcomes. (Contains 3 tables and 21 notes.)

Young people are expected to establish a sense of personal identity and become progressively more independent of their parents, maturing into adults and citizens. Paid work is the key to this transition. Without this, youth would not be able to shift from childhood to adulthood and from dependence to independence. Among the other conditions that influence this transition, two are particularly important: the family and the welfare system. This study focuses on the unemployment experiences of youth in Turkey. Who gives support to the unemployed youth, and by what means is this support provided? The possible divisions of responsibility between the welfare system and family have both positive and negative outcomes. If the state assumes more responsibility than families do as the primary provider, this would create a "dependence culture". On the other hand, if the family becomes the sole supporter of unemployed youth, would this lead to other unexpected consequences? This paper will focus on the answer to this question. (Contains 1 table and 7 notes.)

This paper picks up from Bynner's recent critique of the current formulation of emerging adulthood as presented in his recent exchange with Arnett in the "Journal of Youth Studies" (2005, volume 8(4) and 2006, volume 9(1)). It pays particular attention to the exclusion processes in education and the workplace that prevent young people in some socio-economic contexts from experiencing the developmental processes presumed to be of benefit to all "emerging adults". In addition, an alternative to Arnett's psychological, free-choice model of emerging adulthood is offered that identifies the social and economic conditions that have produced the prolonged transition to adulthood. We argue that this hiatus in the life-course, which is increasingly referred to as emerging adulthood, can be better explained in terms of changing economic conditions leading to a lowering of the social status of the young that is contributing to increasingly precarious trajectories, and in terms of the decline in the social markers of adulthood associated with the individualization process. When these structural conditions are examined, it appears that Arnett's model "begs the question" about emerging adulthood (i.e. takes for granted the very thing under contention), and mistakes the coping mechanisms of many young people for freely chosen options to delay their entry into adulthood. (Contains 2 tables, 2 figures and 1 note.)

This article considers claims now being made about "the adolescent brain". It points out why some of those claims are problematic for methodological, social and philosophical reasons. Attention is given to how some "youth experts" and others have used this research by relying on and reinforcing prejudicial stereotypes about young people as intrinsically problematic. Questions are asked about history and what that teaches us about such claims and what the implications are of uncritically accepting this latest "discovery" in terms of rights and responsibilities. One response of those wedded to the adolescent brain model is to increase the age at which young people can engage in a number of activities. I argue that if we deny young people responsibility and opportunities to build a repertoire of experiences and to learn how events connect to emotions, then we are denying them the chance to develop their capacity for good judgment. The response proposed in this article rests on a different proposition that some young people are sometimes at risk not because their brains are different, but because they have not had the experience or opportunity to develop the skills and judgment that engagement in those activities and experiences supply.

In this paper, through the theoretical lens of life-course research and reproduction theory, we employ 15 years of longitudinal data from the British Columbia, Canada "Paths on Life's Way" project to examine the extent to which educational and career pathways of this cohort of 1988 high school graduates are gendered, individualized, prolonged, diversified; to determine marriage and parenthood patterns in relation to educational and occupational participation and outcomes across time; and to assess the extent to which social class still matters. We employ a transition probabilities analysis to follow the journeys of over 730 individuals from high school through the post-secondary system and work by identifying a sequence of significant stages. We then correlate these transition rates with relevant factors that influenced respondents' lives. We demonstrate quantitatively that although the life courses of young women and men are experienced differently, there is an overall regularity in outcomes. Their "choices" at key transition points are to large extent shaped by external structures and social class and gender differences are evident. (Contains 9 tables, 4 figures and 3 notes.)