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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 investigates unauthorized practices of sticker art that usually understood by scholars as political acts and yet narrated as apolitical by the sticker artists themselves. In order to analytically explore this contradiction, the article examines how and why representatives of youth culture (de)politicize their practices and present themselves as (non)political subject. The concept of (de)politicization is utilized as a tool enabling researchers to analyze what actions and intentions actors wish to present as claims for social change and what not, and the rationale for this. Using ethnographic data on the sticker artists’ community in St. Petersburg, Russia collected in 2016-2021, I scrutinized the nexus of the ethics, esthetics, and politics of youth culture in order to reveal how certain combinations of ethics and its visual manifestations are connected to the young people’s (de)politicization of practices in a given socio-political environment. Through the example of sticker artists, the paper discusses the alternative types of claims that do not follow the logic of resistance and shows young people’s complex work of politicization and depoliticization, which contributes to their liberation from subordination and provides them with an opportunity to live a meaningful life in their own manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Young people in residential alcohol and other drug (AOD) services build meaningful relationships with workers during their stays. In this paper we use an ethics of care framework to explore what young people said about care, how it was delivered and what they valued about it. Drawing on three waves of longitudinal interviews conducted with 38 young people over 12 months, we discuss our findings according to two overarching themes – opportunities enabled by care and limits to care. Young people’s descriptions highlight the potential for care to challenge stigma, enhance self-worth and wellbeing, enable respectful staff-client relationships, and foster positive relationships crucial for maintaining engagement. At the same time, young people described challenges around providing both individual and collective care, coproducing care in structured environments, and facilitating care as young people transition out of residential services. These findings shed light on the delicate balance between care provision and contextual constraints within AOD settings. This emphasises the need for ethical relationships built on clear communication, mutual respect, and ongoing forms of care. Recognising the value of care work, especially in transitions out of acute treatment services, is essential for reshaping funding approaches to prioritise meaningful and continuing care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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