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We use the concept of time–space paths (Gordon, Holland and Lahelma 2000) to explore how young people negotiate manageable educational pathways and experience educational engagement in alternative educational settings. For many young people in alternative settings, tight time–space paths (e.g. attending school on time) led to their disengagement from mainstream school settings, as mainstream schools did not accommodate the lives and needs of these young people. We draw on interviews with young people in alternative educational settings in Finland and Australia. We extend the discussion to two alternative time–space paths to explore how young people in alternative educational settings, while expressing a like and need for looser time–space paths to accommodate their difficult life circumstances, still need aspects of tight time–space paths to engage with education. We discuss strategies used in the alternative educational settings that enable the young people to develop a rhythm within their own time–space paths and a sense of agency and control in their learning environment. These strategies enabled communication and the development of positive relationships with teachers that led to a sense of belonging and their engagement with education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on microethical issues concerning interactions in which the process of informed consent occurs. It draws on research analysing the biographies and future hopes of 15- to 17-year-old girls and boys participating in targeted youth/educational programmes in the Helsinki area. The ethical challenge explored here is how to negotiate with the young interviewees on expanding the research setting towards a longitudinal and cross-generational approach, which also means expanding the data produced on their already well-reported lives. The paper highlights the power relations between adult researcher and young research participant, the contextual nature of gaining informed consent, and the conflict involved in trying to avoid hounding an over-surveilled group while still tracking their whereabouts and revisiting them for a follow-up interview.

Young adults who are not in education or work are often depicted as deviating from the norm of gainful employment that is still widely shared across the Nordic countries. While it has been argued that young adults feel that they are being blamed for their NEET situation, this article seeks to identify the variety of interpretations they have of their situation and what kind of explanations can be proposed for the differences. Theoretically, perspectives from Axel Honneth's recognition theory are combined with Thomas Scheff's sociological work on shame to discuss the variations in the sentiments of young adults. Based on this framework, the article illuminates how young adults use the shared semantics available within their immediate circles to enable them to feel worthy of recognition despite their depicted deviation from the norm of gainful employment. Additionally, the article contributes to sociological debates on Honneth's recognition theory – especially its ambiguous concept of shared semantics – by making sense of the role of communities and institutions as providers of shared semantics. The findings are based on an abductive analysis of 35 in-depth interviews with young Finnish adults aged 18–29 who have been or are currently outside of education or employment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The conventional approach to youth transitions has focused on particular transitional points taking place after the completion of compulsory education. This paper focuses on the ways in which institutional regulations, individual agency, and emotions are related in bringing about such significant transitions that take place outside the traditional transitional points and before the endpoint of compulsory education. It seeks to contribute to the understanding of agency as being emotionally and socially structured and interlinked to the family and the institutional resources available for a young person. It uses Ruth Lister's typology of forms of agency as well as the concept of "bounded" agency introduced by Karen Evans in 2007. Drawing on research focusing on the biographies and future hopes of young people involved in programmes offering targeted support, the paper aims to illustrate young people's attempts to take control of their complicated life situations in the areas of family life, peer relations, and education. By initiating a transition from one status to another outside the traditional transitional points, the young people were able to position themselves in a way that allowed them, from their point of view, to become better resourced in their present situation as well as in terms of their future. (Contains 1 table and 7 notes.)

This paper focuses on the social attachments and detachments of 16- to 29-year-old young adults who are not in employment or education, and consequently not part of the sociability related to work or school. While the characteristics of this group tend to be well documented, there is less empirical research on their social relations. Here, the aim is to explore the interlinkages between young adults' structural and social marginalisation through an analysis that draws upon two types of interlinked datasets: follow-up surveys and online group discussions conducted among a sample of young adults recruited from targeted youth services during 2017–2018. Leaning on empirical evidence, the paper argues that structural marginalisation is associated with the social marginalisation of young adults. With the use of both quantitative and qualitative data, the paper provides new youth-specific insights into the arguments made in the previous literature on financial constraints and stigma as mechanisms between structural and social marginalisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This methodological article reflects upon the relationships between researchers and professionals who work with marginalized young adults. The latter act as gatekeepers who have the power to foster or restrict cooperative research. As such, this paper focuses on the significance of researcher and gatekeeper relationships in the context of research that aims to broaden established professional practices, as well as the role of the gatekeeper. The paper evaluates a case example to determine how gatekeeping impacts the research process and how gatekeepers' engagement with research is maintained. The analysis is based on field notes and interviews that were completed during the research process for an empirical study that aimed to both scrutinize and promote the quality of life of 16- to 29-year-old young adults who were not in education or employment. In spite of the expectation of rapid and impactful results by entities that fund research, the ability to co-create new professional practices requires time and continuous negotiation. Therefore, operating as a researcher in targeted youth or social work calls for a developed understanding of varying forms of knowledge and gatekeeping that are relevant to youth counselling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the discourses related to gender in interviews with welfare service practitioners and their young, 18- to 29-year-old clients using ‘boy discourse’ as an analytical framework and J. M. Barrie’s story of Peter Pan as a metaphorical framework. Those beyond the reach of the welfare services are referred to by the practitioners as ‘lost young people’. Some practitioners see young men in particular as poor creatures, unable to achieve anything without a girlfriend, whose task is to get these Peter Pans ‘on the right track’ as Wendy does. The ‘Lost Girls’ are in a similar position to the ‘Lost Boys’ but the practitioners are more concerned about the boys. Their assumption is that girls can cope but boys need Wendys in order to succeed in life. As a result, the combined efforts of the female staff and nurturing girlfriends are seen as instrumental in steering ‘failing boys’ towards adulthood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]