Social inclusion for whom and towards what end? A critical discourse analysis of youth and sport policies in Turkey

This article examines the social inclusion policy strategies of the Turkish Ministry of Youth and Sport (MYS). Using a critical discourse analysis, based on Norman Fairclough’s work (2012), the aim is to analyse the discourses used within policy-related documents regarding social inclusion, youth, and sport. In order to achieve this objective, we analysed 15 key documents, including annual activity reports, national youth and sport policy documents, and strategic plans produced by the Ministry. Findings revealed that the dominant discourses about young people seem to be embedded within neoliberal and neoconservative ideologies in which depoliticised notions of ‘employment/apprenticeship’ and ‘the family’ are put forward as solutions for the social inclusion of young people. However, such a discourse risks further sustaining the social exclusion of youth, denying their full citizenship.     

Time to look in/at anger: considerations on the position and policing of young people’s anger

Mental and emotional well-being is steadily overtaking physical difficulty as the biggest health challenge facing young people. As a result, young people’s emotional well-being and needs are a significant concern within contemporary youth studies. However, the intricacies of ‘managing emotion’ have been somewhat neglected in the context of youth studies. In particular, the role of discourses of emotional well-being to produce ‘feeling rules’ [Boler, M. 1999. Feeling Power: Emotions and Education. Florence, KY: Routledge], to discipline, and to restrict expressions of emotion has been unconsidered. This article explores this problematic further with the intention of provoking a larger concentration on relationship between the policing of emotion and youth well-being discourses. Specifically, it focuses on anger as one of the emotions that young people are encouraged to move away from. It outlines how young people’s right to be angry is policed through the construction of angry subjectivities as characterised by incompleteness. It focuses on two – the unresolved subject and the unreasoned subject. Young people, who are already constructed as incomplete, are particularly vulnerable to this policing. Drawing on a range of theoretical interjections on the disciplining of ‘adult’ anger, the article explores the political importance of anger, how it is limited for young people, and the complexities of engaging with anger in the context of youth studies. Given the limited attention anger has attracted in youth studies literature, the article is intentionally provocative. However, as the article notes, this is a complex debate with many challenges and a much more detailed investigation is necessary.     

Young people,future hopes and concerns in Finland and the European Union: classed and gendered expectations in policy documents

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

Youth and their workers: the interacting subjectification effects of neoliberal social policy and NGO practice frameworks

The effects of neoliberalism on young people and youth workers through outsourcing government services has attracted critique from multiple sources. Post-structural analysis interrogates subjectification effects of these policies on youth. However, this kind of analysis of the governmental formation of youth ought to consider the interaction between the knowledge of youth underpinning neoliberal social policy, and those employed by non-government agencies implementing them. The interaction between these two shape the reciprocal governing activity within the young person and youth worker power–knowledge relationship that, this paper will argue, is an important factor in the critique of neoliberal social policy. Young people are governed by a diverse array of knowledges developed by government, youth studies, NGOs and young people themselves. These knowledges interact, reinforce and contradict discourses of youth work. This paper focuses on a neoliberal social policy (FLO) which constructs youth as a surplus population in need of risk management, and youth workers as the producers of young workers. Furthermore, I will consider the interfering subjectification effects produced by an intake and assessment tool (Your Story) utilised by a non-government FLO provider. These discourses underpinning Your Story and FLO render young people and their workers as relational beings or economic citizens respectively.     

Self-work and social change: disindividualised participation amongst young Australian Buddhist practitioners

Recent work on youth participation has mobilised a ‘DIY’ or ‘individualised’ framework to explain the nature of contemporary participation, particularly amongst minoritised religious youth. This paper examines this conceptual framework in light of concurrent claims that contemporary participation can be better conceptualised using a ‘doing it with others’ (DIWO) approach, which emphasises the collaborative nature of participation. In light of these claims, I analyse the participation experiences of 22 young adult Buddhist practitioners who are located within a neo-liberal Australian context, yet simultaneously have access to religious teachings and practices which challenge distinct notions of selfhood. This paper shows that both ‘DIY’ and ‘DIWO’ conceptions of participation find expression in the participation experiences of participants from the study, and that both DIY and DIWO approaches can additionally be seen as mutually reinforcing rather than distinctly contrasting. I propose a new concept of ‘disindividualisation’, suggesting that Maffesoli's concept of ‘disindividuation’ and Elias's work linking psychological development and social change should be considered in conjunction with an individualised or DIY perspective on youth participation to denote this kind of participatory work.     

Oppositional Defiant Disorder: The Psy Apparatuses and Youth Resistance

This article, situated in Foucauldian, anti-psychiatry, and mad studies literature, provides a theoretical intervention into the practice complexities and complicities of working with young people marked with the diagnosis of oppositional defiant disorder. Using a composite vignette as a proxy for social work practice, I map the particular harms of the deployment of the oppositional defiant disorder diagnosis, using Foucault and others to provide insight, in order to reorder and rethink work with young people marked as disorderly. Scholars effectively trace the manifold harms of the psychiatrization of young people; this article knits together the ways in which these harms operate, with the expressed intention of psychiatrizing youth resistance through multiple targets. The article concludes with tentative formulations for reconceptualizing youth resistance, in particular, using contributions from Sara Ahmed’s work on willfulness and Eve Tuck’s work on dangerous dignities. My aim is to use these emerging formulations to position our work with young people in alignment with their own resistance to injustice, rather than in concert with the efforts to psychiatrize their actions.     

Young people and the gendered and aesthetic dimensions of ‘enterprise’: stories from a ‘Rust Belt’ city

ABSTRACT

In the ‘Rust Belt’ city of Geelong in Victoria, Australia, discourses of young people’s enterprise and innovation provide a counter-narrative to the prevailing material and symbolic consequences of industrial decline, job losses, and the growing insecurity of employment and income. GT Magazine is a weekly, large circulation magazine in Geelong with a significant focus on the activities and aspirations of enterprising young people. In this paper, we examine, by utilising techniques of content analysis and discourse analysis, the particular ways in which young people’s innovation and enterprise are framed and enacted in GT Magazine. Our analysis reveals that ‘youth’ and ‘enterprise’ are, in GT Magazine, given an embodied form that is powerfully marked by aestheticised, normalised enactments of gender, class and race. In doing this work, we make productive contributions to three key themes in contemporary youth studies: new work orders and the youthful self as enterprise; the gendered and aesthetic dimensions of affective labour in these new work orders; and the emerging spatial turn to examine young people's embodied, place-based experiences of employment and enterprise. We seek to make problematic the sense that solutions to multiple disruptions and crises in capitalism and the environment are to be found in young people’s enterprise. Particularly when that enterprise is given form in ways that are aestheticised, gendered, classed, individualised and responsibilised.     

‘Individual and connected’: an exploration of young people’s discourses about youth cafes in Ireland

Since 2000, youth cafes are accorded prominence in Irish youth policies and research. Youth cafes are drug and alcohol free recreational spaces and research shows that they impact positively on young people. Youth cafes are broadly similar to youth clubs, but they are less structured and are primarily youth-led spaces. This paper draws on qualitative materials from a national study of youth cafes in Ireland, arguing that young people’s perceptions of youth cafes are linked to individuality and connectedness. In this paper, we explore these discourses surrounding individuality and connection in detail and argue that youth work in the twenty-first century must simultaneously appeal to young people’s need for space to ‘be’ and to find themselves and provide a structure within which they can relate to others and wider society.     

Figures of youth: on the very object of Youth Studies

ABSTRACT

‘Youth’ as a social category is used and abused in all manner of ways across an array of fields, platforms, discourses and spaces, Youth Studies notwithstanding. When we talk about ‘young people’ sometimes we seem to be referring to different phenomena, depending upon our political interests, theoretical perspectives and research methods. This article interrogates how the concept of ‘youth’ is figuratively put to work. By suggesting different figures of youth, and inviting suggestions for more, I propose that tracing how they are situated in different ontological spaces can develop a clearer conception of our research object(s) and help reduce confusion and the possibility that we are talking past each other. The incomplete picture I want to paint of figures of youth, in quite broad-brush strokes, all inter-relate in something of a feedback loop, a material-semiotic assemblage that forms powerful affects for the ways that ‘youth’ is brought into being, how youth are researched, governed, co-opted and exploited.     

A revised approach to racism in youth multiculture: the significance of schoolyard conversations about sex,dating and desire

Anxieties about social cohesion in multicultural societies have prompted scrutiny of how young people negotiate culturally diverse spaces. A key perspective of the literature at the intersections of youth studies and urban multiculture is that young people shift between racist and convivial modes of relationality to navigate their complex social worlds. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in a culturally diverse high school in Melbourne, Australia, I suggest that this binary framing fails to capture some of the diverse logics and practices within multicultural youth sociality. Reconciling dichotomous conceptual frames that position young people as moving back-and-forth between forms of exclusion and openness, I propose an alternative frame – a perverse form of everyday cosmopolitanism – through which to consider young people’s intercultural relations. To do this, I draw on young people’s conversations about sex, dating and desire as an entry point for new theorising about racism. Race and ethnicity were cornerstones of students’ frequent discussions about sexual ‘tastes’ and activity, discourses that have racist histories and effects. However, students did not understand their social world in such terms. These students’ social practices offer a situated illustration of how racism can function as part of a more inclusive cosmopolitan ethos in young lives, which I term ‘perverse cosmopolitanism’.     

Youth masculinities: compelling male heterosexuality

This article seeks to extend understandings of heterosexual masculine identities through an examination of young men's constructions of what motivates young men to engage in heterosexual practices and relationships, and what not having sex might mean for them. Using the masculinity literature and work on heterosexuality to frame the discussion and to contextualize the findings, it explores the complex dynamics that frame the relationship between masculinity and heterosexuality. Specifically, how dominant or 'hegemonic' discourses of heterosexuality shape young men's identities, beliefs and behaviour. It considers these questions using empirical data from a qualitative study of young people living in close-knit working-class communities in the North East of England, with a specific focus on cultural and social attitudes towards sexuality and sexual practices. Peer group networks are a key site for the construction and (re)production of masculinity and, therefore, an important arena within which gendered social approval and acceptance is both sought and gained. In this article, I explore the reasons why young men engage in specific types of heterosexual practice in order to gain social approval. A central question is the extent to which heterosexuality is compelling for young men. That young men do feel compelled to behave in certain ways sexually, behaviours that they may be uncomfortable with and/or dislike, and the fact that they feel they are restricted in terms of how they can talk about their experiences within their peer group networks, demonstrates the power of dominant discourses of masculinity in everyday life. This is addressed through an examination of the restrictive effects of normative discourses about male heterosexuality, including their privatizing effects, which suggest that youth masculinities are often experienced in ways that are highly contradictory requiring young men to adopt a range of strategies to deal with this.     

Feeling disability: theories of affect and critical disability studies

This paper explores connections between affect studies and critical disability studies. Our interest in affect is sparked by the beginnings of a new research project that seeks to illuminate the lives, hopes and desires of young people with ‘life-limiting’ or ‘life-threatening’ impairments. Cultural responses to these young people are shaped by dominant discourses associated with lives lived well and long. Before commencing our empirical work with young people we use this paper to think through how we might conceptualise affect and disability. We present three themes; ontological invalidation in neoliberal-able times; affect aliens and crip killjoys; disability and resistant assemblages.     

Democracy denied,youth participation and criminalizing digital dissent

Attention is given in this article to recent action by many liberal states to regulate and criminalize certain forms of political dissent reliant on new media. I ask how those working in the fields of youth studies and social science more generally might understand such processes of criminalizing political dissent involving young people digital media. I do this mindful of the prevailing concern about a ‘crisis in democracy’ said to be evident in the withdrawal by many young people from traditional forms of political engagement, and the need to encourage greater youth participation in democratic practices. A heuristic or guiding frame is developed to analyse how new laws, amendments to existing laws and other regulatory practices are being implemented to contain certain forms of political participation, performed in large part by young people. A case study of ‘Distributed Denial of Service action’ is offered to examine government responses to political practices which I argue constitute legitimate forms of protest and civil disobedience.     

The importance of discourse in homelessness policy for young people: an Australian perspective

Homelessness among young people remains an ongoing critical issue across the globe, despite numerous targeted policies attempting to address the issue. Research demonstrates that the way policies represent social problems influences policy solutions. Drawing on Australian policy, this research investigates how policy discourses construct homeless young people, and how these constructions influence the support services developed. The study involves a critical discourse analysis of Australia’s most recent national inquiry report on homelessness among young people. The analysis suggests that the values and assumptions present throughout this policy largely reflect neoliberal political contexts, emphasising the importance of individual and community responsibility. However, there exists a disconnect between policy expectations of young people’s autonomy and the construction of their capacity for autonomy. This suggests that young people require greater levels of participation in policy development to create an effective balance between their own need for self-determinism and the support they require to transition out of homelessness.     

Unlocking Hikikomori: an interdisciplinary approach

This article provides an interdisciplinary exploration of the ways in which social isolation is constructed in institutional and public imaginaries. It examines the discursive devices that produce hikikomori subjectivities, with a particular focus on the existence of an enduring deviant construct. Despite largely existing in the private sphere, hikikomori are positioned as residing outside of the prevailing system of social relationships and as such are perceived as a threat to social order. Persistent psycho-medical and idiosyncratic cultural depictions of hikikomori continue to obscure those who are doing the defining. Such portrayals also re-assert enduring normative expectations concerning the social, civil and economic participation of young people. Through an interdisciplinary approach that blends sociological and cultural critique, this paper challenges the dominant discourses framing hikikomori, at the same time underlining the ways in which these limiting discourses act upon the self by reinforcing an individualised subjectivity, masking the network of institutions and cultural discourses that mediate this process. We assert that there needs to be a broadening of the concept away from the atomised individual to one that situates hikikomori within a social and cultural context, having significant implications for identity and notions of personhood in contemporary, digital Japan and beyond.     

Sexuality Education in the United States: Shared Cultural Ideas across a Political Divide

“Sexuality education”– broadly defined as teaching and learning about a range of issues related to puberty, sexuality, and relationships – occurs all day every day, formally and informally, intentionally and unintentionally. Nevertheless, adults organize policy and instruction for young people around a constrained set of concerns: first, that the sexuality education youth receive does not help them navigate an increasingly sexualized and dangerous world and, second, that the lessons are themselves damaging, exacerbating the risks youth and children already face. I discuss sexuality education’s entanglement with these conventional cultural ideas about youth, sexuality, and education. I consider the ways that abstinence‐only and comprehensive school‐based sexuality education rest on a series of a discursive framings, including a commitment to regulating sexuality and youth, a contemporary “moral panic” that renders all talk about youth and sexuality provocative, and normative and instrumental conceptions of teaching and learning about sexuality. I conclude by discussing the implications of these discursive framings for classroom practice and imagining an alternative model in which sexuality education might embrace ambiguity and ambivalence as a necessary and even welcome condition of young people’s sexuality and education.     

“Do you guys hate Aucklanders too?” Youth: voicing difference from the rural heartland

This paper extends recent work in the geography of childhood and youth studies by examining the ways in which rural youth voice their understandings of what it means to be a young person at this historic moment (the end of the twentieth century) in New Zealand. Youth First¹ has been a nationwide project which has sought to privilege what young people 10–17 years say as a basis for evaluating the last 15 years of economic and cultural change in New Zealand. Over the course of 3 years a methodology was used to constitute spaces where youth voices would be heard. Focus Groups and “Youth Tribunals” have been conducted across New Zealand involving young people from diverse social and ethnic backgrounds. This methodology was supported by a development programme for beginning researchers also from diverse backgrounds and disciplines, and by the significant participation by young people in the design and conduct of the “Youth Tribunals”. Their participation has been critical to the power of the methodology to constitute spaces where rural youth have provided rich testimonies about their complex lives. While the voices of rural youth in the study resonate with national youth themes, including the theme of “not being listened to” they also speak to the nuances and differences in the lives of rural New Zealand youth. We would argue that in sharp contrast to the organizing concept of one “rural childhood” our research clearly shows that there are different possibilities in growing up rural. Maori and Pakeha² youth for example draw on different cultural and linguistic resources to voice their relationships to place and identity. Although vehemently clear about the ways in which they were excluded from participation in community life and their strategies of resistance, rural youth in this study also provided analyses which showed their commitment to positive possibilities which they saw as part of rural lives and communities.     

‘The outraged young’: young Europeans,civic engagement and the new media in a time of crisis

Public involvement in traditional political institutions has declined significantly over the past few decades, leading to what some have seen as a crisis in citizenship. This trend is most striking amongst young people, who have become increasingly alienated from mainstream electoral politics in Europe. Nevertheless, there is overwhelming evidence to show that younger citizens are not apathetic about ‘politics’ – they have their own views and engage in democracy in a wide variety of ways that seem relevant to their everyday lives. In the aftermath of the global financial crisis, young Europeans have borne the brunt of austerity in public spending: from spiralling youth unemployment, to cuts in youth services, to increased university tuition fees. In this context, the rise and proliferation of youth protest in Europe is hardly surprising. Indeed, youth activism has become a major feature of the European political landscape: from mass demonstrations of the ‘outraged young’ against political corruption and youth unemployment, to the Occupy movement against the excesses of global capitalism, to the emergence of new political parties. This article examines the role that the new media has played in the development of these protest movements across the continent. It argues that ‘digitally networked action’ has enabled a ‘quickening’ of youth participation – an intensification of political participation amongst young, highly educated citizens in search of a mouthpiece for their ‘indignation’.     

Strategic self-management: the new youth challenge

Individualization has been a much debated topic in youth research for decades now. Getting a good education and choosing the right one is one of the manifold ways young people deal with late-modern individualization challenges. Based on in-depth interviews with 12 young students aged 17–20 years in the Danish Gymnasium we investigate how young people make sense of, and deal with, these challenges by focusing on how they handle and reflect on their educational biographies. We employ The General Activity Theory to sensitize our contextual understanding of individualization in relation to the youth perspective. Based on our data analysis, this study contributes theoretically by further-developing the concept of ‘strategic self-management’ in an educational context. We conclude that this concept is suitable for encapsulating how young people make sense of, and deal with, their educational biographies facing the new youth challenges. The study thus contributes with an enhanced sensitivity in relation to understanding some of the contemporary challenges of young people whose choice about education echo into their future work life.     

Becoming,Being and Having Been: Practitioner Perspectives on Temporal Stances and Participation across Children’s Services

This article is based on a study of the changing meanings and experiences of citizenship and participation for young people in transition from primary to secondary school. One of the primary concerns of the study is to better understand how different professional practices impact upon young people’s uptake of participation and adoption of civic identity. To gain some insight into this area the article first looks at the contexts in which participation work is developing and the interrelationships between these developments across children’s services. How different practitioner’s conceptualise participation is tied into different assessments of young people’s or children’s capacity. Recasting questions of capacity as dialogues across differing temporal stances can offer practitioners new ways to reflect upon the power negotiations within their relations with young people. The key role temporality plays in configuring power relationships and transactions is explored as it arises within practitioner life history interviews. The shifts between temporal stances that young people experience as they interact with different practitioners are illustrated through fieldwork data.