Young subjectivities and affective labour in the service economy

Post-Fordist employment is characterised by the demand for new forms of labour in which workers are expected to make personal investments in their work and to mobilise their embodied subjectivities in the practice of labour. Whilst employment insecurity is well documented in the sociology of youth, theoretical development in this area has yet to contend with the role of changes in the nature of labour itself in the production of youth. This paper draws on theories of labour under post-Fordism to explore the practice of ‘affective labour’ amongst young people performing ‘front of house’ bar work in a large metropolitan service economy. The paper theorises the role of youth subjectivities – including capacities for relationality and leisure, gendered embodiment, and tastes – in the practice of contemporary labour. The paper describes how young people doing bar work contribute to the production of affective atmospheres, or sensations of ease, pleasure and enjoyment that are offered to clientele of boutique bars. In this, we suggest that affective labour mobilises young subjectivities at work in ways that are currently unrecognised within youth studies. The paper concludes by suggesting a new research agenda that goes beyond the existing focus on youth transitions through employment to explore how youth is produced as part of the social dynamics of post-Fordist labour.     

Precarious leisure: (re)imagining youth,transitions and temporality

ABSTRACT

The precarity of young people’s transitions to work has been a longstanding focus in youth studies. As Furlong and others have demonstrated, processes of social, political and economic restructuring have led to a pronounced instability for young people entering the labour market. While the notion of labour market precarity has gained attention, the ‘contamination’ of precarity into other spheres of life such as leisure has been less developed. This article seeks to extend these debates through interrogation of the concept of ‘leisure precarity’. Drawing on a qualitative study of youth leisure in Glasgow, it argues that temporal anxieties have reframed young people’s experiences and understandings of leisure such that young people have come to fear ‘empty’ or unproductive time. The pressures of juggling work and study, or looking for work, meant that most participants in our research had limited time free for leisure, and temporal rhythms became fragmented between past, present and future. The paper argues that these multiple and contradictory leisure dispositions reveal new forms of individualisation and uncertainty, as well as traditional patterns of inequality, thereby bringing youth transitions into dialogue with the study of precarity in the twenty-first century.     

‘We don’t have any limits’: Russian young adult life narratives through a social generations lens

A social generation framework attends to how emergent historical patterns of social organization shape young adult contemporaries, noting shared strategies to constructing subjectivity within a common political, social, and economic milieu. However, the perspective has given scant attention to how young people engage in reflexive life management outside of well-documented Western contexts. Additionally, the framework needs further consideration of how youth lives are shaped by the social relations of globalization. To address these omissions, this article examines how educated, urban Russian young adults engage in reflexive life management. In drawing on a social generations rather than transitions approach, youth meaning-making is analyzed through grounded analysis rather than reliance on previously conceived categories. The study of youth reflexive life management can be reframed as a question: ‘what does making a life mean to educated urban post-adolescents in Russia?’ We explore how respondents interpret difference and inequality through transnational comparisons, center globality in the biographical project, and encounter citizenship constraints. We focus on three meaning-making projects: idealized globality, assuming nonlinear paths, and vigilant evaluative work.     

Change and continuity in youth transitions in Eastern Europe: Lessons for Western sociology*

This paper argues that the evidence from research among young people in post‐communist countries vindicates and should consolidate confidence in the Western sociology of youth's conventional transitions paradigm which seeks links between social origins, routes and destinations. Contrary to claims about postmodern fluidity, individualisation, and a blurring of traditional structural boundaries, the expected links between origins, routes and destinations have persisted throughout the transformation of the former communist countries. The relevant evidence also confirms the primacy of education‐to‐work and family/housing life stage transitions. Other aspects of young people's lives – their uses of leisure, levels and patterns of social and political participation, and socio‐political attitudes, for example – become meaningful and explicable only when set in the context of the routes that individuals’ lives have taken, and the stages that they have reached, vis‐à‐vis their school‐to‐work and family and housing transitions. The paper proceeds to argue that the exceptionally thorough changes that are still in process in East‐Central Europe and the former USSR reveal with exceptional clarity the processes whereby young people's life chances are structured in ways that are not of the individuals’ own making. It has been, and it remains, possible to observe how young adults learn from their own youth life stage transition experiences and, where applicable, use the assets that they acquire or retain, to advantage their own children thereby structuring the opportunities that confront all members of subsequent cohorts of young people. Finally, it is argued that the sociological approach being advocated is uniquely able to use the evidence from young people as a window through which to identify the impact of the ongoing macro‐changes in former communist countries among different socio‐demographic groups in the wider populations.     

Exploring youths' perceptions of the hidden practice of youth work in increasing social capital with young people considered NEET in Scotland

This small-scale research explores the generation of social capital in young people growing up in one urban area and one rural area in Scotland via community-led youth work projects that aim to re-engage young people categorised as NEET (Not in Employment Education or Training). By looking at their varied and complex biographies, it considers young people's experiences and perceptions of their communities and their transitions from education to the workplace. Using social capital as a theoretical lens, we examined the impact that youth work can have not just on these important transitions but also upon the young people themselves. By visiting two different sites of engagement we were able to explore whether the type of initiative (media or sports) or place (urban or rural) had an impact on the generation of capital for young people. The youth work practice in both areas acted as a glue between the young people and their communities, creating opportunities where the two could be bound together and relationships created. This occurred in both sites regardless of the area or type of initiative and confirmed in this study that youth work acts as a site of capital building.     

The Study of Youth Labor: The Shift Toward a Subject-Centered Approach

In recent years, part-time work has emerged as an important area of study in understanding young people's lives. The existing literature on young people's work focuses predominantly on the effects of youth labor, particularly on academic progress, future employment, emotional development, and deviant behavior. While youth employment has been studied extensively from the perspectives of parents, educators, and policy-makers, the central actors – young people themselves – have been relatively neglected and young people's motives behind work remain virtually unexplored. A bourgeoning literature advocates a subject-centric approach and proposes an understanding of youth labor from the perspective of young people. In this paper, I aim to (i) survey the existing literature on youth employment in the USA and Europe, (ii) examine the differences that come from adopting a subject-centered approach, and (iii) discuss the implications of this shift for the future of youth labor literature.     

Fractured lives: understanding urban youth vulnerability in Perú

ABSTRACT

The paper reports on a mixed methods study that sought to analyse determinants of youth labour market and educational disengagement in Peru. It begins by questioning the widespread focus on NEET – youth not in employment, education or training – as a measure of youth vulnerability in countries with extensive informal labour markets where labour precarity can be as problematic as unemployment for young people’s futures. A broader category of ‘urban vulnerable’ youth, including both NEET and precarious workers, is proposed and used as the basis for analysing the factors that influence young people’s trajectories. Key factors and shocks in youth trajectories are identified through qualitative life histories, and are tested using cross-section and panel survey data. Findings from the study have implications for the analysis of youth labour market vulnerability in the Global South, as well as for the policies that seek to address this problem.     

‘Fuck It,Shit Happens (FISH)’: a social generations approach to understanding young people’s imaginings of life after school in 2016–2017

ABSTRACT

This article uses a social generations approach to explore the lives of young people transitioning to life after schooling. Drawing on ethnographic research in England during the geopolitical uncertainty of 2016–2017, we track the trajectories and narratives of six individuals. The research begins with final year pupils in schools talking about their futures, during and after their A-Level exams. We then follow these individuals on routes to Higher Education and employment, exploring how they are socialised into imaginings of the future and/or struggle to inhabit these futures. A deeply ingrained, modernist, neoliberal reckoning of future time is normalised through experiences of schooling. However, this logic is troubled profoundly in the transition to life after school. Young people’s experiences in an unpredictable present run in stark contrast to the ordered trajectory of future action they have been socialised to expect. Amidst this uncertainty, ambivalence towards shaping the future (‘Fuck It, Shit Happens’) can in some ways feel like the most agentic stance to take. Furlong et al.’s (2011) social generations approach to understanding youth transitions reveals how we must critique the very concept of ‘the future’ if we are to understand the reality of youth transitions in the present.     

Youth transitions and interdependent adult–child relations in rural Bolivia

There are few studies which document youth transitions from school to work in rural areas of the majority world. This paper, based on ethnographic fieldwork in a rural community in Bolivia, considers how young people make decisions about different types of school-to-work transitions which include migrating to continue their formal education, working in the community, or seeking migrant work in the regional town or in neighbouring Argentina. The paper explores how young people negotiate structural constraints over their choice of transition, including the rural location, economic resources, parental attitudes and family background, gender, birth order, social networks and role models. Importantly the paper highlights that underlying young people's choice of transition are interdependent household relations. In the majority world, in this case in Bolivia, rural young people may achieve economic independence sooner than those in the minority world, but long-term family interdependence tends to be maintained throughout the life-course. This paper suggests that the notion of negotiated interdependence is a more appropriate way to understand youth transitions and relations between young people and adults in rural areas of the majority world.     

Editing the project of the self: sustained Facebook use and growing up online

Now in operation for 12 years, Facebook comes to serve as a digital record of life for young people. With significant parts of their lives played out on the site, users are able to turn to these profiles to reflect on how their use of Facebook has come to constitute a life narrative. In this paper, we report on findings from qualitative research into sustained use of Facebook by young people in their twenties in Australia and the UK. We focus on the ‘editing’ or re-ordering of narratives that our participants engage in while they scroll back through their years of disclosures – and the disclosures of others – that make up their Facebook Timelines. We present our analysis through three arenas (employment, family life and romantic relationships) subject to what we argue is a reflexive re-ordering of life narratives. We argue that Facebook profiles represent visual manifestations of Giddens [1991. Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press] reflexive project of the self, that serve not only to communicate a sense of self to others, but that also act as texts of personal reflection and of growing up, subject to ongoing revision.     

青年压力来源与社会支持系统优化策略

现代社会给青年提供了前所未有的发展机遇,也使青年承受着超出以往任何时代的生存压力．2011年,对山东城市在业青年进行的社会心态调查显示：当前青年的压力主要来自经济压力、工作压力、子女教育压力三个方面。研究表明：传统的家庭支持系统是青年应对经济压力和人生重大选择的主要支持力量,非正式社会支持系统和家庭共同构成青年情感支持的主要力量,正式的社会支持系统对青年的支持作用尚未得到充分发挥。建立相对完备的社会支持系统,需要从社会保障、组织覆盖、舆论影响、心理疏导等方面提升优化。     

Young,successful, precarious? Precariousness at the entry stage of employment careers in Germany

ABSTRACT

The article investigates entry-stage employment trajectories of young people in Germany, asking whether transitions into continuous employment indicate successful labour market integration. Applying a novel multidimensional approach to precariousness to individuals’ employment and household trajectories, we understand entry-stage employment trajectories holistically. The balanced-panel sample is drawn from the German Socio-Economic Panel, with a focus on young men and women between 15 and 25 years of age in the first year of the sample period who had been employed at least once (n?=?1360).

Dual-channel sequence-cluster analysis reveals considerable variation in the precariousness of young people’s entry-stage employment. While almost all young men and women experience periods of precariousness, the durations vary substantially. Precarious employment or precarious living conditions frequently occur during education. Our results confirm that individuals with disrupted employment trajectories are seldom successfully integrated into the labour market and frequently experience precarious employment. In previous research, transitions into continuous employment have been understood as the hallmark of successful labour market integration. This holds true for young women but not for young men, who experienced continuous and precarious entry-stage employment. To correctly identify young men’s successful labour market integration, additional information about their employment precariousness is required.     

‘Generation rent’ and the ability to ‘settle down’: economic and geographical variation in young people’s housing transitions

The term ‘Generation Rent’ denotes young people who are increasingly living in the private rented sector for longer periods of their lives because they are unable to access homeownership or social housing. Drawing on qualitative data from two studies with young people and key-actors, this paper considers the phenomenon of ‘Generation Rent’ from the perspective of youth transitions and the concept of ‘home’. These frameworks posit that young people leaving the parental home traverse housing and labour markets until they reach a point of ‘settling down’. However, our data indicate that many young people face difficulties in this ‘settling’ process as they have to contend with insecure housing, unstable employment and welfare cuts which often force them to be flexible and mobile. This leaves many feeling frustrated as they struggle to remain fixed in place in order to ‘settle down’ and benefit from the positive qualities of home. Taking a Scottish focus, this paper further highlights the geographical dimension to these challenges and argues that those living in expensive and/or rural areas may find it particularly difficult to settle down.     

Young precariat and a new work order? A case for historical sociology

This article assesses Guy Standing's (2011) account of ‘the precariat’ as a ‘new class' to the many exercises undertaken in youth studies since the 1980s to make sense of the changing patterns of youth employment. While Standing's focus on the experience of fragmented and casualized work in many economies which now implicates young people has value, there are significant problems with his account that highlights the some difficulties in thinking in somewhat abstracted ways about ‘structural’ change processes that do not sufficiently consider the question of time. The case of Australia's of labour market regulation since the 1890s is used to test the validity of Standing's focus on the novelty of neoliberalism after the early 1980 to explain the emergence of precarious employment. Standing's claim that insecurity is central to the ‘new precariat’ because they lack the different kinds of security enjoyed by the ‘working-class’ after 1945, highlights the need for an interpretative framework attentive to the longer term role of state policy and the interplay of historical and local processes. The case is then made for developing a historical sociology that engages with what is now happening in respect to young people and their employment security.     

The NEET concept in comparative youth research: the Nordic countries and South Africa

The NEET concept has become widely used internationally since its emergence in the UK almost two decades ago. This article reviews the adoption of the concept in two extreme contexts in terms of NEET rates, youth opportunities and youth welfare: the Nordic countries and South Africa. The article discusses the situations of NEET young people in the two contexts, and how the concept is used in the wealthy and relatively homogenous Nordic welfare states and in relatively poorer and racially divided South Africa. While the concept has been problematised in different ways in Nordic youth research, it has been more readily accepted by South African researchers. We argue that, in both contexts, the NEET concept can be taken as an invitation to look beyond individual life situations and biographies, and to focus on how structural forces such as the political economy shape young people’s lives. The NEET concept provides a way of discussing changing opportunity structures and how global social forces such as globalisation and neoliberalisation shape young people’s lives in different contexts. The NEET concept is useful in comparative youth research.     

“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.     

Youth underemployment: A review of research on young people and the problems of less(er) employment in an era of mass education

In this article, we examine the problem of youth underemployment and how it is conceptualised, operationalised and understood within wider sociology, with particular focus on the sociology of youth and youth studies literature. We outline the contours of this body of work, showing how in most cases underemployment is undefined and used as a general term to describe the challenges and inadequacies of the contemporary labour market for young people. Further, we show how despite a lack of clarity, most researchers in this field contend that underemployment is increasing for young people, becoming a normative experience, cutting across class, ethnicity and gender. For some, however, underemployment is a ‘choice’, but as the literature shows, how different groups of young people respond to underemployment varies. In addition, we show how overeducation, another form of underemployment, is being understood by both researchers and young people as a ‘new normal’ rather than being challenged as another flank in the on-going neo-liberalisation and massification of education. We conclude with a call to think through the ideas presented and to develop new understandings of youth underemployment that can facilitate change. The sensitising concept of less(er) employment is proposed as best placed to facilitate this reanimation.     

Comparing transition expectations of young people with moderate learning disabilities with other vulnerable youth and with their non-disabled counterparts

This article uses data obtained from a study that examined transition experiences of young people with moderate learning disabilities. A comparison is made between those experiences and the experiences of both other vulnerable young people and non-disabled youth. It was found that non-disabled youth experience extended transitions with events that signify adult status taking place well into young people's 20s. On the other hand, vulnerable youth transitions are often (out of necessity) rushed, with young people having to take on responsibility beyond their years. The results of the study demonstrate that for young people with moderate learning disabilities the experiences of transition more closely mirror those of other vulnerable youth than they do the non-disabled population.     

Rural communities and well‐being: a good place to grow up?

This study looks at young people's accounts of life in communities in rural northern Scotland, and considers in what ways affective and social aspects of community are bound up with well‐being, over and above young people's concerns for the future, rural youth transitions, and out‐migration. Interviews were held with 15–18 year‐olds in four study areas (16 groups, N=60+) and a parallel survey of 11–16 year‐olds was conducted in eight study areas (N=2400+). Themes to emerge from the interviews included: opportunities locally, the future and staying on, as well as local amenities and services; but older teenagers also spoke at length about their social lives, family and social networks, and their community, both as close‐knit and caring and as intrusive and controlling. Rural communities were seen as good places in childhood, but not necessarily for young people. In parallel with that, the survey data paints a picture where feelings of support, control, autonomy, and attachment were all associated with emotional well‐being. Importantly, links between emotional well‐being and practical, material concerns were outweighed by positive identifications of community as close‐knit and caring; and equally, by negative identifications as intrusive and constraining, where the latter was felt more strongly by young women. Certainly, beliefs about future employment and educational opportunities were also linked to well‐being, but that was over and above, and independently of, affective and social aspects of community life. Additionally, migration intentions were also bound up with sense of self and well‐being, and with feelings about community life; and links between thoughts about leaving and community life as controlling and constraining were, yet again, felt more strongly by young women. Thus, gender was a key dimension affecting young people's feelings about their communities with significant implications for well‐being, and out‐migration. The study illustrates the importance of understanding the experiences young people have of growing up in rural areas, and how they evaluate those experiences: particularly, how life in rural communities matters for young people's well‐being; and especially, for young women.     

Young people’s education biographies: family relationships,social capital and belonging

This paper examines complexities and interdependencies of key family relationships which anchor young people’s educational biographies. It is well recognised that young people’s education pathways in late modernity are strongly dependent on their ability to draw on the range of resources available, and that socio-economic status and family resources play a central role in this process. Less is known about how such relationships anchor young people’s education biographies. Drawing on theories of social capital and belonging in dialogue with qualitative interviews, and situated in studies of rural youth and education, this article considers how young people themselves talk and make decisions about their education in relation to complex family connections. These connections, contestations and negotiations between young people and central family members highlight how the late modern economy impacts on young people’s intimate relationships, and sheds light on the ongoing work of youth to resolve such tensions around their schooling in daily life.