Mobile transitions: a conceptual framework for researching a generation on the move

This paper argues for a renewed research agenda on the transnational mobility of young people across both youth studies and migration studies. We review key literature across these fields, before arguing for a new conceptual framework that helps to further extend the emerging interdisciplinary space of ‘youth mobility studies’ (Raffaetà, Baldassar and Harris 2016). Our central proposition is that mobility has become an important marker and maker of transitions for youth in many contexts globally. We argue that a conceptual advance is required to understand the unique circumstances of a generation ‘on the move’ as they navigate diverse and non-sequential social, civic and economic practices of ‘adulthood’, and propose the conceptual framework of mobile transitions as a timely new agenda. ‘Mobile transitions’ describes transition pathways under conditions of mobility but also emphasises two key claims around the further development of transnational youth mobility research. The first is the importance of an orientation towards spatio-temporal complexity, multiplicity and fragmentation of both ‘youth transition’ and ‘migrancy’ as scholarly concepts and lived experiences. The second is an argument for understanding ‘mobile transitions’ in relation to three intersecting domains – economic opportunities, social relations and civic practices – rather than through linear notions of the achievement of economic and social autonomy.     

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.     

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.     

‘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.     

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’.     

The price of youth: commodification of young people through malleable risk practices

Risk has become a dominant part of theory and practice in young people's services over the past 30 years [Kemshall, H. 2008. “Risk, Rights and Justice: Understanding and Responding to Youth Risk.” Youth Justice 8 (1): 21–37; Goldson, G. 2000. “Children in Need’ or ‘Young Offenders’? Hardening ideology, organizational change and new challenges for social work with children in trouble.” Child and Family Social Work 5 (3): 255–265]. Young people are simultaneously described as ‘at-risk’ and risky, ‘permanent suspects’ [Mcara, L., and S. Mcvie. 2005. “The usual suspects? Street-life, young people and the police.” Criminal Justice 5 (1): 5–36] with the potential for committing crime, using drugs, being sexually promiscuous or under-performing in the socio-economic climate [Turnbull, G., and J. Spence. 2011. “What's at risk? The proliferation of risk across child and youth policy in England.” Journal of Youth Studies 14 (8): 939–959]. This paper reports on a UK study of youth practitioners’ perceptions of young people in relation to ‘risk’ and how this affects practice. Findings identify a context where practitioners engage with notions of young people as at-risk or risky, managing tensions between external constructions and the ‘real’ individual on an on-going basis. ‘Risk’ becomes malleable, with young people's risk biographies being amplified or attenuated on the basis of the practitioner's view of needs, resource allocations, contracts, targets, practitioner or organisational fears, risk management processes, and the desire to get the best for the young person. Whilst of short-term benefit, this commodification of young people is counter-productive, magnifying the construction of youth as risky others. The paper calls for new approaches to challenge the continued dominance of the youth risk paradigm in practice, policy and the academic youth studies field.     

Youth studies in transition: theoretical explorations

In youth studies, a clear distinction is made between theories on youth in transition and theories of youth culture. Whereas theories and research on youth transitions often use quantitative data – (and therefore need to operationalize their ‘variables’) – cultural studies uses various qualitative methods, alongside a more elastic definition of, and conceptual approach to, young people’s socio-material living conditions. The argument made in the present article is that we need a theoretical renewal in youth studies that will enable us to thoroughly explore class, gender and ethnicity in light of the intersections between social and cultural positions. At the same time, we also need to elaborate our conceptual tools to capture contemporary transformations of social identity among youth and in society and culture. The aim is to reintroduce three central concepts in the renewal of youth studies, that of identity, subculture and resistance. Furthermore, it is imperative that connect and create links between these concepts and theories of youth in transition.     

‘It’s like exercise for your soul’: how participation in youth arts activities contributes to young people’s wellbeing

Active participation in organised youth arts activities is generally considered ‘good’ for young peoples’ social and emotional wellbeing. There is, however, less known about how youth arts participation helps to create wellbeing benefits. This paper details a retrospective narrative study that sought to understand not only what wellbeing benefits 17 participants attributed to youth arts activity, but more specifically, how these outcomes occurred. The concept of liminality, within a spaces of wellbeing approach, is used as a framework to explore and understand participant’s stories of their time at Corrugated Iron Youth Arts, in Darwin, Australia. A pattern of transformation involving three phases emerged through an analysis of participant stories. This involved (1) joining in, (2) developing skills and gaining experience, and (3) becoming a ‘real’ performer. These stages have strong resonance with contemporary conceptualisations of liminal experiences, and provide further evidence for the value of youth arts activity as a space for the development of social and emotional wellbeing.     

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.     

Translating Bourdieu into youth studies

ABSTRACT

Against a backdrop of lively discussion about the best ways to do youth studies, or sociology of youth, this article asks: Can Pierre Bourdieu’s work be translated into youth studies in ways that benefit the field? We begin by considering Bourdieu’s thoughts on the category of ‘youth’ using a new translation of this text, and then turn to an important discussion by Furlong, Woodman, and Wyn about certain long standing tensions in youth studies. These tensions are between writers engaging in the ‘structure versus agency’ debate that is mapped onto the ‘culture versus transitions’ binary. We consider the case for adopting a ‘middle-ground’ represented by Bourdieu’s writings. We argue that many in youth studies work from an unacknowledged substantialist tradition, which is contra to Bourdieu's relational perspective. The result includes misunderstandings of Bourdieu's thinking and expectations of his work, for example, that it can pass certain empirical tests. We argue that if Bourdieu's relational perspective is to be translated into youth studies, we will need a more determined effort to understand that perspective first.     

A place for mobility in metaphors of youth transitions

ABSTRACT

Metaphors are central in the study of youth; in fact, it has been argued that ‘youth’ itself could be considered a metaphor. In a recent assessment of transition-related metaphors, Cuervo and Wyn [2014. “Reflections on the Use of Spatial and Relational Metaphors in Youth Studies.” Journal of Youth Studies 17 (7): 901–915.] have noted that such metaphors as ‘niches’, ‘pathways’, ‘trajectories’ and ‘navigations’, often contain an element of movement. However, it is still under-debated how we can systemically incorporate mobility into the study of young people to capture the precarity characterising their lives (a), but also heuristically link to metaphors used to describe the changing shape of careers of young people (b). Indeed, scholarship on ‘boundaryless careers’ and ‘peripatetic careers’ appear to have developed separately from the youth-related literature, albeit dealing in part with similar issues. Departing from Furlong’s work on metaphors in youth studies, this article interrogates potential for intertwining research lines within the growing debate on mobility in youth transitions. The article develops at a conceptual level; however it takes on Furlong’s legacy in the sense of contributing to a youth research agenda which is attentive to both the creation of new imaginative categories for the study of current conditions of youth, and the challenges that emerge in discursively positioning youth in society.     

‘It feels as if time has come to a standstill’: Institutionalised everyday lives among youth with a mental illness

This paper focuses on the everyday lives of young people with a severe mental illness living temporarily at a social psychiatric housing facility in Denmark. In the paper we take a temporal approach to the analysis of this and we draw on Henri Lefebvre’s work on rhythm analysis to investigate the differences between the rhythms of everyday life within the institution and the rhythms of what is perceived as the everyday life of ‘ordinary’ youth. We also show how digital technologies play a central part in these institutionalised everyday lives by creating connections as well as disruptions between different time-spaces. Centrally, we point to the positive and negative consequences this has for the young peoples’ sense of self. Empirically, the paper is based on a four-month ethnographic fieldwork at the housing facility in 2014.     

‘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.     

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.     

What does wellbeing do? An approach to defamiliarize keywords in youth studies

Wellbeing has become a keyword in youth and social policy, a construct deployed as a measure of a good life. Often associated with physical and mental health, wellbeing encompasses numerous indicators, from subjective experiences of happiness and satisfaction to markers of economic prosperity and basic human needs of security. This article examines wellbeing as an organizing concept in discourses on young people and argues for defamiliarizing its truth claims and cultural authority by investigating what wellbeing does. We begin by examining the rise of wellbeing, drawing attention to its conceptual muddiness and ambiguity. Framed by the Foucauldian notion of problematization, the analysis proceeds along two routes: first, through an historical consideration of wellbeing as a relational concept with antecedents, focusing on ‘self-esteem’; and second, through a reading of wellbeing in contemporary educational policy. Informed by Somers' historical sociology of concept formation and Bacchi's critical policy analysis, we illuminate the mixed dimensions of wellbeing's reach, placing it within longer traditions of youth studies and psy-knowledges and showing its transformative promise as well as its individualizing effects. In doing so, we elaborate a methodological approach that can be adapted to examine other keywords in youth studies and social policy discourse.     

Regrounding Youth Cultural Theory (in Post‐Socialist Youth Cultural Practice)

This article considers how the study of youth cultural practice in Eastern Europe informs theoretical and empirical debate about youth culture. It charts the trajectory of academic writing on East European youth cultures and suggests the region’s state socialist past (which made social inequalities relatively insignificant at a time when, elsewhere, youth cultural studies were dominated by class‐based readings) combined with the explosion of inequality in the post‐socialist period (by which time class‐resistant post‐subcultural theories led anglophone academic discussion), makes it an interesting vantage point from which to reconsider academic paradigms. Drawing on empirical examples of youth cultural practice in (post)‐socialist Eastern Europe, it argues for a perspective that integrates structural and cultural factors shaping young people’s lives. It suggests moving forward western theoretical debates – often stymied in arguments over nomenclature (‘subculture’, ‘postsubculture’, ‘neo‐tribe’) – by shifting the focus of study from ‘form’ (‘subculture’ etc.) to ‘substance’ (concrete cultural practices) and attending to everyday communicative, musical, sporting, educational, informal economy, and territorial practices. Since such practices are embedded in the ‘whole’ rather than ‘subcultural’ lives of young people, this renders visible how cultural practices are enabled and constrained by the same social divisions and inequalities that structure society at large.     

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.     

‘Scarred’ young entrepreneurs. Exploring young adults’ transition from former unemployment to self-employment

The recent increase in youth unemployment has major implications for the current and future development of European labour markets. Previous studies reveal the long lasting ‘scarring effects’ of early unemployment experience on later career prospects, including a higher probability of future unemployment or social exclusion. Self-employment is often advocated as a potential remedy for unemployment in general and youth unemployment in particular. In this study, we investigate the individual-level factors that lead young people with the ‘scar’ of previous unemployment to engage in self-employment. Based on a recent survey among young adults in eleven European countries, we show that previous unemployment has a significant moderating effect on other individual-level characteristics usually associated with a higher likelihood of being self-employed. While the overall propensity of self-employment is not affected by unemployment experience, the reasons for becoming one’s own boss differ considerably between those young adults who have and those who have not experienced unemployment in the past.     

‘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’.     

Sharing beyond Slacktivism: the effect of socially observable prosocial media sharing on subsequent offline helping behavior

New forms of youth social and political participation have been termed ‘Slacktivism’ – low-cost online forms of social engagement that decrease subsequent offline participation. Previous experimental work has provided support for a ‘Slacktivism effect,’ but it is unclear if this theoretical model applies to youth media sharing on social networking sites. This study uses a novel sharing simulation paradigm to test the effect of publicly vs. anonymously sharing a social cause video on subsequent willingness to engage in offline helping behavior. Results show that publicly (as compared to anonymously) sharing a selected video on one’s own Facebook wall led to a greater willingness to volunteer for an issue-related cause. Participants’ existing use of social media for engagement in social issues/causes moderated the effect, such that only participants low in use of social media for social engagement were susceptible to the sharing manipulation. Implications for reconceptualizing media sharing as a unique form of online participation beyond ‘Slacktivism’ are discussed.