Writing in a role for structure: low-income young people's dual understanding of agency,choice and the welfare state

Young people, it is often argued, are more individualised and more free of older, class constraints than ever before. This has led some thinkers to debate the (positive) possibilities of ‘choice biographies’ and self-making among the young, alongside the (more sinister) possibilities of ‘epistemological fallacies’ blinding them to the limits of these self-making capacities. This article interrogates the idea of ‘epistemological fallacies’ for five groups of young people from low-income backgrounds in England. Comparing focus group discussions they had about their lives, with policies they wrote to address the problems of their lives, this article suggests that these young people were less blind to the limits of their own agency than individualisation theorists may predict, and were in fact acutely aware of the difficulties behind finding personal solutions to social problems.     

Negotiating reform: young people's leadership in the educational arena

Youth organizing within the institutional context of community-based organizations has grown exponentially. Drawing on interviews with more than eighty organizers, youth, and educators, this article examines young people's experiences as they organize to expand educational opportunities for themselves and their peers in urban school districts. The authors explore educator responses to youth organizing and analyze how race- and class-based assumptions about youth leadership, as well as differing cultural norms between schools and youth organizing groups, pose challenges for young people fighting for education reform. The authors describe three strategies youth organizing groups use to address these challenges: intensive leadership development, targeted relationship building with district administrators, and alliance building. Implications for both educators and youth organizing groups are discussed.     

Classed,raced, and gendered biographies: young people's understandings of social structures in a boomtown

As young people attempt to adapt to a rapidly changing society, how they experience school and work has undergone significant changes in recent decades. Youth researchers attempting to understand these changes have drawn heavily on the concepts of agency and structure. In the process, researchers often end up taking a ‘middle-ground’ approach and in turn have critiqued the theorizing of Ulrich Beck for being too focused on agency. This article engages with this debate by examining young people's understandings of the social structures shaping their lives within the constantly changing environment of a boomtown. Drawing on qualitative in-depth interviews with high school students, post-secondary students, and young workers, it was found that most young people were able to recognize how class had shaped their lives, only Aboriginal young people discussed how race/ethnicity had shaped their lives, and only young women understood how gender had shaped their lives. The findings suggest that the specific local context that young people experience their school and work lives within is important in their reflexive understandings of their biographies. In this case, the boomtown environment helped to highlight difference and make only certain social structures visible to particular young people.     

Buzzes and barriers: young people's attitudes to participation in the arts

SUMMARY: This article draws on evidence collected through interviews with 700 young people between the ages of 14 and 24 in five different regions of England. Material from this source is used to construct a tentative typology of attitudes towards participation in the arts. This typology contains a set of twelve positive attitudes (or motivations) associated with arts involvement, followed by a set of eight negative attitudes which emerge as barriers to participation. In addition, an attempt is made to identify those positive attitudes which most frequently appeared to accompany high levels of involvement in the arts. It is suggested that a self-identity or self-expression motive (‘I participate in the arts because it's how I define myself, it's a means of self-expression’) and a physiological motive (‘I participate in the arts because of feeling a real buzz’) are particularly evident among arts enthusiasts.     

The good,the bad and the unnatural: a study of coroners' decisions in Northern Ireland

This paper is concerned with an examination of the investigatory resources and explanatory principles which surround the dead. The central focus is upon the distinctions which are drawn between natural and unnatural death, and the paper has two main aims. First, it attempts to measure the direction and flow of investigatory and observatory power which emanates from the coroners’ court. Second, it attempts to unravel the connotations embodied in the concept of unnatural death. It is argued that the characteristics of the natural and the unnatural are not to be found within the anatomy or physiology of the corpse, but rather in the principles of an aetiological framework which seeks to decontextualise death and disease from their social base, and which consequently distorts our vision of the human condition at death. The data on which the arguments are based are drawn from studies of those deemed to have died unnaturally in Belfast at various periods during the twentieth century.     

Different worlds of motoring: choice, constraint and risk in household consumption

The article shows how the old economic variable of income can be related to spatial location and used to reinforce recent revisionism in sociology which questions the automatic link between consumption and identity. The diversity of motoring experience is demonstrated through a case study of motoring in inner and outer London which draws on a variety of resources, including interviews from two London boroughs, survey evidence on household expenditure and other official statistics. The analysis shows how income and space variably define household motoring experience as one of choice or constraint and risk. The end result is a cultural economy analysis that shows how motoring sustains multiple, overlapping identities in different worlds of enabling and enforced consumption which connect with production.     

Arenas of comfort and conflict: peer relationship events and young people's educational attainment

Previous research suggests that developments in young people's peer relationships may either compound or alleviate the adverse impacts of other major life changes during adolescence. We explored this proposition with respect to young people's educational attainment upon leaving high school, using longitudinal data from a large cohort of Australian secondary school students (n?=?1612) who have taken part in the Our Lives research study between the ages of 12/13 and 19/20 years. Our analysis focused on the role of peer relationship events such bullying, friendship problems, falling in love, and breaking up with someone. Bullying and romantic involvement were associated with lower odds of receiving a competitive tertiary entrance rank at the end of high school. However, close, resilient friendships – in which status and identity conflicts may be more easily tolerated and resolved – may help to offset the role of these other events. As well as reviewing the consequences of our findings for young people's educational and occupational trajectories in the longer-term, we highlight their implications for future research and policy in this area.     

Constructs of childhood,generation and heroism in editorials on young people's climate change activism: Their mobilisation and effects

We analyse the effects of constructions and mobilisations of childhood, generation and girl heroism in 30 Canadian editorials written in response to 2019 climate change protests. We discuss how the editorials strategically position—and sometimes dismiss—young activists through discourses of childhood innocence, becoming and social participation. Second, we focus on how the editorials mobilise generation to emphasise either generational division or cross-generational solidarity. Finally, we problematise the editorials' concentration on individualised girl heroism. We thus contextualise and deconstruct truth statements around age, generation and heroism, emphasising instead their effects and the potential for certain narratives to better recognise the diversity and solidarity in climate change activism.     

Subjective measures of risk aversion, fixed costs, and portfolio choice

The paper investigates risk preferences among different types of individuals. We use several different measures of risk preferences, including questions on choices between uncertain income streams suggested by Barsky, Juster, Kimball, and Shapiro (1997) and a number of ad hoc measures. As in [Barsky et al., 1997] and [Arrondel and Calvo-Pardo, 2002], we first analyze individual variation in the risk aversion measures and explain them by background characteristics (both “objective” characteristics and other subjective measures of risk preference). Next we incorporate the measured risk preferences into a household portfolio allocation model, which explains portfolio shares, while accounting for incomplete portfolios and fixed costs. Our results show that a measure based on factor analysis of answers to a number of simple risk preference questions has the most explanatory power. The Barsky et al. (1997) measure has less explanatory power than this “a-theoretical” measure, suggesting that sophisticated measures based on economic theory may exceed the financial capability of respondents. Fixed costs turn out to provide an economically and statistically highly significant explanation for incomplete portfolios.     

Youth,risk and the Structured Dialogue: governing young EU citizens

The European Union’s (EU) Structured Dialogue, a consultation process between young people and policy-makers on the EU’s youth policies, has achieved remarkable popularisation and is perceived as a valuable mechanism in finding remedies for the risks facing young people across the EU. Applying the Foucauldian analytics of government approach, this article critically analyses the formation and features of the Structured Dialogue and its practical implementation during the final phase of the third work cycle under the Greek Presidency of the EU (January 2014 to June 2014). It shows that the proliferation of dialogue is a practical feature of government at the EU level undertaken by a multiplicity of stakeholders. In this constellation, risks associated with youth are mobilised as representational notions that render reality in such a form to make it amenable to specific types of operations and interventions. The Structured Dialogue works as a practical form of governing reconstituting power relations so that government is reaffirmed as a valid and legitimate process through which actors collectively search for the best possible outcome and in the interest of all, while youth are pursued and encouraged to make them active citizens capable, as both individuals and communities, of managing their own risk.     

Youth political involvement update: measuring the role of cause-oriented political interest in young people's activism

In recent decades, a series of transformations have occurred that have changed young people's relationships with politics. In most Western countries, young people vote less and protest more. Survey research has detected this two-fold process in participation behaviour, but has failed to detect this same process in the field of political attitudes. In particular, the emergence of a specific dimension of psychological political involvement with a special impact on youth has gone unnoticed in survey-based research. Based on some recent qualitative studies, this research tries to identify and measure a specific dimension of interest in politics using a new question in a survey carried out in Catalonia in 2011. An interest directly oriented to political issues and causes – particularly those relevant in young people's everyday lives – is identified. The article also evaluates how traditional survey indicators of political involvement do capture, or not, this particular dimension of interest in politics. Finally, the new cause-oriented interest indicator is tested to analyse its impact on different types of participation in order to better understand patterns of activism in young people.     

The role of beliefs,trust, and risk in contributions to a public good

This paper experimentally investigates if and how beliefs, trust, and risk attitudes are associated with cooperative behavior. By applying incentivized elicitation methods to measure these concepts, we find that beliefs about others’ cooperation and trust are positively correlated with cooperation in a public goods game. However, even though contributing to a public good resembles a situation of making decisions under strategic uncertainty, elicited risk preferences do not seem to explain cooperation in a systematic way.     

The cultural symbolisation of disordered and deviant behaviour: young people's experiences in a Welsh rural market town

Global and national developments have brought into question traditional ways of asserting identity, as it is argued that society becomes increasingly homogenised. At a local level, communities have responded to such change (global meets local) by asserting identity through processes that have a direct bearing on their everyday lives. In the context of a market town in rural North Wales, the conceptual value of rurality and a cultural identity embedded in the landscape is no longer the primary marker that it was once perceived to be. Concepts of ‘traditional community’ and local (Welsh) culture are believed to be under threat from the in-migration of people from other areas. Local people have responded to such a change by utilising categories of criminal, deviant or disordered behaviour as signifiers which may determine one's cultural belonging and identity. It is a response that cuts across the whole community, and young people are one group, where this response is evident in terms of disordered and deviant behaviour.     

Beyond access and supply: youth-led strategies to captivate young people's interest in and demand for youth programs and opportunities

Increasing access, even increasing supply, may not be sufficient to attract young teens who do not typically participate in youth programs. Several youth mapping projects in rural and urban communities have led to these conclusions: youth do not know what is available even in their own neighborhoods, young teens have a strong voice in how they spend their discretionary time, and we need to learn how to market youth programs much more effectively. This author reviews important findings from youth community-mapping experiences and showcases a project attempting to move beyond access and supply issues to increasing young people's interest and engagement in community youth development programs.     

Occupational stress and biomechanical risk in a high fashion clothing company

Psychosocial discomfort may amplify job-related risk factors. The aim of this study is to evaluate job stress in a high fashion clothing company with upper limb biomechanical overload due to repetitive and forceful manual activities. Biomechanical risk was analyzed and in part reduced using the OCRA Check list. A total of 518 workers (433 females and 85 males) were investigated to determine anxiety (by STAI 1 and 2), occupational stress (using the Italian version of the Karasek Job Content Questionnaire) and perception of symptoms. Final biomechanical assessment did not reveal high risk jobs, except for cutting. Although the perception of anxiety and job insecurity was within the normal range, all the workers showed a high level of job strain (correlated with the perception of symptoms) due, probably, to very low decision latitude. It was suggested that job strain may increase the perception of symptoms. Moreover, the result of this study indicates that musculoskeletal overload has to be further analyzed since its low level is not in agreement with the level of discomfort due to the repetitive tasks.     

Situational political socialization: a normative approach to young people's adoption and acquisition of political preferences and skills

Research on young people's political socialization has had an adult-centered top–down bias in which young people are considered incomplete and in need of the right upbringing. The article attempts to balance this bias. The aim is to introduce and argue for another normative approach – situational political socialization. Four theoretical elements constitute its basis: (1) the political, (2) contingency (the principle of the public sphere), (3) space and place, and (4) situation. In the contingent western digital media society marked by cultural dissemination, individualism, and the erosion of traditional institutions, situational political socialization represents a normative basis for a research approach which is open, action-oriented and contextualized, viewing young people as political actors in their own right.     

Images across Europe: The sending and receiving of sexual images and associations with interpersonal violence in young people's relationships

This article explores young people's experiences of sending and receiving sexual images and text messages (sexting) within their interpersonal relationships and the contexts in which this occurs. The article uses data from a recent Daphne funded project ‘Safeguarding teenagers' intimate relationships’ (STIR) involving a survey with 4564 young people aged between 14 and 17 in a number of schools across five countries in Europe. Findings reveal that experiences of sexting vary by country and gender. The study also found that young people who reported victimisation in their relationships were more likely to have sent a sext message than those who had not. The article points to the need for a more nuanced understanding of the varied contexts and experiences around sexting in order to better develop policy, practice and education in this area.     

Participation,empowerment and capacity building: Exploring young people's perspectives on the services provided to them by a grassroots NGO in sub-Saharan Africa

This paper explores young people's perspectives on the services that were provided to them by one NGO in sub-Saharan Africa. Semi-structured interviews and discussion groups were carried out with 71 young people, aged between 10 and 18 years old, who lived and worked on the street. Volunteer facilitators (n = 26) who run the groups and who had either previously lived on their street themselves or who lived in the ‘informal slum areas’ also took part in the discussions. A number of challenges and tensions became apparent from discussions including issues around capacity building, empowerment, participation and the depoliticised nature of social action.