Being trusted: The perspectives of trusted adults about engaging with young people

Trusted adults outside the home often play an important role in young people's lives, providing motivational, emotional and practical support as young people navigate the social and economic transitions of young adulthood. Their support is developmentally appropriate as they often treat young people as adults, as they are guiding them towards that status. Yet knowledge of trusted adult relationships is largely drawn from the perspectives of young people. How do trusted adults themselves experience the relationship?Drawing on a broader study of young people's social and economic engagement during adolescence to adulthood, this paper explores the perspectives of 23 trusted adults, including those in family/friend, paid professional and community roles. It looks at how trusted adults' accounts of the relationship compare with young people's accounts. It examines some subtleties trusted adults experience in the relationship, related to their perception of their role and the roles of others, the impermanence of the relationship and personal–professional boundaries. It draws policy and practice implications regarding how to support both trusted adults and young people in the relationships they share.     

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.     

The discursive construction of gay teenagers in times of mediatization: youth's reflections on intimate storytelling,queer shame and realness in popular social media places

New media applications such as social networking sites are understood as important evolutions for queer youth. These media and communication technologies allow teenagers to transgress their everyday life places and connect with other queer teens. Moreover, social media websites could also be used for real political activism such as publicly sharing coming out videos on YouTube. Despite these increased opportunities for self-reflexive storytelling on digital media platforms, their everyday use and popularity also bring particular complexities in the everyday lives of young people. Talking to 51 youngsters between 13 and 19 years old in focus groups, this paper inquires how young audiences discursively constructed meanings on intimate storytelling practices such as interpreting intimate stories, reflecting on their own and other peers' intimate storytelling practices. Specifically focusing on how they relate to intimate storytelling practices of gay peers, this paper identified particular challenges for queer youth who transgress the heteronormative when being active on popular social media. The increasing mediatization of intimate youth cultures brings challenges for queer teenagers, which relate to authenticity, (self-) surveillance and fear of imagined audiences.     

Echoes from the Past: Intergenerational Memories in Cyprus

The purpose of this article is to describe young people's awareness of their parents’ and grandparents’ stories of the events of 1974 in Cyprus and to evaluate the extent to which they perceive teachers as other key figures in their lives endorsing family accounts of history. The article is based on focus group discussions with 20 Turkish Cypriot and 20 Greek Cypriot teenagers from two schools in Cyprus. The article describes how in some cases, young people appropriate these memories as their own, while in other cases, they acknowledge how the passing of time dilutes the significance of past events and allows some young people to envisage a different collective future.     

Trapped in Space? Children's Accounts of Risky Environments

The purpose of this article is to explore children's perceptions and experiences of safety and risk in one highly contested interface area in Belfast. Interface areas are landscapes divided by physical and symbolic boundaries on the basis of religious/ethno‐national identification. The research draws on maps and focus group discussions with young teenagers from four schools in an interface area located in North Belfast. The teenagers identified both private and public places of risk that they faced in their everyday lives. The types of risks produced by this environment are outlined and the teenagers’ strategies for managing the daily risks that they faced in their everyday lives are assessed. The data reveal how teenagers negotiate movement across different types of space and illustrate the extent to which their immediate geographical environment is dependent on its location within wider political, social and cultural systems.     

Social class and approaches to shaping educational expectations

Scholars have recognized young people's educational expectations as a key factor in predicting educational outcomes, but few studies have attempted a comprehensive classification of how young people's educational expectations are shaped. In this article, I outline a typology of how young people from different social class origins shape their educational expectations. Drawing on 100 interviews with 15-year-olds, I find two underlying dimensions in young people's accounts of their educational expectations: how risk aware they are and how goal oriented they are. These dimensions translate into a heuristic model for understanding the structure of young people's educational expectations. I identify four major approaches to shaping educational expectations - the confident, the determined, the explorative, and the anxious - and show how these approaches connect to the young people's class origin. The typology of approaches offers a conceptual framework for understanding the mechanisms that lead young people to shape their expectations in qualitatively different ways.     

Staying inside: social withdrawal of the young,Finnish ‘Hikikomori’

This article explores socially withdrawn young Finnish people on an Internet forum who identify with the Japanese hikikomori phenomenon. We aim to overcome the dualism between sociology and psychology found in earlier research by referring to Pierre Bourdieu, who provides insights into how individual choices are constructed in accordance with wider social settings. We focus on the individual level and everyday choices, but we suggest that psychological factors (anxiety, depression) can be seen as properties of social relations rather than as individual states of mind, as young adults have unequal access to valued resources. We scrutinise young people’s specific reasoning related to the social and psychological factors and contingent life events that influence their choice to withdraw. An experience of inadequacy, a feeling of failure and a lack of self-efficacy are common experiences in the data. This indicates that young adults who identify with the hikikomori phenomenon find external society demanding and consider themselves lacking resources such as education, social networks or the personality type that they see as valued in society and as essential to ‘survival’. They also feel that they cannot control their life events, which may mean that they receive little help in their everyday lives.     

Private and public experience captured: young women capture their everyday lives and dreams through photo-narratives

Recent studies about young people suggest a need to change the way researchers and policy-makers have traditionally understood the concepts of youth, transitions to adulthood, educational participation and the need for young people's voice to be heard. For many young women the taken-for-granted features of everyday life such as family, social, education and paid work are the priorities in their lives. Yet those priorities are frequently masked in large-scale studies, resulting in homogenising the diversity of young people's experiences and abstracting educational engagement from other parts of their lives. The study reported in this paper approaches the issue of young women's construction and defining of their identities in interaction with the broad institutional milieu that is part of their everyday experiences. This approach seeks to understand this lived experience through the use of photo-narratives. The paper explores a rationale for this approach in methodological and ethical terms. It allows for an exploration of the complexity of young women's multiple identities and the changing nature of young people's engagement with post-compulsory senior secondary education.     

Children's narratives of post-divorce family life: from individual experience to an ethical disposition

This article draws on interviews with 60 children and young people to explore how they construct narrative accounts of post‐divorce family life. Rather than seeking to describe children's experiences as if their accounts are simple factual recollections, the focus of the article is on how young people position themselves in their narratives and the ways in which they construct their past experiences. It is argued that these narratives are multi‐layered, often revealing ambivalence and contradictions. The conclusion turns to the question of whether these individual accounts can give rise to what might be referred to as an ethical disposition in which children's experiences can inform a broader social ethos on how to divorce ‘in the proper manner’.     

Young People as Co‐producers in Policing across England. An Evaluation of the ‘Youth Commission’ on Police and Crime

This paper discusses a recent study on three ‘Youth Commission’ on police and crime projects. Professional viewpoints were interpreted to understand how they valued young people's participation and made sense of their experiences and capabilities. Framed within policing reforms, the ‘Youth Commission’ projects regard young people as co‐producers, who work in partnership with professionals to address police and crime issues. The focus is upon professionals and their relationships with young people for transformative participation and social outcomes. Working in partnerships showed interdependency but identifies further challenges if professionals do not truly value young people's participation.     

Vulnerability to bushfires in rural Australia: A case study from East Gippsland,Victoria

This paper investigates the nature and causes of vulnerability to bushfires in the Wulgulmerang district of East Gippsland, Victoria, in south-eastern Australia. In 2003 bushfires devastated the small population of this isolated farming district, destroying homes, agricultural assets and public infrastructure. The fires also adversely affected the health, livelihoods and social lives of many local people. The paper examines: (i) how and why people were exposed to hazards during the bushfires; and (ii) how and why people were differentially capable of coping and adapting to the fires' impacts. Qualitative methods were primarily used to investigate these questions, including semi-structured interviews with residents and landholders of the district and others who responded to the fires in an official or unofficial capacity. Vulnerability is shown to arise from the circumstances of people's everyday lives, which are shaped by factors both within and beyond their control. Local pressures and challenges – such as drought, declining farm incomes, depopulation, and the inaccessibility of essential services – are shown to increase people's exposure to hazards and reduce their capacities to cope and adapt. The paper demonstrates the fundamental importance of sustainable livelihoods and regional economic vitality to the long-term goal of vulnerability reduction.     

‘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.     

Jokes and routines make everyday life a good life—on ‘doing family’ for young people in foster care in Sweden

The aim of this article is to identify inclusion practices in foster families by studying the everyday life of young people entering various types of foster family. Structure and warmth in the family stand out as important dimensions of everyday life. What is not so evident in previous research is the way emotional ‘warmth’ is created. In particular, joking, gentle teasing and laughing, which in this paper stand out as important inclusion practices, seem to be rather unknown aspects in foster care, as is the importance of doing things together in everyday life. The young people's contributions in creating a good family atmosphere are visible in the study, as is their capacity to adapt to a new family. Daily routines normalise the adolescents' everyday life. Negotiations make them part of important decisions, and may strengthen them as social agents. Foster parents' positive attitude towards birth family facilitates birth parents' support to their children. In this case study, mixed qualitative methods are used: interviews, network maps, ‘beepers’ and video recordings in the foster home.     

“Such Trivial Matters:” How staff account for restrictions of residents' influence in nursing homes

National policies emphasize older people's right to autonomy, yet nursing home residents often have restricted opportunities to make decisions about everyday matters. We use qualitative interview data to analyze staff members' explanations of actions that conflict with both social norms and national policies. Two types of problematic actions are discussed: restrictions of elderly residents' influence in decision making and neglect of residents' complaints. While staff members describe residents' influence as desirable, they simultaneously formulate accounts that justify their inability to live up to this ideal. Further, we demonstrate how certain complaints are “made trivial” when they are described and treated in specific ways by the staff. We argue that the accounts offered by staff members draw on an implicit folk logic, a logic in which residents are allowed to exercise influence only as long as it does not conflict with the efficient running of the institution as a whole.     

Snowball sampling: using social networks to research non‐heterosexual women

This paper explores snowball sampling, a recruitment method that employs research into participants' social networks to access specific populations. Beginning with the premise that research is ‘formed’, the paper offers one account of snowball sampling and using social networks to ‘make’ research. Snowball sampling is often used because the population under investigation is ‘hidden’ either due to low numbers of potential participants or the sensitivity of the topic, for example, research with women who do not fit within the hegemonic heterosexual norm. This paper considers how the recruitment technique of snowball sampling, which uses interpersonal relations and connections between people, both includes and excludes individuals. Following this, the paper contends that due to the use of social networks and interpersonal relations, snowball sampling (in)forms how individuals act and interact in focus groups, couple interviews and interviews. Consequently, snowball sampling not only results in the recruitment of particular samples, use of this technique produces participants' accounts of their lives. Doctoral research with (rather than on or for) 28 non‐heterosexual women is used to examine the inclusions and exclusions of snowball sampling and how interpersonal relations form research accounts.     

When everyday life is double looped. Exploring children's (and parents’) perspectives on post‐divorce family life with two households

This article explores children's perspectives on post‐divorce family life with time‐sharing arrangements, focusing on the children's experiences of dilemmas and constraints, but also on new possibilities. In many ways, the everyday lives of children who commute between two households are double looped. These children have to be attentive to the routines, expectations and demands of each household. By assessing their conduct of everyday life, this article elucidates what children do to adapt to and make sense of this double‐looped situation. This article examines how differences between households affect children's ways of understanding themselves and their family lives.     

Variations in subjective well-being when ‘aging in place’ — A matter of acceptance,predictability and control

The aim of the present study is to explore how older home-help recipients regard their life situation in terms of subjective well-being. The background is that there seem to be two counteracting forces affecting the achievement of subjective well-being among home-help recipients: on one hand, both diminished everyday competence and dependence on others' help are supposed to reduce subjective well-being, and on the other hand, living in one's own home is supposed to affect subjective well-being positively. The analysis is based on qualitative interviews with 21 home-help recipients between the ages of 78 and 93. The findings indicate that the informants' expressions of subjective well-being fall into four main categories: ‘well-being’, ‘well-being despite it all’, ‘well-being so far’, and ‘lack of well-being’. Three comprehensive core themes were identified as relevant to a deeper understanding of the informants' various expressions of well-being. These core themes are acceptance, predictability, and control. The findings point to the possibility of experiencing subjective well-being despite diminished everyday competence and dependence on help and support from others. They suggest, in short, that subjective well-being among older people who receive help and support in their everyday lives is not only related to socio-contextual factors – such as physical and mental capability, activities and/or engagement in the outside world, the spatial and social consequences of physical limitations, social and emotional relations, as well as the social support they receive – but also to how they regard and handle these matters in terms of acceptance, predictability and control.     

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.     

What is the value of qualitative longitudinal research with children and young people for international development?

This paper draws on data from Young Lives, a longitudinal study of childhood poverty, to explore how international development research might be strengthened by including qualitative longitudinal research (QLR). We review three problems in development studies: (a) the relatively low status of qualitative research within the hierarchy of development knowledge, (b) the predominance of cross-sectional research, and, (c) marginality of research with children and young people. We offer examples from Young Lives research on early marriage in Ethiopia, household poverty dynamics in India and Ethiopia, and aspirations and migration in Peru, to highlight the potential of QLR to address these drawbacks. We suggest that QLR illuminates the dynamic complexities of the processes and practices of everyday life, how they are experienced by children and young people, the responses they make, and the shifting trajectories of their lives.