I Am All about the Future World: Cambodian Children’s Views on Their Status as Orphans

The dominant representation of children living in majority world orphanages highlights their vulnerability and fragility. However, little is known about their lived experiences of orphanage care and their perspectives on being regarded as ‘orphans’. This article draws on data from a pilot project undertaken in one orphanage in Cambodia to highlight such perspectives. It presents the three discourses the children themselves used to make sense of their status; the orphan as becoming, as powerless and finally as ‘lucky’. These findings draw attention to the complex nature of the orphan identity and the juxtaposed discourses of orphan care that the children employ.     

‘I'm not proud,I'm just gay’: Lesbian and gay youths' discursive negotiation of otherness

This article outlines the shared identity construction of five gay and lesbian members of an LGBT youth group, situated in a conservative, working‐class, Northern English town. It is shown that the young people's identity work emerges in response to the homophobia and ‘othering’ they have experienced from those in their local community. Through ethnography and discourse analysis, and using theoretical frameworks from interactional sociolinguistics, the strategies that the young people employ to negotiate this othering are explored; they reject certain stereotypes of queer culture (such as Gay Pride or being ‘camp’) and aim to minimise the relevance of their sexuality to their social identity. It is argued this reflects both the influence of neoliberal, ‘homonormative’ ideology, which casts sexuality in the private rather than public domain, and the stigma their sexuality holds in their local community. These findings point to the need to understand identity construction intersectionally.     

Honourable Sacrifice: A Visual Ethnography of the Family Lives of Korean Children with Autistic Siblings

Literature on the siblings of disabled children has been dominated by western psychosocial theories that focus on stresses associated with being a ‘young carer’ or on children as active agents realising their ‘rights’ rather than as the victims of familial expectations. This article presents the findings of a visual ethnographic study exploring the lives of nine children living with an autistic sibling in South Korea (hereafter Korea). Despite personal challenges and family tensions, experiences of ‘being’ a sibling were strongly influenced by Confucian familist cultural values in which sacrifice plays a central role in achieving honourable and harmonious family life.     

Men with learning difficulties doing research: challenging views of learning difficulties

This paper explores the views of men with learning difficulties living in a secure environment. Reflecting findings from a doctoral thesis based upon a research project where the participants looked at the processes and concepts of research, the dialogues within the study were analysed using critical discourse analysis. Thesis aims relevant here include investigating given ‘truths’ about the positives of having a learning disability. The men are not only categorised as having a learning difficulty, but also have the added stigma of being offenders, and commonly having mental health issues which expose them to the worst of myths surrounding learning difficulty. Despite this, the findings suggest that the men are very positive about their lives – reporting that they have many attributes and talents – and view having a learning difficulty as an advantage at times. This affirms Foucauldian ideas on the way that dominant knowledge may be challenged.     

‘What Troubled Children Need’ Constructions of Everyday Life in Residential Care

This article argues that key values of child protection work are not the appropriate point of departure for contemplating the welfare of children in professional care. Central values, such as ‘comfort’, ‘recognition’ or ‘appreciation’ say very little about the social practices of residential care. Using data from an ethnographic study in Denmark, the article demonstrates that ideas about the needs of troubled children are realised in dissimilar ways, creating highly different living environments for institutionalised children. The principles behind these construction processes are explored, and the profound ambiguity of values in childcare is discussed as an effect of residential care’s being an ‘institutional’ or ‘human service’ type of organisation.     

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.     

Motives and Decisions for and Against Having Children Among Nonheterosexuals and the Impact of Experiences of Discrimination,Internalized Stigma,and Social Acceptance

Same-sex parents are increasingly a topic of public discourse. A growing number of homosexuals openly speak about their desire to have children or are already living together in different family constellations. The current study examined the decisions for or against having children and the motivations behind those decisions among nonheterosexuals living in Germany. A sample of 1,283 nonheterosexuals participated by means of an online survey. As some nonheterosexual individuals do not identify themselves with a male or female gender identity, a third category, “gender different,” was generated. Motives for (not) having children, perceptions of social acceptance, experiences of discrimination in relation to one's sexual orientation, and levels of internalized stigma were taken into account regarding their influence on the decision about parenthood. Most respondents (80%) reported that they did not have children. However, among this group, 43% stated that they had decided to have children later in their lives, 24% were undecided, and 11% had already decided against having children. The most important influences on the decision of whether to have children were respondents’ age and their desire for emotional stabilization. Negative experiences as a result of sexual orientation and internalized stigma had no impact on the decisions regarding parenthood.     

Interprofessional education: a curriculum response to work with children and young people

This paper charts the development of undergraduate teaching material produced at the Open University in the United Kingdom. The School of Health and Social Welfare at the University has a long history of providing open and distance learning and multiprofessionally focused education and training opportunities. In this instance two courses, entitled ‘Working with Young People’ and ‘Working with Children and Families’, were created to meet the needs of a diverse student audience working across the public, voluntary and private social care, health and education sectors. The materials produced were underpinned by the desire of their academic authors to challenge long‐established assumptions about the nature of children and young people's lives. Crucially though, both course developments reflected a requirement to demonstrate how policies and services for children and young people might be significantly improved. Accordingly, the paper offers some useful indications as to how interprofessional working with children and young people could be fostered. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

‘We need to understand what’s going on because it’s our life’: Using sandboxing to understand children and young people’s everyday conversations about care

Children and young people who live away from birth families (through adoption or being in care) need an understanding of their life story, including reasons for removal from birth family to process what has happened to them and to develop a secure identity. We report data produced with care experienced children and young people using a creative sandboxing method capturing hopes and fears for conversations about care in sand scenes. The themes presented emphasise the need for care-experienced children and young people to be supported to engage in ‘difficult conversations’ about their lives in warm, open and responsive ways.     

Constructing the sick child: the cultural politics of children's hospitals

Drawing on an ESRC funded study of children's experiences of hospital space this article explores the cultural politics of contemporary English childhood. Using the words and commentaries provided by both children and young people, the article argues that although, as patients, children and young people share the same hospital spaces, their experiences of them are quite different. Through mundane material and symbolic practices, a number of experiential continuities are created for the youngest children between life in hospital and life at home, continuities that work to downplay their identities as children who are sick. For young people, however, these practices are more problematic since the discourses of childhood that are recreated have little resonance with young people's own experiences and sense of self and identity. Thus this article provides evidence of the need for a more nuanced understanding of not only young people's needs in relation to hospital services, but also of the significance of understanding the ways in which particular constructions of ‘the child’ and ‘childhood’ are threaded through public discourses and come to be realized in institutional settings.     

‘Here and There’: Children and Youth’s Perspectives of Borders in Mexico–United States Migration

This article explores children’s perspectives regarding migration and family separation on both sides of the Mexico‐U.S. border. ‘Transnational care constellations’¹ that connect separated siblings allow children to imagine the other side of the border and to explore their thoughts and perspectives through the lenses of inequality, as well as through a sense of belonging and family. This article presents ethnographic data of families that capture the dynamism of families that are both ‘here and there’ as children assemble their ideas and narratives of how transnational lives exist.     

‘If the Social Worker had Called at Least it Would Show they Cared’. Young Care Leaver’s Perspectives on the Importance of Care

Young people leaving local authority care are frequently discussed in terms of being socially excluded and having ‘poor life outcomes’. In terms of educational achievement, employment and involvement in the criminal justice system, those with an experience of the care system fare the worst. Within the context of these poor outcomes, the Government Green Paper ‘Care Matters’ has emerged. However, the Green Paper’s outcomes framework for looked after children’s well‐being risks simplifying the complex nature of children’s experiences and needs. It is children’s experiences of care, both before entering the care system and whilst growing up within the care system that shapes their well‐being and their life outcomes. The basis of improving children’s outcomes should include listening to and understanding what children need from the care system. This knowledge helps to develop an understanding of how failings within the care system are experienced by children in care and how these experiences are subsequently translated into negative outcomes for young care leavers. Drawing upon qualitative, empirical data, this study aims to explore young care leavers’ experiences of care. Through this, the extent to which feelings of care shape self esteem and a sense of self will be explored. Finally, this study will outline themes of trust and stability in the provision of care services and how these can shape positive outcomes for care leavers.     

The ‘right time’ – negotiating the timing of interviews with vulnerable young people

Participant retention is a key factor in determining the success of longitudinal research. Challenges in re-locating and retaining participants over the long term are major issues for researchers working with young people who face adversity and experience frequent changes in circumstances. This article reports on a study of vulnerable young people and their transition into adulthood. Rather than the more conventional schedule-based approach to locating and re-interviewing young people, a relational process, the ‘right time’ framework, was used to facilitate young people's involvement in the study. Embedded in the ‘right time’ framework is recognition of the diverse and fluctuating circumstances that shape young people's availability for interviews. Several case examples are considered which amplify the way that the ‘right time’ framework allowed the research to navigate around these circumstances. The case examples highlight the value young people attached to being involved in the research, the influence on the ‘right time’ of wider relational tensions for young people and the need to negotiate researcher status as a different sort of adult. The ‘right time’ framework contributed to a high retention rate in the study generating a more representative sample and enhancing the subsequent data analysis by providing valuable insights into the lives of these vulnerable young people.     

Young people's views on safety and preventing abuse and harm in residential care: “It's got to be better than home”

Young people who live in residential care are at greater risk of experiencing sexual abuse and other forms of abuse than those living in other out of home care placements. To better understand how young people perceive and experience safety in residential care, and the things that they most need to be and feel safe, a qualitative study was conducted with 27 Australian children and young people for the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. This paper describes young people's perspectives on what makes residential care safe: supportive relationships, stability and predictability, fair rules, and having some control over their environment. Young people said that safety could be improved with: better appreciation of the risks in residential care; better matching, staffing and oversight; and better-designed responses that involve young people themselves. The findings provide critical insights from young people themselves and argue that adults and institutions need to appreciate their views of safety so as to adequately respond.     

‘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.     

Is anybody there? Informal supports accessed and sought by youth from foster care

Young people's ‘ageing out’ of foster care has been described as stark and abrupt, in sharp contrast with the gradual process of transitioning to adulthood experienced by parented youth in the general population. Research has demonstrated that being supported during this transition is associated with a variety of health, social, and educational outcomes. The purpose of this article is to report former foster youths' perspectives on their informal supports, what difference these supports made for them, and what they believed would be useful in their transition to adulthood. Data came from semi-structured interviews with 43 former foster youth aged 19–26. Findings revealed that while approximately half the informants reported having support from family, most did not have family whom they regularly relied upon for emotional, practical and/or financial support. Further, while nearly all youths indicated that having support made a difference to them, many also noted that for daily living, they were on their own. The study's findings are an important reminder of the gulf existing between youth from care and parented youth in terms of their access to support during their journey to adulthood.     

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.     

Care for vulnerable and disadvantaged children in the Czech Republic

The problematic issue of care for vulnerable and disadvantaged children in the Czech Republic, highlighted in this article, stems from the large number of children in institutional care. Workers from the Department for Social and Legal Child Protection (OSPOD) may get involved if there are factors in the family jeopardising the child's healthy development that cannot be improved, and institutional care may be recommended. This article discusses factors that influence and many times complicate the worker's job and are often the reason for an adversely high number of children living without a family. Attempts to reunite children with their biological families are complicated by the fact that the family situation rarely improves. Therefore children returning to live with their own families face the same conditions they were previously removed from. A more positive option for some children placed in institutional care is adoption or long-term foster care. However, many children continue to spend their whole childhood in a care home. The authors describe the care system in the Czech Republic and point out its weaknesses and some controversial facts. They also discuss and evaluate the ‘National Action Plan’, a government policy document, which articulates aspirations and obligations for all government departments and organisations involved in the Czech childcare system.