The pedagogical political participation model (the 3P-M) for exploring,explaining and affecting young people’s political participation

In young people’s political participation in public decision-making, research and youth policy may benefit from a participation model that is pedagogical and sensitive to context. Due to the limitations of established participation models, the pedagogical political participation model (referred to here as the 3P-M) is suggested. The 3P-M is a theoretical and methodologically embedded model that builds on three observations: (1) that young people (as a category) are always presented as dependent on and subordinate to adults (decision-makers) in public decision-making, (2) that participation cannot be quantitatively measured without being normative and insensitive to context and (3) that different types of pedagogical leadership determine what kind of political participation is possible. The 3P-M offers an analytical framework for practitioners, policymakers and researchers to identify, explain and affect public pedagogical settings and situations in which young people politically participate.     

(De)mobilising and (mis)representing ‘youth’ in the Chinese workplace: political dependency,generational subordination and corporatisation in the Communist Youth League

The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) youth organisation, the Communist Youth League (CYL, League), has an extensive grassroots network and approximately twelve million members in public and partially state-owned sectors of the economy, as well as a political mandate to promote ‘youth’ interests at work. This article examines the League’s operation in the Chinese workplace by analyzing qualitative data collected during fieldwork in twelve different sites in Beijing and Zhejiang province. It was hypothesised that as League organisations are under pressure to represent youth-specific demands, their response would be similar to the Trade Unions, which try to simultaneously remain loyal to pro-management Party committees and act as grassroots channels for advocacy. The article finds that League cadres occupy junior positions in political, generational and workplace hierarchies resulting to their multifaceted subordination to more senior power holders present, namely the management, Party Committee and Union leadership. The institutionalised ‘juniority’ of cadres creates strong disincentives for pro-youth employee initiatives and leads to the disarticulation of a distinctive ‘youth’ agenda. This institutional ‘gap’ in workplace representation has direct implications both for the welfare of young employees and for the future of industrial relations in China.     

Time to look in/at anger: considerations on the position and policing of young people’s anger

Mental and emotional well-being is steadily overtaking physical difficulty as the biggest health challenge facing young people. As a result, young people’s emotional well-being and needs are a significant concern within contemporary youth studies. However, the intricacies of ‘managing emotion’ have been somewhat neglected in the context of youth studies. In particular, the role of discourses of emotional well-being to produce ‘feeling rules’ [Boler, M. 1999. Feeling Power: Emotions and Education. Florence, KY: Routledge], to discipline, and to restrict expressions of emotion has been unconsidered. This article explores this problematic further with the intention of provoking a larger concentration on relationship between the policing of emotion and youth well-being discourses. Specifically, it focuses on anger as one of the emotions that young people are encouraged to move away from. It outlines how young people’s right to be angry is policed through the construction of angry subjectivities as characterised by incompleteness. It focuses on two – the unresolved subject and the unreasoned subject. Young people, who are already constructed as incomplete, are particularly vulnerable to this policing. Drawing on a range of theoretical interjections on the disciplining of ‘adult’ anger, the article explores the political importance of anger, how it is limited for young people, and the complexities of engaging with anger in the context of youth studies. Given the limited attention anger has attracted in youth studies literature, the article is intentionally provocative. However, as the article notes, this is a complex debate with many challenges and a much more detailed investigation is necessary.     

From ‘Employab-ility’ to ‘Entrepreneurial-ity’ in Spain: youth in the spotlight in times of crisis

This paper discusses the processes of individualisation of work and redefinition of the referential category of worker fostered by youth employability schemes in Spain. Employability measures proposed by the recent Spanish Youth Guarantee Implementation Plan and its antithetical youth representations (as a group ‘without qualities’ – the ‘NEETS’– while at the same time as a referential value and cultural model – ‘the young entrepreneur’-) will be analysed. These paradoxes strengthened by employability policies, and further aggravated in the wake of the current economic crisis, do not give rise to political contradictions due to the depolitisation promoted by employability policies: social problems are converted into individual deficits. These processes of psychologisation of work are further discussed on the basis of a recent study on employment counselling and career guidance to help to enhance the employability of jobless people in three Spanish cities, Seville, Madrid and Valencia. These tools are aimed at fostering employability of unemployed people with a high risk of social exclusion and are emblematic concerning the principle of employability (new governance tools, different intervention logics/principles). Some paradoxes concerning employability policies (entrepreneuriality) in the current labour market crisis will be outlined.     

Visual methodologies for research with refugee youth

Abstract

In the current moment of social, political, economic and environmental disquiet, unprecedented numbers of children have been forced to leave their homes and settle in new communities. As schools worldwide receive increasing numbers of refugee youth, there is a pressing need for thoughtful educational research that inquires into the unique individual needs and experiences of displaced learners. Given that students’ journeys are shaped by movements across physical, cultural and linguistic spaces, we suggest that related scholarship might benefit from Third Space theory. Within this theoretical framework, neither language nor culture is static. Rather, both are continuously shaped through interactions – including those that are non-verbal. For students who may be learning in an unfamiliar language, visual methodologies offer a means and venue for communication. To explore how refugee youth might benefit from Third Space theory and visual methodologies, we first review scholarship that examines how children and schools negotiate educational space. We then describe a series of methodologies that scholars might consider when conducting research with refugee youth, including photovoice, fotonovela, digital storytelling and quilting. Significantly, pairing a Third Space theoretical framework with visual and participatory methodologies may address issues of language, power, vulnerability and ethics.     

Do Foster Parents and Care Workers Recognize the Needs of Youth in Family Foster Care with a History of Sexual Abuse?

Children in family foster care have the right to participate in decisions regarding their life, however, adults often advocate on behalf of children. This Q methodological study explored whether shared perspectives among foster parents and care workers resemble shared perspectives of youth regarding the psychosocial needs experienced by youth with a history of sexual abuse. Participants sorted a set of statement cards according to what they thought was most important for youth. By-person factor analyses examined how the Q sorts of foster parents and care workers related to those of youth. The results showed that foster parents mostly recognized the group of youth who value an instrumental relationship with their carers, while care workers mostly recognized the group of youth who value support of both foster and birth parents with regard to their preparation for independent living. The two youth groups characterized by ambivalence and autonomy were barely recognized. Results are discussed in light of the expected roles of foster parents and care workers, and youth’s contact with birth parents. Lastly, this study highlights the importance of youth participation, because youth offer unique and varying perspectives about their needs.     

Engaging Youth in Municipal Government: Moving Toward a Youth-Centric Practice

Youth councils are one mechanism to engage youth in community governance; yet, there is scant research to guide practice. This study examined the extent to which youth are engaged in the origin, structure, and activities of municipal youth councils. Interviews were conducted with 24 adult stakeholders involved in the operations of youth councils. Data were analyzed using thematic analysis. Results demonstrated that youth-centric practice builds upon theoretical frames of positive youth development, social justice, and civic engagement. Youth-centric practice consists of youth representation, leadership, initiative, and decision-making. Results can assist practitioners and policy makers in engaging youth in municipal government.     

Taking pleasure seriously: the political significance of subcultural practice

This paper demonstrates that subcultural theory continues to provide a relevant and useful analysis of youth leisure practices and their political significance in contemporary society. It achieves this by analysing the theoretical antecedents to both subcultural theory and the post-subcultural theory that followed it. It is argued that the post-subcultural turn to studying affects and everyday lives resonates deeply with the Gramscian perspective informing subcultural theory. It is thus possible to interpret post-subculturalism as augmenting rather than negating its predecessor. Deploying an analysis that combines these perspectives allows for an account of contemporary youth leisure practices that demonstrates a number of different forms of politics explicated within the paper: a politics of identity and becoming; a politics of defiance; a politics of affective solidarity and a politics of different experience. Whilst not articulated or necessarily conscious, there is a proto-politics to youth leisure that precludes it from being dismissed as entirely empty, hedonistic and consumerist. This paper demonstrates how the lens of post-subculturalism focuses on the affective spaces where this politics is most apparent and provides a means of updating subcultural theory to understand contemporary youth practices.     

Significant life events as a journey of meaning making and change among at-risk youths

The study examined at-risk youths’ meaning making of their own significant life events and the contribution of these events to changes in their lives. Narrative interviews with 14 Israeli at-risk youths (aged 16–18) revealed three themes: (a) the event as a powerful, emotional-awakening experience; (b) self-inquiry following the event, differentiating between life before and after, and (c) biographical changes in the youths’ lives. Despite the diversity of the events, certain similarities were identified among them: they were perceived as surprising in their timing and intensity, as conveying a broader message, and as the cause of the youths’ choice to take responsibility for themselves and their interactions with significant others. Use of narrative theories of personality provides insight into at-risk youths’ meaning making of their difficult experiences. The deep exploration and construction of these experiences reveal the process in which difficult life events can lead to positive changes.     

Gendered expectations of the biographical and social future: young adults’ approaches to short and long-term thinking

Numerous studies have found that although young adults are arguably less constrained by gendered norms and expectations than previous generations, they have nevertheless continued to imagine their biographical futures in highly gendered ways. In this paper I draw on an analysis of 28 in-depth interviews in which 16 women and 12 men (aged 18–34) were asked to discuss their expectations for both the biographical and social future. The results of this study largely confirm the findings of previous scholarship, with young women often viewing childbearing and caring responsibilities as compulsory, while young men largely viewed these commitments as complementary to their chosen careers. This paper extends existing findings in this area by examining, firstly, whether these perceptions of the biographical future are mirrored in the participants’ views of the long-term, social future, and secondly, what implications such views may have when they are extended into this register. In so doing it ultimately finds that the gender norms that shape young adults’ expectations for their own futures are echoed in their outlooks upon the social future.