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

Abstract

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.