Contradictions of Progress

Despite society's current preoccupation with interrelated issues such as obesity, increasingly sedentary lifestyles and children's health, there has until now been little published research that directly addresses the place and meaning of physical activity in young people's lives. In this important new collection, leading international scholars address that deficit by exploring the differences in young people's experiences and meanings of physical activity as these are related to their social, cultural and geographical locations, to their abilities and their social and personal biographies. The book places young people's everyday lives at the centre of the study, arguing that it this 'everydayness' (school, work, friendships, ethnicity, family routines, interests, finances, location) that is key to shaping the engagement of young people in physical activity. By allowing the voices of young people to be heard through these pages, the book helps the reader to make sense of how young people see physical activity in their lives. Drawing on a breadth of theoretical frameworks, and challenging the orthodox assumptions that underpin contemporary physical activity policy, interventions and curricula, this book powerfully refutes the argument that young people are 'the problem' and instead demonstrates the complex social constructions of physical activity in the lives of young people. Young People, Physical Activity and the Everyday is essential reading for both students and researchers with a particular interest physical activity, physical education, health, youth work and social policy.

This paper explores the ways that young people express their agency and negotiate complex lifecourse transitions according to gender, age and inter- and intra-generational norms in sibling-headed households affected by AIDS in East Africa. Based on findings from a qualitative and participatory pilot study in Tanzania and Uganda, I examine young people's socio-spatial and temporal experiences of heading the household and caring for their siblings following their parent's/relative's death. Key dimensions of young people's caring pathways and life transitions are discussed: transitions into sibling care; the ways young people manage changing roles within the family; and the ways that young people are positioned and seek to position themselves within the community. The research reveals the relational and embodied nature of young people's life transitions over time and space. By living together independently, young people constantly reproduce and reconfigure gendered, inter- and intra-generational norms of ‘the family’, transgressing the boundaries of ‘childhood’, ‘youth’ and ‘adulthood’. Although young people take on ‘adult’ responsibilities and demonstrate their competencies in ‘managing their own lives’, this does not necessarily translate into more equal power relations with adults in the community. The research reveals the marginal ‘in-between’ place that young people occupy between local and global discourses of ‘childhood’ and ‘youth’ that construct them as ‘deviant’. Although young people adopt a range of strategies to resist marginalisation and harassment, I argue that constraints of poverty, unequal gender and generational power relations and the emotional impacts of sibling care, stigmatisation and exclusion can undermine their ability to exert agency and control over their sexual relationships, schooling, livelihood strategies and future lifecourse transitions.

The article explores how the dominant discourses of identity politics in the Sri Lankan conflict have silenced people in northern Sri Lanka and closed spaces for political participation. In order to understand the discursive processes and their material outcomes, the article addresses in particular the role of young people in northern Sri Lanka and explores their relationship to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The author examines the LTTE's discourse on gender, young people, nationalism, and governance through the lens of two books written separately by Anthon Balasingham and by Adele Balasingham. Birds of Freedom, the LTTE's women's wing, is shown to be an example of how the warring parties have monopolized liberation discourse through the uncompromised nationalism of a militant movement. The article discusses how this dominant discourse informs young people's lived experiences, material realities, and life opportunities for participation as social actors in their communities in the Jaffna peninsula. A particular feature of people's everyday lives in northern Sri Lanka is described as a complex citizenship characterized by the presence of several governing and uncompromising actors to whom people must relate. The latter part of the article analyzes the way young people in the north of Sri Lanka relate to this context of complex citizenship, with particular reference to the LTTE.

Responsibilised Resilience? Reworking Neoliberal Social Policy Texts

Surveillance Enabling Technologies and Peer Scrutiny: Impacts on Young People's Interpersonal Relationships

ObjectivesMost studies have been concerned with the experiences and needs of spouses/partners and adult children of people with dementia. In this review, children and young people's lived experience of parental dementia was investigated. Findings will inform both researchers and professionals in the area of dementia care.DesignA systematic literature search was performed in CINAHL, PsychINFO, PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science. A rigorous screening process was followed, and a checklist for qualitative and observational studies was used to evaluate the methodological quality of the studies. Narrative synthesis of the selected articles was carried out.ResultsTwenty‐one studies were included and a synthesis of the literature revealed six themes. The first theme concerned the difficulties in dealing with the diagnosis which was often preceded by a long period characterized by uncertainty, confusion, family distress, and conflicts. The second theme discussed changes in family relationships in terms of the role of children and young people in supporting both parents and keeping family together. The third theme described the impact of caring on children and young people who struggled to balance caring tasks and developmental needs. The fourth theme showed consequences on children and young people's personal lives in terms of education/career and life planning. The fifth theme illustrated main adaptation models and coping strategies. The last theme discussed the need for appropriate support and services based on a “whole family” approach.ConclusionsThe included studies provide the basis for knowledge and awareness about the experience of children and young people with a parent with dementia and the specific needs of support for this population.

Youth and surveillance in the Facebook era: Policy interventions and social implications

Understanding young people's lives through a focus on their micro‐geographies has been central for exercising young people's voices through research. However, such a focus has also neglected the multiple and complex realities of growing up that ripple throughout their lives, resulting in calls for more research to go beyond capturing daily snapshots of experience. This paper acknowledges that decades of research with and for young people living on city streets has underpinned activism and challenged western child rights discourse, helping to ensure that abuses and violations of street young people's rights are confronted. Yet, much of this research draws attention to lives lived in present moments – the difficulties encountered and capabilities displayed. It does not account for the temporal fluidity of how young people's realities are future impacted by slow crises and challenging daily life experiences as they grow towards adulthood. This paper explores the crisis temporalities of young people's street lives through a youth‐led ethnographic longitudinal approach. The paper focuses on 18 youth researchers and over 200 of their peers' experiences of research over three years while living on the streets of three African cities. The paper discusses the challenges of undertaking longitudinal research alongside the temporal affordances of surviving urban informality and the compounding effects of slow crises on present and future‐oriented survival. These affordances emerge as street youth respond to daily trials, experience setbacks, crises, triumphs, and failures, yet show resilience and employ capabilities. The paper concludes by demonstrating the crucial importance of ethnographic longitudinal research for policy and practice to ensure that youth who age on the streets, and their families, are supported in accordance with social justice concerns.

Within late modernity a sense of 'risk' and increased individualisation are theoretically much discussed and debated, especially ideas surrounding risk, risky behaviour and its impact upon identity construction. Drawing upon data from a recent Department of the Environment funded project exploring risk and risk management in young people's lives, this article moves beyond theory and official discourses of 'risk', in order to demonstrate the importance of young people's lay accounts or 'situated vocabularies' of risk and everyday risk-taking behaviour. Furthermore, fieldwork has also highlighted the important link between risk and identity, especially, gendered identity construction. This will be discussed in terms of socially perceived risky identities, such as being a 'macho risk taker' or a young (single) mother and the importance of gendered risk discourses within the lives of these young people. This in turn raises issues of risk governance. As we begin to unpack the complexity that surrounds risk discourses and risky identities it becomes extremely difficult to understand or isolate specific areas of risk without situating them within young people's multidimensional lives, that is, the social, ideological and economic milieux within which they live and make sense of the world.

The intensive use of interactive media has led to assertions about the effect of these media on youth. An increasing number of studies refute these assertions. Despite the enrichment of the debate with empirical data, current research tends to focus on computer and Internet use and skills. Elsewhere we argued that research shouldn't look at the use per se, but rather at the ways interactive media function in young people's activities from the perspective of a changing society. This perspective allows describing possible consequences of societal tendencies for young people's everyday life; it allows describing the social and cultural functions of interactive media as part of young people's behaviour and systems of values and beliefs. This paper presents a quantitative study on the social and cultural functions of interactive media in young people's lives. Rather than following the assumption of a homogeneous generation, we investigate the existence of a diversity of user patterns. Results from a pilot-study show that contemporary youth can be divided into categories of interactive media use and of interactive media users. These results call for a better understanding of these categories and the characteristics of their members. The research question for this paper by result can be formulated as: Can patterns be found in the use of interactive media among youth? We answer this question by a survey among Dutch youngsters aged 9-to-23. The respondents were all students in education levels ranging from primary education to higher professional education. Four clusters of interactive media users, namely Traditionalists, Gamers, Networkers and Producers were identified using cluster analysis. Four clusters of interactive media use, namely browsing, performing, interchanging and authoring were identified as well. Behind these straightforward clusters, a complex whole of user activities can be found. Each cluster shows specific use of and opinions about interactive media. This allows for studying the intricate relationship between youth culture, interactive media and learning. With our analysis of both a) use and b) opinions and preferences, our study provided a deeper understanding of the social and cultural functions of interactive media. Furthermore this study revealed the existence of a diversity of interactive media users, rather than one uniform group, as is often assumed in the literature.

Children of immigrants are the fastest-growing segment of the US child population. The complex and nuanced manner in which immigrant children's lives are shaped by issues of legal status, citizenship, state-sanctioned violence and belonging should be of great interest to educators, policymakers and researchers in the US and across the world. However, little attention is given in literature to impact of specific immigration policies on young people's development and socialisation. Perhaps that's because it's a time expensive task and one that requires a deep understanding of child-centred research. Into this gap steps Silvia Rodriguez Vega with her new book, Drawing Deportation. Built on 10 years of work with immigrant children in Arizona and California, she analysed 300 drawings, theatre performances and family interviews to engage with accounts of children's challenges with deportation and family separation during the Obama and Trump administrations. Through children's drawings and stories Rodriguez Vega exposes the destructive consequences of legal violence, structural racism and lack of safety in these young people's lives. Even though they may have been born in the US or may have US citizenship, they still feel endangered if they have one undocumented parent whose status dictates the way family can live their lives. A young participant in the study, Sergio ‘states that in Arizona, just looking Mexican is enough reason to be arrested and detained or deported via racial profiling’ (p. 75). On holidays and special occasions, immigrant families often stay home because they can be easily pulled over for a routine check at alcohol checkpoints, which can then lead to interrogation about status and potential deportation. The artwork shows that children are highly aware of this risk. The book includes multiple examples of what sociologist Nira Yuval-Davis (2011) called ‘everyday bordering and politics of belonging’. The ‘technologies of everyday bordering’ are in place to supposedly ‘make people feel safe by keeping those who do not belong out’ (Yuval-Davis et al., 2018, p. 230). Drawing by a participant in the study, Sandra from Arizona (figure 3.4 in the book) shows an acute representation of the border by a young person. A short dialogue between the two characters is depicted in two word-bubbles. As ‘an authority’ character points to the border, the smaller character says, “But I'm a citizen”; the authority replies, “you look Mexican.” Sandra underlined the words “citizen” and “look” in red. ‘Linking these words communicates the difference between being a citizen and looking like one’ explains Rodriguez Vega (p. 80). In my view, the drawing also shows the omnipotence of de- and re-bordering that involve displacement, relocation of borders and border controls, influence these young people's everyday lives by challenging their sense of belonging, disabling their feeling of safety and raising their sense of precarity. Further, Rodriguez Vega argues that children understand and internalise violence, racism, hate and death and may mirror back what they experience in their lives. In the environment marked by destruction and dehumanisation, violence becomes cyclical and children can become powerful messengers and reproducers of hate. But she counters this possibility by showing children as agents of their own stories who reimagine destructive situations in ways that adults sometimes cannot, offering us alternatives and hope for a better future. In her work, she is clearly inspired by notable educators such as Paulo Freire, to demonstrate how art can be a healing praxis ‘for children to calm their fears and explore positive solutions’ (p. 117). Her book results in an explicit message to transform schooling and teacher's training in super-diverse societies such as the US or the UK where more non-traditional, art-based methods of teaching, civic education, social-justice-oriented learning and culturally relevant curricula are needed. My final point from across the Atlantic is to observe growing research that conveys experiences of migrant children and youth in contexts of the Global South and North, which is increasingly published by international journals in the field demonstrating that these young people's views are becoming recognised as relevant to mainstream academic developments. Connecting to the large volume of scholarship that exists in the interdisciplinary area of migrant childhood and youth studies beyond the United States would have made Rodriguez Vega's contribution more universal and recognisable as it is a fascinating, timely and beautifully written book that speaks beyond its context.

Within late modernity a sense of 'risk' and increased individualisation are theoretically much discussed and debated, especially ideas surrounding risk, risky behaviour and its impact upon identity construction. Drawing upon data from a recent Department of the Environment funded project exploring risk and risk management in young people's lives, this article moves beyond theory and official discourses of 'risk', in order to demonstrate the importance of young people's lay accounts or 'situated vocabularies' of risk and everyday risk-taking behaviour. Furthermore, fieldwork has also highlighted the important link between risk and identity, especially, gendered identity construction. This will be discussed in terms of socially perceived risky identities, such as being a 'macho risk taker' or a young (single) mother and the importance of gendered risk discourses within the lives of these young people. This in turn raises issues of risk governance. As we begin to unpack the complexity that surrounds risk discourses and risky identities it becomes extremely difficult to understand or isolate specific areas of risk without situating them within young people's multidimensional lives, that is, the social, ideological and economic milieux within which they live and make sense of the world.

ABSTRACTThis paper explores the responses of nearly 1200 children and young people in Wales who were asked to identify which three famous people they most admired and which three they most disliked. Analysis of these young people's responses reveals a number of sociological and educational issues. Their selections confirm other research which has highlighted the importance of celebrities in the lives of young people. Their ‘heroes’ and ‘villains’ are drawn mostly from the worlds of popular music and sport. Their choices are also highly gendered and ‘raced’. Of particular interest is the finding that someone's ‘villain’ is more than likely to be someone else's ‘hero’. Our young people's selection of heroes and villains reflects the broader landscape of celebrity culture, where female fame is as much about appearance as talent and Black and minority ethnic celebrities are to be found largely in the fields of sport or popular music. The paper concludes by discussing the chasm between our young people's ‘heroes’ and ‘villains’ and those which are ‘officially sanctioned’ within the school curriculum and considers what schools and teachers might do about it.

This article seeks to understand how, in a highly mediated society, a “digital thread” is established through the personal and social life and in the learning process of young people. For this purpose, an ethnography was carried out with students aged between 13 to 14 years, during a year. The interlinked forms of digital media that young people have used to find spaces of autonomy and personal action have been revealed, while their parents and teachers try to establish digital media in a normative way, shaping young people’s current achievements and future perspectives. This is related to the subtle stimulation of connections and disconnections, often motivating or problematic, present inside their homes and between home and school. The result is that digital media – although it does not necessarily determine the lives of young people – has become an important source of anxiety and conflict between generations.

School-to-Work Transitions