From cruel optimism to foreclosed futures: The emotional and temporal dimensions of enduring precarity among young adults in Barcelona

Recent research in Sub‐Saharan Africa has revealed the importance of children's caring roles in families affected by HIV and AIDS. However, few studies have explored young caregiving in the context of HIV in the UK, where recently arrived African migrant and refugee families are adversely affected by the global epidemic. This paper explores young people's socio‐spatial experiences of caring for a parent with HIV, based on qualitative research with 37 respondents in London and other urban areas in England. In‐depth semi‐structured interviews were conducted with young people with caring responsibilities and mothers with HIV, who were predominantly African migrants, as well as with service providers. Drawing on their perspectives, the paper discusses the ways that young people and mothers negotiate the boundaries of young people's care work within and beyond homespace, according to norms of age, gender, generational relations, and cultural constructions of childhood. Despite close attachments within the family, the emotional effects of living with a highly stigmatised life‐limiting illness, pressures associated with insecure immigration status, transnational migration, and low income undermined African mothers' and young people's sense of security and belonging to homespace. These factors also restricted their mobility and social participation in school/college and neighbourhood spaces. While young people and mothers valued supportive safe spaces within the community, the stigma surrounding HIV significantly affected their ability to seek support. The paper identifies security, privacy, independence, and social mobility as key dimensions of African young people's and mothers' imagined futures of ‘home’ and ‘family’. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Experiences of family conflict are common in young people's accounts of homelessness, yet in‐depth explorations and conceptualisations of these experiences remain sparse. Drawing on focus group discussions with 29 participants, this article explores the accounts of young people and carers and parents about the dynamics, interactions and characteristics of family conflict. Findings highlight the primacy of verbal insults, criticisms or threats, as well as acts of aggression and violence in young people's and parent's understandings of family conflict. Feelings of mistrust, instability and a lack of safety also pervade family conflict and are considered its most impactful elements. We contend that these impacts are best understood via the concept of ontological (in)security, whereby young people's sense of self, belonging and stability are undermined by family conflict. This provides important insights for developing practice in this space, where working to remove long‐term patterns of family conflict, restoring young people's sense of self and belonging within their family, and supporting the stability and trust within a family may prove beneficial.

Friends, peers and safeguarding

This paper develops understandings of how being publicly identified and consequently labelled as ‘looked after’ can have damaging consequences for young people, particularly in how they are perceived by their peers in the context of schooling. Based on qualitative research in northern England utilising participatory approaches with young people and interviews with support staff, we explore barriers that inhibit young people's sense of belonging. We highlight how the very processes and practices set up to support the young people can often have unintended consequences by routinely positioning them as Other, before considering the implications for education and schooling in particular.

US plans to boost number of medical schools

Dignity and its components in Palestinian adolescents and young people: a pilot study

In this paper, I argue that current arrangements for school-to-work transitions support in England, now school-based, are designed to contribute towards ensuring the consent of the population for what I refer to as the ‘state of insecurity’ (Lorey, 2015): the neoliberal relationship between the individual and the state in which insecurity is promoted as freedom. Based on an analysis of policy, the paper argues that the government careers strategy for young people aims to contribute to shaping the precarious subjects which inhabit the state of insecurity, by encouraging them to internalise neoliberal values around freedom and individualism which accompany governmental precarisation. Drawing also on the work of Judith Butler (2011), I suggest that throughout the careers strategy, neoliberalism functions as performative or hegemonic norm which is cited to constitute notions of ‘good’ or ‘normal’ labour market arrangements, aspirations and selves. I suggest that this strategy is an example of Berlant's (2011) ‘cruel optimism’, which constitutes a fantasy of a ‘good life’ which is in fact likely to be unattainable to many young people, especially the more disadvantaged.

This study aimed to explore adolescents and young adults' experiences of symptoms related to their eczema in order to determine their psychosocial needs. A secondary qualitative analysis of two data sources collected through semi-structured interviews for two different projects, SKINS project and Eczema Care Online project. In total, there were 28 transcripts with adolescents and young adults with eczema having a mean age of 19.5years available to analyse. Interview data were collected from face-to-face interviews that were recorded and transcribed. Inductive thematic analysis explored data about symptoms and organized according to psychosocial needs. Adolescents and young adults with eczema experience both visible symptoms (such as flaky, dry, and inflamed skin) and invisible symptoms (such as itch, pain, exhaustion, and mental distress) that elicit different psychosocial needs. These psychosocial needs are to (i) be understood; (ii) be perceived as normal; and (iii) receive emotional support. Interviewees described a struggle between wanting their peers and family to understand but take their eczema seriously whilst not wanting to stand out and instead to be perceived as 'normal', which they would define as being perceived as other adolescents. This has implications on behaviours, such as seeking support, avoiding going out, hiding their skin, as well as emotional implications, such as social isolation and feeling anxious and low. Having a better understanding of young people's experiences and psychosocial needs will provide a framework on how best to support adolescents and young adults when managing symptoms related to eczema. Statement of contribution What is already known on this subject? Eczema has a high impact on children and is considered a burden by children and adults with eczema. However, it is unclear what impact eczema has on adolescents and young adults. Adolescents and young adults with chronic conditions are known to be vulnerable to negative psychosocial outcomes but psychosocial needs and how to best support this age group with eczema are unknown What does this add? Three psychosocial needs were developed from evaluating the impact of visible and invisible symptoms of eczema: The need to feel understood (mostly reflective of invisible symptoms such as itch and pain and visible symptoms such as scratching). The need to be perceived as 'normal': visible symptoms such as flaky, inflamed skin make them stand out in comparison with their peers and a need emerged to blend in. The need for emotional support: adolescents and young adults searched for this from their health care providers, from shared experiences and from online resources. Adolescents and young adults with eczema appear to feel ambivalent about wishing the impact of the condition to be acknowledged whilst wishing the condition to be invisible to others. This ambivalence had further impact on feeling self-conscious, seeking support, and dealing with unsolicited advice.

This paper uses reports from 13,000 Grade Nine pupils in five countries to examine issues such as whether they were treated fairly at school, trust their teachers and adults in wider society, are willing to sacrifice teacher attention to help others, and support the cultural integration of recent immigrants. Using such reports as ‘outcomes’ in a multi‐stage regression model, it is clear that they are largely unrelated to school‐level pupil mix variables. To some extent, these outcomes are stratified by pupil and family background in the same way for all countries. However, the largest association is with pupil‐reported experience of interactions with their teachers. Teachers appear to be a major influence on young people's sense of justice and the principles they apply in deciding whether something is fair. The paper concludes by suggesting ways in which schools and teachers could take advantage of this finding.

This closing chapter draws together the threads of the book by providing a platform from which to act. Our opening proposition is that at their best, schools can be transformative places of hope and possibility, but they are far too often places of fear, incarceration and ‘cruel optimism’ (Berlant, Differ J Fem Cult Stud 17(3): 20–36, 2006). Schools can end up mouthing platitudes, while wilfully refusing to equip young people with the intellectual resources with which to analyse, confront and puncture rampant humbug. We confront this situation directly by providing a toolkit—not a recipe! Firstly, by exploring what it might look like for young people—those who are the most marginalized—to confront the ruthless pursuit of individualism, materialism, consumption that is coming to characterise their lives, by examining the way these processes deform and disfigure their lives and communities. Secondly, we show what schools look like that are able to find the space within which to put a very different inflection on schooling, where: (i) teachers are treated and act as intellectuals; (ii) students position themselves as activists in respect of their own learning; and where (iii) communities present as politically engaged and connected. Along the way, we provide a sense of how young people might gain a sense of control of their destinies by pursuing a critical pedagogy of ‘audacious’ hope.

In this article I interrogate the attachment to ‘the imagination’ as a site free from the weed-like tentacles of carceral systems and structures, and thus a solution to ‘stuckness’. Building on Lauren Berlant’s theorisation of ‘cruel optimism’, I draw on my own sticky, cruelly optimistic methodological engagements with the imagination in qualitative research, whereby collage was used to explore what participants wanted in response to the injustice wrought by sexual violence. Drawing on scholarship that seeks to examine the edges of the carceral imaginary, I instead suggest a gentle, yet significant, reorientation to imaginings and what I see as their weed-like capabilities. Thus, rather than holding on to the imagination as a solution for coining futures free from the violence of carcerality, I instead call for a deeper attention to, and staying with, the ‘stuckness’ that exists when utilising the tool of the imagination.

A major challenge for researchers and urban planning practitioners is how to obtain meaningful and influential contributions on urban and environmental planning activities from children and young people within the constraints of adult policy and practice. The key elements of this challenge concern traditional methods of communication between ‘experts’ and children and young people in rationalist planning settings, versus emerging research in relation to children's and young people's views and agency around civic participation. This article will address the work of a number of researchers and practitioners who have grappled with the inherent tenions of making planning practice and urban design more inclusionary, while facilitating and respecting children and young people's civic participation. This article also advocates the advantages and strengths of their participation in planning and urban design processes.With a focus on two exploratory programs developed by the authors in the Australian states of New South Wales and Victoria, this article will demonstrate how the sharing of knowledge and skills between planning and design professionals and children and young people can lead to more meaningful and influential contributions from them. The programs examined were informed by leading practice both in Australia and internationally, and have assisted to develop children and young people's sense of spatial competence, and their confidence and efficacy in their local environment, contributing ultimately to their wellbeing. They have also supported the establishment of youth leadership groups with the confidence and skills to contribute to ongoing local government urban and environmental planning activities.

In the last decades, young people not in education or employment have become the focus of policy-makers worldwide, and there are high political expectations for various intervention initiatives. Despite the global focus, there is currently a lack of systemic knowledge of the factors supporting policy-making. Therefore, using scoping review methodology, a systematic literature overview of research findings in 2013–2021 on young people not in education or employment will be provided. The research revealed five categories to consider from a policy-making perspective: “NEET” as a concept, the heterogeneity of the target group, the impact of policies for young people, possible interventions, and factors influencing young people's coping strategies. Based on analysis, the target group requires applying the holistic principle where the young person is a unique person whose involvement in service creation supports the service's compliance with the actual needs of young people. To support young people, it is important to consider differences within a single social group; the interaction between the different site-based policies; young people's sense of self-perception and autonomy in entering support services; possible coping strategies and the need to provide support in a time and place-based flexible and caring environment through multidisciplinary teams. The study's results support the importance of implementation and the identification of existing opportunities of the EU's reinforced Youth Guarantee guidelines and point to possible future research topics related to the target group.

European Union youth policy since the 1990s has been ostensibly committed to enhancing the social participation of young people. This study explores the reliance of the 2009 European Union (EU) Youth Strategy on a combination of OECD ‘active society’ and human capital theory which seeks to increase educational participation rates in Europe with the goal of creating more and better opportunities for young people and to promote active citizenship, social inclusion and solidarity. The authors adopt a ‘southern theory’ perspective to open up a range of problems with the EU Youth Strategy which begins to indicate why, contrary to expectations, this policy has failed to ameliorate the increasing levels of youth unemployment, underemployment and child and youth poverty. The study concludes that the EU Youth Strategy has consolidated ‘a relation of cruel optimism’ when what is desired, in this case more education, has become an obstacle to human flourishing.

Asianfail examines literary and filmic works by contemporary Asian Americans and Asian Canadians that deal with failure and unhappiness. While the hashtag #Asianfail pokes fun at cultural stereotypes of Asians on social media, the myth of the model minority has serious negative consequences for many young people who feel pressure and anxiety when they do not succeed in professional careers. This book looks at how novelists, such as Ruth Ozeki, Madeleine Thien, Alex Gilvarry, and lê thi diem thúy reveal the "cruel optimism" that characterizes ordinary existence for many people in the 21st century. Films such as The Debut, Red Doors,and Saving Face query immigrant aspirations of the older generation and the feasibility of the American dream. The protagonists in the graphic novels of Mariko and Jillian Tamaki, Keshni Kashyap and Mari Araki express their ugly and painful feelings as they grow up, while Jan Wong and Catherine Hernandez grapple with work and stress-related depression. In Linda Ohama's Obaachan's Garden and Catherine Hernandez' performance, even the aged feel precarity and are burdened with secrets of the past. These works interrogate and expose the limits of our neoliberal notions of the good life and happiness.