Introduction to the special issue: reflections on young people’s responses to negative everyday representations of themselves

Abstract

ABSTRACT At a time when existential crises – environmental disaster, pandemic, war – jostle for pole place in our hierarchy of concerns, it is not surprising that not only what is happening, but our responses to it, come under intense scrutiny. Young people, whose responses to the social world, historically, have been subject to surveillance and representation as ‘trouble’, are again centre-stage in society’s imagination. They appear, at once, as the symbol of all that is wrong with the world and as the repository of hope for the future. In this special issue, we draw on new ethnographic research in multiple European contexts to explore the implications of this positioning from young people’s perspectives. Specifically, we aim: to consider the shared experiences of young people across Europe as they navigate negative everyday representations of themselves; and to understand the complex configuration of power relations that drives the cycle of (mis)representation, stigmatisation and misrecognition that compounds the exclusion of young people from equal participation in social life.