Researching ‘Ordinary’ Young People in a Changing World: The Sociology of Generations and the ‘Missing Middle’ in Youth Research

Abstract

Several researchers have pointed to an overemphasis on ‘spectacular’ elements of youth culture and on ‘at-risk’ young people, arguing for greater attention to the ‘ordinary’ in sociological youth research. This article draws upon the Life Patterns Project, a 20-year longitudinal study of transitions in Australia, to argue that both understanding the ‘ordinary’ experience of youth and contemporary patterns of inequality between young people can be facilitated by a return to ideas from the undervalued legacy of the sociology of generations. Much youth research draws, often implicitly, on a model of youth where the adulthood that is the end point of transitions tends to be taken for granted. Yet, in the context of a rapidly changing labour market, the Life-Patterns participants have had to reshape the meaning of youth and adulthood as the field of possibilities open to them has changed. Understanding this remaking is the basis from which youth research can understand how some young people come to win or lose in contemporary conditions.