The New Zealand OE as governance through freedom: rethinking ‘the apex of freedom’

Abstract

Against the backdrop of social, economic, and demographic changes of recent times, Arnett has proposed his theory of ‘emerging adulthood’, essentially a new stage of the life-course between adolescence and adulthood. Arnett sees emerging adulthood as a distinct, historically unprecedented period demographically, subjectively, and in terms of identity explorations. Furthermore, he claims that this time typically involves independence and represents the ‘apex of freedom’ in young people's lives where they ‘have more freedom to decide for themselves how to live than they have ever before or will ever have again’. In this article, we expand on existing critique aimed at Arnett's concept, in particular with respect to his understanding of emerging adulthood as the ‘apex of freedom’. To exemplify the limits of Arnett's theory, we use Nikolas Rose's theorisation around governance through freedom and apply it to qualitative research material about the working holiday phenomenon in New Zealand – an essential element of emerging adulthood, which, superficially, seems to offer unlimited options for self-exploration, choice, and freedom. Rose's approach, however, illustrates that freedom and constraint are intertwined and that as emerging adults in New Zealand insert themselves into OE discourses, they are governed through freedom.