Field Of Youth Studies Research Articles

Beyond Place: Youth Belonging and Language in the Third Space

AbstractPlace and place attachment have emerged as key concepts in the study of belonging within the field of youth studies in the last few decades. Yet these are limited lenses through which to understand the practices and experiences of youth belonging. In this article, I conceptually examine the possibility of belonging for young Australians navigating their everyday lives between cultures and languages, especially in circumstances where their connection to place is contested. I argue that this is an important task as Australia continues to globalise, as its society continues to diversify, and as a vast array of languages other than English continue to be practised in private and public spaces. Furthermore, I argue that research in youth studies must go beyond place-based conceptualisations of belonging to include the role of language in belonging, and to understand young people’s ways of being and belonging in the third space between cultures and languages. Ultimately, I propose that space should continue to be a serious consideration in youth studies and youth lives, and for there to be an emphasis on the role of language in the processes of negotiating identity and belonging.

Rethinking education and work relationships in youth transition: an alternative metaphor

ABSTRACT Education and work are two essential parts of young people’s lives. Currently, the relationship between education and work in the youth policy field is predominantly discussed from the perspective of a narrow economic discourse of education to work transitions. This is despite the fact that this narrow paradigm of examining youth transition from school to work which was prevalent in the 1980s and early 1990s has been consistently problematised and re-worked in the past few decades. Drawing on longitudinal data collected from a cohort of Australian young adults reporting their self-assessment of and their reflections on the connection between their study and work, this paper provides new empirical evidence in support of some of the arguments that have emerged within the field of youth studies regarding transition. Grounded in a broader conceptualisation of transition and informed by theories of youth citizenship, this paper highlights the complexities involved in young people’s navigation of education and work, and proposes the metaphor of a double helix which considers education and work as two interconnected venues through which recognition and meaning are achieved by young people in a postmodern society.

Why so moderate? Understanding millennials' views on the urban housing affordability crisis in the post-socialist context of the Czech Republic.

The housing affordability crisis is one of the most pressing issues in urban centres around the globe, affecting especially young adults. Some theorists have in response begun calling for the provision of more public housing or less housing financialisation (free market). The goal of our article is to demonstrate the housing attitudes of Czech millennials towards state interventions that are designed to address the decline in housing affordability, using a quantitative attitude survey and a series of qualitative interviews. The results of our study reveal that young Czechs are sceptical about increased public housing provision as a solution, and on the whole their views align more with the neoliberal ideas, the very ideas that are criticised by critical theorists. We show that there are contextual reasons that explain why young Czechs are not calling for radical policy change - reasons such as familialism, which facilitates the intergenerational transmission of norms, habitus, and resources within families; the legacy of socialism and society transformation; a belief that more redistribution of resources could be unfair; and stronger support for competition, individualism and right-wing politics. There is also, however, some inconsistency and uncertainty in their attitudes, especially between their general worldview and their suggestions for concrete action. This study contributes to the research in the field of youth studies that looks at young people's strategies for dealing with the problem of decreasing housing affordability, and to the discussions surrounding diverse housing policy responses to a common global challenge.

Субъектность молодежи в публикациях МосГУ

<p>В статье представлены взгляды на социальную субъектность молодежи как ее характерное свойство на материале публикаций, подготовленных и изданных в Московском гуманитарном университете (МосГУ). В этом вузе развивается научная школа молодежных исследований, где субъектным свойствам молодежи придается первостепенное значение.</p>

Of Risk and Youth: Exploring Discourses of Adolescence Through Meg Rosoff’s How I Live Now

New developments in the field of youth studies are calling for a reorientation of discourses of adolescence away from developmental tropes of transition, crisis, and dysfunction, and towards a more fluid sociocultural framework. Meg Rosoff’s acclaimed novel How I Live Now (2004) achieves a balance that transcends the pitfalls of developmentalism and gestures towards a sociological model of adolescence. In this novel, key developmental ideas such as risk, vulnerability and liminality are not the province of the young characters, but are reframed as the defining features of the dystopic society they inhabit. Rosoff’s critical revision of dominant ideas about adolescence is facilitated by her fluid use of different literary traditions ranging from adolescent realism and evacuation fiction to dystopia.

On the political economy of youth: a comment

ABSTRACTThis article is written as a brief comment on a recent discussion that has taken place in the pages of the Journal of Youth Studies on the question of youth, youth studies and political economy, in a series of articles by Côté [2014. “Towards a New Political Economy of Youth.” Journal of Youth Studies 17 (4): 527–543; Côté, J. 2016. “A New Political Economy of Youth Reprised: Rejoinder to France and Threadgold.” Journal of Youth Studies. doi:10.1080/13676261.2015.1136058] and France and Threadgold [2015. “Youth and Political Economy: Towards a Bourdieusian Approach.” Journal of Youth Studies. doi:10.1080/13676261.2015.1098779]. It argues for the value of embracing a broad understanding of the term political economy, and for the importance of increasing the attention paid to political economy in the field of youth studies. The comment draws on a simple review of articles published in the Journal of Youth Studies over a five-year period between 2011 and 2015 in order to clarify the different approaches that can be taken by youth studies researchers with respect to the question of political economy.

A new political economy of youth reprised: rejoinder to France and Threadgold

ABSTRACTIn a previous issue of this journal, France and Threadgold [2015. “Youth and Political Economy: Towards a Bourdieusian Approach.” Journal of Youth Studies doi:10.1080/13676261.2015.1098779] claim that they ‘strongly believe that a political economy perspective remains vital for understanding macro-structural power’ (8), yet they reject key aspects of the version I recommended in an earlier issue of this journal [Côté. J. E. 2014a.“Towards a New Political Economy of Youth.” Journal of Youth Studies 17 (4): 527–543]. They also present a Bourdieusian framework, asserting that it provides a better understanding of the effects of political and the economic forces on the lives of young people. In this article, I show how their rejection of the political-economy-of-youth perspective is based on their misunderstandings of some of the fundamental concepts of that perspective, as well as their misrepresentations of what I recommend to the youth studies community concerning that perspective. Consequently, although their Bourdieusian framework may be useful in illuminating certain aspects of the problem, their attempt to promote their framework as a better approach to the political economy of youth is based on unfounded claims. I use their errors to illustrate several metatheoretical principles that can help researchers to be less imperialistic in their claims, and I offer an analysis of how this dispute reflects the current fragmented nature of the field of youth studies.

Youth as Tactical Agents of Peacebuilding and Development in the Sahel

One of the major lacunas in the field of youth studies is the lack of attention to, and thorough documentation of, the positive contributions of young people, especially in developing societies. The vast bulk of studies are skewed towards the view of youth as enfants terribles, without any attempt to understand and explain tactical ways in which youth have created and continue to create alternative lives for themselves under great adversity. Drawing on case studies from Northern Nigeria (youth as agents of counter-terrorism) and Northern Mali (youth as tactical agents of development), the burden of this article is to identify the multiple challenges facing youth in West Africa's Sahel region and, especially, to show how Sahelian youth are coping with these everyday challenges in tactical, ingenious and creative ways that underscore both their considerable social agency and their inherent capacity to make telling contributions to peacebuilding and development in their local communities.

Introduction for Special Section of Sociological Research Online: The Marginalised Mainstream: Making Sense of the ‘Missing Middle’ of Youth Studies

Research in the field of youth studies has produced many important insights and has been influential in critiquing, shaping, and changing our understandings of, and social policies in respect of, young people's lives. The social scientific focus has, rightly so, oftentimes been on those young people more obviously situated on the margins of society and possibly at risk of becoming excluded or disconnected from it. There has been some occasional and direct research interest in the lives of more advantaged young people who follow more successful youth transitions through extended education. Often, however, it is taken for granted that those on 'slow track transitions' are 'successful' - and un-problematic in social policy terms. Regardless, in adopting this dualism successful versus unsuccessful transitions, slow-track versus fast track trajectories, advantaged versus disadvantaged youth research is in danger of ignoring the experiences of young people who fall somewhere in-between.

Youth and Politics in Democratic Argentina: Inventing Traditions, Creating New Trends (1983–2008)

This article has three objectives. First, to present the trajectories of youth studies, in particular about youth and politics, in Argentina from 1983 to 2008. This section is the centre of the article and it is organized in three axes, we will first show the link between the historical context and the possibility of research on youth, both for their appearance as objects of study and for the development of social sciences in Argentina. Then we will detail this background that constitutes what we call ‘the invention of tradition’, and we will pass on to a characterization of current tendencies in the field of youth studies and politics. The second objective is to present through a case study (participation in secondary schools) some discussions regarding the link between youth and politics. Finally, we will discuss youth and politics as an academic and societal preoccupation in the light of the aforementioned processes.

Keeping connected: a review of the research relationship

In this paper, some key findings of the Keeping Connected project are discussed in light of the methodological challenges of developing an analytical approach in a large-scale study, particularly in starting with open-ended, participant-selected, digital still visual images as part of 31 longitudinal case studies. The paper works to clarify the methodological and epistemological discussions of the visual data, an issue of great interest in qualitative research and visuality for researchers intent on developing understandings of participatory research methods in the field of youth studies.

Agency in UK hip-hop and grime youth subcultures – peripherals and purists

This paper addresses the rejection of subcultural collectivity by postmodern scholars in the field of youth studies. The fluidity of neo-tribes does not fully reflect the lived experiences of many young people today whose subcultural being is neither transient nor irrelevant. Moving away from the notion of spectacular subcultures, this paper identifies cultural knowledge and creative engagement as significant factors in youth group affiliations. This inevitably causes problems for the researcher as such identifiers of subcultural belonging are almost impossible for an ‘outsider’ to appreciate. An attempt is made to incorporate the term subculture back into academic discourse whilst also investigating aspects of agency within hip-hop and grime cultures. Qualitative research was undertaken in five sites in and around the south-east of England. This work identified variations within a cultural form that is often homogenised by scholars. Distinctions are made between the relative passivity of consumers of youth culture, here termed ‘peripherals’, and those at the centre of their localised musical scenes. The ‘purists’, as they are identified in this paper, exert significant degrees of autonomy over their cultural participation and openly reject mainstream sensibilities in favour of claiming a sense of ownership and connection to their personalised variant of this globalised form.

Youth Studies, Comparative Inquiry, and the Local/Global Problematic

The field of youth studies appears to have increasingly taken on a self-consciously “international” orientation, characterized by grappling with how to represent local youth identities and social p...

Andrew Keen Vs the Emos: Youth, Publishing, and Transliteracy

Andrew Keen Vs the Emos: Youth, Publishing, and Transliteracy

Youth, sex, and government

For nearly twenty-five years, the field of youth studies has employed the same conceptual tools to explain the conduct of young people, tools that inexorably lead to the same recurrent conclusions-youth equals resistance, youth equals alienation, youth equals problem. This book offers a way out of this theoretical Groundhog Day. Starting with the familiar notion of youth subcultures, but also addressing topics such as young women's magazines, 'at risk' youth, anorexia nervosa, and HIV/AIDS programs, this book examines the way in which youth is produced as both a governmental object and a set of practices of the self. Employing the ideas of Foucault, Rose and Mauss, this new approach attempts to reinvigorate what is an important-yet slumbering-area of research.