Identity Of Young People Research Articles

Youth homelessness and individualised subjectivity

This article aims to contribute to understandings of youth homelessness and subjectivity by analysing identity construction in terms of young people's negotiation of the structural and institutional environment of youth homelessness. I suggest that while existing literature on this topic concentrates mainly on micro-social encounters, the identities of young people experiencing homelessness can be understood as constructed by structural processes described by Ulrich Beck's individualisation thesis. Narratives from 20 Australian young people are analysed for how their identities are constructed in their contact with the institutions which govern youth homelessness, and the way these young people make sense of the structural conditions they are facing. Two narrative trajectories are identified. In narratives describing movement into homelessness, young people articulate feelings of failure and shame, consequences of their individualised understanding of their biography. In narratives describing movement out of homelessness into a home, young people articulate feelings of strength and pride, while also describing those who remain homeless in ways which reflect the status of homelessness as a stigmatised difference. This article concludes by discussing the way that structural, institutional and subjective processes interact to produce the identities of young people experiencing homelessness, and reflects on the utility of understanding youth homelessness as a form of individualised social inequality.

The struggle to belong: young people on the move in the countryside

AbstractIn this paper I explore the relationship between marginality and rural youth by revealing the multiplicity of ways in which young people's identities are performed in contemporary rural society. I illustrate how for some rural youth engendering a sense of ‘belonging’ in the countryside is a daily struggle – a struggle embedded in the way power is executed in villages. Recent research illustrates how dominant discourses of rurality reflect and mutually reinforce conventional gender identities and stereotypes in particular places. While emphasising the significance of this work to the study of rurality and identity, this paper argues for the need to extend academic analysis to examine the marginalising influence of dominant constructions of rurality on some young people. Through exploring young people's narratives of self I further develop identity theories around notions of the body through movement in village spaces. Drawing on the experiences of the young people in this study, this paper further demonstrates the existence of highly defined ideas concerning acceptable rural identities and how some young men and women struggle to maintain their sense of belonging. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Problematising short-term participant observation and multi-method ethnographic studies

This article reports on a study of apprentices in England and Germany designed to explore young people's learner identities over time and in relation to particular learning environments. The research adopts a multi-method ethnographic approach, combining biographical interviews with multi-site participant observation. The article problematises the notion of participant observation and the possibility of obtaining meaningful data in short-term observations as part of a broader research design. It highlights the importance of the researcher role and the opportunities different roles entail for developing shared understanding and co-constructing meaning. It concludes that the observations yield important findings about the construction of identity in different sites and thus complement the interview data in enabling the researcher to reconstruct the apprentices’ learner biographies.

The School as a Democratic Community

Schools may be able to play a particular role in instilling a strong American identity in young people. They can do this by actively practicing democratic community within the school. This practice of democratic community is key to the development of an individual identity that prioritizes the interdependent relationship between individual and community. James Youniss and Jacques Benninga (along with myself) are introduced as authors who will draw specific attention to the roles of participation and community in schools, as they become places where young people both learn about and practice democracy.

Educational Equity in Poor Urban Contexts – Exploring Issues of Place/Space and Young People's Identity and Agency

ABSTRACT An enduring concern for educational policy in many affluent countries is the endemic nature of educational inequalities that are predominately located in poor urban contexts. Given the inabilities of school reform per se to deal with these inequalities, the paper focuses on issues of scarcity and spatial processes that are implicated in the formation of young people's educational identities – identities that then mediate the conversion of educational resources into educational attainments or achievements.

Stability and Change in Self-Reported Sexual Orientation Identity in Young People: Application of Mobility Metrics

This study investigated stability and change in self-reported sexual orientation identity over time in youth. We describe gender- and age-related changes in sexual orientation identity from early adolescence through emerging adulthood in 13,840 youth ages 12-25 employing mobility measure M, a measure we modified from its original application for econometrics. Using prospective data from a large, ongoing cohort of U.S. adolescents, we examined mobility in sexual orientation identity in youth with up to four waves of data. Ten percent of males and 20% of females at some point described themselves as a sexual minority, while 2% of both males and females reported ever being "unsure" of their orientation. Two novel findings emerged regarding gender and mobility: (1) Although mobility scores were quite low for the full cohort, females reported significantly higher mobility than did males. (2) As expected, for sexual minorities, mobility scores were appreciably higher than for the full cohort; however, the gender difference appeared to be eliminated, indicating that changing reported sexual orientation identity throughout adolescence occurred at a similar rate in female and male sexual minorities. In addition, we found that, of those who described themselves as "unsure" of their orientation identity at any point, 66% identified as completely heterosexual at other reports and never went on to describe themselves as a sexual minority. Age was positively associated with endorsing a sexual-minority orientation identity. We discuss substantive and methodological implications of our findings for understanding development of sexual orientation identity in young people.

Shards of the old looking glass: restoring the significance of identity in promoting positive outcomes for looked‐after children

ABSTRACTThere is a driving force within current UK child welfare policies which promotes a strengths led approach to both assessment and care planning for children in need. Social policy emphasizes the importance of tangible outcomes such as education achievement, which have been enshrined in statute. However, other developmental outcomes, such as identity, are subordinated. Notwithstanding the relevance of these more concrete indicators, this paper suggests that this focus has left a gap at theoretical, strategic and operational levels relating to more psychosocial aspects of human growth and development, such as identity. This paper seeks to redress that gap by considering identity as both a process and an outcome. Following a review of the literature on identity development, it presents an analysis of semi‐structured interviews with 13 young people and their social workers. The findings show how young people's identity is shaped by their relationships, can be a protective mechanism, and deferred or put on standby. In the concluding discussion the implications for social work practice are highlighted.

Global flows as gendered cultural pedagogies: learning gangsta in the ‘Durty South’

This article theorizes empirical data from an ethnographic project conducted in and around the economically disadvantaged suburb of Noble Park in southeast suburban Melbourne (Victoria, Australia). Exploring the politics around gendered identities of young people involved in the research, particularly Australian-Sudanese men, the authors theorize global flows of ‘gangsta culture’ as gendered cultural pedagogies that are (re)produced by young men who live in the area. In highlighting the pedagogical role of gangsta culture, the authors read Appadurai's theories of globalization and the imagination in relation to theories of hegemonic masculinity, to argue global flows of gangsta culture are gendered and carry with them specific kinds of idealized masculinities in relation to which young people in the study produce themselves. The authors also argue that gangsta culture clearly is not an American phenomenon, despite commonly being associated as such. Rather, its reach is globalizing, appearing everywhere global media texts form part of local communities. Gangsta pedagogies are thus in motion and disjunctive, operating transnationally and having differentiated effects in the lives of young participants involved in the research. In line with this, gangsta masculinities are ubiquitous and constitute sites of constant contest and reconstruction, with the young men involved in this research constructing their masculinities dialogically, in relation to the perceptions of peers, family members, teachers, members of the community and in relation to the contours of local space. Whether young people choose to actively engage with gangsta culture, or are unwillingly engaged with it by virtue of the spaces they traverse, its pedagogical forces effect both problematic and productive performances of racialized, gendered and spatialized identities.

How do young people identify with online and offline peer groups? A comparison between UK, Spain and Japan

Peer groups such as neighbourhoods and hobby circles are important sources of social identity for young people, but their viability is challenged by processes of urbanisation and labour mobility. In recent years, traditional peer groups have been joined by easily accessible computer-mediated groups, which have become an everyday part of life in many countries. In this article, we examine how young people identify with various online and offline peer groups. We compare online and offline identification experiences from the perspective of how socio-demographic position and individual sociability characteristics influence them, and examine how these identification processes differ between national contexts. Empirical analyses are conducted based on a survey of online community users from the UK, Spain and Japan (N=4299). It is found that participants identify as strongly with their online communities as they do with their own families, and stronger than with offline hobby groups. In the mature online societies of the UK and Japan, the online group provides a more socio-demographically inclusive source of identification than traditional leisure-time formations. As friends and family move online, affinity towards online groups is more likely to be a reflection of high sociability than a lack of it. Games, social networking sites and other online environments should be seen as crucial contexts for today's youth's socialisation and identification experiences.

Creating reflexive volunteers? Young people's participation in Czech hospital volunteer programmes

Drawing on a recent ethnographic study of contemporary hospital volunteering in the Czech Republic, this paper explores the changing ideologies underpinning youth volunteering in the Czech context and shows how they may be linked to broader socio-economic and political transformations that have taken place in Czech society following the collapse of state socialism in 1989. Volunteering discourses in the contemporary period promote processes of individualisation, and the experiences of young volunteers highlight volunteering as an activity enabling the construction of distinctive personal identities and biographies. The article examines the extent to which these developments can be illuminated by the theory of reflexive modernisation. It is argued that this thesis can conceptually elucidate the emphasis on reflexivity in the creation of young people's contemporary volunteer identities. At the same time, however, young volunteers' reflexive practices also create the ground for the reformulation of certain well-established health hierarchies and gender inequalities linked to the socialist era.

Identity and apprenticeship: the case of English motor vehicle maintenance apprentices

The paper arises from my PhD thesis on the learner biographies of retail and motor vehicle maintenance apprentices in Germany and England which explores the interrelationship of social structures and individual agency in identity formation over time and in particular learning environments. The paper reports initial findings, focusing largely on the English case study of motor vehicle apprentices. It challenges common assumptions of young people in vocational education in England as second‐chance learners being socialised into pursuing low‐status occupations and invites reflection on the particular model of apprenticeship in England and its role in shaping young people's identity.

Performing Identities in Physical Education

This paper shows how a group of young people and researchers, through their reading of images, performed “identity work” within discourses of the body and gender in physical education. To explore young people's identity narratives and physicality, the researchers used an ethnographic method using photo-elicitation. Findings in this study showed the complex ways girls and boys, picked up, resisted, and negotiated male and female body signifiers by “doing girl” and “doing boy” in the school context. Given these results, the researchers discuss several implications for educators and scholars to consider in working toward the new gender agenda in physical education.

Young people's embodied social capital and performing disability

This paper teases out how the identities of young people with mind–body–emotional differences are performed and reproduced via their social relationships primarily within school spaces. Drawing upon the concept of embodied social capital (Holt 2008), the paper explores empirically how young people's positionings within a variety of social networks (re)produces differentially valued identity positionings which can become embodied within young people's shifting senses of self.

Young People's Identity Formation in Mixed-Faith Families: Continuity or Discontinuity of Religious Traditions?

The present paper draws on a recent ethnographic study which investigated the religious identity formation of young people growing up in mixed-faith families in the UK. Taking into account the parents’ backgrounds in terms of faith tradition, ethnicity, and culture, we explore to what extent and in what way religious values are transmitted from generation to generation. The paper examines the meaning of transmission and places it in the context of earlier research, before looking at processes which facilitate religious transmission and the question of what is transmitted. It then considers the link between culture, religion, ethnicity, and language and how individuals approach these elements. This is followed by a discussion of the role which memory plays in culture and religion, with particular reference to Danièle Hervieu-Léger's concept of religion as a chain of memory and the way it applies to data emerging from our study. Although we focus on two families who participated in our study, we refer to data relating to other families in our project and highlight the importance of grandparents and the extended family in the continuity or rupture in the chains of transmission.

Students' attitudes towards history: does self-identity matter?

Background: In England, the promotion of ‘national values’ within the history curriculum has become an increasingly topical issue in the wake of recent debates about ‘Britishness’ and community cohesion. However, despite the swathe of policy statements and pronouncements, there is little empirical evidence linking young people's identities and their attitudes towards history. Purpose: Drawing on a survey of undergraduates, we explore young people's attitudes towards the history curriculum and how these relate to their ethnic, national and political identity. We anticipated that students ascribing to a strong sense of national identity may be particularly receptive to a traditional approach to teaching national values within history classes, while those with a strong sense of political identity would be receptive to a multicultural approach; and vice versa. Sample: The sample consisted of 353 undergraduates attending five universities in the North of England. The sample was composed of British citizens, the majority of whom would have recently experienced secondary education including discrete or cross-curricular teaching designed to promote ‘British’ national values. Design and methods: Students' attitudes towards history and their self-identity were estimated using a questionnaire survey asking respondents a series of questions about history teaching and identity. Exploratory factor analysis was used to reveal underlying patterns in students' responses to items assessing their attitudes towards history. Items gauging relevant dimensions of self-identification, such as the relative importance of their national identity, along with other individual background characteristics, were then regressed on to attitudes towards history. Results: We found that students' attitudes towards history were connected with two distinct factors: traditional/conservative and multicultural/liberal. The regression results revealed a positive relationship between a strong sense of national identity and a traditional attitude towards history, and, a negative relationship between a strong sense of national identity and a multicultural attitude towards history, even when controlling for students' background characteristics. Conclusions: Our exploratory research suggests that students' self-identity is likely to influence their attitudes towards approaches to history teaching. Educational policy-makers and practitioners must therefore pay careful attention to students' self-identity and the context in which this is formed when seeking to inculcate an inclusive national identity in history classes.

Young People as Agents in Development Processes: reconsidering perspectives for development geography

This paper explores the role of young people in development processes. This is achieved through an examination of the latest developments in literature concerning young people's identity, agency and experiences of power relations and by reflecting on our own empirical research with young people in Zambia (child-headed households) and Uganda (empowerment and sexual health). In particular, we discuss the opportunities and challenges faced by young people in terms of taking greater control over their own lives and contributing to the development of their communities. In doing so we further understanding of how young people (inter)act to improve their own lives and negotiate the challenging—and changing—realities and relationships they experience.

Shaping the night: How licensing, social divisions and informal social controls mould the form and content of nightlife

This paper considers licensing as a governmental tool for controlling crime and disorder in the night-time economy while simultaneously shaping that economy's social mores. Using recent contrasting examples from the English and Welsh experience – the regulation of live music events and lap dancing – the paper shows how licensing frameworks endorse particular social, cultural and economic forms while criminalizing, delegitimizing and suppressing others. Regulation of alcohol sales and entertainment (through licensing) sits in uneasy relationship with contemporary youth/young adult cultures and local leisure scenes. Young people's identities are constructed, in part, by and through their experiences as ‘consumers’ of nightlife. Within this context, heavy sessional alcohol consumption remains an important motif for young people; a culture of intoxication, combined with wider sources of social tension and fragmentation, governs the ‘life of night’ informally and in more subtle, pervasive and effective ways than formal dicta could hope to achieve.

Jovens produzindo identidades sexuais

Nesse artigo analisamos a formação das identidades sexuais de jovens, a partir de uma série de exemplos retirados de trabalhos de campo, no decorrer de vários anos e em diferentes projetos de pesquisa. Argumentamos que os jovens se produzem como atores generificados e sexualizados em e por meio de certas relações centrais. Seus contextos mais imediatos são suas próprias culturas sexuais, formadas em relação a espaços institucionais como escolas, cultura popular comercial e relações domésticas e familiares. Sugerimos que as identidades são poderosamente formadas por meio do que Connell chama de "práticas reflexivas do corpo" - ou seja, o circuito de efeitos entre experiências corporais, vida emocional e explicações culturais. É importante observar, no entanto, que essas experiências e entendimentos são desenvolvidos no contexto de relações sociais de poder. As diferenças sexuais, por exemplo, são sempre acompanhadas e mutuamente moldadas por outras "diferenças que fazem diferença" na vida cotidiana das pessoas, tais como raça, gênero ou corporificação. Interações imediatas, face a face, estão sempre imbuídas de formações culturais mais amplas em torno do sexual, que são reproduzidas e às vezes modificadas em práticas como representação na mídia, processos políticos e legais, venda e consumo de bens, educação e conhecimentos científicos, profissionais e especializados. Sugerimos que tais entendimentos têm implicações consideráveis para práticas profissionais, pois indicam que os praticantes - por exemplo de profissões de cuidado, ensino ou assistência médica - estão direta e ativamente envolvidos na construção da identidade de seus jovens clientes, alunos ou pacientes, ao mesmo tempo em que constroem suas próprias identidades profissionais. Finalizamos argumentando que a prática ética com jovens em relação às suas identidades sexuais emergentes somente é alcançável quando os profissionais são autorreflexivos no que diz respeito às limitações de seus próprios horizontes e cientes de sua parcialidade.

Dialectic of Pornographic Enlightenment

This article introduces a dialectic of pornographic enlightenment through a reading of diaries written by the German avant-garde poet R. D. Brinkmann, and unfolds this basic pattern of modernity both systematically and historically with reference to Adorno and Horkheimer and the history of pornography. The framing of societal negotiations of pornography as a ceaseless shifting between the promise of liberation of and through sexuality and the fear of desensitization and loss of intimacy results in some comments on everyday life in "on/scenity" (Williams) and young people's identity politics ("Generation Porno") in pornographied pop cultures.

The internet, youth participation policies, and the development of young people's political identities in Australia

In Australia, renewed interest in the principles of youth participation during the last decade has led to an increase in the development of youth participation policies, in both the government and non-government sectors. At the same time, the internet is being increasingly utilised to promote and implement the aims of these youth participation policies. This paper asks, what is the relationship between youth participation policies, the internet and young people's political identities? Is the internet simply a vehicle for participation policies – a mechanism for governments and organisations to extend their reach to otherwise disengaged youth? Or is it a space where young people are authoring new forms of participation and political identities? It is argued in this paper that the internet is significant in shaping the relationship between youth participation policies and new political identities in the following ways: it is a unique and autonomous platform for the realisation of project-based political identities; it is a legitimising space for new political practices of young people; and, though it can address some barriers to participation, there is little evidence to suggest that it challenges the economic structural disadvantage that can exclude certain groups of young people. Drawing on empirical research conducted in Australia, this paper provides insights into Australian young people's experiences of participation, their attitudes to participation policies, and the role of the internet in their participatory activities.