Middle-class Young People Research Articles

Youth Movements: Travel, Protest, and Europe in 1968

THE YEAR 1968 WAS A SIGNIFICANT MOMENT in the cultural history of European integration. The events of that year marked a turning point in the emergence of a cohort of young people who had come, through travel, to conceive of themselves not merely as members of a particular nation, but as a continent-wide, transnational social group.1 It was a group based largely on age, and one that professed culturally internationalist sensibilities in addition to, and often instead of, nationalist sensibilities. As young Europeans traveled between protest sites, they expressed this solidarity explicitly; some even demanded the abolition of national borders and the establishment of a united Europe with unhindered mobility. Thus, one aspect of the general internationalism of 1968 was specifically Europeanist and was expressed within the context of ongoing European integration. The experience of travel within the emergent youth culture helped to shape a politicized European identity among the young protesters of 1968. The ease and frequency with which middle-class young people in the 1960s traveled to cities such as Amsterdam, Berlin, London, Paris, and Prague created interpersonal solidarities that were crucial to the formation of movements that challenged national demarcations of power. More than mobilization, travel became the foundation for a youth identity that emphasized mobility and built a shared political

Using Bourdieu's Concept of Habitus to Explore Narratives of Transition

Written as part of a doctoral thesis exploring young people's educational decision making, this article focuses on the stories of three of those students. The study on which the article draws is located in two institutions: an independent school and a sixth-form college. It follows 12 middle-class young people through their two years of A level study prior to university. The thesis argues for educational decision making as a classed practice, using Bourdieu's trilogy of habitus, capital and field to develop a more nuanced understanding than that offered by occupationally defined social class. This article focuses on the narratives of three of those students. Drawing on their narratives of transition, the article aims to explore how far the concept of habitus can be used in empirical research. It is concluded that whilst there are limitations to what habitus offers as a research tool, it is a concept worth grappling with. If its promise is partially fulfilled, at the very least it accentuates the inadequacy of defining individuals through the labels of social class. Above all, habitus embraces continuity and change, offering a more fluid and dynamic understanding of classed identities.

Youth transitions to urban, middle-class marriage in Indonesia: faith, family and finances

This paper examines a timely topic in international youth studies – the transition to (middle-class) marriage – in a developing country, Indonesia. While early marriage in Indonesia is still common in rural areas and marriage itself remains almost universal, these trends are moving into reverse for urban, tertiary-educated middle-class young people. Discussion of the data begins with an analysis of survey responses and ‘fictionalised’ fieldwork narratives, and then moves to a discourse analysis of classified personal advertisements in Kompas, the national daily Indonesian newspaper geared to middle-class, urban, secular interests. Some provisional claims are offered about de-traditionalisation and re-traditionalisation trends in contemporary transitions to marriage for urban middle-class Indonesian young people of both sexes. It is concluded that contemporary transitions to successful marriage in Indonesia take place in reference to the three key tenets of faith, family and finances.

"Keepin' It Real": White Hip‐Hoppers' Discourses of Language, Race, and Authenticity

This study investigates the discursive construction of authenticity among white middle‐class young people in the New York City area who affiliate with hip‐hop. It explores the ways in which hip‐hop mediates the adoption of African American English‐influenced speech by these young people and how this phenomenon complicates traditional sociolinguistic conceptions of identity. There is a discourse within hip‐hop that privileges the urban black street experience. This forces white middle‐class hip‐hoppers whose race and class origins distance them from this socially located space to construct themselves linguistically as authentic via both form and content.

Linking Clients and Policy: Social Work's Distinctive Contribution

Social work's unique and distinctive contribution to American life, often expressed as a dual focus on the person and his or her environment, resulted from a specific frame of reference that linked clients and social policy. From the earliest origins of the profession, social workers understood the relationships between individuals and primary groups and between primary groups anti forces in the larger environment. This frame of reference provided an orientation to action that placed interventions in the environment on a par with interventions with the client system (Gordon & Schutz, 1977). This dual focus, unique to social workers, was evident during the profession's formative years - the period between the 1890s and the coming of the New Deal in the 1930s - and continues to be important today. This article discusses social workers' linkage of clients - initially conceptualized as neighbors and charity cases - and social policy concerns during the profession's formative years. The article concludes with a case study of a social policy effort, the ultimately successful campaign to enact social standards for industry. Early Social Work: Settlements and Charity Organization Both of the institutions traditionally associated with, the origins of the social work profession - charity organization societies and settlement houses - began as efforts to organize the local community and to introduce a personal relationship among workers - settlement residents, district agents, and friendly visitors - and clients-neighbors and charity cases. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, industrialization, urbanization, immigration, and internal migration from rural areas to cities transformed American society. Previously a nation made up of small island communities, the United States increasingly became organized nationally (Weibe, 1967). Urbanization and industrialization characterized the emerging nation. The largest cities grew in size, and there were more of them. The proportion of urban dwellers increased from less than 20 percent in 1860 to nearly 40 percent in 1900 and more than 50 percent by 1920 (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1975). As industrial production replaced agriculture as the major source of national wealth, business institutions became larger and more influential. Concomitantly, the disparity between rich and poor increased, and the likelihood of a personal relationship between poor people and wealthy people lessened. Reformers created settlement houses and charity organization societies to respond to the changing American city. Both settlement residents and charity workers were quick to perceive the interrelationships between local and state movements, state and regional developments, and local and national phenomena. These formative professional institutions, which oriented members of the first generation of social workers to their new profession, had in common an orientation to the community and to viewing the person as embedded in the community system. Each movement was based on English precedents - London's Toynbee Hall and other English social settlements and the English Charity Organisation Societies - but each movement developed a distinctive American pattern. Both movements owed much to the example of Thomas Chalmers, an early 19th century Scottish critic of the Poor Laws, who organized a parish-based system of charity to replace the poor law in Glasgow during the early 19th century (de Schweinitz, 1943). Settlement Houses Settlement houses responded to two complementary social imperatives of late 19th century America. Settlements had objective value because they addressed the increasing fragmentation of American life that resulted from the growing contrasts between rich and poor people, native born and immigrants, and Protestants and Catholics in late 19th century America (Addams, 1893a). In addition, the settlements responded to a subjective necessity that resulted from the lack of meaningful opportunities for middle-class young people, especially women (Addams, 1893b). …

Six weeks to twenty-one years old: a longitudinal study of children with Down's syndrome and their families. Third Jack Tizard memorial lecture.

A cohort of children with Down's syndrome, and their families, have been seen at intervals from six weeks old. Some follow-up data to 21 yrs are reported here. Until 21 yrs when one mother withdrew her son there have been no losses to the study apart from those caused by death. Mean IQs rose slightly from 11 to 21; scores on language and academic tests favoured the home-reared, females, and middle-class young people even when IQ was allowed for. Some of the effects on the family of having a handicapped member were explored; although adverse effects are fewer than might have been expected many parents, especially mothers, carry significant burdens.