Precarious Youth Research Articles

변종 가족의 출현, 청소년의 미완 가족 만들기 -2010년대 청소년 ‘가출팸’ 영화를 중심으로-

This study focuses on the films “Another's Melody(2014)”, “Dream Jane(2016)”, and “Park Hwa-young(2018)”, which are based on “Gachulfam” among independent youth films of the 2010s. The aim was to examine the aspects of reproduction and their meanings. Movies dealing with youth deviance continue to exist throughout this age. The meaning of runaway, which was understood as rebellion and beating, changed with the times, and “Gachulfam” became a precarious youth in the 2010s. In this situation, this study noted that the appearance of the “Gachulfam” made by adolescents from post-family families can be interpreted as a way of living and revealing their consciousness in the reality of crisis. First, the “home” as a fluid and open space created by the youth of the three “Gachulfam” films reveal the fear of isolation and causes relationship obsession. Second, the “Gachulfam” made by the youth is a kind of abnormal family that is not recognized in the existing society. However, owing to the irresponsible and incomplete appearance of adults, including parents, teenagers are gaining an upper hand in power relations and the positivity of family building. Third, these families are completed by re-calling the “dedicated mother”. However, the pursuit of motherhood, which appears in “Gachulfam”, stands at a different point from the existing maternal ideology that led to the establishment of patriarchal authority for the survival of the family. Therefore, it is meaningful because it has the possibility of an incomplete but new family.

Преодоление неопределенности: феномен нестандартной занятости молодежи

The article examines the phenomenon of precarious youth employment and examines strategies to overcome the associated uncertainties. Precarious youth employment refers to the prevalence of temporary, insecure and low-quality employment opportunities among young people, resulting in economic, social and psychological problems. The article emphasizes the importance of providing young people with conditions for employment opportunities, analyzing the positive and negative aspects of non-standard employment.

Precarious Young Adults' Mental Health during the Pandemic: The Major Impact of Food Insecurity Independently of COVID-19 Diagnosis.

The COVID-19 pandemic had a major impact on mental health across populations, especially young and precarious people. Furthermore, COVID-19 diagnosis itself has been associated with psychiatric symptoms. However, only a few studies have assessed the mental health of precarious youth, and examined a possible association with food insecurity, while including COVID-19 diagnosis in their analyses. We aimed to determine the prevalence of poor mental health in precarious youth during the COVID-19 pandemic, and to investigate its possible association with food insecurity, independently of COVID-19 diagnosis. In a cross-sectional study conducted in the context of an employment program for precarious youth (18-25 years) living in Paris, France, 823 individuals were assessed for depression, anxiety, subjective distress and food insecurity during the second lockdown of 2020. A directed acyclic graph (DAG)-based approach was used to identify confounders for inclusion in a multivariate regression model. Of the 823 precarious youth, 45.93% reported significant symptoms of depression, 36.69% anxiety, 39% distress and 25.39% suicidal ideation. In the multivariate analysis based on DAG, food insecurity (less than one meal per day) was associated with depression (OR = 2.30; CI%: 1.19-4.51), anxiety (OR = 2.51; CI%: 1.29-4.88), distress (OR = 2.36; CI%: 1.23-4.57) and suicidal ideation (OR = 4.81; CI%: 2.46-9.44), independently of age, gender, education, COVID-19 contact and COVID-19 diagnosis. This study highlights the importance of food insecurity on mental health among young precarious people during the COVID-19 pandemic. Reducing food insecurity is essential to help reduce psychological distress.

Gangs and the Gig Economy: Triads, Precarity and Illicit Work in Hong Kong

Abstract Paid employment in the criminal economy is, in many ways, the essence of precarious labour yet to date criminological work on the so-called ‘gig economy’ is scarce. Here we apply emergent sociological literature on ‘post-Fordist’ working cultures to precarious youth employment in Hong Kong, arguing: (1) recent reorganizations of labour markets towards flexible entrepreneurship are mirrored in the illicit economy; (2) a shift in structural features of triad gangs has led to a parallel form of ‘network sociality’; and (3) triad-affiliated youth remained rooted in place-based ‘communities of practice’ that form a point of difference from existing theory. In concluding, we reflect on the implications of these arguments for the study of illicit economies, triads and post-Fordist working cultures.

Redrawing the Division Lines?

This article examines Cold War icons transfigured in new media ecology by looking at the South Korean webtoon (web cartoon) Secretly, Greatly. In featuring the superfluous existence of kanch’ŏp (North Korean spies) dispatched to the South, the graphic narrative interweaves the legacy of national division with the sensibilities of the millennial generation. Feeling that their lives are rendered ingyŏ (surplus) under neoliberal governance, the precarious youth empathetically relate to the history-laden image of spies, whose belonging in society has been disavowed or forsaken. Appropriating earlier aesthetic conventions, Secretly, Greatly thus offers content and a channel through which the surplus generation can express and share their sense of misplacement in the present. In addressing such remediation of inherited memories, this study critically attends to the webtoon’s formal qualities that evoke affective engagement and connective practices in the digital space. By fostering multisensory interactions with the kanch’ŏp-ingyŏ personas on the screen, the graphic power of comics invites the viewer to participate in the characters’ boundary-crossing movements against the geopolitical backdrop of divided Korea. Nonetheless, the webtoon ultimately leaves the survival of North Korean others beyond the realm of the visible because their ordinary coexistence in the South is yet to be imagined.

유동하는 청년들의 미디어 노동 : 2 · 30대 미디어 생산자를 중심으로

미디어 노동의 유연화가 심화되는 과정에서 미디어 생산자 연구는 다양한 ‘주변부’ 노동자들을 대상으로 확장되어 왔다. 이러한 맥락에서 이 연구는 외주/독립 제작사 PD, 종합편성채널 PD, 웹 기획 콘텐츠 제작사의 대표 제작자, 유튜브 크리에이터이자 프리랜서 PD 등 미디어 콘텐츠 제작 산업에서 다양한 ‘주변부’ 노동자로 일하고 있는 2 · 30대 청년 9명을 대상으로 심층 인터뷰를 실시하였다. 지상파 방송사 중심의 안정적인 노동 시장에 청년층이 진입하는 사례가 극히 드물어진 시점에서 미디어 산업의 노동 유연화는 청년층이 가진 개별적 자본과 상황에 따라 다양한 방식으로 나타나고 있다. 그러나 프로젝트성 노동은 청년들의 개별적 차이에 관계없이 열악한 노동조건을 구성하고 있다. 또 미디어 산업 시장이 정규직/비정규직의 ‘이중 시장’으로 구성되면서 청년기의 노동이 안정적인 노동 환경으로 이행해 갈 가능성은 희박하다. 인터뷰 참여 청년들은 미디어 콘텐츠 제작이 주는 즐거움과 보람, 희열 등을 기반으로 미래의 삶을 계획하고 있었으나, 열악한 노동 현장의 현실에 대해 이직이나 침묵, 자기 정당화 등의 개별적 대응을 하고 있었으며, 장기적인 삶의 계획이나 ‘저녁이 있는’ 안정된 삶을 유예하고 있었다. 또, 웹 콘텐츠 시장의 확장으로 청년들의 기회가 더 확대되기도 하였으나, 대체로 경쟁의 심화, 유연화된 노동의 일반화를 경험하고 있었다.

Working class youth transitions as a litmus test for change: labour crisis and social conflict in Arab Mediterranean countries

ABSTRACT The article reconceptualizes the issue of youth precariousness and unemployment by taking empirical data from five Arab Mediterranean countries, namely Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Occupied Palestinian Territories and Lebanon. It demonstrates that youth worsening labour conditions point not only to the problems of a specific age-cohort in entering the labour market but also to a much larger process of change that can be best understood as the creation of a new working class which is by far more precarious and fragmented than the post-independence one. The reaction to the profound reconfiguration of labour relations is intense, as the unparalleled labour-related protests in the region demonstrate. However, current dynamics of mobilization reveal many tensions between wage, secure workers, and precarious unemployed youth, as well as between secure-workers themselves due to growing fragmentation of the working class, but also to repressive and divide et impera strategies carried out by regimes.

Rebelling Against Time: Recreational Activism as Political Practice Among the Italian Precarious Youth

Hit by the economic and political crisis, young people in Italy face increased labor precarity and the disillusionment derived from the disappearance of the radical Left from the parliamentary arena. In the Italian context, economic hardship, the decrease of resources available for collective action, and the weakened mobilizing capacity that traditional mass organizations (such as trade unions and political parties) retained in the first decade of the 2000s brought about a general decline in intensity and visibility of street protests, leading to an apparent retreat of activism to the local level of action. Although the crisis had a negative impact on collective action, evidence reveals that more creative and less visible forms of societal and political commitment were adopted by young generations in these years. This article explores how the Italian youth in times of crisis engaged actively in alternative and unconventional forms of political commitment aimed at re-appropriating space, free time, and access to leisure, mainly by means of mutualistic practices. Based on data from qualitative semistructured interviews with key informants and activists, this article sheds light on recreational activism, adopted as a political practice by the Italian youth active in counter-cultural spaces, nowadays at the forefront of the struggle to oppose the commodification of free time and leisure.

Economies of Childness in Cynthia Voigt\u2019s Homecoming

This paper focuses on the ways in which multiple constructions of childhood are produced, consumed and exchanged as child characters negotiate the adult world in Homecoming (1981), the first of Cynthia Voigt’s Tillerman novels. Drawing on Peter Hollindale’s ideas about interactions and exchanges between children and adults, the paper explores the ways in which the agency of Voigt’s child characters is limited and conditioned by adult ideas about them. Yet at the same time, the children are often depicted as being able to turn these ideas to their advantage. In Homecoming’s symbolic and material economies, questions about trust, risk and value come to the fore, painting a picture of precarious youth that both reflects and expands existing debates on childhood outside the text. The paper is framed in terms of entrepreneurialism, the criminality ascribed to unaccompanied children, questions of autonomy and capacity and, finally, constructions of gender.

Precariousness, youth and political participation: the emergence of a new political cleavage

AbstractThe article aims at disentangling the existing relation between job precariousness and political participation at the individual level illustrating that the former can be considered an emerging political cleavage. The authors apply an interpretive framework typical of political participation studies to an original data set composed of two groups of young workers (with precarious and open-ended contracts) in a big Italian post-industrial city, Turin. First, applying a confirmatory factor analysis, a typology of three ‘modes’ of political participation – voting, collective action, and political consumerism – is used to reduce data complexity. Second, logistic regressions are deployed to analyze the role played by occupational status, political positioning, and the interaction between the two, on the different modes of political participation. Precarious youth show a higher level of political participation in representational behaviours (voting). Left-wing youth are generally more active than non-left-wing ones in non-representational behaviours (collective actions and consumerism), the impact is more pronounced for precarious young people. Thus, results demonstrate the relevance of occupational status in explaining patterns of participation and invite scholars to promote a dialogue between industrial relations and political participation studies.

Género, vulnerabilidad y precariedad de los jóvenes de la Ciudad de México en la reproducción de la desigualdad social

This paper analyzes, from a theoretical point of view, the development of an explanation of Mexican youth social vulnerability through some statistical evidence, which showed the weakness of institutions, which have been favorable to the reproduction of gender inequality that is linked at the same time to the context of poverty and social inequality. It is concluded that in Mexico City precarious youth plays in various ways despite the institutionalization of the different social assistance programs.

The struggles of precarious youth in Tunisia: the case of the Kerkennah movement

ABSTRACTThis article analyses the origins and the dynamics of the social movement against the energy corporation Petrofac that took place in the Tunisian archipelago of Kerkennah between 2011 and 2016. The Kerkennah movement is seen as part of a broader cycle of mobilisations for social justice that started in 2008 and continues to the present day. The main subjects of these mobilisations are young people lacking sources of regular income and their core demands are secure employment and local development. It is argued that communal solidarities were key in compensating for the lack of occupational cohesion among the protesters.

What about the welfare state? exploring precarious youth political participation in the age of grievances

In this paper, the authors analyse non-institutionalised political participation patterns of precarious urban youth in five European cities—Cologne (Germany), Geneva (Switzerland), Kielce (Poland), Lyon (France) and Turin (Italy)—following the 2008 financial crisis. In particular, the aim is to test the validity of the ‘grievance theory’ on precarious youth. In fact, the political participation of precarious youth has been overlooked to date. The article shows that across the cities, precarious workers exhibit higher levels of political participation owing to a sense of relative deprivation with respect to their regularly employed counterparts. The authors apply a logit analysis to duly consider the local context (i.e. unemployment regulations and labour market regulations). The empirical results show that precarious youth are more active than regular workers when unemployment regulations and labour market regulations are at their intermediate level, featuring as ‘issue-specific’ political opportunity structures. In sum, the article contributes to the debate on occupational disadvantage and political participation, shifting the focus on precarious young workers.

Returns: Youth, Time, and Maturity in The Ambassadors

In this essay, I study numerous spatiotemporal returns in The Ambassadors to make three points. First, youth is multitemporal and relational rather than chronological and individual in this novel. A chronological view of Strether’s lost youth and Chad’s precarious youth eludes the returns of Strether’s young self and his dead son to figure in Strether’s relationship with Chad. Second, Strether’s consciousness analytically moves forward by temporally moving backward: his progress has to be backward. And third, Strether and Chad are boyish characters not necessarily because they are immature by nature but because their representations botch the telos of maturity.

Youth policy in austerity Europe: the case of Greece

This article addresses young people's declining power in the Greek labour market due to the implementation of sweeping austerity policies and the consequent expansion of youth precarious employment and unemployment since the first bailout agreement in 2010. The analysis concludes that the crisis has acted as a catalyst for worsening of the employment situation of young people. Nevertheless, the social and employment disadvantage for youth has strong historical roots and it can be only partially explained by the crisis, as long before the crisis precarious forms of employment and unemployment rates were already higher than the adult levels. Finally, the article concludes that precarious youth employment and high youth unemployment levels are two sides of the same coin of poverty and social exclusion risk.

Life out of Synch: How New Patterns of Further Education and the Rise of Precarious Employment Are Reshaping Young People’s Relationships

Young people increasingly mix study with variable hours of employment in a precarious youth labour market. Drawing on interview material from 50 participants (supported by questionnaire data from 1294 participants) from a longitudinal study of the post-secondary school transitions in Australia, this article explores how these patterns of work and study impact on young people’s friendships. As the participants left school they moved into new courses of study, in which timetables shifted each semester, and employment in which the hours they worked also varied, sometimes each week. This increasingly common temporal structure shaped the participants’ lives in inconsistent and singular ways that made it more challenging for many, but not all, to find regular periods of shared time to maintain close friendships and to build new acquaintances into deeper friendships. Some participants had the resources to manage this emerging variable temporal structure without it having a major impact on their relationships.

Union responses to the rise of precarious youth employment in Greece

The ways unions have responded so far to the emergence of precarious employment among young people in Greece are critically analysed in this article. The analysis considers that traditional forms of regulation and union representation are not effective in protecting young workers from the risk of vulnerability at work. It further makes the case for a radical strategic reorientation of the Greek trade unions placing greater emphasis on organising and attracting young precarious workers through more appropriate representation structures and engagement strategies at the workplace level.