Young People's Everyday Research Articles

Introduction to special issue: youth, rural places and marginalisation

ABSTRACT This Special Issue on Youth, Rural Places and Marginalisation, brings together nine papers from six countries – Australia, England, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden – to explore young people's experiences of living in rural locations. We focused on rural youth for two main reasons: firstly, there are relatively few sociological studies of young people's experience of rural life and, secondly, academics and policymakers have tended to frame discussions about young people and rural places in negative terms. Together the papers here use a wide range of methods – quantitative and qualitative longitudinal approaches, questionnaire surveying, face-to-face and online qualitative interviews, ethnography, visual methods, ‘mobile probes', ‘walk-along' and ‘drive-along' interviews – in order to understand young people's everyday life. We were particularly interested in the stories of young people who appeared to resist ‘the mobility imperative' and chose to stay rather than leave their rural homes. Our introduction focuses on ‘rethinking concepts of staying'; ‘gender and the risks of staying' and ‘geographies of rural opportunities'. We conclude with a call for a sociological imagination of rural youth that avoids romanticizing narratives of ‘the rural idyll’ or which paints rural places and populations as backward or lacking.

Young people's experiences of addiction to nicotine vaping products: A qualitative analysis from Aotearoa New Zealand.

Young people who use nicotine-containing electronic cigarettes, or 'vapes', risk becoming addicted to these products. While several studies document dependency symptoms, few report in-depth qualitative analyses of addiction. We explored experiences of self-reported vaping addiction using in-depth interviews with 22 young people aged 16-20 years who vaped and lived in Aotearoa New Zealand. Our semi-structured interview guide probed participants' early experiences and how they progressed from experimentation to addiction and explored how addiction affected their perceptions and daily routines. We used an inductive reflexive thematic analysis approach to interpret the data. Vaping's pervasiveness piqued participants' curiosity and encouraged trial. Most transitioned from experimentation to addiction within a couple of months; while a minority described a slower progression, nearly all felt irritable, angry or uncomfortable if they had to delay vaping. Intense cravings disrupted school and work routines and dictated how they spent their time. Many deeply regretted vaping and some suffered shame and embarrassment. These participants saw vaping as a threat to the well-being of younger youth, which they tried to shield from addiction. We go beyond earlier studies by probing the burden vaping comes to represent, offering new insights into young people's everyday experiences of vaping addiction. In addition to informing health promotion campaigns, our findings could inform policy directions. Understanding the speed with which addiction can occur, its impact on daily life, and the considerable regret many felt could help inform a more strategic and sorely needed approach to reducing youth vaping.

Social Media Use and Sleep Quality Among Secondary School Students in Aseer Region: A Cross-Sectional Study.

Use of different social media platforms has increased radically over the past decade, emerging as an important part of adolescents and young people's everyday life. This might exert potential adverse effects on sleep quality and daytime performance of young adults. To assess the relation between use of social media platforms and sleep quality among public secondary school students. A cross-sectional study was conducted on 961 students in Aseer region, Saudi Arabia. Students were asked to fill in a structured interview questionnaire covering personal data, pattern of social media use, sleep quality using The Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) and their mental health status using the depression, anxiety and stress scale (DASS-21). Students' ages ranged from 15 to 20 years with a mean age of 16.7 ± 2.1 years old. A total of 570 (59.3%) students were females. Tiktok (80%), Snapchat (77.9%), Instagram (63.8%) and YouTube (58.8%) were the most reported platforms used. Regarding their sleep quality, 34.7% of students were poor sleepers. TikTok use (OR 1.33, 95% CI 1.01-1.77), hours spent on social media (OR 1.26, 95% CI 1.16-1.37) and having moderate to severe depressive symptoms (OR 1.69, 95% CI 1.19-2.40) were significant independent predictors of poor sleep among the studied sample. The present study emphasized the association between prolonged use of social media and poor sleep quality among Saudi adolescents. Awareness and behavioral change strategies and activities concerning the drawbacks of poor sleep and proper use of social media are urgently called for to control mental and physical health consequences of poor sleep and social media addiction.

Água negra (black water) and overwhelming details: For more-than-nexus approaches to global water–energy–food challenges

This paper advances multidisciplinary research, policy, education and activisms which cohere around the concept of the ‘water–energy–food (W–E–F) nexus’ via an evidence-led critique of normative forms of nexus-thinking which draws upon research with 3705 diverse young people's (aged 10–24 years) W–E–F experiences in SE Brazil. We consider how the neat, cool, ostensibly authoritative buzzword style of W–E–F nexus-thinking is radically unsettled – and sometimes conceptually-critically overwhelmed – via encounters with social scientific data in practice. In particular, the paper presents two interlinked analyses of data relating to young people's everyday engagements with water resources. First, we present a quantitative analysis of young people's everyday participation with/in water resources, highlighting diversities and inequities in relation to age, gender, ethnicity and social class, among other modes of social–cultural heterogeneity and intersectionality. Second, we present a qualitative narration of young people's water-related anxieties, evidencing their intimate everyday interrelations with watery materialities and insecurities – ‘black water’, ‘muddy water’, ‘shit water’ and all. In so doing, we advance an argument for what we term more-than-nexus-thinking: i.e., forms of research, theory and practice which value the apparent conceptual-ethical clarity and interoperability of nexus-thinking, whilst actively thinking-with complexities and deeply-affecting lived experiences of W–E–F in everyday spaces.

Perceptions and practices of healthcare providers in providing HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis to trans adolescents and young adults and men who have sex with men.

This study aims to understand the perceptions and practices of healthcare providers regarding the offer of HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) to gay and trans adolescents and young adults. This qualitative research was developed as part of the PrEP1519 study, which was conducted from 2018 to 2021 to analyze the effectiveness of PrEP in adolescents and young adults. Data were collected from July 2020 to February 2021 at the municipality of São Paulo by combining participant observations and semi-structured interviews. The analytical process involved immersion in the empirical material and coding and categorizing it with the support of NVivo®. Interpretation followed the hermeneutic-dialectical principle and had the concept of Care in health practices as its horizon. The construction of trust-based relationships followed practices that acknowledge the uniqueness of youth and their demands and sought to strengthen their autonomy. Sensitive and supportive listening was pointed out as a welcoming practice that propelled care actions. Welcoming attitudes and support in facing stigma and violence (related or not to the use of PrEP) acknowledged the need to support adolescents and young adults to develop autonomy for prevention. The use of language close to young people's everyday life favored the construction of relationships of trust and positively influenced the development of autonomy and adherence to PrEP. The tension between technical and practical success occurred in the idealized search for adult-centric normativity as opposed to intersubjectivity. The perceptions and practices of healthcare providers are aligned with the concept of Care as they include actions beyond technical knowledge and recognize the contexts that increase the vulnerability of adolescents and young adults to HIV.

Exploring young trans people's everyday experiences of ‘out‐of‐placeness’ and socio‐bodily dysphoria

AbstractThis paper examines how young trans people come to be positioned as, and subsequently feel, ‘out‐of‐place’ in certain everyday spaces, particularly in the socio‐political context of the contemporary UK. Through the stories of young trans people aged 14–25 collected via participatory research, I question what it feels like to be young and trans and to experience and embody such dislocating feelings as ‘out‐of‐placeness’ and socio‐bodily dysphoria, and what toll repeatedly experiencing such embodied emotions exacts on young trans people, their bodies, and life trajectories. To do so, the experience of misgendering and deadnaming, others' hostile gazes, and what I refer to as socio‐bodily dysphoria, are introduced as examples of common modes of cisnormativity and ‘out‐of‐placeness’ experienced by participants. I build on Sara Ahmed's work on the socio‐spatial positioning and experience of non‐conforming or disruptive bodies to examine how trans youth and marginalised folk more generally become ‘out‐of‐place’ and experience ‘out‐of‐placeness’ in everyday space‐times that are not affectively, socially, or materially structured to expect their bodily presence, facilitate their participation, or enable their active agency, particularly on gendered terms. Importantly, a central contribution of the article involves articulating a spatial conceptualisation of socio‐bodily dysphoria. In sum, I develop geographical analyses of young trans people's everyday encounters and crucially build geographical understandings of the emergence and fixity of socio‐bodily dysphoria and everyday marginality through the voices and stories of trans youth.

Exploring young people's experiences of race, gender and socioeconomic status in relation to everyday challenges: A focus group study

AbstractReports indicate a decrease in youth mental health in Sweden but at the same time research suggests that what is interpreted as mental ill‐health could be considered everyday challenges by young people themselves. The distribution of mental health and illness among young people is uneven based on inequities related to factors such as race, gender and socioeconomic status. Sweden in particular is a country with large socioeconomic inequities in youth mental health and in school results, compared to other European countries. The aim of this study was to explore young people's experiences of the role of race, gender and socioeconomic status in relation to everyday challenges. Sixty‐five young people aged 13–15 years old were recruited by student health services and participated in focus group discussions at schools in the southernmost part of Sweden. Data were analysed by secondary analysis with deductive qualitative content analysis using Ecosocial theory of disease distribution as theoretical framework. The analysis resulted in one main theme; Navigating inequities to gain and keep social status, with three underlying themes; Guided by social norms, Negative impact in everyday life and Importance of family influence. Participants were aware and critical of norms and expectations related to race, gender and socioeconomic status. Experiences of prejudice and unfairness was both own lived experiences by the participants as well as observed through friends and classmates. Young people spontaneously identify everyday challenges related to race, gender and socioeconomic status, even when not asked directly about these issues. Conforming to sexist, racist and classist, expectations is a way to lose and gain status in a school setting. Many of the inequities discussed related to socioeconomic status and the direct consequences of having or not having money. Young people's everyday experience of inequities is important to consider in youth mental health promotion aiming to tackle health inequities. Further research is needed on those experiences and how this affects mental health.

Emotions matter: EMPOWER-ing youth by integrating emotions of (chronic) disaster risk into strategies for disaster preparedness

In a context where disaster risk has become a chronic, continuous condition, this paper explores new pathways for creating long-term (emotional) resilience. I show that emotions matter as part of devising community-based and formal educational strategies for disaster risk reduction and preparedness. Focus is on exploring young people's everyday emotional experiences in situations of recurrent disaster risk, such as flooding and landslides. The article draws on lessons learned from participatory and community-based research with 30 young people in the urban periphery of Sao Paulo, Brazil, as well as educational approaches on dealing with climate anxiety and ecological distress. Results indicate that participants tended to ‘normalise’ risk while using humour to engage with difficult emotions. Results however also show that with the tools at hand to acknowledge, validate and engage with the emotions of disaster risk, youth can develop and cultivate hope, improve individual coping behaviours, and recognise their agency without minimising or denying their experience. To guide interdisciplinary disaster risk scholars and practitioners in developing a process of reflective participation and collaborative peer- and intergenerational learning about disaster risk, I developed the EMPOWER framework. I suggest that by openly engaging with and sharing emotions across the researcher/practitioner and participant divide, we can develop critical reflexivity and collective hope as part of a praxis for improved wellbeing and disaster preparedness.

Moving through, interacting with, and caring for the city. Children's and young people's everyday experiences in smart cities

In recent years, smart city programmes have focused on innovation and technology to transform cities into resource-efficient, liveable, and inclusive places. Children's and young people's positions in smart cities are unstable and, depending on a project's agenda, ever-shifting – at the centre of a bottom-up movement, on the fringes of top-down planned programmes. This article revolves around the everyday experiences of children and young people and explores how they encounter life in a smart city district. It draws on observations from a qualitative case study with children and young people in a Viennese neighbourhood where an EU smart city lighthouse project was implemented from 2016 to 2019. Drawing on ethnographic research with children and young people in a school, an afterschool centre, and an open child and youth care programme in a city park, I develop three dimensions of encounters: how children and young people move through, interact with, and take care of the city. My findings show that many children and young people perceive crises with the same urgency as smart city programmes and are equally interested in technological innovation, environmental protection, and social inclusion. They demonstrate responsibility and care about socio-ecological challenges and approaches to solutions. However, young people's discourses and practices also show that urban life cannot be limited to certain issues, nor do young people's urban lives end at structural or administrative boundaries. Participants also emphasise that focusing on human beings alone does not lead to sustainable urban development, and they express frustration with measures that bypass the reality of their lives and divert much-needed attention away from pressing issues.

Young trans people's experiences of leisure and mental health: Belonging, creativity, and navigation

There is a lack of research on young trans people's everyday leisure. This article analyses how leisure, defined within a broad spatial context beyond sport and physical activity, is perceived and experienced by trans youth in relation to their mental health and wellbeing. We draw upon theoretical concepts of cisnormativity and spatiality to our analysis of sixteen interviews with young trans people (16-25 years old) in Sweden. Three themes emerged. The first refers to how both queer- and non-queer-specific leisure spaces connect people with similar (and different) experiences regarding queer and trans identities and shows how these identities can shift in importance. The second highlights how creative spaces (e.g., theatre, cosplay) can offer opportunities to carve out a leisured space to explore different gender identity/ies and expressions that are often crucial and life changing. The final theme illustrates how leisure is avoided, postponed, waited for, and reclaimed by trans youth. Excluding mechanisms such as transphobia, cisnormativity, and the lack of access to gender-confirming care can hinder young people's leisure participation. Our analysis illustrates the complex connections between leisure and mental health among young people with trans experiences. Leisure can be a source of discomfort and distress but also of belongingness and affirmation of one's identity. Finding and accessing strengthening leisure spaces demands emotional investment, engagement, and navigation.

Breathing new futures in polluted environments (Taranto, Italy)

AbstractThis paper analyses the ways that young people create new futures in Taranto, Southern Italy, a city hosting one of the largest and most polluting steel factories in Europe. It draws on ethnographic fieldwork in Taranto and uses storytelling to understand how young people – a minority of residents aged between 24 and 35 years – shape futures in industrially polluted environments. The study weaves together geographic and anthropological scholarship about futures in (post‐)industrial cities, conceptualisations of breathing as well as lived experiences in highly polluted areas. Through mobilising the notion of breathing, we highlight the embodied, entangled, and emotional dimensions of the young people's everyday practices and develop our concept of “breathing new futures.” We argue that both pollution and the envisioning of a new future become visible in everything the study's participants do; the ways they promote environmental awareness, take care of animals, or seek to foster children's education. By focusing on generational differences, the study expands on recent scholarship analysing environmental pollution in relation to intersectional identities such as race, ethnicity, and gender, and sheds light on the activities of young people to imagine and live new futures in polluted environments.

Class conditioning and class positioning in young people's everyday life with digital media: Exploring new forms of class-making in the Swedish media welfare state

Abstract In this article, I explore how social class shapes the conditions and configurations of digital media practice in the everyday life of young people in Sweden. Drawing on Bourdieusian theory and qualitative interview data from two research projects, I complicate the notion of Sweden as a universally wired media welfare state by showing how economic and cultural forces are structuring Internet access and digital media practice along the lines of preexisting social divisions. Invoking Bourdieu's conceptualisation of social classes as defined both intrinsically and relationally, I identify and exemplify two different but interrelated processes whereby class makes a difference in young people's everyday relationship to digital media: class conditioning and class positioning. I conclude the article by arguing that distinguishing between these processes might offer a better understanding of the relationship between class and everyday media practice. The complexities of advancing a welfare-oriented media policy in the age of digital media are also discussed.

Bringing the Falklands/Malvinas Home: Young People's Everyday Engagements with Geopolitics in Domestic Space

This paper draws on recent research examining feminist and everyday geopolitics to focus on the relatively neglected domestic sphere as a space where geopolitical events like the Falklands/Malvinas war are learnt, (re)produced, remembered and contested by young people. It presents qualitative data drawn from interviews with young people from Argentina (Río Gallegos) and the Falkland Islands (Stanley), locations with intimate connections to the 1982 war. It argues that research in domestic environments that engages the familial relations, objects and practices that embody geopolitical pasts can help make sense of how young people (are able to) express geopolitical agency.

Patterns of Continuity and Change in the Psychosocial Outcomes of Young Autistic People: a Mixed-Methods Study.

Long-term longitudinal studies have consistently demonstrated that the outcomes of autistic individuals are highly variable. Yet, these studies have typically focused on aspects of functioning deemed to be critical by non-autistic researchers, rather than autistic people themselves. Here, we uniquelyexamined the long-term psychosocial outcomes of a group of young autistic people (n = 27; M age = 17years; 10months; 2 female) followed from childhood using a combination of approaches, including (1) the standard, normative approach, which examined changes in diagnostic outcomes, autistic features and adaptive functioning over a 9-year period and (2) a qualitative approach, which involved semi-structured interviews to understand young people's own subjective experiences of their current functioning. On average, there was no significant change in young people's diagnostic outcomes and autistic features over the 9-year period, although there was much variability at the individual level. There was far less variability, however, in young people's everyday functioning, with marked declines over the same period. While these often-substantial everyday challenges aligned well with young people's subjective reports, there was no straightforward one-to-one mapping between self-reported experiences of being autistic and standard measures of severity. These findings call for concerted efforts to understand autistic outcomes through the mixing of quantitative and qualitative reports and for sustained and targeted interventions during adolescence in those areas that matter most to young people themselves.

Anticipating the more-than: Working with prehension in artful interventions with young people in a post-industrial community

Inspired by speculative, post-qualitative research practices, this paper is framed within new feminist materialist ontologies of immanence to explore anticipation as the potentialities of the virtual, a prehension (Manning 2013) that can be glimpsed in bodies, movements and artful processes of creation. These ‘prehensive’ potentialities are explored with an arts-based praxis, developed over many years, with young people living in an ex-mining community experiencing post-industrial trauma to interrupt the sedimented practices that can lock some young people into feeling stuck and trapped.The paper follows a series of carefully composed events during a residential adventure weekend with a group of young people who wanted to explore their troubles by pushing their bodies to the limit with a range of physical activities and arts-based interventions. With ‘art as the way’ (Manning 2016), we map how our speculative praxis enabled us to attune to the embodied and embedded affects of young people's everyday practices, fears and concerns. We describe how prehensions as feelings, movements and images emerged and were transformed into creative artefacts; how these artefacts materialised affective prehensions as new and past potentials signalling the ‘more than’ of young people’s beingness, as a kind of buried, unknown-known anticipation; and how the artefacts continue to vibrate as micro-political affective matter in the after life of a project that could not have been predicted in advance.

Overcoming obstacles on the peri‐urban fringe: young people making new geographies

AbstractUnderstanding contemporary youth lifestyles is a challenge for urban planners and geographers. Young people's everyday needs are complex, and urban spaces in new outer city developments offer unique spaces for shaping their identities. Juxtaposed with affordances of digital technologies, the physical location of home exists in a fluid landscape. Overcoming obstacles, such as access to public transport, places to socialise, and meet their peers, is characteristic of the everyday young person's experience. Knowing how young people decide where to go for personal space, as well as who to ask for personal advice, was the aim of this study. The study was conducted with samples of young people growing up in the rapidly growing peri‐urban northern suburbs of the Australian city of Melbourne. A survey questionnaire was administered to a gender‐balanced sample aged 12–15 years (n = 523) with follow‐up interviews to better inform the results. Logistic regression and factorial analyses of variance reveal their favourite places to be ‘my’ bedroom, being with friends, the park, and the café. Although not the focus of this study, some gender differences were noted. In addition to innovative use of space, the results show the positive influences on their well‐being of trusted family and friends. Young people's geographies offer transdisciplinary insights that highlight their creative usage of these new urban spaces. They offer a new imaginary for geographical education and research.

(Re)thinking (re)connection: Young people, “natures” and the water–energy–food nexus in São Paulo State, Brazil

This paper critically analyses pervasive contemporary discourses that call for children and young people to be “reconnected” with nature and natural resources. Simultaneously, it reflects on emerging forms of nexus thinking and policy that seek to identify and govern connections between diverse sectors, and especially water, energy and food. Both of these fields of scholarship are concerned with connections, of different kinds, and at different spatial scales. Based on a large‐scale, mixed‐method research project in São Paulo State, Brazil, this paper explores how these rather different literatures could be combined in order to (re)think notions of (re)connection that operate across different spatial, political and material registers. Through research with Brazilian professionals and young people about their experiences of, and learning about, the water–energy–food nexus, the paper makes several substantive contributions to scholarship on childhood, youth, environmental education and nexus thinking. Centrally, it is argued that, rather than dispense with them, there are manifold possibilities for expanding and complicating notions of (re)connection, which rely on a more nuanced analysis of the logistical, technical, social and political contexts in which nexuses are constituted. Thus, our work flips dominant forms of nexus thinking by privileging a “bottom‐up” analysis of (especially) young people's everyday, embodied engagements with water, food and energy. Our resultant findings indicated that young people are “connected” with natures and with the water–energy–food nexus, in both fairly conventional ways and in ways that significantly extend beyond contemporary discourses about childhoods–natures (and particularly in articulating the importance of care and community). Consequently, the nexus approach that is advocated in this paper could enable more nuanced, politically aware conceptualisations of (re)connection, both within and beyond scholarship on childhoods–natures and nexus thinking.

Not In The Same World: Topological Youths, Topographical Policies

Public attitudes continue to portray youths in Western societies as being passive and disengaged. Critical scholars are largely unanimous in that the misrecognition of and disrespect for young people's everyday experiences and activities form a major reason why they appear detached from politics and public life. Contributing to this debate, this paper traces the everyday experiences of some Finnish urban youths, and argues that their lived worlds differ notably from the worlds of the public administration that seeks to address youths as active citizens. Based on these findings, the paper proposes the pragmatically oriented concepts of “issue publics” and “topological connectives” for rethinking youth participation and democratic life more broadly.

Food Journeys: Place, Mobility, and the Everyday Food Practices of Young People

We examine the everyday food practices of a group of high school students living in an urban, multicultural, and lower income community in San Diego, California. We integrate theoretical and empirical insights from research in health, food, and youth geographies and offer a relational conceptualization and analysis of the food environment that is sensitive to young people's everyday mobilities and encounters with food. We pay particular attention to how young people journey through the local food landscape and navigate contradictions between food norms across places, including home, school, and neighborhood. Our goal is to uncover young people's personal and emotional engagements with what, how, and where they eat. Our methodology begins by recognizing young people's agency and centers on an analysis of the spatiality of their food routines. We present results of a year-long participatory study involving Global Positioning System–tagged photography, Photovoice interviews, and surveys. Our results provide a fine-grained analysis of young people's daily engagements with their food environments and reveal how their food journeys are structured and governed by social relations, physical and material constraints, biopolitics, and emotional geographies. Our approach permits a critical and dynamic understanding of the food environment and its relationship to young people's food practices, with useful insights for health research and policy.

The ordinariness of youth linguascapes in Mongolia

ABSTRACTDrawing on varied offline and online contexts, this article indicates that youth linguistic diversity in contemporary Mongolia is better understood from the perspective of ‘the ordinariness of linguascapes’. The notion of ‘linguascapes’ is important in capturing the rising complexity of youth mixed language practices fundamentally produced by the amalgamation of transnational linguistic resources that are intersecting with other social landscapes. However, these youth linguascapes in Mongolia are neither novel nor eccentric linguistic productions as mostly imagined in the local language ideology. Instead, youth linguascapes in Mongolia should be understood as part of young people's everyday, mundane and ordinary linguistic practices. Consequently, it is important for language educators and language policy-makers in Mongolia to reconsider youth linguistic diversity in globalisation through the eyes of sameness of differences or the ordinariness of the diversity.