Young Person's Identity Research Articles

Social Justice Youth Work: Actualizing Youth Rights

This article explores models of prevention/intervention and positive youth development within the context of social justice. Both of these models seek to support young people, but they have vastly different methods and goals. The author argues that these models fall short of effectively supporting youth because they neglect to interrogate how power, privilege and oppressive forces shape a young person's identity and how that young person engages with society. Therefore, a new approach to working with youth is needed: a social justice youth work model. The author proposes this model as a means for youth and adults to work together to achieve a high quality of life in an equitable world. The paper outlines three steps to enact this approach with young people: 1. develop self-awareness within youth and adults; 2. build solidarity across differences; and 3. take action towards dismantling unjust systems. In order to do this work successfully, adults must first interrogate their own motivations for engaging in social justice work with youth.

Undercover placemakers: transforming the roles of young people in planning

A young person's identity as a product of their relationship with place has been the subject of research across many disciplines. In the field of urban planning, engagement with the community and young people, in particular, is acknowledged as being desirable, but in reality their contribution remains largely undervalued or undiscovered. Drawing on Lefebvre's production of space this paper explores how young people's perception of the places in which they live is shaped by a combination of their day-to-day experiences, their memories and their aspirations. The outputs of a research project at Newcastle University show how young people readily comprehend their local environments and how they nurture strong visions for the future of these places. The paper suggests that despite this wealth of place knowledge among young people and their capacity for envisioning the future, there are few opportunities for them to share this expertise or to voice their opinion on the future of those places. Through the development and use of suitable youth engagement methods, facilitated by urban planning students, the ‘YES Planning’ project has demonstrated how young people might begin to use their previously hidden placemaking capabilities.

Narrative Practice and the Signs of Safety Approach: Engaging Adolescents in Building Rigorous Safety Plans

The Signs of Safety approach to child protection has been gaining prominence around the world and this approach has developed through learning from good practice. Generally, examples of good practice are derived from adults who pose a risk to children, while this paper outlines an example of good practice that engages an adolescent in building a safety plan. It addresses the balance needed to be struck between the complex nature of addressing concerns and developing a rigorous safety plan while not shaming the young person and creating resistance or avoidance. This paper therefore sets out how the Signs of Safety approach can be synthesised with narrative practice to create an effective approach in working with young people. Using the externalising process along with re-membering conversations, positive alternative stories can be created about the young person's identity that support desistance and promote engagement with the authorities. A case example is used to demonstrate this synthesis where a young person has displayed harmful sexual behaviour towards a child. Consideration is given as to how this approach reduces shame-inducing practice often associated with statutory child protection processes. It concludes with the potential for such an approach to be applied more widely to working with young people.

Finnish Students’ Attitudes towards Commercialised Sex

The article examines attitudes towards sexuality and its commercial representations among Finnish students aged 18–30. In order to evaluate commercialised sex as broadly as possible, we approached it from three angles: sex as a special effect in media and marketing; display of a ‘sexy’ body and clothing as a part of young person's identity; and sex or pornography as a direct purchase that involves transaction of money or other goods. Empirical measures addressing these three angles are constructed for the analysis. The data are derived from an Internet survey (N =1208), collected in Finnish universities and university colleges in 2007. We examined how gender, age, field of study and type of household affect the students’ attitudes towards commercialised sex. The results reveal that the responses can be predicted by various socio-demographic characteristics. However, gender appears to have clearly the strongest non-specific impact. The results also indicate that the structure of variation differs considerably between the types of measures explained. In conclusion, it is discussed whether a new and more versatile culture of sexuality is emerging among young people.

Imagining the Lost Other: The Experience of Loss and the Process of Identity Construction in Young People

This article looks at the significance that the experience of loss may assume in the process of identity construction. Within a theoretical framework that views identities as intrinsically defined by the dialogue with the other, losing the other represents the negative case and is discussed in relation to the experiences of death of a significant other and of parental divorce. These two experiences are often linked in the literature because both are associated to the psychological process of mourning. On the basis of the life stories narrated by 10 young people who were among the participants in a wider autobiographical project on identities, attention is paid to the psychological mechanisms through which the ability to reconstruct a relationship with the lost one on an imaginary level may be important to the definition of the young person's identity.

Acting out of character: Window on the identity crisis

An autobiographical account of "acting out of character" at a life turning point is presented as a window on a young person's identity crisis. Analysis of that account reveals (1) that the "play" of the tentative identities reflects the concurrent crisis in the character of that person's society, (2) that the story the person now has to tell sets forth the range of the psychosocial issues active in his life, (3) that the mysteries generated identify for the person the specific issues at crisis, (4) that the novelty of the event itself catalyzes called for changes, and (5) that the metaphor of the "out of character" actions serves to preview the ultimate resolution.