Youth Narratives Research Articles

Negociando condutas: estilo de vida Straightedge no Brasil e os discursos sobre política e sexualidade

This article discusses experiences of young adepts of the straightedge lifestyle, particularly their relationship with behavioural standards which form the core of this group identity, like the rejection of licit and illicit drugs, and the reprobation of “promiscuous” sex. For this purpose, two recurrent themes in the narratives of youths—the politicization of the Brazilian straight edge scene and the low adherence to sexual abstinence—are analyzed. The article’s purpose is not to show what elements differentiate the Brazilian straightedges from those of other places, but to demonstrate that these discursive formations show a major trading among the rules that define group belonging and those defined by young people themselves, from their different trajectories.

Campus of Opportunity: A Qualitative Analysis of Homeless Students in Community College

Objective: Community colleges are gateways of access to higher education for many underrepresented students. One group that has received little attention in the community college research literature is homeless youth. The objective of this research is to address the following research questions: (a) What might be learned from the narratives of homeless youth and their experiences in postsecondary education? and (b) How might community colleges promote interpersonal and institutional resilience for homeless students? Method: Utilizing qualitative research techniques, this article reviews the experiences’ of homeless youth attending community college and explores the ways in which community colleges might serve as sites for fostering resilience and stability in the lives of homeless students. Results: The results of this empirical work suggest that although homeless students do benefit from enrolling in community college, some of the benefits are not salient to them and they are unable to take full advantage of institutional resources. Contributions: The findings from this study contribute to the literature on low-income students’ experiences in community college and add the voices and experiences of homeless youth.

Challenging Popularized Narratives of Immigrant Youth From West Africa: Examining Social Processes of Navigating Identities and Engaging Civically

Given polarizing popular-media narratives of immigrant youth from West African countries, we construct an interdisciplinary framework engaging a Sankofan approach to analyze education research literature on social processes of navigating identities and engaging civically across immigrant youth’s heritage practices and Indigenous knowledges. In examining social processes, we disrupt three areas of inequalities affecting educational experiences of immigrant youth: (a) homogenizing notions of a monolithic West Africa and immigrant youth’s West African countries, (b) deficit understandings of identities and the heterogeneity of Black immigrant youth from West African countries living in the United States, and (c) singular views of youth’s civic engagement. We provide implications for researchers, policymakers, and educators to better meet youth’s teaching and learning needs.

It Should Not Be a Pit Stop: Voices and Perspectives of Homeless Youth on Labeling and Placement in Special Education

ABSTRACTAlthough the incomplete school histories of homeless youths are often highlighted, little is written about their school careers involving special education. This study is based on the educational narratives of homeless youths in special education. Their narratives were constructed using “direct scribing” and narrative ethnography. The article highlights the stigma and bullying experienced by youths as a result of being labeled, and shares their perspectives about special education being similar to a “pit stop”—a brief transitory stop with very short-sighted designs and benefits. It also discusses the benefits of direct scribing and the need to listen to the perspectives of students themselves on how labeling and placement in special education affect them.

“Because That’s What We Do . . . We Sit and We Drink and We Talk”: Stories and Storytelling among Street-Involved Youth

Eliciting stories of homelessness, past trauma, addiction, and street resilience is regarded widely as useful for understanding the problems youth face and enabling solutions. Young people’s stories of homelessness, past trauma, addiction, and street resilience can help illuminate the problems they face and identify possible solutions. Recent scholarship has conceptualized youth narratives in diverse ways, but how do young people view their stories and their telling? Drawing on our work in western Canada, we explore how a group of street-involved youth view stories as personal and collective memories, as strategies for negotiating the complex circumstances of their lives, and as especially powerful forms of recognition.

Scripted Fantasies and Innovative Orientalisms: Media, Youth, and Ideology in the Age of the “War on Terror”

Anxieties associated with global conflict surround youth and ideological narratives mediating these conflicts can be seen in the popular media youth consume. This investigation uses contemporary cultural-theoretical conceptualizations of ideology to analyze several important popular screen-based cultural artifacts created for youth consumption to determine how young audiences are invited into the ideoscapes and discourses of global politics in the age of the “war on terror.” The analysis shows that these youth-oriented media artifacts script fundamental understandings of conflict and provide schema in which young viewers can orient themselves in relation to global Others, while also setting the matrix of intelligibility within which global politics itself becomes coherent. In addition, these popular cultural texts undertake an innovation of familiar Orientalisms, inviting young people to identify with an aggressive defense of the West and serving as an ideological support for the United States in the context of ongoing global conflicts.

Delayed, deferred and dropped out: geographies of Filipino-Canadian high school students

Models representing the assimilation of post-Second World War immigrants to North America use the academic achievement of children of first-generation immigrants as a benchmark of social mobility. Filipino youths in Canada fall short of this benchmark – they neither meet nor exceed their parents’ academic achievements. While concern with outcomes is a useful starting point, I suggest that there is a need to interrogate how and where students are produced as different. To do this, I attend to the geographies in the narratives of youths gathered from Filipino high school students in Vancouver (unceded Coast Salish Territories). I examine how they negotiate the spaces of transnational migration, their lives as students and spaces where their educational trajectories are deferred and delayed. I argue that the geographies of transnational migration and family should be held together with spaces of the school and education when considering academic outcomes.

Identity Production on Social Media: The Narrative of Second-generation Youth of Sinhalese Sri Lankan Origin in New Zealand

This qualitative study examines the identity claims of second-generation youth of Sri Lankan origin in New Zealand on social media, a social terrain that transcends the boundaries of traditional social worlds. Research participants’ represented themselves online by three main strategies: visual (graphic), textual (narrative) and group. Participants simultaneously travelled back and forth between two virtual cultural identities, Kiwi and Sri Lankan, thus [re]constructing identity performances, in which “definition of the situation” played a key role. Their virtual identities represented only a snapshot of the self, where different versions of the self were performed and [re]produced, thus defying the essentialist or foundationalist notion of identity.

Theorising youth and everyday peace(building)

The introductory essay presents a locally-grounded theoretical framework for studying youth and everyday peace(building). Drawing on examples from fieldwork as well as insights from the articles to follow in the journal, the essay highlights three interrelated and overlapping spheres of inquiry. First, it makes the case for examining the age-specific as well as gender-, and other contextually-specific roles of youth as they relate to everyday peacebuilding. Second, the essay draws attention to how everyday peace is narrated by or through youth. It poses questions about what values, policies, and governmental structures are specifically being resisted and rejected, and how peace is conceptualised and/or hidden in the narratives of youth. Third, along with these concerns, the nexus of global and local (including discursive and institutional) structures that facilitate, curtail, and curtain everyday peace (building) practices are important to identify and evaluate for their impacts on the roles and ideas of youth. In proposing this theoretical framework that recognises the complex and multiple ways youth are engaged in their everyday worlds, this essay asks how we can engage this recognition within knowledges and practices of everyday peace(building).

Promoting and developing direct scribing to capture the narratives of homeless youth in special education

This article highlights the use of direct scribing to gather special education narratives of homeless youth. Direct scribing is a method of qualitative research developed in child welfare practice and adapted for research with foster youth. Its strengths include offering voice, power, and ownership of narratives to participants using minimal technology and the framework of narrativity. The article improves on the rigor of this method, highlighting considerations about “working up” or attention to interactional processes leading up to direct scribing, and the need to offer narrative power to participants. It offers a different take on interview practices including eye contact, listening, and the use of a computer screen as an interface. Through an extensive illumination of the narrativity of one participant, the preparation, process, and outcome of direct scribing are highlighted. The fit between social work values and this method is in keeping with advancing an anti-oppressive focus in research and practice.

Youth Exposure to Violence in an Urban Setting

To inform a city-wide youth Violence Prevention Initiative, we explored youth narratives about their exposure to violence to gain insight into their understanding of the causes and effects of violence in their communities. At-risk youth were recruited through street outreach for individual interviews and focus group sessions. Types of experiential violence identified included (1) street, (2) family/interpersonal, (3) school, (4) indirect exposure (e.g., neighborhood crime), and (5) prejudice/discrimination. Reactions ranged from motivating positive effects (resilience, determination to escape) to negative effects (fear, paranoia, and aggression). For some, experiences with violence motivated them to pursue educational achievement and positive lifestyles. Causes of violence were described by participants as existing at a number of different levels (societal, neighborhood, interpersonal, and individual), reflecting a social-ecological perspective. Our findings highlight a need for violence prevention efforts that focus on a broad definition of violence, as well as on the poly-victimization of children and youth. At the same time, our findings highlight the challenges of conducting effective community-based prevention programs in urban settings characterized by spatial inequalities and social exclusion of community residents.

Siblings in foster care: A relational path to resilience for emancipated foster youth

Sibling relationships are a powerful influence on child development, one that takes on particular significance in contexts of familial disruption or adversity. This study examined the effect of sibling co-placements during foster care on subsequent educational competence, occupational competence, housing quality, relational adjustment, and civic engagement in a sample of 170 recently emancipated foster youth (66.5% female; Mage=19.63). Analyses evaluated direct relations between the proportion of time spent with a sibling in foster placement and young adult adjustment outcomes, as well as indirect effects from sibling co-placement to later competence through youth's coherence displayed in a narrative of experiences in foster care. The coherence of life narratives develops in the context of primary relationships, including those with siblings, through co-constructed meaning making and emotional discourse, particularly regarding difficult life events. Emancipated foster youth's verbal narratives about their experiences in foster care were evaluated for narrative coherence based on the organization, complexity, and balance of youth's narratives. Analyses documented significant indirect effects of sibling co-placement on young adult competence through narrative coherence. Moreover, moderation analyses indicated that these effects were particularly robust among males. Findings are discussed with respect to relational mechanisms underlying resilience, and the potential for sibling co-placement to provide a relational context for risk and resilience among emancipated foster youth.

Revolutionary Suicide and Other Desperate Measures: Narratives of Youth and Violence from Japan and the United States by Adrienne Carey Hurley

Revolutionary Suicide and Other Desperate Measures: Narratives of Youth and Violence from Japan and the United States by Adrienne Carey Hurley

Reflexos de Alice: Corpo, Gênero e escrita em Alice no Espelho, de Laura Bergallo

Por via de aportes teóricos vários, porque interdisciplinar se nos apresenta a produção epistemológica voltada ao exame do gênero literário infantil e juvenil, importa investigar a obra Alice no espelho (2005), de Laura Bergallo, com ilustrações de Edith Derdyk. Na narrativa juvenil em questão, a autora contempla a história de Alice, uma adolescente que desenvolve um processo doloroso e angustiante de anorexia nervosa. A partir de um intenso e constante processo de intertextualidade com o clássico de Lewis Carroll, a escritora trata de forma bastante literária o tema, em muito distanciando sua obra de um mero compêndio médico dos sintomas e do tratamento da doença. Por via do presente trabalho, objetivamos investigar a representação literária do corpo e o investimento intertextual realizado pela autora como um dos procedimentos estilísticos que conferem literariedade à obra.DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.15304/elos.1.1727

Self-exploration, anonymity and risks in the online setting: analysis of narratives by 14–18-year olds

This article explores youth narratives of Internet risks and opportunities brought about by user anonymity. Using an essay-based study of 258 youth (mean age 15.4 years, 56% female), we examined youth narratives concerning the effects of Internet anonymity on youth behavior online. Narratives were written anonymously to maximize disclosure. The needs categories of self-determination theory (SDT) for autonomy, relatedness, and competence were used to identify risks and opportunities in youth narratives. The analysis of the data was thematic, using both quantitative and qualitative methods with SDT providing an effective descriptive framework. Quantitative thematic analysis showed that 17% of the narratives included a notion of competence, 32% autonomy and 30% relatedness. Risks were also prevalent in the narratives, with primary themes of 74% cyberbullying and insults, 27% identity theft and risky false identity, and 18% sexual harassment or exploitation. The qualitative analysis underlines the interaction of both risks and opportunities in the use of social media online by youth. These findings illuminate both the importance of Internet opportunities as a social tool for youth need fulfillment toward self-determination and the social risks that youth Internet use involves.

‘I want to get a piece of paper that says I can do stuff’: youth narratives of educational opportunities and constraints in low socio-economic neighbourhoods

The persistent failure of contemporary policies to improve school retention rates and close the achievement gap between students from low and high socio-economic (SES) backgrounds should be a matter of grave concern. In this article, we set out to show what it means to be educated in a context of disadvantage from the perspectives of young people attending a senior secondary public school in regional Australia. Acknowledging that youth are experts in their own lives, we draw extensively on student narratives of the funds of knowledge and opportunity structures that support and/or constrain education and employment opportunities in low-income neighbourhoods. Although young peoples' stories of hope and agency go some way to undermining the deficit thinking about these students and their families, we argue that the realisation of their aspirations requires institutional support and policies that address the systemic causes of educational disadvantage.

Lebanese youth narratives: a bleak post-war landscape

To identify the themes that define the lives of a generation living in a conflict-ridden post-war society, I explore the changing views of Lebanese students through an analysis of the personal narrative texts that they created during my creative writing workshops over a 16-year period (1997–2012). Increasingly, young Lebanese feel trapped in a violent past, a threatening present and a hopeless future. As traditional forms of stability and loyalty (family and state) become more dysfunctional, modern alternative sources of education, employment, security and public discourse remain absent, creating an ever-widening disjunction between expectations and disheartening lived realities. Since 1998, student texts have focused on three salient thematic groupings: Idealism (1998–2005), Activism (2005–2008) and, most recently, Disillusionment (2008–present). In an atmosphere of escalating intolerance and hostility, it is hardly surprising that students are currently escaping to spaces of indulgence and personal gratification. As ongoing regional conflicts fuel local sectarian rivalries, I argue that reengaging educated young Lebanese in non-confrontational narratives that challenge dysfunctional systems can play a vital role in disrupting a dangerous sectarian narrative that is fast threatening to entangle Lebanon in yet another brutal war.

Novas configurações familiares na Literatura Brasileira Infantil e Juvenil: Leitura de Meus dois Pais, de Walcyr Carrasco, e de Olívia Tem dois pais, de Márcia Leite

Este trabalho objetiva refletir a respeito das configurações familiares representadas na literatura brasileira contemporânea. O artigo está dividido em duas seções principais: inicialmente, é proposto um estudo acerca dos processos de subjetivação e dos modos como a identidade do outro é representada discursivamente em nossa sociedade; a seguir, analisamos as novas configurações familiares na narrativa brasileira infantil e juvenil.

Youth Narratives on Community Experiences and Sense of Community and Their Relation to Participation in an Early Childhood Development Program

This comparative study examined how participation in an early childhood development (ECD) program, Better Beginnings, Better Futures, for children (ages 4-8) relates to sense of community (SOC) in later adolescence (ages 18-19). Youths’ stories ( N = 96) about community experiences, collected by semistructured, open-ended interviews, were quantitatively coded for several narrative dimensions (specificity, positivity, prosocial content, and meaning-making) and for elements of SOC (membership, influence, needs fulfillment, and shared emotional connection). Findings show a significant positive relationship between all narrative dimensions and the total SOC score. Better Beginnings youths’ stories ( n = 64) were significantly higher on specificity and shared emotional connection than comparison youth ( n = 32). Findings have implications for community-based ECD programs to impact later adolescence SOC and for using narratives to study these effects.

Central Role of Relatedness in Alaska Native Youth Resilience: Preliminary Themes from One Site of the Circumpolar Indigenous Pathways to Adulthood (CIPA) Study

This qualitative study of youth resilience takes place in an Alaska Native community, which has undergone rapid, imposed social change over the last three generations. Elders, and successive generations have grown up in strikingly different social, economic and political contexts. Youth narratives of relationships in the context of adolescent growth and development offer insights to better understand culturally-patterned experience, continuity and change. Local youth and adults shaped the design, implementation and analysis phases of this participatory study. Multiple interviews, totaling 20 older (ages 15-18) and younger (11-14) boys and girls provide accounts of everyday lives and life histories. Although losing close relationships was the most common stressor, many of the participants' resilience strategies centered on their connections to others. Participants cultivated 'relatedness', nurturing relationships that took on kinship qualities. Within these relationships, youth participants acted more responsibly and/or developed a sense of competency and self-worth because of others' reliance on them.