Young recent issues

Young people and social capital: Uses and abuses?

Holland, J. — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 09:50:04 PDT

The concept of social capital has gained wide currency in recent years in sociology and related areas, including youth studies. Politicians and policy makers have eagerly taken it up, seeing building and enhancing social capital as a solution for difficult policy issues, and it has been at the core of Third Way politics. This article provides a general review of social capital, critically examining issues raised by the academic and political use of the concept related to its journey through several academic disciplines, and to its perceived value as a guide to policy. Selected examples of its use in studying the lives and experiences of young people are discussed, as is the extensive research undertaken by myself and colleagues in a five-year multi-project study of families and social capital, focusing on our work on young people.

Responsible victims? Young people's understandings of agency and responsibility in sexual situations involving underage girls

Smette, I., Stefansen, K., Mossige, S. — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 09:50:04 PDT

Most countries have a legal age of consent, setting the minimum age for the involvement of a young person in sexual relationships. Engaging in a sexual relationship with a person below this age is defined as abuse, even if the minor has consented. At the same time, underage young people often see themselves as knowledgeable agents across a range of situations, including having sexual relations with older persons. Using both quantitative and qualitative data, this article examines the role of the construction of agency in young people’s understanding of different types of sexual situations — from consented sex to situations of physical coercion — involving a minor girl and an adult man. How do constructions of agency affect the labelling of different situations and the attribution of responsibility to the persons involved? The article further discusses how the concept of agency interlinks with gendered sexual scripts in the process of interpretation, thereby reproducing gendered vulnerabilities. The concluding section considers how a contextual approach to youth agency may inform preventive efforts.

An exploration of self-awareness among shy adolescents

Lund, I. — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 09:50:04 PDT

The aim of this article is to explore the concept of self-awareness related to adolescents with shyness as an emotional and behavioural problem at school. In its extreme form shyness can be seen as an emotional and behavioural problem that interferes with an individual’s potential for growth, learning and overall well-being. Self-awareness is a rather ambiguous term, and psychological, philosophical and neuro-scientific literature discuss the term from different angles that are relevant for this group of adolescents. During interviews and observations in school, 15 adolescents presented their experiences and challenges. Their narratives are the foundation for a discussion related to self-awareness and implications for future practice in the context of school in relation to this group.

Insecurity of young people: The meaning of insecurity as defined by 13-17-year-old Finns

Vornanen, R., Torronen, M., Niemela, P. — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 09:50:05 PDT

This article critically examines the concept of insecurity as experienced by young people in Finland. Young people’s own definitions of insecurity show how 13–17-year-olds assess their lives and ontological insecurities and threats in the world. The topic is analyzed from a social sciences perspective and interpreted within the theoretical framework of risk society by Ulrich Beck (1996; 2001), Anthony Giddens (1991) and Franz-Xavier Kaufmann (1970).

The data was collected from schools in five regions in Finland. A total of 922 respondents aged 13 to 17 completed a questionnaire in classroom settings. This article analyzes only the data elicited by open-ended questions, which were answered by 683 young people.

Young people’s experiences of insecurity were classified into 16 categories, which were then divided under three headings: (i) the inner circle, that is, insecurity related to personal emotions and inner experiences; (ii) the social circle, that is, insecurity related to social interaction; and (iii) the outer circle, that is, insecurity related to external realities. Young people’s definitions of insecurity reveal their perspective on risk society in which everyone is vulnerable to certain risks.The answers disclose a set of contradictory risks, which are at the same time personal, local and global. First, they connect insecurity to their inner feelings and emotions. Second, they interpret the social relationships and the everyday life experiences in connection with insecurity. Third, insecurity is defined by young people by external realities, such as socio-economic ill-being, violence and war.

In the future, more empirical and qualitative research on risk society and how it is experienced by young people in the everyday life is needed. How do young people connect close and distant security issues and insecurity to their everyday life?

Global citizenship and the 'New, New' social movements: Iberian connections

Feixa, C., Pereira, I., Juris, J. S. — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 09:50:05 PDT

The past two decades have witnessed the rise of a new global cycle of collective action not only organized through the Internet and made visible during mass pro-test events, but also locally shaped by diverse organizations, networks, platforms and groups. Focusing on specific cases in two Iberian cities — Barcelona and Lisbon — we argue that this protest cycle has given rise to new kinds of movements referred to here as ‘new, new’ social movements. We analyze particular aspects of each case, but also discuss their European and global dimensions. The article will also highlight the role of youth, discussing the characteristics associated with the participation of young people in the ‘new, new’ movements. After a short introduction to the research on this topic, focusing on the emergence of the ‘anti-corporate globalization movement’ and related theoretical implications, we provide a description of four protest events in Barcelona and Lisbon. Next, we analyze the local contexts that anchor these events. Finally, we discuss the main characteristics of the ‘new, new’ social movements, examining the links between Barcelona and Lisbon and the wider international context that shapes them and paying particular attention to contemporary networking dynamics.

A young concept in a new country: The institutionalization of the citizenship question in the UK and its generational impact

Huq, R. — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 09:50:05 PDT

For a long established nation-state, Britain’s tradition of citizenship is very young. This article takes the form of a debate rather than being based on empirical research to examine developments of the past decade that have resulted in a steady entrenchment of this concept into official British structures. Citizenship is likely to be more engrained in the consciousness of the young than any other age group following the introduction of its teaching in schools in 2002. Britain’s youth have multiple possible affiliations including European identity and often other ethnic origins, be they Irish, French Hugenot or from the countries of the ex-British Empire. Balancing competing demands from different groups (generational, ethnic and otherwise) is a contemporary UK reality that is ever more acute during the current period of economic downturn. Lazy characterizations of British youth as disconnected from politics ignore the multifaceted nature of both young people and the ways in which they are currently active in civic life.

Book Review: Young People Making a Life

Wierenga, A. — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 09:50:05 PDT

Youthful bodies rebel: Young men in Israeli Haredi Yeshivas today

Hakak, Y. — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 05:49:44 PDT

One of the central aspects of the ideal model of the Haredi body is a hierarchical and dichotomous relation between the body as an aspect of the earthly reality, and the spiritual world. This dichotomy has also shaped the ‘division of labour’ between the Haredi and non-Haredi Jewish communities in Israel. The article examines the yeshiva students' responses to this ideal and hegemonic model. My claim is that as a result of a series of social processes, the notion of the ideal body is facing growing resistance and is being challenged by the students themselves. The students' resistance to the ideal male body is contributing to the destabilization of the traditional relations between the earthly and the spiritual and as a result, to the undermining of the ‘division of labour’ among the various parts of Israeli Jewish society.

Exploring and negotiating femininity: Young women's creation of style in a Swedish Internet community

Elm, M. S. — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 05:49:44 PDT

Previous studies have pointed at the girls' room's importance for girls' identity work. Instead of working with identities in the street, as the boys, girls have instead mainly sought their free places in the home. It is in the girls' room that girls have gathered together to engage in identity work, such as experimenting with style. The ‘Internet generation’ is not different in this respect. The difference is rather that where it used to be done primarily in the girls' room at home, or in fitting rooms of clothes' shops, the act of experimenting with styles is now increasingly also found online. The aim of this article is to look at how teenage girls use their production of style in their identity work in the Swedish Internet community, Lunarstorm. Results show how girls use their experimentation with style in a way that lets them explore and negotiate the conflicting ideals of femininity. The mediation does not seem to change what aspects of femininity are displayed. However, it does change the conditions on which femininity is explored and negotiated.

Young parenthood in the Netherlands

Bois-Reymond, M. D. — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 05:49:44 PDT

The article takes the perspective of parenthood as a complex transition process that young adults have to pass through and have to manage. Becoming and being a parent today is not a self-evident stage in the life course as it was for former generations, but involves the necessity and ability to develop and use networks and learn to find a balance between options and constraints. Starting from youth sociological theories about destandardized life courses in late modernity, the Dutch case is taken to illustrate new learning demands and desires of young parents, Dutch as well as non-Dutch. The ‘combination problem’ of work and care is different for Dutch and non-Dutch young parents. Political initiatives and new institutional facilities at the local level have developed, which are in-tended to activate the self-responsibility of young adults and parents. It is shown that the social welfare state of the Netherlands still provides fair living chances for the majority of young people and parents but that the tension between Dutch and non-Dutch groups is growing.

Youth scenes, body marks and bio-sociabilities

Ferreira, V. S. — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 05:49:44 PDT

Recent research has shown that in contemporary societies, tattoos and body piercing are no longer seen as compulsory signs of collective belonging, but rather as voluntary auto-bio-graphical resources for personal identities constructed around values of individuality, difference and authenticity. More than a trend of narcissist individualism, these new symbolic investments in body marks show how new patterns of sociability among young people are constructed in a more fluid and fragmented way, in which somatic affinities take place amidst other kinds of elective affinities. This contention is underpinned by insights from post-subcultural approaches, and also by the concept of bio-sociabilities proposed by Francisco Ortega (2004). Methodologically, the present study is based on qualitative data from intensive and ethnographic fieldwork on body modification scenes in Lisbon. Indepth interviews with both working professionals and consumers of tattoos and body piercing were conducted.

Young people and UK citizenship education: A gender analysis

Brooks, R. — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 05:49:44 PDT

A number of commentators have highlighted the potential of citizenship education to offer young people a radical critique of society. For example, Aapola et al. (2005) have argued that it can provide a forum for contesting gendered power relations and their differential effect on young men and women from different class and ethnic groups, and for exploring the ways in which constructions of masculinity and femininity are dynamic and related to the public/private divide. However, it has also been argued that the playing out of ‘active citizenship’ (a common component of many citizenship programmes in schools and colleges) in the lives of young women, frequently means taking responsibility for themselves economically, while at the same time taking care of others. Indeed, some have suggested that current conceptualizations of citizenship — particularly its ‘active’ variant — have served to further social control rather than promote any critical engagement with social structures. In engaging with this debate, this article explores the impact of young people's socially focussed extra-curricular activities, undertaken in a number of different sixth-form colleges across the UK. Based on a year-long study of five peer-driven groups (including an Amnesty International group, a peer support group and a students' union executive), it considers gendered patterns in the take-up of these activities. In addition, it explores the extent to which such pursuits encourage participants to take a critical stance towards the world around them, placing particular emphasis on the structure of gender relations.

BOOK REVIEW

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 05:49:44 PDT

Caregiver or worker: Young women's contradictory experiences of provisioning

Tam, S. H.S. — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 04:21:05 PDT

This article examines how young women in community-based young mothers’ housing and employment programmes make job and career decisions while balancing school, work and family responsibilities in Canada. The research reveals that these young women's experiences are not reflected in the current academic and policy discourses about youth transitions and work. The analysis shows how broader social relations of gender and class shape the labour market conditions, caregiving responsibilities and understanding of ‘at risk’ youth through which young women's contradictory experiences of provisioning arise. Provisioning, an expanded notion of work, is used to reveal the dynamics of choice and risk underlying youth, labour and welfare policies and programmes that affect young women's working lives. It is argued that under the current social policy arrangements, ‘at risk’ young women end up making risky choices that effectively reinforce rather than transcend their marginalized status.

Discouraging citizenship? Young people's reactions to news media coverage of anti-Iraq war protesting in the UK

Cushion, S. — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 04:21:05 PDT

Drawing on a survey completed by 699 young people in the UK at the beginning of the 2003 war in Iraq, this article explores young people's reactions to how young anti-war protestors were represented in news media. The survey taps into young people's opinions at a key democratic moment when many school children — to the surprise of many politicians and journalists — took to the streets to demonstrate their opposition to UK foreign policy making.

The findings suggest that news coverage of the anti-war protests discouraged some young people from participating in the political public sphere. Many respondents also provided suggestions as to how news media could renew a sense of political efficacy amongst young people in ways that might encourage a greater connection between their political beliefs and key democratic structures.

Anti-party sentiment among young adults: Evidence from fourteen West European countries

Kestila-Kekkonen, E. — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 04:21:05 PDT

The study seeks to explore antipartyism in Western Europe. Particularly, it focuses on the extent to which the young adults differ from their elders in terms of trust in parties in fourteen West European countries. Pooled data, based on the European Social Survey 2006/2007, is employed and analyzed by means of ordinary least squares multiple regression. The other socio-economic background variables of the model, as well as the political background, interpersonal trust and the country of origin, are controlled in order to isolate the effect of age. The analysis shows that trust in parties of 18–30 year olds is, on average, significantly higher than in the rest of the population which contradicts the assumptions of the post-modernization theory and the empirical fact that electoral participation among West European young adults is constantly decreasing. Thus, the article suggests that antipartyism and political participation should be seen as distinct processes at different birth cohorts and perhaps also at different stages of the lifecycle.

Youth culture as a context of political learning: How young people politicize amongst each other

Pfaff, N. — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 04:21:05 PDT

Research on the political socialization of the young currently focuses on the following life spheres: family, school, media, service institutions, socio-structural and socio-economic conditions. Studies mainly rely on standardized methods, for example, reports on elections or youth surveys on political culture. Just as the voices of adolescents are not heeded, youth culture as youth-specific styles of music, symbols and values is only rarely taken into account by the current research on political socialization. Based on quantitative and qualitative methods, this article outlines the importance of youth cultural styles for the development of civic competencies. In the case of Germany it can be shown that particular youth cultural styles provide space for the analysis of current social and political problems and provide chances for young people to take political action

Whose arena is the EU youth policy?: Young participants' involvement and influence in the EU youth policy from their own points of view: Case of the EU Presidency Youth Event in Hyvinkaa, Finland

Laine, S., Gretschel, A. — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 04:21:05 PDT

The article has a triple aim. The first aim is to study the structure of EU youth policy, especially the role of the EU Presidency youth events in the EU institution. The EU youth event in Hyvinkää during the Finnish EU Presidency in 2006 was the starting point of our case study. Second, we analyze how the EU Presidency youth events, the case of Hyvinkää in particular, function as tools of political influence in forming EU youth policy. Third, we analyze the Hyvinkää youth event as a democratic miniature society. To show the variety of youth participation in the different political arenas of the EU we bring reflections from the European Youth Forum and the European Youth Parliament to our analysis. The study suggests that in the future the EU Presidency youth events should function as important and versatile arenas of learning-by-doing enabling the growth of ‘young active EU policy citizens’.

Book Review

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 04:21:05 PDT

Editorial

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 07:58:50 PST

The diversity of youth citizenships in the European Union

Hoikkala, T. — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 07:58:50 PST

The aim of this article is to demonstrate the diversity of youth civic action by pre-senting several examples of what young citizenship concretely is and can be in the European Union (EU). This will be done by placing Theodore Marshall's (1950) classical, modern formulation of citizenship in different contemporary contexts, and thus also going beyond the modern conception of citizenship. Contexts such as the globalizing world, new conditions for transitions into adulthoods, new forms of political participation of youth, and the transformation of politics (media politics) as well as consumption will be elaborated upon. In addition to Marshall's triad — civic, political and social — media citizenship, consumer citizenship, cosmopolitan and global citizenship will be discussed as new types of civic virtue (late modern civic virtue). The genre of the article falls into the special category of reflectively open research texts with a touch of a criticism and politicization. The text is not based on any specific empirical corpus as research texts conventionally are.

Participation, citizenship, and well-being: Engaging with young people, making a difference

Barber, T. — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 07:58:50 PST

Theories relating to youth participation are, in the main, ill-defined and contested. It is often assumed that citizenship and a sense of well-being are the outcomes of active forms of youth participation. This paper presents a critical comparative review of each before offering a new model which seeks to explain the top-down and bottom-up influences on the positive engagement of young people.

Paradoxes in schooling gender -- a messy story

Rudberg, M. — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 07:58:50 PST

The fact that girls on the average seem to do better than boys at all levels of schooling has triggered off a debate on ‘feminization of schools’ as a problem in many Western countries. In this article, a competing hypothesis is proposed, namely the ‘new girl hypothesis’, relating the academic success to the change of cultural as well as psychological positions among young girls of today. The story of schooling gender is told on the basis of data from a three-generational study of girls and their mothers and grandmothers in Norway, interviewed in 1991–92, and with a follow up for the girls ten years later. This story proves to be a rather ‘messy’ one, showing both ruptures and continuities between the generations. To understand this ‘messy story’ the article explores some paradoxes in schooling gender: Firstly, the paradoxes of pedagogy wavering between gender neutrality and gender reproduction, secondly the paradox of the welfare state wavering between individualizing policy and reproductive family orientation, and finally the paradoxes of knowledge-seeking itself, which can be seen as both gendered as well as transgressing gender boundaries.

Young people's education to work transitions and inter-generational social mobility in post-soviet central Asia

Roberts, K., Kamruzzaman, P., Tholen, J. — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 07:58:50 PST

This paper is based on evidence gathered in 20 firms, matched by size and business sector, in each of three Central Asia cities — Almaty in Kazakhstan, Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan, and Samarkand in Uzbekistan. In each firm the owner(s) and/or senior managers supplied information about the business, focusing on methods of recruitment, training, and employee career development. Parallel questionnaire surveys gathered information about the family and educational backgrounds, and labour market and employment biographies, of all the young (up to age 30) employees in each of the 20 companies. A total of 1,402 young employees completed questionnaires, and from these, eight per city, with equal numbers of males and females, with and without higher education, were subsequently interviewed in depth. The evidence is used to identify how families that were advantaged under the old (communist) system were continuing to reproduce their advantages inter-generationally. It is shown that this was mainly, though not entirely, via their children's superior chances of progressing through higher education. The evidence is also used to argue that cultural capital was playing a stronger role than social capital in the inter-generational transmission of advantages, that the critical events in the potentially life-long status attainment process were concentrated within a relatively short time frame, and that the multiple strategies to which families with economic and cultural assets could resort were liable to neutralise all efforts to diminish their ability to pass their advantages down the generations.

School disengagement and 'structural options' Narrative illustrations on an analytical approach

McGrath, B. — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 07:58:50 PST

The purpose of the present article is to outline and illustrate an analytical approach that accentuates the biographically complex processes inhering within early school leaving transitions. The organizing device of ‘structural option’ (Stones, 2001) is introduced, which brings into focus the role and interplay of types of ‘structures’ (in a structurationist sense) in the decision-making processes underlying school exit. ‘Structural option’ combines two important dimensions in influencing young people's choices: cognitive/emotional and relational/interactional structures. This study shows that disengagement from school is more than a straightforward reading that might suggest lack of positive disposition towards education, but rather is born out of powerful interactions across these two main structural dimensions. As an analytical construct, structural options alert us to the importance of analyzing young people's disengagements from mainstream school in terms of social relationships, power, and emotions. While the article is based on empirical findings from an Irish context, the intention is that its scope extends more broadly to qualitative data analysis of school exit transitions within other contextual settings. The empirical focus derives from the interview narratives with fourteen participants attending a second chance educational initiative in Ireland, known as the Youthreach programme. While most of the young people occupy the status of ‘early school leaver’, closer inspection of their structural options shows that their pathways to early school exit and school disengagement (for those who completed) comprise quite differing structural combinations. As researchers, appreciation of such combinations can help us understand the justifications young people use in their decision-making.