Journal of Youth Studies

Alozie, Modesta Tochi

doi: 10.1080/13676261.2021.1945561pmid: N/A

Around the world, the harms and profits of oil exploration are distributed unequally. This inequality has sparked violence in many oil communities, leading to calls for redistributive approaches as an effective way to address petro-violence. Despite the inclusivity potential of distributive mechanisms, distributive agencies are often not level playing ground for community members. The capacity of excluded groups to participate meaningfully in the development agencies is shaped by the operation of symbolic violence. Using ethnographic data and symbolic violence as a theoretical basis in this paper, I map out three doxas – lazy youth, gerontocratic and deviant – which hinder youth participation in the oil development process. I show how these doxas enable institutional leaders in two development agencies in the Niger delta region of Nigeria to accumulate various forms of capital and occupy positions of power in the networks while simultaneously limiting young people’s political participation, employment prospects, and stereotyping them as social threats. Several other dimensions of symbolic domination are discussed: including the misrecognition, acceptance, and resistance of these doxas by the youths themselves. I conclude with a brief reflection on the implication of these doxas for achieving inclusive development in the Niger delta.

Stevens, Madeleine; Brimblecombe, Nicola

doi: 10.1080/13676261.2021.1945562pmid: N/A

Young adults who provide unpaid care for older relatives have poorer outcomes than their peers in education, employment, health and wellbeing. Services that can potentially have a positive impact on their lives include services provided to the person they care for. However, survey research in England has indicated that receipt of such services is not necessarily linked to fewer negative consequences for young adult carers. We conducted in-depth interviews with fourteen young adult carers who had responded to the original survey. We explored their experiences with services for the care recipient and what factors limit or enhance the usefulness of those services. We found three interrelated themes. First, difficulties accessing services can add to stress, and make problems harder to address when services are implemented; second, lack of continuity of services, and practitioners, undermines relationships and future trust in services, whereas consistent relationships are beneficial. Third, young adult carers described the benefits that resulted from their being involved in discussions and decisions about services, and the problems when this does not happen. The wellbeing of the young adult carer and the person receiving care are shown to be inextricably interrelated; we draw out implications for efforts to improve services.

Bilgrei, Ola Røed; Buvik, Kristin; Tokle, Rikke; Scheffels, Janne

doi: 10.1080/13676261.2021.1948513pmid: N/A

This article explores the evolving meaning of cannabis use in adolescence. Based on longitudinal qualitative data from 50 focus-group and 175 individual interviews with young Norwegians, followed from the ages of 12–13 years to 16–17 years, the analysis shows how representations, opinions and use of cannabis gradually evolve. When first interviewed, none had personal experience with the drug and the students spoke of cannabis use as a symbol of addiction and marginalisation, linked to both individual and social problems. However, by the age of 16–17, one quarter of the sample had personal experience. The analysis highlights how the symbolic representations and associated identities of cannabis use change during adolescence – from repeating and exaggerating adult voices, the students gradually developed the symbolic imagery of cannabis use, based on influences from their peers, popular culture and the internet. As such, the associated meanings of cannabis use evolved from a distant phase, to a phase of negotiation that reflected their expanded cultural references during the years in question. The longitudinal design highlights how the symbolic meanings associated with cannabis use evolve over time, and how they play an important role in explaining both abstinence from and initiation to cannabis use.

Leu, Agnes; Guggiari, Elena; Phelps, Daniel; Magnusson, Lennart; Nap, Henk Herman; Hoefman, Renske; Lewis, Feylyn; Santini, Sara; Socci, Marco; Boccaletti, Licia; Hlebec, Valentina; Rakar, Tatjana; Hudobivnik, Tjaša; Hanson, Elizabeth

doi: 10.1080/13676261.2021.1948514pmid: N/A

Despite some national examinations of policy responses for young carers (YCs), this study provides a first comprehensive cross-national comparison of the different legislation, policy and service frameworks that exist to protect and support adolescent young carers (AYCs) in six European countries (Italy, Netherlands, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland and United Kingdom) and how these are enacted. Until now, research has focused on estimating numbers of AYCs and the impact of caring tasks. A preliminary examination of policy responses to YCs was followed by expert interviews. Case study analysis of 25 interviews and a cross-national synthesis were undertaken before incorporating feedback from former YCs. Different responses to YCs were found, ranging from protection and support in policy and legislation and a definition for YCs, to a total lack of recognition and support. Findings highlight the potential to extend existing legislation, policy and service frameworks to include AYCs, and the importance of recognising and raising awareness of YCs. Awareness should be raised at all levels of society for example with professionals in health, social and education sectors and the general public. A definition for YCs is needed, so AYCs can self-identify and AYCs should be recognised as an important target group for policy makers.

Ravn, Signe

doi: 10.1080/13676261.2021.1948515pmid: N/A

Mobility is high on the agenda in both policy and research and being mobile is a positive descriptor, not least for young people. The downside of the focus and value placed on mobility as the path to success is that ‘immobility’ has clear, negative associations: being immobile equals being ‘stuck’, a ‘failure’ and not being aspirational. In this paper I seek to problematise dominant representations of decisions to stay in regional and rural locations as ‘immobility’ that indicates a lack of aspiration or agency. More specifically, by exploring how the participants in this study negotiate belonging and aspiration in ways that are both classed and gendered, the paper contributes to more nuanced representations of the lives of young people living outside of urban spaces. The paper is based on a qualitative study of the everyday lives and imagined futures of young women with interrupted formal education, focusing on a disadvantaged location in regional Victoria, Australia.

Idriss, Sherene; Butler, Rose; Harris, Anita

doi: 10.1080/13676261.2021.1948516pmid: N/A

This paper interrogates how three key concepts in youth studies – ‘transitions’, ‘the enterprising self’ and ‘mobilities’ – have historically centred the experiences of white/Anglo young people in the Australian settler colonial context. A race critical analysis of these major concepts that foregrounds colonialism, racialised migration schemes, multicultural policies and everyday racism has yet to be applied in any substantial way. This approach has the potential to unsettle the colonial and racialised logics inherent within these concepts and examine how they normalise whiteness in Australia. In exploring how these concepts are predominantly applied, critiqued and engaged with, we ask, how does youth studies as a field reproduce Northern colonial systems of knowledge production? We demonstrate the necessity of naming race, racism and processes of racialisation explicitly within the Australian field, not merely to include ‘others’ but to investigate how dominant conceptual paradigms produce racialised and minoritised Others and mainstream whiteness.

Hannerz, Erik; Tutenges, Sébastien

doi: 10.1080/13676261.2021.1948979pmid: N/A

This paper calls for renewed consideration of the way research subjects are selected in the study of subcultures. All too often, subcultural researchers limit themselves to the use of one or two of the orthodox sampling designs, such as ‘convenience sampling’ (selecting subjects who are readily available) or ‘chain referral sampling’ (selecting a readily available subject who refers the researcher to other subjects). While these designs certainly have their merits, especially in the early research phase of negotiating access and acceptance, they may impede insight into the diversity that exists within subcultural groups. Based on ethnographic fieldwork among punks and graffiti writers, this paper introduces a supplementary design, that of ‘negative chain referral sampling’, which consists of using group members’ categorisations of subcultural anomalies as an opening to explore subcultural variation and tensions. This design is one that flips the logic of conventional chain referral sampling: if we are encouraged not to speak to certain subjects, for instance, due to their lack of authenticity or status, this forms the motivation for doing exactly that. Closer examination of subcultural anomalies may deepen our understanding of the boundary work, identity-making and social exclusion that occurs in all subcultural groups.

Khan, Rimi

doi: 10.1080/13676261.2021.1948980pmid: N/A

This article examines the ways in which multicultural youth leadership programs reflect a model of participatory citizenship and individual empowerment that risks affirming white institutional worlds. Drawing on data from a national study of migrant and refugee youth in Australia, it suggests that while these activities offer useful forms of civic and vocational training for its participants, leadership programs can burden migrant youth with forms of cultural labor that other young people are not expected to perform. Programs of multicultural youth leadership make young migrants responsible for their communities, while also obscuring these communal attachments and responsibilities via an emphasis on individual achievement. It is argued that such programs form part of a wider discourse of neoliberal nationhood and youth futurity, where ideas about the productive potential of migrant youth are shaped by normative ideas about what the nation should be. These programs could instead be reoriented to emphasize the critical and creative capacities of migrant youth. Strategies of co-production can enable young people to take up a more flexible range of positions through which they share their expertise, and contribute to collective forms of cultural citizenship that can challenge, rather than affirm, the white institutional worlds through which they are governed.

Cairns, David; França, Thais; Calvo, Daniel Malet; de Azevedo, Leonardo Francisco

doi: 10.1080/13676261.2021.1948981pmid: N/A

This article looks at the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic among international students in Portugal, focusing on their experiences during the Spring 2020 lockdown. The discussion begins with an outline of the research context, and recognition of the inherent precarity of much international student life. Our research questions hence look not only at the immediate impact of the pandemic on internationalised learning but also the heightening of pre-existing economic vulnerability among many of our research subjects. Using evidence taken from 27 interviews, we document their experiences, including the challenge of maintaining communications and coping with social isolation, and look at how the pandemic has undermined the financial integrity of international studentship. In conclusion, we argue that in addition to widespread stress and anxiety the pandemic has created additional forms of precarity for this cohort, creating a need to integrate better support measures into the governance of mobility at tertiary education level.