Communities of Youth

Cultural Practice and Informal Learning

Steven Miles, Axel Pohl, Barbara Stauber, Andreas Walther, Rui Manuel Bargiela Banha, Maria do Carmo Gomes

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Topic: Social Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351742757
• Subtopic: Social Work
• Index: Social Sciences

This title was first published in 2002.Communities of Youth critically evaluates what it means to be a young person at the beginning of the twenty-first century and the problems, opportunities and dilemmas that emerge from the experience. The book is concerned with putting key conceptual debates to do with youth in a comparative cutting-edge empirical context. In particular, it endeavours to transcend what its contributors feel is one of the most damaging trends of recent work on the question of youth, namely: the division between young people's transitions and youth culture. Building upon the notion of lifestyle as a means of bridging this gap, the book provides something original and timely: a way of linking young people's broader structural concerns with the cultural and community contexts within which they conduct their everyday lives. The data discussed in the book emanates from a comparative European Union project conducted in Great Britain, Germany and Portugal. The three training programmes examined are based on the performing arts, but the authors argue that the skills young people glean from these courses are more to do with generic skills such as the ability to work effectively in groups, mutual responsibility, discipline and above all, confidence, than the technical proficiencies of performance. These courses become an important part of the young people's lives and as such, provide a space within which they become themselves. In this sense, the book highlights the fact that far from being passive recipients of public policy, young people actively engage with the power structures that combine to shape their lives. Communities of Youth therefore considers the diversity of European youth and by tapping into this diversity it develops important recommendations that will inform academic debate, research and youth policy.

Chapter 1

Introduction

This book is concerned with the exploration of non-conventional means of empowering young people in their transitions to work and adulthood. Biographical transitions are normally related to status passages between different phases of the life-course. As such they refer to learning: the acquisition of knowledge and skills inherent to the demands of the life-phase to come. Institutionalized forms of organizing this kind of learning mainly focus on the skills and qualifications young people need. But equally important to the process of learning is the development of competencies necessary for coping with these demands in a subjectively meaningful and individually viable way. This issue represents a key focus of this book.

Recent research on transitional systems in Europe (EGRIS, 2001; Walther et al., 2002) has shown that the structures of formal education and training have failed in preparing a considerable percentage of young people appropriately for the demands associated with entering the labour market and constructing their own biographies in a way which makes sense for them. First, educational structures cannot avoid, and sometimes re-produce or even re-inforce, inequalities in the qualifications starting postions of young people. This means restricted options for individual choice and high risks of social exclusion for those with the lowest qualifications (Kieselbach et al., 2001). Secondly, many schools and training organizations obviously have lost touch with the needs of a changing economy and a changing workforce. They seem to be simply not in tune with changing labour market needs, with young people’s life plans nor with the requirements of coping with the everyday life of transitions which follow less and less linear and predictable routes. This dilemma is due to the constraints of the societal organization of learning in general, which, in one way or the other, puts a strong emphasis on selection. It is very difficult, if not impossible, to create a balance between the principles of selection and integration. Meanwhile, it is also true to say that economic and social demands alter so rapidly that it is equally difficult to foresee and plan learning needs in advance. In contrast, it has become obvious that formal education and training have ceased to be a reliable defence against unemployment and against increasingly precarious futures. Many young people find themselves in a situation in which they are forced to deal with the uncertainties caused by so-called flexible labour markets and globalized economies. In these circumstances the transition itself is undermined. It is certainly not the case that such young people are not capable enough to cope with the demands of a changing world. Rather, our suggestion here is that the skills and knowledge they are offered by mainstream education and training are not giving them the tools they need to survive and to prosper.

Many young people react to these circumstances by withdrawing from formal education and training. They therefore become labelled as ‘disadvantaged’, and any problems they have tend to be ascribed to individual deficiencies rather than to be regarded as deficiencies of the system as a whole. Young people therefore inevitably feel stigmatized and pressurized into lowering their aspirations towards those jobs and training schemes available to them, however inappropriate they may be. Feeling demotivated they do not expect any subjectively meaningful support from public institutions in general and from agencies such as vocational counselling, and the careers and employment services.

This monograph seeks to question the universal validity of formal qualifications and formally acquired skills and calls for investment in alternative forms of training and education which provide young people with the skills they actually need. The book is based upon the findings of a European research project under the title of ‘Secondary learning effects of community arts’ funded by the European Commission’s programme ‘Youth for Europe’ from 1997 to 2000. With the notion of ‘secondary learning effects’, we tried to express our particular interest in the more implicit learning processes which do occur in education and training programmes for young men and women rather beyond their official curriculum: by developing a drama piece or a music show, for example (which may be the direct purpose of a project), arrangements with the other group members have to be made, individuals have to rehearse with and in front of the group and in these circumstances self-confidence may be enhanced. However, we no longer wish to be beholding to the label ‘secondary’ learning effects, because it implies that such learning effects are somehow inferior to ‘primary’ learning effects. Our suggestion is that they are in fact equally important and perhaps more so than the more explicit skills that young people acquire in these contexts. The central objective of this research was therefore to assess the experiential effect of performance in the following semi-formal settings: community arts, cultural youth work, and in circus and theatre schools. We hope to be able to illustrate the value of indirect learning as a means of coping with transitions into work and adulthood.

Our cross-cultural research was carried out in three European cities - Liverpool (United Kingdom), Lisbon (Portugal) and Mannheim (Germany) - and it deals with experiences of young men and women in the context of performing arts: drama and acting, music and dance. In Liverpool Hope Street Ltd. gives unemployed young people the opportunity to express themselves in music and drama and to acquire workshop skills in the context of community arts projects conducted with children, youngsters, and elderly or disabled people. In Lisbon Chapitô is a professional school offering courses and recognized qualifications in the area of circus skills. In Mannheim the community centre JUST (‘Youth in the Neighbourhood’) serves young people from migrant backgrounds and uses drama and music as a means of preventive youth work.

Why performing arts? Firstly, we start from the assumption that young people have a high subjective interest in performing which, certainly at an informal level, plays a key role in the construction of youth cultural lifestyles and identities. Secondly, we contend that young people develop knowledge and skills in these aspects of their lives. Thirdly, we argue that such competencies are in actual fact highly appropriate given the changing demands of the labour market and the changing shape of individual biographies. They are in turn in line with what has been identified as modern key competencies: creativity, networking and group skills, learning to learn, improvization and flexibility. And they potentially deliver a very important resource for transition processes: motivation. In addition, the performing arts in particular, potentially provide equally invaluable and yet undervalued qualities such as self-confidence, personal standing, more open attitudes to fellow human beings and more flexible attitudes towards gender relations.

The argument that alternative forms of learning are needed to respond to the demands of changing biographies in late modern youth has several consequences: Vocational training and education can no longer be reduced to the acquisition of job-related skills, but have to be seen in the context of the increasing need of young people to make sense of their youth biographies which is no longer supplied by the modern promise of ‘learn now and profit later’. With the attempt to broaden the access of young people to socially recognized forms of learning, this research is located in the context of the discourse on lifelong learning and the building of a ‘learning society’. In general this means that social change requires a fundamental restructuring of the societal organization of learning. The role of learning institutions in individuals lives and vice versa needs to be reconsidered. There is a danger that debates concerning lifelong learning are nothing more than rhetorical. Many authors have indeed underlined the fact that such a discourse reflects a status quo in which segmented learning opportunities persist (Stauber and Walther, 1999; Coffield, 1999a). The danger is that lifelong learning becomes little more than a ‘container’ in which the unemployed are temporarily ‘deposited’. The unemployed are likely to be de-motivated and under-qualified in these conditions. It is therefore absolutely crucial to identify and encourage more ‘proactive’ approaches to ‘training for jobs’ and to invest in ‘innovative’ ‘learning for change’ (Manninen, 1998) in which individuals have an active say in their own training experience. The interest in identifying more informal learning settings and to assess the potential of such settings is motivated by this critical approach to lifelong learning. A necessary prerequisite of a learning society which is currently a long way from being a reality, can therefore be said to be the empowerment of informal spaces and contexts in which learning is embedded in social and cultural practice. The debate as to how informal learning can be strengthened under conditions of late modernity is one of the major challenges to both educationalists and youth researchers. Thus, the various levels of organizations concerned need to foster more open learning processes. Crucially, they also need to be prepared to be brave enough to accept uncertain, and often unmeasurable, learning outcomes. To support this paradigm shift from a teaching curriculum to a learning-based curriculum is one of the objectives of this publication. From a youth research perspective we therefore will link the issue of how learning could be organized along the life-course closely to the issue of re-thinking the concept of youth transitions.

The book is organized in five chapters. Chapter 2 offers a theoretical view on the changes in young people’s transitions. It contends that youth transitions should be conceptualized not merely as prolonged but also as de-standardized in nature. In other words, they offer a dizzying array of options and opportunities as well as risks, depending on individual access to resources and spaces. However, in order to avoid constructing a stereotypical image of young people as mere victims of structural conditions the chapter also deals with the strategies which young men and women adopt in order to cope with transitions and in order to shape their own lives. At the end of this chapter we consider how far performing arts represent an appropriate means of empowering young people in these uncertain times.

Chapter 3 describes the methodological design and procedure of the research and focuses on the following main dimensions: the analysis of organizations and policies which we investigated by expert interviews, document analysis and participatory observation, the analysis of young people’s experiences and orientations by focus group interviews and biographic interviews, and the evaluation of these findings through an intercultural perspective.

In Chapter 4 the three case studies are presented. These presentations start from a description of the respective national transition systems representing the institutional and socio-economic context of the analyzed projects. We then discuss the organizational structure, history and overall objectives of the three projects. The operationalization of these objectives into pedagogical concepts and methods is analyzed according to interviews with project workers. Then this ‘official’ perspective is compared and contrasted with young people’s own experiences of each project. These are related to their experiences and expectations prior to the project as well as to their future orientations. An integral part of these presentations is the analytical description of an actual performance.

In Chapter 5 the above case studies are evaluated with regard to three key dimensions: their relation to and relevance for the transitions and lives of the young people involved; the learning processes and the effects and impact of such processes and the prerequisites which are necessary for these processes to be effective. The findings will be related to and interpreted by means of theoretical concepts such as identity, motivation and self-confidence, informal learning and empowerment, community and institutionalization.

In Chapter 6 we present conclusions regarding the future of indirect learning and its impact on youth transitions with particular reference to the performing arts. We also consider the implications of this relationship for the nature of youth research in this area. By doing so we intend to provide a foundation upon which future research can develop. Our suggestion is that young people are too often constrained by training that fails to engage with young people’s lifestyles and with the meanings they invest in their everyday lives. In short, we call for an investment in indirect learning which is itself remarkable for the way in which how it creates an environment in which young people are the authors of their own training and in which they begin to have a direct say in their own futures.

Chapter 2

Youth Transitions

This chapter will deal with the increasing complexity and ambivalence of transitions between youth and adulthood which has been a recurring feature of recent research concerned with the prolongation of the youth phase (Cavalli and Galland, 1995). In a rapidly changing world the transition into adulthood is not a straightforward process. The transition is itself constituted by a whole spectrum of transitions taking place in various contexts, all of which follow their own rules, whilst create their own sense of normality. In addition, such transitions are located in their own time and space; challenging individuals to negotiate their own paths. However, in public discourses as well as in research, the transition from youth to adulthood is often reduced to the transition between school and work (see Cohen and Ainley, 2000). But it is more than this approach may suggest. In particular, these transitions are ambivalent insofar as they are characterized at one and the same time by cultural autonomy and prolonged dependency, notably with regard to housing and economic dependency. In what follows we will outline the structural demands of these new transitions, but instead of leaving our analysis there (as much youth research tends to do) we will go on to address the active ways in which young people relate to structural constraints on their lives.

As a first step we will have a closer look at the nature of re-structured youth transitions. We will try to identify the main risks and demands that emerge from these structural contexts. Secondly, we will focus on the solutions and strategies young men and women develop themselves. We are especially interested in how young women and men cope with complex and contradictory demands and at the same time try to do this in a meaningful way. Thirdly, we will outline what prerequisites young people need for making subjectively satisfying and meaningful solutions: what do they need as regards resources, competencies and learning environments? We will then conclude this section by presenting a hypothesis concerned with how far performing arts represent an appropriate means to empower young people in coping with the sorts of transitional demands under discussion.

The de-standardization and fragmentation of transitions

Various types of transitions occur in young people’s lives, all of which share the objectives of an individual balancing subjective aspirations within structural constraints: the transition to work, the transition to independence (from the family), the transition towards responsible and fulfilling partnership and sexuality, the transition towards an individual lifestyle, and the transition towards citizenship. A horizontal objective, integral to all biographic transitions, is the construction of sexual and gender identity: what does it mean to become a man or woman?

The above transitions interact, often in a contradictory fashion, and the individual has to navigate and to negotiate them the best he or she can, notably in the context of family and intergenerational relationships, sexual and gender relations, education and training, the labour market, locally and regionally, as well as in cultural contexts and most importantly, in the context of youth cultures. Resources for negotiation and navigation differ significantly according to gender, social backgrounds and ethnic and cultural origins. From a theoretical point of view it is therefore important, notably in the context of post-modernism, that lines of social segmentation are regarded in relation to gender and ethnicity, social background and age, for instance (Bradley, 1996). Young people’s biographies seem to be characterized, above all, by paradox. Young people have to cope with a situation in which they are both young and adult at the same time, but in different life contexts, or in which they are none of the above. They can indeed be said to live in a form of transitional purgatory. Many young people simply feel that they do not fit in. For instance, in their origin-culture young Turkish females in Germany are regarded as adults much earlier than their German friends. In the dominant culture in which they live, however, they are treated as young people without any rights. This represents a source of considerable confusion and uncertainty. As Bauman (1995) argues this can be interpreted as a consequence of the fragmentation of individual biographies and social life (Bauman, 1995); a feature of contemporary life which is apparently especially pertinent to the everyday experiences of young people who have often been described as barometers of social change (Jones and Wallace, 1992).

Perhaps the most important characteristics of youth transitions is that young people are obliged to develop appropriate and complimentary coping strategies which are sophisticated enough to cope with the contradictory nature of their own experiences:

‘In other words, young people’s lives seem to bounce back and forth like a yo-yo. These oscillatory and reversible movements suggest that what has happened is the yo-yo-isation of the transition to adulthood. As if young people had gone to live in the skies and migrated like birds.’ (Pais, 2000: pp. 220).

Transitions and life courses in general lose their linearity: they have no clear beginning and no clear ending any more, their borders are getting more and more hazy. The very legitimacy of notions of ‘youth’ and ‘adulthood’ have been undermined inasmuch as such transitions overlap with and undermine the life-phases we would traditionally associate with youth, adulthood and old age. Transitions no longer appear to represent secure and defined status passages. These status passages are no longer clear cut and are often, in fact, reversed. Routes towards independence often have to be rejected because of unemployment, inappropriate educational choices or broken relationships (Walther et al., 1999).

Biographies and transitions diversify and pluralize. The linear and secure status passage model of ‘youth’ is superseded by a fragmented and reversible model and can therefore be conceptualized as a process of destandardization. In order to avoid the limitations associated with the description of an overly rigidly youth phase, we will re-cycle the metaphor of the ‘yo-yo’ (Pais, 1996, Peters and Bois-Reymond, 1996), in doing so we intend to highlight the particular character of de-standardized transitions. Such ‘yo-yoing’ is a symptom of general processes of modernization which dissolve institutionalized assumptions of normality such as ‘regular work’, ‘family’, ‘male and female life courses’, which are themselves less and less useful as reliable points of reference for young people in the process of transition and biography construction. The promise of guaranteed stable occupations given by educational and training have, in recent years, proved to be unrealistic, at least for a large proportion of young people whose social situation pre-structures the resources and opportunities they have available to them. Young people therefore appear to be experiencing ‘old’ trajectories of inequality alongside ‘new’ risks and opportunities. Sometimes a lack of social resources may provoke the (apparent) ‘falling back’ into traditional gender role models or, alternatively, nourish the wish to live a ‘normal’ life which is still shared by a majority of young people. Young people endow the insecurities and possibilities associated with transitions with their own meanings (Allatt and Yeandle, 1992; du Bois-Reymond, 1998; Walther,...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Tables
• Preface
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Youth Transitions
• 3 Researching Communities of Youth: Some thoughts on methodology
• 4 Case Studies
• 5 ‘Catching the Trapeze in the Learning Society’ : The Evaluation of Case Studies
• 6 Conclusions
• Bibliography
• Index