Youth Studies

An Introduction

Andy Furlong

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9781135189921
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Youth Studies: an introduction is a clear, jargon-free and accessible textbook which will be invaluable in helping to explain concepts, theories and trends within youth studies. The concise summaries of key texts and the ideas of important theorists make the book an invaluable resource. The book also raises questions for discussion, with international case studies and up-to-date examples.

The book discusses important issues within youth studies, for example:

• education and opportunity
• employment and unemployment
• family, friends and living arrangements
• crime and justice
• identities
• health and sexuality
• citizenship and political engagement.

Suitable for a wide range of youth-related courses, this textbook provides a theoretical and empirical introduction to youth studies. It will appeal to undergraduate students on international academic and vocational courses, including sociology, politics, criminology, social policy, geography and psychology.

chapter 1

Youth and the life course

Contents

What is youth?

Why study youth?

Youth and the life course

Structure versus agency

The idea of generation

Psychological perspectives

Policy perspectives

Summary points

Further questions

Further reading

Internet links

What is youth?

Youth is a socially constructed intermediary phase that stands between childhood and adulthood: it is not defined chronologically as a stage that can be tied to specific age ranges, nor can its end point be linked to specific activities, such as taking up paid work or having sexual relations. Youth is a broader concept than adolescence, which relates to specific developmental phases, beginning with puberty and ending once physiological and emotional maturity is achieved, and it tends to cover a more protracted time span. The term adolescence was coined by G. Stanley Hall in 1904 in an ambitious two-volume book entitled Adolescence: Its Psychology and its Relations to Physiology, Anthropology, Sociology, Sex, Crime, Religion and Education. For Hall, the physiological changes associated with adolescence meant that the experience was essentially traumatic: characterized by ‘storm and stress’. Adolescence was a period which involved risky behaviour, mood swings and conflict with parents. Subsequently, psychologists such as Bühler (1921) and Erikson (1968) recognized that there was an important cultural dimension to adolescence and that physiological explanations were somewhat limited. In recent years there has been something of a resurgence of interest in developmental theory and the physiology of adolescence as researchers have begun to use modern brain imaging technology to study differences in the brain activity of young people and adults. The argument here is that the brain’s frontal lobe cortex, which plays an important role in judgement, does not mature fully until young people are in their early or late twenties. As a result, young people may exercise poor judgement and are prone to risky behaviour (Evans et al., 2007; Bessant, 2008). Bessant notes, however, that some neuroscientists are highly critical of this reductionist tendency and argue that young people’s experiences, well-being and relationships also have a powerful impact on development and on decision-making processes.

GStanley Hall was born in Massachusetts in 1844. Educated at Union Theological Seminary and Harvard University, he held a Chair at Johns Hopkins University before being appointed as the first president of Clark University. An influential psychologist, he founded the American Journal of Psychology and was the first president of the American Psychological Association. As well as his work on adolescence (he is sometimes referred to as the ‘father of adolescence’), he played a leading role in the development of educational psychology. He died in 1924.

The sociological tradition in youth research has always placed a strong emphasis on the way in which experiences (which obviously vary across time and space and between social groups) are central to definitions of youth as they link to patterns of dependence. Whereas adolescence can be tied reasonably accurately to a specific age range and the completion of a set of developmental tasks (whether or not these are explicitly linked to the physical structure of the brain), as a socially constructed category youth can be difficult to define. It is essentially a period of semi-dependence that falls between the full dependency that characterizes childhood and the independence of adulthood. Defined in this way, it is clear that youth is constructed differently across time and between societies. In some societies young people become independent at a relatively young age, while in others dependency can last well into their second decade of life, and even beyond. As Heinz argues:

The coordinates of this period of life vary according to the economy and the educational and social policies of the state: the life course and its component ‘youth’ are path-dependent social structures. Modern societies differ in their institutional arrangements concerning life transitions: education and training provisions, labour market regulations, exclusion mechanisms, social assistance rules, and the extent to which there is an explicit youth policy (2009: 6).

Thus Heinz argues that the youth period is not self-contained and is impossible to indentify clearly ‘except in terms of the legal definitions of the maturity age’ (2009: 4). Of course in legal terms, the age of maturity varies across time and between countries: in the United Kingdom the age of majority was 21 until 1970 when it was lowered to 18. In most countries, the age of majority is now 18, although it is not universal. In Canada there is variation between provinces: 18 in Ontario but 19 in British Columbia. Even in countries where the legal age of majority is set at 18, some rights are not granted until a later stage: in the United States, young people are not able to purchase alcohol until the age of 21, while in the UK full entitlement to social security assistance is not granted until age 25. In most countries rights and responsibilities are granted in a piecemeal fashion, beginning well before the legal age of majority and ending sometime later. In England, for example, young people may be regarded as responsible for criminal behaviour from the age of 10, allowed to work part time in a limited range of occupations at age 13 but not allowed to drive heavy goods vehicles until 21.

While recognizing that member states use different chronologies to define youth, the United Nations defines ‘youth’ as persons between the ages of 15 and 24 with all UN statistics based on this definition. The UN also recognizes that a useful distinction can be made between teenagers (i.e. those between the ages of 13 and 19) and young adults (those between the ages of 20 and 24). While seeking to impose some uniformity on statistical approaches, the UN itself is aware of contradictions between approaches in its own statutes. Hence under the 15–24 definition (introduced in 1981) children are defined as those under the age of 14 while under the 1979 Convention on the Rights of the Child, those under the age of 18 are regarded as children.

In some respects the identification of a clear youth stage in the life course has become increasingly problematic as a result of changes in modern societies. Young people spend longer in education, enter full time employment at a later stage and can remain dependent for greater periods of time. Moreover, many young people have non-linear sets of experiences in which events occur in a non-traditional order: they may have children before they have completed their education, for example, or may return to education after several years in employment. As a result of the growing protraction and complexity of youth as a stage in the life course, researchers have begun to argue we must recognize a new phase that they have termed ‘young adulthood’ (EGRIS, 2001), ‘post-adolescence’ (Keniston, 1968) or ‘emerging adulthood’ (Arnett, 2004).

Why study youth?

People study youth for a wide variety of reasons and do so from within a range of social science disciplines such as sociology, politics, criminology, social policy, geography and psychology. Within these subject areas, researchers may be interested in events or experiences that are predominantly manifest among young people (such as leaving school, entering the labour market for the first time or negotiating sexual identities), may wish to explore the youth dimension of a generalized phenomenon (such as voting behaviour or unemployment) or may wish to draw on the experiences of youth to explore broader questions relating to the nature of social change. The study of youth is both broad and dynamic and is frequently at the cutting edge of theoretical debate within different subject areas.

Unsurprisingly, the issues that engage youth researchers are frequently of great interest to policy makers. Often researchers are attracted to a field of study because it is very topical and stimulates widespread debate, although frequently they become involved because they harbour doubts about the veracity of popularist explanations. The link between the policy agenda, media concerns and the research agenda has been evident throughout much of the history of youth research. In terms of policy-related themes, two interlinked areas stand out particularly prominently: crime and youth cultures. For a variety of reasons (which are discussed in Chapter 9), young people are more likely than adults to engage in forms of behaviour that attract the attention of law enforcement agencies, and, as such, much of the work of criminologists focuses on youth. There has also been a longstanding interest in youth cultures, especially when particular subcultures are seen as posing a threat to the established order, when they are regarded as having anti-social or criminal tendencies or when their consumption habits suggest new markets to be exploited.

In many respects, it would not be unfair to suggest that there is always a high level of interest in young people when they are perceived to be a problem because their behaviour causes concern to those with power and influence (the recent urban disorders in the UK are a good example), when their actions are seen as posing a risk to themselves (through their use of alcohol or drugs, for example) or when there are concerns about social integration and economic efficiency (manifest in terms of high levels of long-term unemployment or mismatches in the supply and demand for labour).

In youth research there has been a long-standing rift between what can be termed the ‘transitional’ and ‘cultural’ approaches (discussed more fully in Chapter 7). Those working within a ‘transitional’ perspective have tended to focus on the relationship between education and work and the ways in which social inequalities are reproduced as part of the transition from youth to adulthood. Many (but not all) of those working within a ‘cultural’ perspective have tended to focus on lifestyles and youth subcultures, especially those that are highly visible and challenge the cultural standpoints of older generations.

Youth research, though, is not simply about policy, about the concerns of the powerful or about understanding cultural change. The examination of young people’s lives provides a unique window on processes of social and economic change and facilitates the exploration of some of the big theoretical concerns in social science.

It is important to study youth, because the points where young people engage with the institutions that either promote social justice or entrench social division are significant points of reference for every society. Hence, the study of youth is important as an indicator of the real ‘costs’ and ‘benefits’ of the political and economic systems of each society.

(Wyn and White, 1997: 6)

In this context, youth research is concerned with social justice, class, ‘race’, gender and spatial divisions. It focuses on issues of power and privilege on the one hand, and deprivation and exclusion on the other. Sociologically it provides a focus for discussions of structure and agency, illustrating the ways in which young people are constrained by factors such as social class or gender and highlighting the ways in which they can help break down barriers through their own actions. For psychologists the study of adolescence provides an ideal window for the exploration of identity development. Hence many of the ‘big names’ in social science have, at various points in their careers, held an interest in youth: Aristotle, Freud, Jung, Rousseau, Comte, Mannheim, Parsons and Elias, to name but a few.

Youth and the life course

For many youth researchers, discussion of change tends to centre on transitions from one status to another, such as the transition from school to work, embedded within a broader discourse of life course dynamics. It is useful here to make the distinction between life course theory that developed out of the work of Glen Elder, and earlier work that used the term lifecycle. The idea of embedding the experiences of youth within the life-cycle is a positivistic approach in which the individual’s journey through life is presented as normative and de-contextualized. In other words, key sets of experiences are closely linked to age-related stages in a developmental process. Conceptualized in this way, the lifecycle is essentially linear with one set of age-related experiences (such as leaving school) being closely related to another (gaining full time employment or getting married). Elder’s contribution (1974) was to place individuals’ experiences within contexts that were presented as both dynamic and linked to the lives of others. For Elder the key principles of life course theory ‘are historical time and place, the timing of lives, linked or interdependent lives and human agency in constrained settings’ (1997: 5). As Elder describes it, ‘The life course is age-graded through institutions and social structures, and it is embedded in relationships that constrain and support behaviour – both the individual life course and a person’s developmental trajectory are interconnected with the lives and development of others’ (1998: 951–2).

In elaborating life course theory, Walter Heinz suggests that it rests on five principles:

1 each life phase affects the entire life course: life-span development;

2 individuals actively construct their biography: human agency;

3 the life course is embedded in historical events: time and place;

4 social circumstances and events influence transitions: timing of decisions;

5 social relationships and networks contribute to the shaping of biographies: linked lives.

(Heinz, 2009: 4)

While the central principles of Elder’s work continue to underpin work on the life course, research relating to transitions from youth to adulthood has moved through a number of phases, each characterized by a shift in emphasis from one component factor to another. In some periods of time there has been a strong emphasis on the ways in which young peo...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Youth Studies
• Title Page
• Copyrights
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• The author
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Youth and the life course
• 2 Divisions in youth
• 3 Education and opportunity
• 4 Employment and unemployment
• 5 Family, friends and living arrangements
• 6 Identities
• 7 Youth cultures and lifestyles
• 8 Health and well-being
• 9 Crimeandjustice
• 10 Citizenship and political engagement
• 11 Beyond the first world
• 12 Working with young people
• Notes
• References
• Author index
• Subject index