Lives on hold: youth transitions in contemporary hostile contexts

Author(s):

Sofia Marques da Silva

Conference:

ECER 2009

Network:

5. Children and Youth at Risk and Urban Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

05 SES 06.5, Urban Education & Children and Youth at Risk

Paper Session

Time:

2009-09-29

13:30-15:00

Room:

JUR, HS 15

Chair:

Dolf van Veen

Contribution

This paper results from an ethnographic research carried out between 2005 and 2007 in a Youth Centre placed in the periphery of Porto with young boys and girls aged between 14 and 23 years old. The majority of young boys and girls who attend this space is in the process of abandoning school or has already abandoned School long before the end of the compulsory schooling. Juvenile biographies account for yo-yo transitions (Walther, 2006) towards shrinkage. Many young boys/girls either have not integrated the work market or have integrated it in a precarious way. Having few choice criteria, they try to make options in a paradoxical universe, on one hand full of consumption logics, and on the other hand structured by profound inequalities. At the individual level, juvenile itinerancies are marked by profound irregularities, and if some of the experiences visible there reveal new practices and social links, some others account for paths which are made towards an even more precarious world. Given that there is not a belonging which is guaranteed by birth, by the place or by work, they fabricate small belongings and presenticities in contexts which they try to approximate and make their own.

Method

Ethnography - two years doing participant-observation and writing filednotes. Interviews and data base analysis Document analysis

Expected Outcomes

The focus of this paper will be analysing the contradiction between the confrontation movement of the young boys/girls with vulnerabilities and fears, deriving from the disinvestment and from the loss of trust in several worlds (school, work) and the movement of affirmation and of investment which includes the building of belonging, of trust and of recognition in places, characters and comfort groups.

References

Ball, Stephen; Maguire, Meg; McCrae, Sheila (2000) Choice and Pathways. Transitions Post-16. Milton Keynes: Open University Press. Bauman, Zygmunt (2007) A Vida Fragmentada. Ensaios Sobre a Moral Pós-Moderna. Lisboa: Relógio D’Água. Beck, Ulrich (2002) “The Cosmopolitan Society and Its Enemies”, Theory, Culture & Society, 1/2, 17-44. Beck, Ulrich; Bonss, Wolfgang; Lau, Christophe (2003) “The Theory of Reflexive Modernization: problematic, hypothesis and research programme”, Theory, Cultura & Society, 1, 1-33. Bourdieu, Pierre (1978) «La «Jeunesse» n’est q’un Mot». Entretien avec Anne-Marie Métailié, paru dans Les jeunes et le premier emploi. Paris : Association des Ages, 520-530. [On-line], http://www.homme-moderne.org/societe/socio/bourdieu/ questions/jeuness.html, 21/01/08. Hey, Valerie (2005) “The Contrasting Social Logics of Sociality and Survival: cultures of classed be/longing in late modernity”, Sociology, 5, 855-872. Dejours, Christophe (1998) Souffrance en France. La Banalisation de L’Injustice Sociale. Paris: Éditions Seuil. Du Bois-Reymond, Manuela (2004) “Youth-Learning-Europe”, Young, Nordic Journal of Youth Research, 3, 187-204. Kaufmann, Jean-Claude (2004) L’Invention de Soi. Une Theorie de L’Identité. Paris: Armand Colin. Pais, José Machado (2003) “The Multiple Faces of the Future in the Labyrinth of Life”, Journal of Youth Studies, 2, 115 – 126. Silva, Sofia Marques da (2008) Exuberâncias e (trans)figurações de Si numa Casa da Juventude. Etnografia de fragilidades e de estratégias juvenis para o reconhecimento e para a dignidade. Tese de Doutoramento em Ciências da Educação. FPCEUP. Porto. Walther, Andreas (2006) “Regimes of Youth Transitions: choice, flexibility and security in young people’s experiences across different European contexts”, Young: Nordic Journal of Youth Research, 2, 119-139. Walther, Andreas; Hejl, Gry Moerch; Jensen, Torben Bechmann (2002) Youth Transitions, Youth Policy and Participation. State of the Art Report (Working Paper 1). [On-line], http://www.iris-egris.de/yoyo/pdf/YoyoWP1StateofArt.pdf, 2/09/07. Willis, Paul (2000) The Ethnographic Imagination. Cambridge: Polity Press. Willis, Paul (2005) “Cultura Viva: entrevista com Paul Willis” Roger Martínez, Tempo Social, 2, 301-333. Willis, Paul; Trondman, Mats (2000) “Manifesto for Ethnography”, Ethnography, 1, 5-16.

Author Information

Sofia Marques da Silva

University of Porto

Faculty of Psychology and Sciences of Education/Educational Research and Intervention Centre

Porto

174

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