Hernán Cuervo

Reflections on the use of spatial and relational metaphors in youth studies

This article makes a contribution to ongoing debate with youth studies about the frameworks and concepts that inform research and practice. It offers an analysis of the spatial metaphor of transition and the emerging relational metaphor of belonging. Noting that metaphor is an essential tool of theory, and that all theories illuminate particular elements of life and obscure others, it argues that there are elements of the transitions metaphor that have become entrenched as orthodoxies. These include the focus on youth-as-transition, the entrenchment of particular markers of progress and the tendency to see youth as a category [not in employment, education or training (NEET), for example]. While the goal is not to replace one orthodoxy with another, new insights into the production of inequalities and the creation of enabling processes can be forged through consideration of what is opened up when a metaphor of belonging informs theorising and analysis. Belonging brings the idea of youth as a social process back into the centre of analysis, enabling researchers to recognise the significance of relationships to people, place and to the times. Drawing on analyses of young peoples lives from an Australian longitudinal study, it illustrates the ways in which transitions and belonging approaches open up different insights.

Critical reflections on youth and equality in the rural context

The last two decades have seen a significant growth of research studies concerned with young people living in rural places with a strong focus on social and economic inequalities. In these studies, equality has become a key organising principle in understanding young peoples lives in settings that offer continuous social, economic, and cultural disadvantages. Drawing on a qualitative research study in a rural school in Victoria, Australia, this paper seeks to examine the ways in which young people make sense of and negotiate the challenges they encounter in their communities and in their post-secondary school transitions through two dominant discourses of equality: liberal egalitarianism and neoliberalism. These competing discourses conceptualise equality and approaches to addressing disadvantage differently. The former places the emphasis on a social approach underpinned by the idea of equality of opportunity, while the latter focuses on an individualised approach based on the notion of merit. I draw on a radical egalitarian critique by Iris Marion Young to reveal limitations from both positions and to show that adopting an individualised approach rather than a social one has significant implications for the way youth and institutions frame not only post-secondary school transitions and rural disadvantage but inequality as a whole.

The Limits of Wellbeing

This chapter addresses the complex interrelationship between wellbeing as a personal responsibility and individual experience and the reality that the parameters of wellbeing across populations are social, political and economic. It focuses on the issue of mental health, which is recognized as one of the most significant challenges to young people’s health in developed countries. The nexus between social determinants of wellbeing and individual experience of being well is at the heart of the project of rethinking youth wellbeing. Drawing on longitudinal data from the Life Patterns research program about generation X and Y Australians, this chapter explores the relationship between contemporary social conditions – such as the increased time spent in formal education; the rise of precarious work; the fragmentation of time with significant others; and the tendency to combine study and work – and the deterioration of mental health rates. Data from the Life Patterns program suggests that young people experience wellbeing as yet another dimension of life in which they must perform to normative standards, and for which they are responsible. Rethinking youth wellbeing to acknowledge the social processes that shape emotional and social health leads to the conclusion that governments, institutions and workplaces bear responsibility for the mental health of young people.

A Longitudinal Analysis of Belonging: Temporal, Performative and Relational Practices by Young People in Rural Australia

This article looks at how young people construct belonging over time in rural places in Australia. It draws on the intersecting ideas of theorists and youth researchers whose work supports the view that in order to understand young people’s lives, we need to seek a thicker, richer conception of the interplay among identity, place, mobility and performativity. We illustrate our argument using data from a two-decade longitudinal study of young Australians to provide a more nuanced understanding of place and belonging in rural settings. A longitudinal gaze over the lives of members of this generation alerts us to the manifold transitions and forms of making a life that are patiently constructed over time and through non-spectacular routine practices. The article contributes to a more robust spatialized sociology of youth by rendering visible the complex and intersecting registers of subjective and structural elements in young lives over time.

An unspoken crisis: the ‘scarring effects’ of the complex nexus between education and work on two generations of young Australians

Abstract It is common for organizations such as the International Labour Organization and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development to acknowledge that the links between education and work are far from smooth, creating a ‘crisis’ for youth. This includes increasing rates of unemployment, under-employment and precarious work. In Australia, the federal government response to this crisis for youth has been to suggest the end to an ‘Age of Entitlement’ for youth, cutting education, health and social security provisions and proposing the deregulation of the higher education system. This approach, which fails to acknowledge the profound changes to youth and young adulthood that have occurred over the last 20 years, will exacerbate hardship for young people. This article draws on the concept of a ‘new adulthood’ to analyse the changing nature of school to work transitions, and the impact of these conditions on young adults. Evidence from a two-decade longitudinal research study with two generations of Australians indicates that youth are already immersed in an ‘unspoken’ crisis that has its base in the increasingly complex and tenuous nexus between education and work, creating scarring effects that will mark a generation.

Gendered transitions from education to work: The mysterious relationship between the fields of education and work

This article addresses the paradox that, despite achieving educational participation exceeding their male peers, young women see fewer returns for this investment in the labour market. We argue that this paradox is obscured by youth transitions frameworks that assume a close, linear relationship between education and work. We draw on Bourdieu’s concept of field to highlight the distinctive logics (particularly the ‘time economy’) that shape different engagements by young people in education and work. This approach reveals the enduring power of the time structure of paid work in Australia to dominate key dimensions of life, including caring work, placing many women in a situation where they feel they must ‘choose’ career or parenthood. Our analysis of the intersections and disjunctions of these different fields highlights the challenges for young women’s transitions from education to work, and highlights the need for a relational framework to critically analyse the relationship between these fields.

Pedagogies of care in performative schools

ABSTRACT With growing policy pressures on schools to produce outcomes, there are concerns about the loss of caring relationships from education. In this article, we argue that rather than eliminating all forms of care, neoliberal reform agendas have co-opted the practices of care by encouraging an ethic of care that serves instrumental agendas of student achievement and performance. Drawing upon semi-structured interview data from a teacher and a principal in a school located in a low socio-economic suburb of Melbourne, we assert that such a care ethic often works to the detriment of socially marginalized young people. This is because schools’ caring practices driven by performative agendas fail to respond to the more complex relational needs of some students. The mismatch between the caring intentions of the institution and the actual needs of the students leads to relational tension paving the way for the breakdown of the caring relationships.

Youth homelessness: A social justice approach:

Social justice approaches that work towards eliminating youth homelessness with a sole focus on material needs overlook the significance of non-material aspects, such as the impact of social exclusion and stigma on individuals’ subjectivities. The lack of social legitimacy associated with homelessness is exacerbated under neoliberal conditions, with the shift from social to individual responsibility positioning those unable to achieve the normative transition to adulthood as social failures. We draw on interviews with young homeless women in Australia to extend the emerging sociological focus on the relational aspects of homelessness through a social justice lens. We analyse the association between subjectivity, stigma and neoliberalism, and draw on Iris Marion Young’s theory of justice to highlight how these shape experiences of homelessness. We conclude that overcoming homelessness requires policies and practices that give a greater focus to non-material aspects of homelessness through an emphasis on empowerment, self-respect and autonomy.

Rural Teaching and Learning in Neoliberal Times

This chapter analyzes the impact of neoliberal policies on education policy, the work of teachers, and the learning of young people. The chapter begins by examining the shift in Australian education policy from a strong social justice focus on schooling in the 1970s to a shift toward ideas of efficiency and excellence in education processes and outcomes that are underpinned by the need to increase national productivity and skill-up the workforce in recent times. This latter overarching theoretical and ideological framework has been commonly referred to as the neoliberal education project. The chapter continues by examining the impact of some of the policy technologies arising from this neoliberal project on teachers’ work and subjectivities, including the perennial problem of staffing for rural schools. Finally, it looks at students’ opportunities of further education and work in local spaces, including the normative imperative of mobility that appears to circumscribe their future.

The Formation of a Sense of Belonging: An Analysis of Young People’s Lives in Australian and Italian Rural Communities

This chapter draws on insights from a longitudinal, mixed-methods study in Australia to interpret quantitative data on the formation of belonging among students in Italy. It presents a relational, rather than spatial, analysis of how young people construct belonging in rural places. It shows that belonging is not merely defined by place but by affective, cultural and relational practices. These are sedimented over time through daily rituals and every day practices that operate as social mechanisms and structure social relations. They shape the quality of young people’s relationships and give meaning, value, identity and a sense of belonging to young people, even though they live in rural places and spaces characterised by uncertainty, social change and fragmentation.