Current youth policy in England and Wales utilises "transition" as the major framework for understanding young people's movement from "youth" to "adulthood". Underpinning this are developmental assumptions about who young people are and who they "should" become, especially with regard to sexuality.…

The article considers challenges faced in undertaking research work that examines issues of abuse and neglect, with young people acting in the role of co-inquirer. Based on a research process devised to support a qualitative study exploring why young people think they are frequently not believed when they report abuse and neglect, consideration is…

The research examined the effects on participants of an employment enhancement programme (EEP), which was delivered by a work-integration social enterprise in an area of high unemployment in the South-East of England. The EEP was designed to increase the employability of young people aged 16-24 years who are not in employment, education or…

Despite growing attention to both public engagement in policy development, and youth civic engagement, the engagement of young women and young mothers receives little attention. This article proposes guidelines for engaging with young women in provincial public policy development via their participation in public engagement initiatives. Developed…

The provision of alcohol and other drug (AOD) programmes in Australia targeting a broad age range of young people may inadvertently obscure the particular service needs of early teenagers. In this study, we describe four main accounts of substance use identified through interviews with 20 AOD service-engaged participants in Victoria, aged from 13…

This paper presents the findings from a project investigating the circumstances, experiences, perspectives and service needs of young people caring for a family member with a disability or long-term illness. Using qualitative methods, our research explored the experiences of two cohorts of young carers--younger carers aged 7 to 17 years and young…

Global policy attention has begun to focus on young people in developing countries and much of the discourse is framed around notions of "transition to adulthood" based on the idea that individuals develop in linear ways, separate from family and community. This idea has already been widely critiqued in western contexts. This article…

This article examines the experiences in terms of belonging and sense of place among young Romanian immigrants who came to Spain in search of opportunities for professional development. The research detects and analyses the process of mobility, the search for job opportunities and the necessity of working below one's level of training or…

This article examines the ways in which homeless young people find a sense of self-worth and dignity within the conditions of youth homelessness. It notes that, while homeless young people seek a space where they do not feel marginalised and can attain a form of social status and cultural competence, they also engage in practices and acts of…

The article deals with the formation of the social biographies of young people through the interplay of structure and agency. The aim is to provide a grounded typology of patterns of young people's agency within the process of shaping social biographies. The structural context addressed in the article consists of family resources and habitus. The…

The globalisation process has an impact at the micro-level on life-course patterns: concretely, the trajectories of young people into adulthood are being sharply modified. At a European level, the extension, de-linearisation, reversibility and diversification of youth trajectories have been identified as major changes. However, the extent to which…

Many young people have short spells of unemployment during their transition from school to work; however, some often get trapped in unemployment and risk becoming long-term unemployed. Much research has been undertaken on the factors that influence unemployment risk for young people during their school-to-work transition. However, very little is…

Against the backdrop of social, economic, and demographic changes of recent times, Arnett has proposed his theory of "emerging adulthood", essentially a new stage of the life-course between adolescence and adulthood. Arnett sees emerging adulthood as a distinct, historically unprecedented period demographically, subjectively, and in…

Media plays an important role in shaping public perceptions of youth. Previous studies have shown consistently negative images of youth in news media through a heavy focus on crime, accidents, and moral decay. Most research in this area has only collected data over short timeframes, which makes it difficult to register possible changes in modes of…

Young people's relationship with contemporary politics is complex and often problematized. They are often chastised as the apolitical harbingers of an incipient "crisis of democracy" while simultaneously heralded as the authors of sophisticated new forms of politics, most notably within electronic realms. Previous literature examining…