Youth Cultures in a Globalized World: Developments, Analyses and Perspectives [1 ed.] 3030651762, 9783030651763

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Gerald Knapp Hannes Krall   Editors

Youth Cultures in a Globalized World Developments, Analyses and Perspectives

Youth Cultures in a Globalized World

Gerald Knapp · Hannes Krall Editors

Youth Cultures in a Globalized World Developments, Analyses and Perspectives

Editors Gerald Knapp Institute of Educational Sciences and Research (IfEB) Alpen-Adria-University Klagenfurt, Austria

Hannes Krall Institute of Educational Sciences and Research (IfEB) Alpen-Adria-University Klagenfurt, Austria

ISBN 978-3-030-65176-3 ISBN 978-3-030-65177-0 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65177-0 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Contents

Youth Cultures, Lifeworlds and Globalisation—An Introduction . . . . . . . Hannes Krall and Gerald Knapp

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Youth and Globalisation The North American Notion of Youth: Creating a Transformative and Critical Youth Pedagogy for Leadership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Shirley R. Steinberg

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Social Transformation of Youth and Youth Cultures in Europe: Trends, Theories and the Relevance of Youth Cultural Scenes . . . . . . . . . . Gerald Knapp and Natalia Waechter

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Adolescence and Migration: On the Importance of Orders of Belonging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Britta Hoffarth and Paul Mecheril

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The Nature of Youth. Or: On the Assumed Disappearance of Youth in the Present Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Michael Winkler

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Lifeworlds and Political Participation Lifeworlds and Cultures of Australian Youth in a Globalised World . . . . Anita Harris and Sherene Idriss Globalising Local Voices: Youth Cultures and Participation in Democratic Processes in Uganda . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Janestic Mwende Twikirize, Laban Musinguzi Kashaija, Stanley Wobusobozi, and Harriet Gimbo

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Youth in the Anthropocene: Questions of Intergenerational Justice and Learning in a More-Than-Human World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 Reingard Spannring

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Contents

Youth Cultures, Right-Wing Extremism and Violence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 Hannes Krall Identity and Cultural Diversity Research on Chinese Youth’s Values in the New Era . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157 Yuhang Wang and Hang Yu Opening up Localities to the Wider World and the Postmigrant Generation: New Forms of Resistance and Self-Assertion . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173 Anita Rotter and Erol Yildiz Body, Gender and Beauty: Modified Bodies Between Youth Culture Designs, Constructed Identity Models and Coping Strategies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193 Julia Ganterer Youth and Interculturality in Vienna: Gaming Intervention in Intercultural Contexts—Two Project Cases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207 Gerit Götzenbrucker, Vera Schwarz, and Fares Kayali Digitalisation, Economy and Work “Glocalized” Digital Youth Cultures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227 Natalia Waechter Consumption, Middle Class and Youth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245 Dieter Bögenhold, Yorga Permana, Farah Naz, and Ksenija Popovi´c Youth and Unemployment: Societal Ramifications—An Empirical Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257 Gerald Knapp Little Economists in Global Virtual Markets: An Analysis of the Relationship Between Digital Virtual Worlds and Children’s Economic Engagement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279 Cornelia Mayr

Contributors

Dieter Bögenhold Department of Sociology, University of Klagenfurt, Klagenfurt, Austria Julia Ganterer Institute of Social Work and Social Pedagogy, Leuphana University, Lübenburg, Germany Harriet Gimbo ActionAid International, Kampala, Uganda Gerit Götzenbrucker Department of Communication, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria Anita Harris Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia Britta Hoffarth Department of Educational Science, University of Hildesheim, Hildesheim, Germany Sherene Idriss Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia Laban Musinguzi Kashaija Department of Social Work and Social Administration, Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda Fares Kayali Digital Education and Learning, Centre for Teacher Education, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria Gerald Knapp Institute of Educational Sciences and Research, University of Klagenfurt, Klagenfurt, Austria Hannes Krall Institute of Educational Sciences and Research (IfEB), Alpen-AdriaUniversity, Klagenfurt, Austria Cornelia Mayr Department of Sociology, University of Klagenfurt, Klagenfurt, Austria Paul Mecheril Faculty of Educational Science, Migration Pedagogy and Cultural Work, University of Bielefeld, Bielefeld, Germany vii

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Contributors

Farah Naz Department of Sociology, University of Sargodha, Sargodha, Pakistan Yorga Permana Department of Geography and Environment, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK Ksenija Popovi´c Department of Economics, University of Klagenfurt, Klagenfurt, Austria Anita Rotter Migration and Education, Department of Education, University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria Vera Schwarz Centre for Teacher Education, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria Reingard Spannring Department of Educational Science, University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria Shirley R. Steinberg University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada Janestic Mwende Twikirize Department of Social Work and Social Administration, Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda Natalia Waechter Department of Educational Studies, Ludwig-Maximilian University Munich, Munich, Germany Yuhang Wang School of Marxism, University of International Business and Economics, Beijing, China Michael Winkler Department of Educational Science (Retired), University of Jena, Jena, Germany Stanley Wobusobozi ActionAid International, Kampala, Uganda Erol Yildiz Migration and Education, Department of Education, University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria Hang Yu School of Foreign Studies, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an, China

Youth Cultures, Lifeworlds and Globalisation—An Introduction Hannes Krall and Gerald Knapp

Lifeworlds of young people and their youth cultures are part of a globalised world. Although a process of globalisation and its impact on lifeworlds and cultures can be observed throughout history, globalisation in a modern sense shows particular influences due to its sociopolitical, economic and technological development. In the past, globalisation might have been seen primarily in the context of expanding political powers, global trade and cultural exchange on the one side, and human and natural disasters, wars and migration on the other. Globalisation in a modern sense— at least as it has been understood since the beginning of the twenty-first century—is characterised by an acceleration of economic, social and cultural exchanges, which have subsequently changed the perception of physical distance and time. The world has become a “global village” (Marshall McLuhan) and is nowadays reduced further to global interaction through social media on computer screens. Different localities and their diverse realities are melting down to a new form of simultaneous presence in the digitalised “here and now”. Lifeworlds of young people cannot simply be reduced to the coordinates of time and local space but rather need to be understood as hybrid lifeworlds, which are characterised and formed by the simultaneous presence of local and global forces. Lifeworlds are shaped, on the one hand, by globalisation and digitalisation. On the other hand, as a cultural productive force, young people themselves act upon processes of globalisation and digitalisation. They are an active part in this globalised world, in which they create their ideas of identity and self-representation, use multiple forms of social interaction and thereby develop various social affiliations and youth cultures.

H. Krall (B) · G. Knapp Institute of Educational Sciences and Research (IfEB), Alpen-Adria-University, Klagenfurt, Austria e-mail: [email protected] G. Knapp e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 G. Knapp and H. Krall (eds.), Youth Cultures in a Globalized World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65177-0_1

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Although globalisation is omnipresent in the public and scientific discourse, little attention has been given as yet to the question of how globalisation and lifeworlds of young people and their youth cultures are interacting. Most publications either address the topic from a specific cultural perspective, others focus on specific issues of youth cultures. This book aims to approach the theme globalisation and youth from multiple lifeworlds of young people and cultural angles. Therefore, authors from different countries and continents were invited to introduce their views. The contributions cover a broad range of topics, albeit they represent a selection and sometimes merely offer a snapshot of a far more complex reality. Nevertheless, the contributing authors share their observations and reflections across these selected topics in the context of young people, their lifeworlds and their active involvement in society. In the first part of the book, the understanding of youth and its interaction with globalisation is comprehensively examined. The second part addresses lifeworlds and political participation of young people. Identity and cultural diversity represent the main focus of the third part. And finally, the fourth part deals with topics of youth related to digitalisation, economy and work. The following overview provides a more detailed insight into the content of the book.

1 Youth and Globalisation The first part endeavours to capture the concept of youth and adolescence in a globalised world. “Redefining youth”, the “nature of youth”, “adolescence and migration” and the “transformation of youth” are keywords, whose meaning is not defined clearly in everyday communication. Introducing the notion of transformative youth leadership, the chapter “Tackling the North American Notion of Youth: Creating a Transformative and Critical Youth Pedagogy for Leadership” by Shirley STEINBERG anchors the concept in the articulation that youth are distinct beings and citizens, with specific needs, cultures and views of the world. Instead of seeing youth as mini adults, both scholars in particular and adults in general need to redefine youth by seeing how youth define themselves—they are not a subculture; they are young men and women with cultures and subcultures. In Steinberg’s view it is essential that youth themselves contribute to the vision, that it is not imposed upon them, and that scholars and adults assist them in discovering their abilities and potentials as leaders. She claims that it is necessary to nurture youth leaders in order to create a healthy and optimistic environment. She concludes that critical pedagogy of transformative youth leadership can impact youth in a global context, creating a space for youth leadership studies, research, mentorship, internships and empowerment. In the subsequent chapter “Social Transformation of Youth and Youth Cultures in Europe: Trends, Theories and the Relevance of Youth Cultural Scenes”, Gerald KNAPP and Natalia WAECHTER show that the societal conditions of growing up during the twenty-first century have changed across all of Europe. Today, young

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people are growing up in a society that is characterised by the pluralisation of ways of life and lifestyles, by different societal aims and values, and where the structural requirements and conditions of social chances and opportunities to participate are highly diverse. Against this background the chapter begins with the examination of the correlation between young people, society and culture, then explores the socialisation spheres and lifeworlds of young people, before turning to selected social life situations and areas of conflicts experienced by young people. The contribution also discusses the significance of youth cultures, their theories and contemporary youth culture scenes. In their chapter, “Adolescence and Migration: On the Importance of Orders of Belonging”, Britta HOFFARTH and Paul MECHERIL aim to provide a more detailed explanation of concepts, which represent a sort of hegemonic knowledge about the phenomenon of adolescence, as well as the present theoretical explication, particularly with regards to providing a critique of the concept of adolescence by examining at least three of its main aspects. This includes a critique of the development and phase concepts that suggest quasi-organic processes by naturalising adolescence; a critique of the normative effect of concepts that hypostasise the general requirement of coping with developmental tasks; and a critique of the difference, context and variation-levelling consequences of universal phase concepts. The authors conclude that these categories of belonging are generally connected to normal biographical concepts and more or less defined norms such as the successful completion of certain rights of passage in the education system or the expectations that define the acceptable (“normal”) criteria for a curriculum vita when applying for a job. Not only are subjects usually expected to uphold these norms—in formal as well as other settings—they are also expected to actively and purposefully “fill” them by accepting and verbally validating an individual biographical perspective and giving this perspective communicable meaning. In his contribution, “The Nature of Youth. Or: On the Assumed Disappearance of Youth in the Present Society”, Michael WINKLER argues that social scientists engaged in research on the living conditions of young people emphasise the idea that, in modern societies, youth is no longer found as a persisting common phenomenon in social reality. Of course, there are some striking arguments for such a consideration, for example the general tendency towards individualism as well developments to abandon the difference of ages. However, some distinctive features can still be discerned, which might serve as evidence for a special situation in which youth can be defined as a more or less collective situation. Simultaneously, the contemporary lives of young people feature numerous changes—for example the considerable extension of life in dependence on one’s parents or in a state of economic instability, lasting as far as the third decade of a young person’s life. With this in mind, it is worth reconsidering youth as a special life span connected in a way to the nature of the development of human beings as well as a time when the recognition of nature might be a habit in that time of life, as can be seen by young people protesting against the denial and neglect of climate change by politics throughout the world.

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2 Lifeworlds and Political Participation Growing diversity, technological development, migration and the ubiquity of digital communication and representation of the world open up new forms of selfrepresentation, networking and political expression of young people. Experiencing inequality, forms of prejudice against minorities or even racism evoke acts of protest and self-assertion and the demand for equal rights and opportunities. Global environmental activities and climate protection as it is expressed, for example, by the “Friday for future” movement clearly show the need for political change. Globalisation, on the one hand, can lead to a spread of democratic principles and human rights, and thereby strengthen the voice of young people. However, it can threaten democracy, if young people are inclined to adopt ethnocentric and authoritarian principles. Thus, globalisation and growing ethnic diversity can also lead to nationalism and the longing for a culturally homogenous society in xenophobic youth scenes, which supposedly could provide social security, identity and orientation within a pluralistic world. In their contribution, “Lifeworlds and Cultures of Australian Youth in a Globalised World”, Anita HARRIS and Sherene IDRISS provide a situated snapshot of Australian young people’s lifeworlds and cultures as they grow up, come of age and make their way in a globalised and interconnected world, dealing with uncertain pathways from education to employment and a new landscape of work, and being part of a generation that is ever more mobile, digitally connected and culturally diverse. The authors begin by explaining the context of Australia’s national and regional specificities; this offers a contextualisation that they argue is vital to acknowledge in the development of a situated and interconnected global youth studies agenda. Next, they explore the dominant conceptual framework within Australian youth culture studies, that of the subculture/post-subculture approach, before turning to some new directions in Australian youth culture studies that move beyond the intellectual legacy of the subculture/post-subculture tradition. They consider how emerging research addresses the ways conditions of superdiversity, transnationalism, mobility and the ubiquity of the digital are shaping young Australians’ creative and political collective expressions through youth cultures today. In the following chapter on “Globalizing Local Voices: Youth Cultures and Participation in Democratic Processes in Uganda”, Laban MUSINGUZI, Janestic TWIKIRIZE, Stanley WOBUSOBOZI and Harriet GIMBO explore the effects of globalisation, which go far beyond global economic interdependence and include issues such as the spread of democracy. They draw from the popular global concepts of democracy and youth participation to show how globalisation affects the youth’s voice in local processes of participation and empowerment. Data were collected from a total of 553 youths aged 15 and 30 years using a structured questionnaire and ten focus group discussions with young people in ten districts. Results show that with increased democratisation, there are emerging norms and practices that characterise youth behaviours. Participation in formal leadership positions is low at only 26%. However, in exercising their agency, young people have adopted an

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issues-based approach to confront injustice. There is also a form of youth activism which has spread across the world through the power of internet and social media as an emerging culture among the youth. In the face of the global environmental and climate emergency, the chapter “Youth in the Anthropocene: Questions of Intergenerational Justice and Learning in a More-Than-Human World” by Reingard SPANNRING seeks to bring environmental sociology and environmental education research into a dialogue with youth research and youth work. It sets the scene by presenting the phenomenon of the Anthropocene and by drawing attention to the worldwide wave of youth political participation, the “Fridays for Future” school strikes for the climate. The “environment”, however, is not simply something “out there” to be protected or feared. Rather, human and nonhuman systems are co-constitutive and overlapping in various forms. From this perspective, the chapter proceeds to raise questions about intergenerational justice and learning. It discusses how the global phenomenon of environmental destruction has a differential impact in a world of profound inequalities and interrelated forms of oppression with a special focus on generation and age, geo-social location and species membership. Finally, the chapter suggests that youth research and youth work open up for an ecocentric perspective that locates young people in the context of complex and changing nature cultures, and sees them as responsible and creative members of ecological communities. The chapter by Hannes KRALL on “Youth Cultures, Right-Wing Extremism and Violence” examines right-wing extremism as a growing phenomenon across Western countries, which is a challenge for all aspects of social and political life. These developments seem to be driven by contradicting societal forces. A process of globalisation in all areas of social, cultural and economic life on the one side, and a rise of nationalistic, ethnocentric and authoritarian attitudes on the other. The growing international scene of right-wing extremists is connected via social media and the internet. They can organise joint demonstrations, sports-fan-club activities and events like rightwing rock concerts. International networking is accompanied by the distribution of specific products, clothes and symbols. The lifeworlds of young people and their youth cultures are shaped by these developments. In the public discourse and enacting of right-wing extremism among young people one can easily find a mix of ideological attitudes connected to aspects of their daily coping with life challenges. Case studies show how biographical experiences of violence, neglect, maltreatment or stress due to conflicting family relationships can be related to the development of right-wing orientation of adolescents. Therefore, it is inevitable to include a biographical and a lifeworld perspective of young people in order to understand phenomena of juvenile right-wing extremism.

3 Identity and Cultural Diversity The third part of the book deals with the issue of how globalisation influences the way young people actively shape their personal and cultural identity. Globalisation

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and its socio-economic impact have a strong influence on how young people perceive themselves and how they adopt their beliefs and values. Mobility and migration— often linked to socio-economic status—lead to conflict, resistance and act of selfassertion. The questioning of established social order and hierarchy is not only a struggle between various groups, but can also cause conflict within the groups themselves. Gender identity, sexual orientation and practices to modify one’s own body by piercing, tattooing, medical operations, etc., are forms of not only defining one’s personal and cultural identity, but might also be a way of coping with life issues. Therefore, searching for one’s own personal and social identity in the context of globalisation and cultural diversity is a driving force for a dynamic youth culture. The chapter “Research on Chinese Youth’s Values in the New Era” by Wang YUHANG and Yu HANG focuses on the youth in today’s China, examining their values from six dimensions based on the theory of intergenerational value transformation, i.e. safety, economy, aesthetics, knowledge, belonging and self-actualisation as well as individual values. Results show that the values held by China’s youth tend to be post-materialistic, which means that they attach more importance to life quality, self-expression and self-actualisation rather than to material needs, the typical materialistic values possessed by their grandparents or even parents. The value change of Chinese youth is a reflection of how China’s socio-economic development within the past four decades exerts its influence on individuals. The implementation of the reform and opening-up policies over the last four decades have allowed China to develop a deeper connection with the whole world. Benefiting from actively integrating itself into economic globalisation and the current world order, China has experienced profound social and economic changes, which promote value changes or even shifts of Chinese at the same time. As the most active group in society, youth acts like the barometer of social development, from which we can clearly see value changes in society. Thus, the study focuses on Chinese youth’s values and explores how socio-economic development exerts its influence on individuals. The chapter by Anita ROTTER and Erol YILDIZ, “Opening Up Localities to the Wider World and the Postmigrant Generation: New Forms of Resistance and Self-Assertion”, focuses on the postmigrant generation, the children and grandchildren of the “guest workers” with their specific anti-hegemonic attitudes and resistant practices of positioning. Using selected examples, for instance from rap music, it sketches the realm of comedy and autonomous organising in civil society, showing how youth and young adults develop new forms of resistance and self-assertion, and in this manner defend themselves and struggle against established orders of knowledge. In doing so, they attempt to formulate a joint shared consciousness and political understanding counter to an architecture of discriminatory structures and negative attributions, and endeavour to implement this in different political and, in part, subversive forms of action. The chapter by Julia GANTERER, “Body, Gender and Beauty: Modified Bodies Between Youth Culture Designs, Constructed Identity Models and Coping Strategies”, describes and analyses the practices young people use to express their identity and coping strategies with their lifeworld from a feminist-phenomenological

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perspective. Trimmed beards, pierced nostrils, tattooed upper arms or the fashionable styling are counted among the youth’s cultural mainstream. They themselves and others are often oblivious to the reasons and motivations for choosing them. Like the teenagers themselves, parents and social/education specialists sometimes also do not know how to deal with adolescent bodies and their processes of change and life crises. Therefore, they might be at a loss, afraid and unable to cope. Especially as often a sensitisation of the profound interrelations of bodily practices and intersubjective bodily experiences is lacking. The designs of youth culture visibly represented on the bodies mostly remain unquestioned and silent. This article takes a feminist-phenomenological perspective in order to point out, on the one hand, the tension between body (scheme), gender (order) and beauty (ideals) in the context of adolescent intersubjectification processes. On the other hand, it aims to pursue the question as to the relevance of a self-reflexive attitude, a knowledge of bodily experiences as well as socially constructed realities and the existing various identity and life models therein for social/pedagogical and psycho/therapeutical theories and practices. In light of the global developments, consequentially, modern youth cultures view one’s own body as a medium for communication and projection to process one’s own hidden desires, painful experiences, social conflicts and crises. The chapter, “Youth and Interculturality in Vienna: Gaming Intervention in Intercultural Contexts—Two Project Cases”, by Gerit GÖTZENBRUCKER, Vera SCHWARZ and Fares KAYALI, presents research about a gaming intervention and game development as well as their effects on Viennese youth. In their research, the authors followed the question of whether playing or creating a game can change one’s understanding of diversity in order to overcome gender, social class and ethnic boundaries. Further explored is whether gaming can foster new contacts and, moreover, friendships across these boundaries. For this purpose, two research projects on gaming and playing in youth contexts are outlined. The first is the “YourTurn!” video game project, in which a Facebook game was developed that aimed at creating short videos together within a community of players. In the second project, the authors present a game design project developed for Viennese schools, following the thesis that games can be suitable for social learning. Three different classes from different schools and diverse ethnic as well as social backgrounds were invited to develop games (analogue or digital) to teach them about “informatics and society”. Finally, the games were presented and demonstrated options for addressing controversial topics related to technology development and its impacts on society.

4 Digitalisation, Economy and Work In the final part of the book, contributing authors look at globalisation and youth cultures in the context of “Digitalisation, economy and work”. Young people are seen simultaneously as consumers as well as creators and producers of their lifeworlds and youth cultures. Digitalisation is a driving force for children and young people participating as consumers and/or producers on virtual markets.

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What can be observed as new forms of participation via social media on the one hand, is accompanied by social, economic and political impacts on their lifeworld on the other. In a globalised world, young people are facing growing inequality. Access to education and work provides the basis for participation in society. Therefore, the rising level of unemployment is of great concern. Young people are coping with these global forces in different ways. They might develop specific subcultural scenes where they use social media for networking and sharing. However, in many less developed regions and countries, young people are forced to leave and migrate to make a better living, leaving behind regions populated mostly by elderly people. In more developed regions however, young people are seen as an innovative and productive force for the labour market or as young global entrepreneurs who are active agents in a globalised world. The chapter by Natalia WAECHTER, “‘Glocalized’ Digital Youth Cultures”, provides an overview and a detailed insight into current digital youth cultures by presenting and discussing four relevant examples: Instagram, multiplayer online roleplaying games, political activism on Facebook and YouTube, and TikTok (formerly Musical.ly). Thereby it covers a whole range of digital youth cultures in which all age groups of young people, from late childhood (TikTok) to emerging adulthood (political activism), are engaged. Understanding young people as youth cultural consumers as well as creators and producers of subcultures, the chapter discusses for each example presented in which ways the young people relate to local and regional contexts in their youth cultural engagement on the one hand and to transnational, global contexts on the other. The section on digital youth cultures and political activism further shows how young people use social media for political purposes— from mere “slacktivsm” to the establishment of social movements. The chapter concludes that all four discussed digital youth cultures share their “glocalized” character, globally connected but locally specified, but also confirms a stronger trend towards globalised networks of production, distribution and consumption. In their chapter on “Consumption, Middle Class and Youth”, Dieter BÖGENHOLD, Yorga PERMANA, Farah NAZ and Ksenija POPOVIC point out the connection between social stratification, youth and consumption patterns. The authors seek to bring youth into discussion with consumption and the middle classes in a globalised world. They focus on relations between those three factors and introduce readers to an initial evaluation of the dynamics of social inequality and wealth. All this reasoning is somewhat tentative and of a preliminary nature, so that the argumentation unfolds much like a series of theses which deserve to be explored in further detail. However, this debate does not only take place on the academic ground of youth and consumption of and within middle classes, but it also belongs to a wider debate on injustice in modern society. In his chapter on “Youth and Unemployment: Societal Ramifications—An Empirical Study”, Gerald KNAPP demonstrates that for many young people throughout Europe, the transition from the school system to gainful employment has become more arduous, more diverse and less clearly structured. Due to the changing nature of the employment system, it takes adolescents far longer to secure their first job nowadays. An ever-increasing number of young people is likely to encounter detours, time

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spent in holding patterns, longer job-seeking processes and disruptions. These altered transition trajectories reflect not only the “structural transformation of the working society”, but also the destandardisation and individualisation processes prevalent in our society. The chapter begins with an analysis of the social conditions of youth unemployment and the meaning of gainful employment for the identity development of young people. Against this theoretical background, the contribution describes the aims, methodological approach, key data and main results of an empirical survey exploring the unemployment of young people. The chapter “Little Economists in Global Virtual Markets: An Analysis of the Relationship Between Digital Virtual Worlds and Children’s Economic Engagement” by Cornelia MAYR aims to provide a critical account of debates about the role of a global consumer culture, with specific reference to the position of children as active economic agents. The chapter focuses on a discussion of the ways in which consumer culture itself is currently changing and becoming more digital as well as technologically mediated. It argues that, while the economic globalisation of markets and consumption patterns may lead to a worldwide homogenisation of children’s preferences and experiences, it has also led to the emergence of a “digital kids” subculture that constructs children as “empowered” consumer experts of new media technology and active producers of information. By taking up and reviewing this issue in relevant literature concerning globalisation and children’s consumer culture, the chapter addresses the following questions: (1) What is globalisation and how far does it relate to children’s consumer culture? (2) How far do children engage economically in global virtual worlds and relate to these global digital markets? This requires us to rethink the ways in which children are shaped, on the one hand, by digital virtual worlds, but, on the other hand, how they act as productive forces upon processes of globalisation, economy and digitalisation.

5 Final Remarks and Acknowledgments This book is based on the assumption that by the beginning of the twenty-first century, youth and youth cultures worldwide must be viewed against the background of global processes. Individual biographies and young people’s active dealing with life issues are simultaneously influenced by local and global forces. Therefore, youth studies should be more aware of how individual behaviour, social networking and the creation of youth culture are embedded in interaction between lifeworlds and global dynamics. The contributions in this book show that globalisation, digitalisation and societal change increase opportunities and risks for young people to actively shape their own identity and engage in society—in culture, politics, work and social life. Globalisation and social media provide many models of life concepts and allow communication across geographical and cultural borders. At the same time however, young people are facing opportunities and limitations in their lifeworlds—access to education, work and economic conditions, inequality and poverty, environmental threat, social and political pressure or simply a lack of orientation and guidance.

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The chapters in this book address life issues, forms of identity, self-expression and social activity within youth cultures. Many more aspects need to be discovered and studied in order to understand the complex interaction of globalisation and societal changes due to technical development and digitalisation and the consequent impact on lifeworlds and young people’s biographies. As editors we want to express our gratitude to all authors who have shared their research on youth studies and diverse experiences with youth cultures, and have thereby contributed to the book. In addition, we would like to thank Karen Meehan for her assistance with English translations and the layout design.

Youth and Globalisation

The North American Notion of Youth: Creating a Transformative and Critical Youth Pedagogy for Leadership Shirley R. Steinberg

When I talk about authentic youth engagement, I mean it must come from the heart: the idea of authentically being ourselves and wanting to engage with young people. In this narrative chapter, I will discuss my observations of the North American propensity for displaying a fear of youth. I’ve observed that many “adults” just don’t like youth, they don’t like teenagers. A look at Facebook posts by mothers, mothers with teenagers, notes that we see consistent complaints about their own teens: I’d rather have five 2-year-olds than a teenager. * Could someone please take my 15-year-old daughter? * Pray for me, my son just turned 16. * Teenagers are just a lot of trouble. I just remember when they were little, they were so easy.

1 Adult Fears Historically, adolescents and youth were not a distinct societal subculture. Indeed, until the twentieth century, North American “teens” were often working at a young age, and certainly few were educated (Steinberg 2011). In the 1950s, the Hollywood notion of the rebel youth appeared, poster child James Dean became a grown-up’s nightmare, along with rock ‘n’ roll, the hell-raising 50s led into the tune in, turn on, drop out 60s. Popular images of youth created a suspect society driven by desire and the ability to terrify adults. Psychologists and sociologists struggled to deal with youth; psychologizing, pathologizing, and institutionally marginalizing youth became the practice. What was wrong with youth? Everything. Schools attempted to balance out North American youth subcultural movements by counter images of the good girl and the manly, responsible boy, many playing out in popular American television programs. Certainly, the Cleavers (Leave it to S. R. Steinberg (B) University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 G. Knapp and H. Krall (eds.), Youth Cultures in a Globalized World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65177-0_2

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Beaver, 1957–1963) never had problems with Wally or the Beaver; Patty Duke (The Patty Duke Show, 1963–1966) always complied; Father absolutely always knew best (Father Knows Best, 1954–1960): popular television created images of teens who did not question, did not rebel, were completely transparent to parents and other adults. Notions of drag racing, hoods, “loose” girls and back talking to parents were lower class behaviors, by the kids from across-the-tracks. Mid-twentieth-century leadership by teens was reduced to two categories: the “good” kids with starched shirts and ties: and the hoods, those from lower or Blacker/Browner social classes who ran in gangs. Popular culture throughout the first thirty years of television did not portray empowered, functional youth as leaders. Indeed, empowerment was not discussed. Schools did not address the possibility of creating a curriculum of leadership for youth; they still don’t. Historically, and presently, the idea of youth leadership is not engaged. Youth are to be feared, controlled, contained, and kept in. Fear of youth has been ingrained and has become part of our “dealing with youth” fabric. Woven between the threads, young men and women are unloved, often not understood, and often feared. School and parents center their lives about concerns which may, or may not be accurate, and adults define the problems with youth as follows: disobedience, rebellion, pregnancy, bullying, crime, gangs, violence, homelessness, disrespect for parents and adults, boredom, screentime, no future plans, lack of initiative, sexualities, identities, inappropriate language, and so on. Conversations about youth reveal that they are a problem. Yet we do not have the conversations about why we perceive a problem. Curricula in schools are designed to make sure youth know that they need to change, they need to take responsibility; in no way are most schools centered around the positive development of youth in the way youth want to develop. Unfortunately, North American youth pedagogy and leadership is not discussed in our schools in any meaningful manner. Unlike some curricula in Europe (Steinberg 2005), Asia, and the Mediterranean, Canada and the US haven’t picked up the idea of respect and responsibility in regard to working with youth (Steinberg 2011). In my work, I do not discuss a “youth problem” nor articulate any confirmation that youth are “at risk.” I engage in a conversation about youth leadership, its possibilities, and challenges. Youth are not a deficit in our culture or educational system, the deficiency is in how the system views and defines youth. The deficit vision of youth is psychologized, pathologized, institutionalized, and marginalized; in a phrase, adults fear youth.

2 Do Adults Want Youth to Lead? Leadership is a clumsy term to deal with, the non-transformative kind. I’m not sure how to replace it, but want to state upfront, I don’t like it much. It implies a hierarchy with the leader at the top, and then those who are led, follow below. Some may be given tasks or delegated responsibility, but leadership tends to expect that the leader will ultimately have the power. As a critical theorist, leadership for me becomes

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problematic. In a critical pedagogical world, noting how power works and replicates itself, how does one become a leader without assuming power? And, how do we work with youth to become leaders who do not intend to wield power? This is a tough one, and I want to keep it in mind in this discussion. The notion of transformative youth leadership must be grounded in the articulation that youth are distinct beings and citizens, with specific needs, cultures, and views of the world. Instead of seeing youth as mini us, we need to redefine youth by seeing how youth define themselves—they are not a subculture; they are young men and women with cultures. Within these youth cultures, subcultures are created (usually by the youth themselves). I have observed in my work with youth, that many adults are reluctant to name youth cultures, instead discuss them with disdain, pathology, or marginalization, again we refer to Facebook posts: He’s in his heavy metal phase. * Instagram has taken them over. * World of Warfare is just his way of avoiding being with the family. * She’s always on her phone. * I was the same way, I hated all adults. * She just needs to understand that her appearance is not acceptable in our home. * This music is out of control. * He thinks he is gay; we are ignoring it; he will grow out of it. * This hip-hop thing, it is violent; we don’t allow it in our home.

Rarely are youth given credit and respect for the decisions they make on a daily basis. Issues of identity become points of ridicule, and many teachers and caregivers view choices as phases, stages, or unimportant fads. Certainly, teacher education does not prepare secondary and middle school teachers to facilitate youth leadership and empowerment; most parents and caregivers are not wired to assist empowerment, rather squelch it. Often citing yellowed memories from their own lives, adults forget that they somehow made it through adolescence and teen years and actually did lots of good things during that time. Memories from adults are often categorized in two ways: A, I did it, regret it, and don’t ever want my kids to know I did it or to do “it” themselves; or B, When I was that age, I did what I was told, what was expected, did not ask for my own “space”, I was part of a family. Incanting the term, youth leadership, most educators and parents speak without authenticity, giving the term, leadership, but keeping the power. No one seems to want kids to lead, to make responsible decisions, and to eventually replace a stagnant status quo. Ironically, it will happen. Certainly, the past decade in global politics exhibits to us that adults are not doing a good job. We must create a “get over it” pedagogy that we must enact in order to overcome the youth phobia shared by many adults; especially those who design curriculum and create pseudo leadership roles for youth. This is what we do, this is what our work is about.

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3 How Do We Change the Adult Notion of Youth? Creating a socially just youth leadership curriculum has obstacles, and the more urban the area, the more disenfranchised, the harder the challenge becomes. However, we must use the dialectic of challenges and opportunities. We must view our youth as novel entities, who may be similar or dissimilar from other young men and women. We rid ourselves of assumptions and create a space and pedagogy of leadership for schools and students, researching and observing each group on its own. We must focus attention on understanding and working with the sociocultural context of a school or community organization which exists. This includes contextualizing and internalizing the backgrounds of each young man and woman, the positions of empowerment and disempowerment from which each youth operates, the knowledge each youth bring to the classroom or organization, the languages spoken by the youth, both cultural and subcultural, and the ways in which these dynamics mold teaching and learning. Keeping in mind the complexity and contradictions of the category of youth leadership, we must look at the unique features in creating a transformative youth leadership program. These are features which must be kept in the forefront, especially in working with urban and marginalized youth. What must we understand? Following are suggestions to consider in work with youth: • What are the considerations of population density as it applies to where youth live? • Sizes of schools, availability of community centers. • Are large suburban and rural counterparts more prepared to serve higher numbers of lower socio-economic class students? • Are many students likely to be ignored and overlooked in the crowds of an urban area? In this context, it is difficult for urban and marginalized students to create and feel a sense of community. This creates an alienation which often leads to low academic performance, high dropout rates, and unanticipated leadership, gang affiliation, and negative subculture associations. • What does the examination of geographic areas marked by profound economic disparity reveal? Disproportionate percentages of minority students and their families are plagued by centralized urban poverty, which hampers their quest for academic success on a plethora of levels. In urban schools and drop-in community centers (if they exist), there is an appalling lack of resources, financial inequalities, horrendous infrastructural violations, dilapidated buildings, and no space; no space for youth to just be, to be trusted, to make decisions. • Urban areas have a higher rate of ethnic, racial, and religious diversity.

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In densely populated urban locales, people come from different ethnic, racial, and religious backgrounds, not to mention economic, social, and linguistic arenas, and they live close to one another. In the United States, nearly two-thirds of these urban youth do not fit the categories of White or middle class, and within these population high percentages of students receive a free or reduced-price lunch. Achievement rates for poor minority youth consistently fall below for those of Whites and higher socioeconomic classes, and often their failures are the final proof that quitting school, engaging in illegal activity, is success. • How does our work reach gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered and questioning youth? • Where do indigenous youth fit into a closed definition of youth? Immigrant and migrant youth? • Where do migrant or refugee youth find a space in a reconceptualization of youth? Adults who sit on school boards, city councils, and on youth task forces, experience and factionalize infighting over issues on resources and influence, and often fighting is reduced to the youth phobia notion, that they are not to be leaders. As the reverend told me, there has to be something wrong with me. How could I tolerate and trust youth? There are no attempts to incorporate the voices of youth within these boards, councils, and task forces. Youth are discussed as the societal deficit; the youth problem. Often North American administrators and leaders who work with teachers are undermined by ineffective business operations. The facilities rely on basic resources, especially in urban settings, and no one has the ability to change the reality. I am working with youth in the Bronx, New York now and have made it a point to count the amount of play yards with functioning hoops for basketball and a minimum of jump ropes and handball. Youth drop-in centers are often in the cast-off basements or temporary buildings of a past era, and groups are reluctant to add financially to the structure of a soon-to-be condemned building and space. Work with youth does not tend to include initiatives for health and well-being. Naturally, the more socially deprived the youth, the worse the health and safety issues. School administrators will be more concerned with providing a warm building on a cold day, than fixing unsanitary and disease-producing bathrooms—poor spaces for youth, if any are provided for them to meet. The community fears youth meeting in groups; malls are closed during certain hours, or kids must be accompanied by adults. Street corners, steps of stores, these become the places for youth to meet. A mobility issue also haunts disenfranchised and urban schools. Students, teachers, and community leaders, and especially administrators, leave frequently. Good work may be being done but halts when an adult is replaced. Analysts have noted that the poorer the student, the more moves he or she is likely to make. High teacher turnover, one out of every two teachers in urban and poor schools leaves in five years. Community organizers are volunteers or so poorly paid that they are unable to advocate for even a minimal raise. Urban and poor schools serve higher immigrant populations. Each group experience has needs particular to their own ethnic group, yet they have little governmental or educational help to get them started.

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Urban schools have characteristic linguistic challenges. In New York City, for example, over 350 languages and dialects are spoken. Because the leaders and teachers are White or middle class, it is hard to have the general sense of heritage and educational backgrounds to make use of linguistic diversity. Indeed, linguistic diversity is seen as a problem, rather than a unique opportunity. Context is important. We know the responsibilities many young men and women carry. Once again, in lower socioeconomic strata, or in specific cultures, youth take on adult roles as small children. Minding baby brothers and sisters/nieces and nephews, tending to aged grandparents, translating personal and medical knowledge between adults and doctors or social workers. These conditions throw youth into powerless leadership positions of translation and decision-making. Mentors, teachers, and social workers are less likely to live in a community, which is profiled economically or culturally. Consequently, urban youth do not have consistent leadership models upon which to build or seek advice.

4 Changing Adult Fixations on Youth Along with contextualizing the above thoughts is a short deconstruction of previous notions and definitions of youth. Keep in mind that “teenager,” as a separate designation of an older kid, started to appear in literature in the late 1930s, early 40s. No historical reference launches fireworks for the day that the word first was used. Originally, it described literally, kids who were in the teens, 13–19. Most who work in adolescent and youth studies have different definitions. I loosely look at the ages between 10 and 25 but also can see that teenager or youth are tentative words, and along with them come expectations both cognitively and performatively. Jean Piaget addressed the notion of adolescence, observing that sometime around the age of 12, adolescents began to enter the formal operational stage, a more enlightened and sophisticated cognitive developmental stage. He saw that scientific, logical, and abstract thought was enacted by this age group and understood that many young people could stretch concrete thought to abstractions. He saw them as able to understand words and ideas in meaning-making terms, consider relationships, and have an operating knowledge of concepts like justice, morals, fairness, etc. My criticisms of Piaget have been discussed in the work done with Joe Kincheloe in postformal thinking (Kincheloe and Steinberg 1993). Our main issue was that Piaget as the final word in youth construction was exactly that; and there are no final words. Piaget’s developmentalist approaches are limited, essentialistic, and not capable of considering the nuances of youth, especially in a postmodern era. We cannot work with youth, teach youth, or facilitate youth empowerment for leadership using the tired methods of developmentalism; with a redefined notion of youth, adulthood, and the cultural capital of technology and cyberspace, the development of youth has changed (of course, I would argue that the Piagetian model was not the appropriate read on youth).

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Youth development is not in stages: it is culturally and socially defined by the surroundings and experience of each young adult. Facilitating youth to become socially aware and ethical leaders requires a deep read of the lived world of each young man or woman. There are no applicable prescriptions that can handle youth; that can take place to acknowledge the importance of working with youth to create individualized and contextualized leadership empowerment. The discussions with youth on empowerment and leadership must be tentative and on-going, and, they must be done with those who like youth, who are not afraid of youth, and who are committed to a vision of engaged youth leadership.

5 Creating a Transformative Critical Pedagogical Youth Leadership Considering a critical pedagogical reconceptualization of youth leadership, we must ask, in the Freirean fashion of dialogue: what can be done in youth leadership? What is it we are trying to facilitate and enact (Steinberg 2018b)? Freire (1970) reminds us that empowerment cannot be taught; rather, we can act as conduits to creating safe spaces and opportunities for empowerment/enlightenment to take place. As critical educators, we learn first, to view the world from the eyes of those who are not part of the dominant culture. In this case, we view from the perspectives and ways in which youth see the world. How do youth see power? Do they identify with their place in the world, in the web of reality? Do they recognize opportunities? Are they comfortable with becoming leaders and mentors? What is it like to be a young man or woman today? How can one organize? Can character be built? What are the ethics of leadership? How does trust fit in with leadership? What communication skills are needed in leadership? Is there an attitude of leadership? Leaders are not born, they develop, and it is our mandate to secure dialogue and place in which to mentor and usher development. Youth leadership in a critical sense includes character, responsibility, respect, and knowledge. Those who work with youth to create viable leadership opportunities acknowledge each of these traits; and in this context, I would assert that respect is paramount in youth engagement. Our work with youth should be committed to facilitating the development of a democratic citizen, one who is conscious of being part of a whole, of society. We encourage and mentor the notions that a young leader learns to articulate vision and understands her or his place within power structures and society, in general. We encourage leadership by doing and modeling and by seeking/researching those who lead but may not be known as leaders. I often use the example of the Canadian athlete, Terry Fox, a young amputee with cancer, who determined to run the width of Canada in order to bring awareness to cancer research. Fox began in Newfoundland with little fanfare, just a kid with a metal leg and a vision. Momentum gathered, and he became a symbol of persistence, faith, and leadership. Fox was a leader who did not seek to lead but to do good work. Leadership can be created through good works.

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We remind ourselves that youth do successfully lead. Following the horrendous murders of youth and adults in a school in Florida in February of 2018, the youth stood up against the school, the state, and the nation (United States) to claim they had the right to determine their own futures and that included their insistence that guns and assault weapons must be banned in order to prevent adult shooters from invading schools and murdering the innocent. In a dramatic march in Washington, DC, these youth refused to allow anyone over 18 to speak to the millions watching the demonstration. Their point was that adults had not taken care of the simple needs of keeping the population safe and that it was time to listen to the youth. It is important to not confuse the notion of leader with role models or heroes. Often media-driven, those who are defined as role models are part of the Hollywoodization of leadership. Many are called heroes but incorrectly. A hero is one who does not seek to do heroic deeds but is thrust into being a hero through altruistic motivation and selflessness. It is an important pedagogical act to differentiate between a leader and a role model or hero. A leader does not aspire to be “followed,” but she or he aspires merely to do, as I said earlier, good work. The youth who took over Washington, DC after the shootings in Florida, they were heroic. Paulo Freire also serves as an example of a leader, a quiet intellectual with political indignation, who was imprisoned and exiled; Freire didn’t seek fame; he sought to create socially just dialogue which would serve to open paths to empowerment. Engaging in a conversation about youth leadership demands that youth identify those who serve to define leadership and good work. Part of a critical pedagogy of youth leadership asks that young men and women deliberate upon what characteristics a youth leader needs and who exemplifies those characteristics (Steinberg 2018a). Youth can be engaged in defining youth leadership; discussions about listening, respect, desire to learn, sharing, delegation, lifetime learning, are all part of coming to terms with leadership qualities. We ask when one should lead and when a leader supports another to lead. Leadership also means giving up the lead if necessary. Youth should be leaders, they are leaders; however, with the decades of seeing youth as hoodlums, ganstas, thugs, and reprobates, it will take time to change, not only society’s view of youth, but the self-identity of young men and women themselves.

6 And Now? Avoiding the platitude-laden liberal tripe about youth, we name the needs, issues, and social conditions surrounding our youth. We act as mentors and treat youth as young leaders; younger colleagues, engaging in respect and collegiality as we create a safe and healthy leadership vision (Steinberg 2018b). We ask that youth contribute to the vision, that it is not imposed upon them, and that we assist them in discovering their abilities and potentials as leaders. We do not create a defined leader but a flexible view of one who leads; some will be tacit leaders, some will be overt, some will share leadership, and some will support it.

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Youth leaders are not the new curricular thing (Steinberg 2018c), the new chic of pedagogical lexicons; youth leaders are necessary to nurture in order to create a healthy and optimistic environment. A critical pedagogy of transformative youth leadership can impact youth in a global context, creating a space for youth leadership studies, research, mentorship, internships, and empowerment. Note: Parts of this chapter by permission, are taken from: Steinberg, S.R. “Redefining the Notion of Youth: Contextualizing the Possible for Transformative Youth Leadership.” In C. Shields (Ed.), Transformative Leadership. New York: Peter Lang Publishing. Copyright: Shirley R. Steinberg, 2011.

References Abrams, M., Asher, W., Butler, D., Horwitt, A., Kammerman, R., & Sheldon, S. (1963–1966). The patty duke show, ABC Television. Connelly, J., & Mosher, B. (1957–1963). Leave it to beaver, CBS-ABC Television. Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. London: Continuum Books. James, E., Bolen, M., Burton, K., & Van Hartesfeldt, F. (1954–1960). Father knows best, NBC-CBS Television. Kincheloe, J. L., & Steinberg, S. R. (1993). A tentative description of post-formal thinking: The critical confrontation with cognitive theory. Harvard Educational Review, 63(3, Fall), 296–321. Steinberg, S. R. (Ed.). (2005). Teen life in Europe. Greenwich, CT: Praeger Press. Steinberg, S. R. (2011). Redefining the notion of youth: Contextualizing the possible for transformative youth leadership. In C. Shields (Ed.), Transformative leadership: A reader. New York: Peter Lang Publishing. Steinberg, S. R. (Ed.). (2018a). Thirty activists under thirty: Global youth, social justice, and good work. Leiden, the Netherlands: Brill/Sense Publishing. Steinberg, S. R. (2018b). Introduction: Effecting change, making a difference: Celebrating youth activism. In S. R. Steinberg (Ed.), Activists under 30: Global youth, social justice & good work. Leiden, the Netherlands: Brill/Sense Publishing. Steinberg, S. R. (2018c). Contextualizing the possible for transformative youth leadership. In J. L. Kincheloe & S. R. Steinberg (Eds.), Classroom teaching: An introduction. New York: Peter Lang Publishing.

Social Transformation of Youth and Youth Cultures in Europe: Trends, Theories and the Relevance of Youth Cultural Scenes Gerald Knapp and Natalia Waechter

1 Youth and Social Transformation The social conditions of growing up during the twenty-first century have changed across all of Europe (Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft, Familie und Jugend 2011; Knapp and Lauermann 2012; Institut für Jugendkulturforschung 2019). Today, young people are growing up in a society characterised by the pluralisation of ways of life, lifestyles, social norms and values, and by diversification of structural requirements and conditions of social chances and opportunities to participate. On the one hand, these social transformation processes in the shape of “pluralisation”, “individualisation” and “de-standardisation” (Beck 1997; Keupp et al. 1999; Böhnisch et al. 2005; Knapp and Salzmann 2009; Borrmann et al. 2019) provide young people with manifold options in terms of how to design their lives, but on the other hand they also introduce risks, as the young people can rely less on prescribed norms, values, social rules and life designs. Young people have to cope with this plural and complex social reality and are challenged to take on the responsibility for their own lives. They are forced to make life decisions that are coupled with opportunities as well as with risks (cf. also Fend 1988, p. 296). However, not all young people have the same objective prerequisites and life opportunities. Young people from socially disadvantaged circumstances (working class, migration background, single-parent households, children with disabilities) have less favourable requirements and conditions in their families and at school,

G. Knapp (B) Institute of Educational Sciences and Research (IfEB), University of Klagenfurt, Klagenfurt, Austria e-mail: [email protected] N. Waechter Department of Educational Studies, Ludwig-Maximilian University Munich, Munich, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 G. Knapp and H. Krall (eds.), Youth Cultures in a Globalized World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65177-0_3

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and have fewer social resources at their disposal, with which to tackle the increasingly complex demands they face (Raithelhuber 2008; Knapp and Pichler 2008; Klinglmaier 2013; Peuckert 2019). The institutional and organisational conditions of the European school and education systems seem to be unable to compensate for the social inequalities that arise due to the preconditions prevailing in different social classes (Mansel and Speck 2012). At the same time, however, the ongoing social modernisation processes are accompanied by a relaxation of social and cultural ties. Young people growing up under the conditions of a late modern society (Giddens 1992; Keupp and Hohl 2006) are also growing into a lifeworld which has become increasingly “unreadable” for the young (Sennet 1998), and for which there is an insufficient pool of experiences to draw on, in order to master one’s life. Consequently, the young people of today are not only exposed to social contradictions, but far more frequently they are also subjected to excessive demands and precarious future perspectives, which are further exacerbated by the current economic and financial crisis affecting Europe (with regional variations). Due to these economic and societal trends, young people today increasingly come up against social problems such as unemployment, poverty, drugs, violence and health-related problems (Ecarius et al. 2011). This is coupled with heightened pressure in the school and education system and competition for school and educational qualifications, with the dual effect of extending the amount of time young people spend at school and in training (Münchmeier 2001; Knapp 2012), while simultaneously leading to a long-lasting economic dependency on the parental home (Knapp and Salzmann 2012). These complex conditions for successfully coping with life represent new challenges for the socialisation spheres and lifeworlds of the young people, namely for families, schools, peer groups and work environments. While the described social transformation by which young people are affected has become a global trend with global inequalities between the youth of the Global South and its counterpart in the Global North (Cicchelli and Octobre 2019), this chapter focuses on European youth.

2 Youth in a Pluralised and Globalised Society The term “youth” describes a historical, social and cultural phenomenon with varied manifestations, depending on the different social systems, cultures and time periods. These dimensions always influence the living conditions and circumstances of the young people and act upon their subjective orientation patterns, their specific interests and needs, as well as their images of the self and the other. The interplay of historical, social, cultural and political framework conditions with individual biographies and lifeworlds (Hitzer and Niederbacher 2010; Knapp and Lauermann 2012; Hugger 2014) is important for the social-pedagogical interpretation and analysis of youth.

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In every society and culture, the transition from child to adolescent and the transition from adolescent to adult are associated with changes of social behavioural expectations, which are linked to taking on a “new” social position. Moreover, in every society, culture and time period, there are prevailing beliefs, values and norms about how members should behave, and what rights and obligations they have. The respective young person is familiarised with these behavioural requirements through socialisation processes and specific developmental tasks to be mastered. While the status transitions in pre-industrial societies were clearly defined in terms of content and timing, today it is virtually impossible to predict individual transitions (Fend 1988; Scherr 2009; Fass and Zipperle 2014). The rather uniform status transition of earlier times is currently contrasted with one that is divided into many individual areas and shows a high degree of temporal dispersion. Especially the transition from child to adolescent is heavily segmented and, from a sociological point of view, cannot be determined to occur at any specific time, based on the biological age. Rather, what we see is a gradual “expansion of the scopes for action, along with a simultaneous enhancement of the diversity of roles” (Hurrelmann 1994, p. 39) (translation by authors). The social expectations and obligations, which young people are required to fulfil on their journey to becoming a full member of society, are steadily becoming more complex. One of the stages that is considered to be decisive for accepting independent social roles is the detachment process from the family. However, it is important to remember that young people attempting to master these tasks have few useful societal assistance and orientation patterns at their disposal. Today, youth and youth cultures live in a pluralised and globalised society (Villanyi et al. 2007).

3 Youth, Socialisation Spheres and Lifeworlds Young people grow up in plural life contexts and institutions devoted to upbringing and education. Notwithstanding the theory that social modernisation processes (Beck 1986) are linked to individualisation and pluralisation and have resulted in a “structural change of the adolescent stage” or, respectively, to a “destructuring” and “destandardisation” of the life courses of young people (Ferchhoff 1985, p. 46; Ferchhoff and Neubauer 1989; Fuchs-Heinritz and Krüger 1991; Zinnecker 1987; Heitmeyer and Olk 1990), socialisation agencies such as the family, peer group, school, working environment, media and the recreation sector are highly significant for the development and the day-to-day actions of young people. While peers, media and recreation are gaining importance in the socialisation process, family and school continue to carry great weight for the development of the identities and biographies of young people (Ecarius et al. 2011). Each socialisation sphere is independently cultivating specific, legal, institutional and organisational structures that might be perceived as confusing, fragmented or even conflicting. Consequently, young people have become more challenged in finding their own paths of individual development and social integration. Similarly, traditional trajectories of the life course (e.g.

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completing school, entering the labour market, starting a family, having own children) no longer follows a straight line, but has become more open and more variable. Youth researchers explain that there is a trend towards self-socialisation during youth (Zinnecker 2000; Tenbruck 1965), above all in media socialisation (Fromme et al. 2014; Süss 2006). The term self-socialisation is not undebated but there is common sense that young people’s own contribution to socialisation processes has increased in the past decades. Peer and media socialisation are strongly connected because from an early age, young people use media in many ways independent from adults and educators. Since the emergence of the “Web 2.0” young people have become their own producers of youth-relevant content on online media. They do not need any help from adults to create accounts and peer networks, to produce and upload pictures and videos and to share them among their peers. Social media has become an important peer-to-peer learning environment for youth-specific developmental tasks such as identity development and peer intimacy (Subrahmanyam et al. 2008). The concept of self-socialisation further implies that it is important to consider young people not as merely passively subjected to social contradictions and social change but rather as subjects and actors, who also have the opportunity to actively influence and shape their lifeworlds. The relevance of self-socialisation, however, does not mean that the institutions traditionally dedicated to upbringing and education, particularly family and schools, have lost their significance for psychosocial development and social participation.

4 Youth, Living Conditions and Protest The greater the extent to which young people feel socially disadvantaged and excluded in important areas of life (family, school, peer groups, working environment, recreation, etc.), the lower is the identification with the state and democracy. Moreover, community skills and cultural and political participation are also in danger of decreasing. Increasing youth unemployment and a growing risk of poverty for adolescents, as well as a rising number of young welfare recipients across all of Europe bring long-term psychosocial consequences in their wake (for instance, a rising propensity for violence, right-wing extremist attitudes, drug use, adverse health effects), which have been demonstrated in a nuanced manner by European poverty research (Knapp and Pichler 2008; Knapp and Salzmann 2009). While, at the moment, we find decreasing youth unemployment rates in some regions, other (Southern) regions experience no improvement in the situation. The percentages vary from 4.3% in Czech Republic and 5.9% in Germany to 30.3% in Spain and 35.6% in Greece (Eurostat 2019). The living situation of young people has become multilayered, heterogeneous and precarious in Europe (and beyond) in recent years. Riots by youths in the suburbs of Paris, London and Athens, to name just a few, can be seen as consequences that give rise to increased public debates about maintaining the intergenerational contract, and discussions about education, poverty and criminality. If the life situation of many

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young people does not improve and society and politics are not able to maintain social solidarity, we might have to deal with social tensions and conflicts in the future. Young people, however, have various ways in which they express their concerns regarding their exclusion from society. While the riots such as in England or the French suburbs showed much anger and desperation, the Spanish Indignados Movement (“Movimento 15-M”) or the Occupy Movement had a clear political agenda based on political and economic theories. Other than political movements, young people reflect and challenge social norms and values also in youth cultures that are not political per se: On the one hand late modern political movements such as e.g. anti-globalisation-movement do enfold a (youth) cultural activity, on the other hand youth cultures themselves are to be seen as participatory movements in terms of their use/appropriation of (public) space, in terms of the shaping of imageries by symbolic policies, in terms of identity policies (e.g. the shaping of gender identities). (Pohl et al. 2007, p. 42)

Against this background, in the following section we further ask what is the significance of growing up in different youth cultures during a time of individualisation and globalisation?

5 On the Significance of Youth Culture Youth cultures are of greater societal and individual significance than a superficial observation may seem to suggest, as today’s young people face a series of demands in order to successfully meet the new social challenges.1 In this endeavour, participating in a youth culture can offer stability and support the pursuit of one’s own individual path. Previous generations were able to trust to a greater extent in a predetermined life course, in other words, they were able to assume that a certain educational qualification would soon lead to working in a relevant profession, much as the first serious relationship would likely lead to starting a family. The paths were embedded in limited class structures, which restricted the options from the start. Nowadays, society is characterised by individualisation, flexibilisation and de-standardisation. The life courses of today’s adolescents and young adults are no longer predetermined, but rather must be individually crafted. Biographies are less predictable and instead await construction by the young people themselves. The youth phase has therefore gained in importance. Youth researchers have described a prolongation of this transitional phase due to more years of education and a later entry into the labour market and claimed a new life stage (“emerging adulthood”) for young people up to 29 years (Arnett 2000, 2015). The beginning of adulthood varies individually and usually goes along with the first major responsibilities such as the first child or a responsible job and with entering adult communities. The transition into adulthood is often marked by numerous attempts and fractures. On the job market, young people often experience precarious conditions (temporary contracts, internships, marginal 1 For

the significance of youth culture see Waechter (2012).

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employment, part-time work, etc.), and periods of employment that are interrupted by periods of unemployment, further education and new qualifications. Participation in a youth culture cannot change the conditions, albeit precisely this was attempted by politically oriented youth cultures, but it can contribute to allowing young people to find their way in the world of individualism. For example, Beck regards individualisation as forced upon young people, but he also recognises the opportunity for them to invent their own biography: “Young people do not become individualised, but rather they individualise themselves” (Beck 1998, p. 62) (translation by authors). Today, there is a great variety of youth cultures available to young people, in which they can usually participate simultaneously but only on the fringes, using certain elements and switching between scenes. Only those belonging to the very core of a youth scene are less flexible (Waechter 2006). Preferences regarding youth cultures develop through friends, personal dispositions and social backgrounds. By engaging in youth culture participation, adolescents fulfil important developmental tasks. Free from family ties and age cohort structures implemented by the school system, young people can now form their own groups. This group formation facilitates outward differentiation in several ways, from adults and their institutions, from younger ones (who have yet to enter adolescence), and from other adolescents, who either do not belong to a youth culture or belong to a different one (Waechter and Triebswetter 2009). The multiple outward differentiation, in turn, reinforces inner cohesion. Most youth cultures share the importance of self-portrayals and self-presentations. By positioning themselves in a youth cultural context, young people express individuality and uniqueness on the one hand, and group membership on the other (Stauber 2001). Only a small percentage of adolescents and young adults fully dedicate themselves to a particular youth culture. The larger share use youth cultural symbols drawn from various scenes for a “sampled” self-presentation. In their self-presentations, however, they always have to negotiate between distinction and belonging. Using elements of different youth cultures meets the societal demand for flexibility, because the more flexible one is, the more likely one is to cope with social change. The individual embedding in youth cultures can now offer “stability in flexibility” (Stauber 2001, p. 65) (translation by authors), which has been partly lost in the course of social change. In the following, we will present theories and debates on youth cultures. The subsequent chapter “Globalizing Local Voices: Youth Cultures and Participation in Democratic Processes in Uganda” provides a categorisation of contemporary youth scenes, offering insights into music, sports, computer/media and ideologically oriented youth cultures, as well as fan cultures.

6 Theories of Youth Cultures Youth cultures in today’s sense of the term first emerged at the turn of the twentieth century. From the outset, in every time period, there was not merely one single manifestation, but instead different trends facing each other, some conflicting and

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some in a friendly way (Waechter 2012). Research of youth cultures is almost as old as youth cultures themselves. In Austria and Germany, the establishment of research on youth culture can be tied to Bernfeld (Austria) and Wyneken (Germany); both were concerned with the bourgeois “youth movement”, which became known as the Wandervogel, they supported the movement and applied a socio-pedagogical focus to their work (Waechter 2006, 2011). While Bernfeld and Wyneken were focused on the empowerment of upper and middle-class youth, the (international) youth workers’ movement that had formed at the end of the nineteenth century was fighting for better working conditions for themselves and their working peers. Not only youth cultures transformed as time passed, but so did the academic approaches (Waechter 2012). In the 1940s and 1950s, youth culture was viewed from the perspective of deviant behaviour of working-class youth. With his ethnographic study and same-titled book “Street Corner Society”, which has since become famous, Whyte (1943) showed that behaviour that diverges from the prevailing social norms is nonetheless guided by certain rules and structures. He analysed the emergence and maintenance of group structures and the ways in which social mobility and membership in a particular youth culture correlate. Thus, the American study explains why adolescents “hang around” at street corners in an allegedly unplanned and unstructured manner and have great difficulties in managing a successful entry into higher education or the labour market. The sociological term subculture was introduced in America in the 1940s, and it was subsequently also taken up by European youth culture researchers. The research that has attracted most interest was conducted at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) in Birmingham. It claimed that youth subcultures were embedded within the existing social class structures, which means that certain subcultures are either a subsystem of the dominant culture (upper and middle class), or a sub-system of working-class culture. Consequently, youth subcultures always develop in relation to their respective class culture (Willis 1981). In the youth culture research conducted in the 1970s and 1980s, particularly, the notion of counter-culture was highly significant. In this context, counterculture refers to the dissociation from the prevailing adult culture and the dominant societal idea (Waechter 2012). British youth cultural studies took this to mean the “counterculture” of working-class adolescents (cf. Willis 1977), but the student movement of 1968 or the subculture of punks was also regarded as counterculture. The youth movements were understood as “youth subcultures” in the sense of social sub- or countercultures, which have different values and norms than general society. In the German-speaking research, it was Rolf Schwendter, in particular, who explored youth subcultures. In his “Theory of the Subculture” he describes subculture as “part of a distinct society, which in terms of its institutions, customs, tools, norms, value classification systems, preferences, needs, etc. differs significantly from the prevailing institutions etc. in general society” (Schwendter 1973, p. 11) (translation by authors). The presumed powerful correlation between social origin and membershipspecific youth culture was soon criticised. For instance, the German youth researcher Baacke (1987) argued that the concept of subculture should not be used to describe

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and explain youth cultures for three reasons: firstly, subculture should not be understood as a culture dominated by the “dominant” culture (anymore); secondly, the concept wrongly assumes that subcultures can be precisely located, i.e. they occur in a particular social stratum, or they are associated with a specific political attitude; thirdly, subcultures are not independent subsegments of society, but rather there are blurring boundaries to society as a whole. Baacke thus anticipated what would later become common sense in youth culture research—the rejection of the concept of “subcultures”. Since the 1990s, youth research has increasingly referred to self-chosen lifestyles and youth scenes that are independent of social origin and lack any ideology. This approach, now referred to as “post-subcultural”, is represented by both British and German youth culture researchers (cf. Muggleton 2000, 2005; Ferchhoff 2006, 2011). Based on a structural change in society as a whole (individualisation, restructuring, de-standardisation, differentiation and pluralisation), also youth cultures are understood as fast-paced, flexible and open both internally and externally. Internal openness means that it is possible to participate in youth cultures while at the same time adapting to the rules of society as a whole. External openness means that the demarcation from other scenes and from the overall culture of adult society is less stringent and more open. The postsubcultural approach assumes that young people may participate in several scenes at the same time, where most will not be in the core of the scene but on its fringes. Switching between scenes is said to have become easier in current youth scenes compared to the earlier youth subcultures. Finally, it is assumed that young people choose their scene independently from their social (class) background. In general, however, the post-subcultural approach has neglected structural considerations in favour of descriptions of scenes, styles and music (Waechter 2011, 2012). More recent discussions on youth culture criticise that structural significances were neglected (cf. Shildrick and MacDonald 2006; McCulloch et al. 2006) and draw on theories and empirical studies to demonstrate that the socio-structural background continues to determine which youth scenes young people are likely to join. Shildrick and MacDonald point to “the continuing role of social divisions in the making and shaping of young people’s leisure lives and youth cultural identities and practices” (2006, p. 125). Similarly, criticism is also voiced in German youth culture research. “Beyond aesthetic self-presentation, the socio-structural background of adolescents in terms of class, milieu, ethnic origin or gender continues to play a central role in the appreciation of youth cultures. There is a fundamental difference whether a hiphop fan is a young man from the Turkish migrant milieu, or a young woman from a white family of academics” (Spatscheck 2005, p. 424) (translation by authors). Most recently, research on Austrian and German activists and participants of the “Fridays for Future” movement shows that the majority clearly belongs to middle and upper class, measured by their educational level (Sommer et al. 2019; Waechter 2020). It must be assumed that scene membership continues to be determined by the social categories of class, gender and ethnicity (Waechter 2012). While not all youth cultures can clearly be assigned to the dominant class and the working class anymore, within the scope of many youth cultures, different sub-scenes have emerged, and the

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participation in these still depends heavily on the individual affiliation along the lines of class, gender and ethnicity. A second strand of the discussion addresses the question whether youth culture in general has undergone a process of de-ideologisation (Waechter 2011, 2012). Indications for this can be found in loosening class structures and in the differentiation and individualisation of living conditions. Ferchhoff (2006), for instance, notes that youth cultures do not refer to a common dominant culture anymore; instead, today’s youth cultures are oriented towards recreation and consumption. It can also be argued, however, that political ideas and resistance in youth cultures have not vanished but are merely less obvious. Opposing values to prevailing social norms can be observed in youth cultural day-to-day activities. “Young people who are active in youth cultures typically are creative stylists and as such should be regarded as constructive actors, who subversively attack societal norms in a playful manner” (Waechter 2011, p. 271) (translation by authors). Recent debates are concerned with youth cultural and consumer aspects of globalisation (Bookman and Hall 2019; Roudometof 2019). On the one hand, the trend of increasing global interconnectivity has also contributed to globalised youth cultures that share the same style, attitudes and behaviour across regions and nations. For example, hip-hop and rap music also became an important tool of expression and mobilisation of the young protesters in the events of the “Arab Spring” (Waechter 2019 and Waechter, in this volume). On the other hand, there are still important local elements referring to the surrounding culture and current events which make local youth scenes distinct and specific. For example, the rappers of the “Arab Spring” used their Arabic languages to express their fears and worries about their countries’ governments and national politics. The interplay of global trends and local references suggests using the term “glocalized youth cultures”, referring to “glocalization” as introduced by Robertson (1995).

7 Contemporary Youth Cultures Waechter (2006, 2012, 2021) has described five categories of youth cultures: music, sports, media and politically oriented youth cultures as well as fan cultures. One can find some overlap between the categories, e.g. the preference of musical styles by specific sports youth cultures (e.g. punk rock and skateboarding used to be strongly connected). It seems that the digitalisation of society produced a stronger overlap between media and any other type of youth cultures. Social media have become an important field of activity for many youth cultures that are not thought to be “media” youth cultures, such as protest movements or music scenes.

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7.1 Music-Oriented Youth Cultures While in the context of modern youth cultures, a musical subculture may have been formative for a long time for a whole generation (above all, swing youth in the 1920s and 1930s, rock ‘n’ roll in the 1950s), in the 1970s, a variety of music youth cultures exploded—many of them having first been developed in London and New York—and continued to exist alongside each other: punk rock, new wave, skinheads, rockers, mods, poppers, goth, rockabilly, heavy metal, prog rock, glam rock, disco, reggae, ska and finally also hip-hop. In the early 1990s, not only had hip-hop grown up, but a number of other club music scenes were also created and quickly spread across countries, especially house, techno, drum bass and jungle. Since then, there has been a continuous development into numerous subgenres in the electronic music scenes, and today there is an extraordinary variety of electronic music styles. The earlier music youth cultures, however, have not died out either and even Swing has made a comeback in a new way (electro-swing) (Waechter 2021). In addition, there is not only a greater differentiation in subgenres, but also along social categories. In larger cities, for example, it is becoming apparent that local scenes are being formed around social categories of distinction such as ethnic affiliation or social class. At the same time (musical) youth cultures are increasingly described as “glocalized”. The term “glocalization” (Robertson 1995) refers to interconnectivity of local communities with the rest of the world and the interplay of global and local trends. In the context of music-oriented youth cultures, the emergence of glocal music scenes means that there are strong global influences on the shape and the content of local scenes worldwide (for example defining what hip-hop means) but local music scenes are still shaped as well as by their local experiences (see Waechter, in this volume). Other than the classic protest song, there are further strong connections between music- and political-oriented youth cultures. Many music (sub-)scenes can be characterised by a shared ideology or common attitudes and values, for example, anarchist or left-wing attitudes in the punk scene. Even if not made explicit, the clothing and styling (body, hair and make-up) typical for a specific youth culture, may challenge gender norms (disco in the 1970s, goth in the 1980s until now, emo in the 2000s). The interconnectivity of music and media youth cultures is not new but has become stronger since all music youth cultures use social media for the sharing and distributing music, for building networks and exchanging ideas. Furthermore, there are recent music youth cultures that exist only on social media, such as the self-produced, lip-synch music videos on Musical.ly and TikTok.

7.2 Sports- and Body-Oriented Youth Cultures Especially in the field of sports-oriented youth cultures, the question arises as to what makes sport a youth cultural activity. The focus is on the practice of a certain sport, but this is embedded in a specific youthful sport culture. This culture often

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includes its own styling, media, language codes, and events and it often overlaps with other youth cultural elements and settings. “Youth cultural” sports scenes such as skateboarding, snowboarding or parkour were also developed by young people in contrast to traditional sports (Waechter 2012). Initially, competitions are held outside the scope of recognised international sporting championships, and in any case, taking part and winning in competitions is not the ultimate goal. At least as important as the actual performance seems to be the self-presentation in videos and on social media as well as the embodiment of a lifestyle that promises ease, freedom and independence. The scene members experience group membership with like-minded people, and membership allows identification (Waechter 2021). Within the skateboarding scene, there are several sub-types, above all street skateboarders (using public streets and places with “natural” obstacles such a handrails and stairs) and park skateboarders (skating in dedicated skate parks with pools). Both often have a political agenda: park skateboarders may become politically active when trying to persuade city authorities to finance and open a skate park, and street skateboarders have to negotiate public space for their own use (skating) which is a different use than intended by the city and society (Borden 2019; Waechter 2011). Sports-oriented youth scenes often involve types of sports that require courage and promote adrenaline. The currently largest sports-oriented scene, however, is the fitness scene. Here again, young people present themselves and their trained and wellshaped bodies on social media, hoping for recognition and positive peer feedback. A new body cult can also be seen in the recently growing tattoo scene and in the various scenes of certain eating habits such as veganism which is based on political attitudes such as reducing animal suffering and climate change as well as on health issues (Waechter 2021).

7.3 Computer- and Media-Oriented Youth Cultures Today, most youth cultures use (social) media for networking and community building, for information and self-expression as well as for the distribution and consumption of youth cultural products. Young people, in general, are the most intense users of social media among all age groups. Typically, they have their own mobile devices and they each use a range of applications such as WhatsApp, Snapchat, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Tumblr and online games. These provide opportunities to connect with their peers, to make new acquaintances, to negotiate existing relationships, to present themselves, to receive peer feedback and to experiment with identity development and peer group belonging. In the following, two media-centred scenes will be presented which exist and interact mainly online, a typical girl culture (video producers on TikTok) and a typical boy culture (online gamers).2 2 For

digital youth cultures, in particular video games, Instagram and TikTok, also see Waechter (“Glocalized” digital youth cultures) in this volume as well as Waechter (accepted).

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The representative German JIM study (2019) found that the TikTok platform is mainly used by 12- to 15-year-old girls. TikTok is very popular in this age group (and probably also among younger girls not surveyed in this study) because it enables them to produce and share their own music videos. The category of lip-synch video selfies is most popular on the video platform: the girls choose a song they like, “sing” (lip-synch) and dance to it. Typically, they film their performance at home or in their neighbourhood. By sharing their videos, they aim at getting (positive) feedback in the form of likes and followers. A typical element of the performance is the use of hand signals to underline the individual words of the song’s lyrics (Rettberg 2017). Some girls became famous themselves by sharing their performances across national borders, such as the German teenage twin sisters Lisa and Lena with more than 30 million followers (Waechter 2021; and Waechter, in this volume). While girls tend to play mobile phone games, boys are more likely to be found in online video game scenes in which groups play together against others (MMORPGs—massively multiplayer online role-playing games). In such roleplaying scenes, the age group of 12- to 13-year olds is again the largest one (JIM 2018). They play with friends from school but also with strangers from the Internet, who may also become friends after having played together for some period. While playing (as well as before and after the actual game), they communicate intensively via TeamSpeak or Skype. MMORPGs are used for establishing and shaping peer relationships, peer-learning and personal development (Waechter and Hollauf 2018). There are concerns, however, about a particular form of youth language widely used and accepted in digital games: hate speech (Brehm 2013). Young and unexperienced gamers (“newbies”) are most likely to become victims of hate speech or even bullying.

7.4 Ideologically Oriented Youth Cultures Ideologically oriented youth cultures can be differentiated into politically motivated protest cultures and youth cultures based on a common religious believe. The young population is often said to be disenchanted with politics, and youth cultures have been described as de-ideologised and non-political. While the election turnout of first-time voters does indeed tend to be lower than among the overall population, and young people are less keen than older generations to tie themselves to parties and political organisations, social movements are nonetheless carried to a significant extent by the young population. Since the anti-globalisation movement with protests at the World Trade Organization Conference in Seattle 1999, there was a long series of protest movements that acted transnationally with the help of social media and cyber activists, “outrage movements” (e.g. yellow vests in France or Indignados in Spain) and the “Facebook revolutions” of the Arab Spring which led to the downfall of decades-long dictators (Waechter 2019). We are currently seeing what are probably the largest global student protests in history (“Fridays for Future”) aiming to persuade politicians at national and international levels to change their economic

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and environmental policies but also promoting personal responsibility (Rucht and Sommer 2019; Waechter 2020). Young people get involved in social movements because they can work for or against a cause together with their peers and likeminded people without having to commit themselves in the long term, as it would mean to work for a political party. We can also find protest cultures in youth organisations of the political parties that are critical of the “mother party” (e.g. “Jusos” of the German Social Democratic Party) (Waechter 2021). Protest movements can be found across the entire political spectrum, and interestingly, right-wing groups now traditionally use “left-alternative” forms of protest and action. In the area of right-wing radical youth cultures there are extreme right-wing (student) fraternities, skinheads (with the exception of Redskins and Sharp Skins) and neo-Nazis. The political orientation today is less related to the preferred music, and in many youth cultural music styles there are now bands that use right-wing extremist ideologies and symbols (Ecarius et al. 2011). Religious cultures are also multi-layered and can be divided into two orientations. On the one hand, young people often form local communities within the framework of the major religions, which can then be more or less religiously oriented. On the other hand, there are also youth cultural varieties in the field of religion, such as the German “Jesus Freaks”, which meet annually at the “Freakstock Jesus Festival” (Waechter 2021).

7.5 Fan Cultures In terms of numbers, young people are most likely to be part of a fan culture, compared to other categories of youth cultures. Here, too, there are numerous and varied forms, but they all have in common that young fans are enthusiastic about celebrities from the music, sports or media world. Boys are more interested in sports superstars (individual athletes and clubs), and girls are more interested in celebrities from music and the media. Being part of a fan scene usually involves a range of activities. In the following, we will give a short insight into the girl culture of pop fans and the young men’s ultra culture. The girl culture of pop fans is not just about adoring the respective stars and using them as role models for your own identity development (Wegener 2008), but also about collective activities with like-minded friends (Fritzsche 2007). The practices include collecting and exchanging fan items, wearing merchandise (T-shirts, caps, etc.), networking with celebrities and other fans on social media, joint concert visits that involve queuing, singing and screaming, as well as collecting and exchanging of expert knowledge. Typically, the fans are younger girls who are transitioning from childhood to youth status. In their fan groups, the girls experience group cohesion and experience intimate, trusting friendships, which are essential development tasks in this age group. They also use the common area of experience for identity formation by differentiating themselves from their peers (especially the group of boys) as well

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as younger people (children) and older people (young people and adults) (Waechter 2021). In the fan culture of the “ultras”, mainly young men form groups to support their favourite football (soccer) club. Larger football clubs even have several ultra groups that exist independent of the official club structure. In addition to the unconditional presence at home and away games, between the games the members develop choreographies for each game and produce the associated materials, e.g. huge banners. After all, the ultras groups compete in terms of who has the best choreography. Depending on their political orientation, the various ultra groups are friendly or hostile to each other, which can also lead to violent clashes but ultras must be distinguished from hooligans who are explicitly violent football fans. Other identitycreating activities include the DIY production and distribution of merchandise as well as critical discussions of club politics (e.g. buying and selling football players) (Waechter 2021). They also feel compelled to protest against a criminalisation of their fan culture; for instance, the use of pyrotechnics, an essential element of their culture, was banned in most countries and places many years ago.

8 Conclusion and Perspectives for Youth Work and Politics To conclude, the contribution will now address several perspectives and challenges, which are situated in the connection between youth research, youth work and politics. Youth research conducted along interdisciplinary lines is essential for a scientific examination of youth as a phase of life, but also in the practical settings of youth work and youth politics. This is necessary in order to comprehensively grasp the social phenomenon of youth and youth cultures in its full breadth and complexity and to react adequately to the social problems young people face. The analysis of the individual, institutional and overall social dimension of youth and youth cultures requires the consideration of not only developmental and sociopsychological but also organisational and macro-sociological theoretical approaches in youth research such as “psychological development theories”, “psychoanalytical explanations”, “approaches based on socialisation theory”, “socio-ecological approaches”, “approaches based on social theory” and “cultural-theoretical and cultural-comparative approaches” (Krüger and Grunert 2002). A field which is much concerned with youth and young people’s lifeworlds is social pedagogy. In the field of socio-pedagogical theory development, the age of youth is one of the classical subject fields and it is regarded as one of the most important phases during the course of life and in the social construction of the biography. From the theoretical perspective of social pedagogy, we can observe the ongoing “de-standardisation” of topics that are specific to young people, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to analytically grasp the essence of the multilayered life stage of youth, because the boundaries between the life stages of child, adolescent and young adult are dissolving (Krüdener 2009; Göppel 2009, pp. 44–74). In view of the complicated individualisation, pluralisation and differentiation processes that young people in our society

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are affected by, it seems vital that social work, traditionally concerned with young people, continues dealing with the youth phase and offer the young people assistance with managing their lives. In the light of the above-mentioned social problems of young people in the different socialisation spheres and lifeworlds, together with the associated psychosocial consequences, unresolved issues are increasingly being passed on to social work facilities (e.g. institutions providing youth welfare). Due to the increasing demand for social assistance, in the shape of either educational or therapeutic help, the “concept of coping with life” is gaining importance in the realm of social work. In this context, the term “coping with life refers to the pursuit of the subjective capacity to act in critical life situations in which the psychosocial equilibrium – self-esteem and social recognition – is at risk” (Böhnisch 2001, p. 1119) (translation by authors). In this social assistance process, social work itself is brought into a difficult and ambivalent position, however. On the one hand, social work is expected to provide assistance for coping with life, to offer young people who are in critical circumstances social support and orientation, as well as to encourage them to develop agency. On the other hand, when it comes to youth violence, criminal offences or drug abuse by young people in Europe, social work is increasingly forced into a regulatory role and function, which contradicts its self-understanding and the preventive-educational measures. What is more, with increasing frequency, the realm of social work is caught in a web of tension between growing pressure to address problems and declining financial resources. There is a very real risk that the quality of social work delivered in the respective facilities can no longer be guaranteed, or that the levels of quality in social work vary significantly between institutions. On the one hand, there is a clinging to the demand for high-quality social work, while on the other hand, the economic problems caused by the economic and debt crisis in Europe have led to a distinctive trend in youth welfare towards saving money. This means that it is becoming increasingly difficult to provide guidance, support and assistance as well as ensuring the development of sustainable relationships with the affected adolescents. To counteract undesirable developments of this kind, we need youth-related policies, which promote and improve the development and life chances of young people. The political sphere and its representatives define the legal, organisational and financial framework, within which the institutions concerned with upbringing and education (families, kindergarten, after-school care, schools) exist alongside institutions from the social work realm (counselling services, children’s homes, etc.). Thus, the endeavour to promote the developmental requirements, resources and equal opportunities of children and young people is a political responsibility and challenge (Knapp and Köffler 2009; Filzmaier et al. 2015; Institut für Jugendkulturforschung 2019). Youth-related policies must be conceived as “cross-cutting policies”, which link together social, family, educational, health, housing and regional policies. As stated by youth researchers (see, e.g. Pohl et al. 2007, 2012) and in childhood studies (Prout and James 1990), young people have to be considered as actors, not just as victims of circumstance. This article has shown that, on the one hand, young people use youth cultural activities for protesting against governments and politics as

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well as against social norms, and on the other, for developing new cultural, political, economic and social perspectives. However, as research further shows (e.g. Waechter 2011), young people’s engagement, more often than not, is perceived as temporary and troubling rather than becoming acknowledged as political participation.

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Adolescence and Migration: On the Importance of Orders of Belonging Britta Hoffarth and Paul Mecheril

1 Adolescence as a Space of Possibilities In this paper, we aim to provide a more detailed explanation of concepts, which represent a sort of hegemonic knowledge about the phenomenon of adolescence, as well as the present theoretical explication, particularly with regard to providing a critique of the concept of adolescence by examining at least three of its main aspects. This should include a critique of the development and phase concepts that suggest quasi-organic processes by naturalising adolescence (Erikson 2017, Melzer 1976); a critique of the normative effect of concepts that hypostasise the general requirement of coping with developmental tasks (Hurrelmann and Bauer 2020, Hurrelmann 2012); and a critique of the difference, context, and variation-levelling consequences of universal phase concepts. Against the background of such criticism, we understand adolescence here as a designation less of a stage of life than of a—in a way ‘spatial’— life context in which the individual intensively examines his or her relationship to the self, a form of self-reflection that occurs in relation to relevant social contexts. The image and concept of space play a role in the social sciences particularly where the situatedness and constitution of the subject are discussed within the context of patterns of orientation that simultaneously surround and permeate it. To relate the A longer version of this paper was originally published in German: Mecheril, P. & Hoffarth, B. (2009). Adoleszenz und Migration. Zur Bedeutung von Zugehörigkeitsordnungen. In V. King & H.-Ch. Koller (Eds.) Adoleszenz – Migration – Bildung. Bildungsprozesse Jugendlicher und junger Erwachsener mit Migrationshintegrund (pp. 239-258). Wiesbaden: Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. B. Hoffarth Department of Educational Science, University of Hildesheim, Hildesheim, Germany e-mail: [email protected] P. Mecheril (B) Faculty of Educational Science, Migration Pedagogy and Cultural Work, University of Bielefeld, Bielefeld, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 G. Knapp and H. Krall (eds.), Youth Cultures in a Globalized World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65177-0_4

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metaphor of space to a phenomenon like adolescence that usually appears to belong to the irreversible march of biographical time, aims to assert the contextuality of social phenomena, or at least to mark them. Social spaces are socially constructed phenomena; they are the result of cooperative and competitive processes of symbolic attribution and derive from processes of ascribing meaning that are carried out by the actors in a given social space (Löw 2001). Based on these assumptions we understand adolescence firstly as an effect of processes and practices of construction and secondly as a performative phenomenon that doesn’t exist beyond processes of ‘doing meaning’. In the following, adolescence is not just thought of as performance but as space for adolescents to negotiate the relations of the possible and the impossible. Distancing oneself from the family, trying out alternative lifestyle and relationship forms, and experiencing efficacy in ways that unfold in completely new, if somewhat unguided ways, experience as a lifestyle, for its own sake, the experience of boundaries, their transgressions, their creations, the experience of social and physical sensations for the first time, introduced to another body as one’s own, leading to other gestures and another knowledge of the self; the list that ends here is well known: ‘Adolescent individuation requires […] play and risk, it requires the testing and transgression of boundaries, experimentation with one’s own creative potentials’ (Winkler 2005, p. 30). The decoupling of adolescence from fixed life stages which is the preferred perspective in this chapter is tied to emphasising a culturally and socially specific process of detraditionalisation, pluralisation, and individualisation; it should be understood loosely as a relative decoupling (and relative coupling), as a specific life stage that is nonetheless still associated in a specific way socially (and in media) with adolescent meanings and attributions. We understand the space of adolescence thus as characterised not only by the fact that it is a realm in which experimentation and playful ‘what if’ questions are possible, a place in which experimentation is allowed, a testing area, but also by the fact that such actions are, so to speak, necessary to be able to speak of adolescence. Further, we suggest understanding adolescence as a space in which individuals negotiate the uncertainty of not being able to decide what aspects of the social are to be treated playfully or seriously. A culture that recognises the adolescent space expects those considered to be adolescents to be experimental, awkward, excessive, exaggerated, errant, and bungling: in short, it expects juvenile, ‘infantile’ practice (Hoffarth 2019); otherwise the difference between adolescence and non-adolescence would be irrelevant. The fact that under conditions of pluralisation and de-standardisation, what is regarded as ‘awkward’ and ‘articulated’, i.e. as ‘adolescent’ and its other has become unclear and diverse, does not change the fact that there must be practically significant ideas about provisionality, individuation, etc., in order to be able to speak of adolescence at all. The suggested perspective thus prefers pointing to the cultural practice of identifying ‘adolescence’ by using the idea of ‘difference’, not ‘development’. Thus, two concepts of adolescence can be discerned. The first places adolescence within a realm of experience and possibilities within ‘individuating’ relationships

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and is not only and not necessarily limited to the usual understanding of ‘adolescence’ as a biographical period. The other deals with ‘adolescence’ as a cultural construction of biographical periodisation, which is not determinative, yet is efficacious, and influences types of action, understandings of the self, and patterns of assigning meaning, legitimacy, and the limits of plausibility in different ways. A fifty year-old woman would presumably have a harder time making social sense of certain kinds of ‘non-sense’, which may be perceptible and perhaps relevant to others, than a sixteen year-old. Adolescence is a life context that is relatively independent of a certain phase in a person’s life, and it is characterised by complex relations in a significant and somehow exaggerated way: I place myself in a cognitive, affective, physical, symbolic, and aesthetic relationship to myself, and in doing so, I place myself in a relationship to political, cultural, and social contexts, and vice versa; I will be placed in a relationship to political, cultural, and social contexts by virtue of being placed in a cognitive, affective, physical, symbolic, and aesthetic relationship to myself, and vice versa. As we pointed out with Winkler, the performance of adolescence thus can be understood as playful and risky at the same time because the recognition as a serious subject is always at stake. In this respect, we assume that the cultural code ‘adolescence’ is characterised in a special way by educational processes that are constitutive in the context of this type of relations. Who, like us, prefers a non-normative concept of adolescence, will thus associate adolescence less closely with a set life stage, and not exclude the possibility that adults can experience biographically diachronic adolescent ‘states’. Furthermore, one will ultimately understand adolescence (synchronically) as a context-specific, i.e. conditional state of exaggerated proportion. In order to clarify what we understand as the specific moment of becoming in adolescence, we refer in the following to the concept of education (Bildung). Becoming here is not only to be understood as a passive exposure, but rather as an active engagement of the subject with themselves and the world. Bildung in the following is designed as a field of tension between subjectivation on the one hand and agency on the other (not to be mixed up with control). The adolescent is an agent in their lifeworld whose participation in social contexts is articulated through the active shaping and confrontation with their limits and possibilities. The process of individuation shaped by this self-directed activity is complementary in relation to the conditions of generativity and is thus also connected to the formation of generational order. Generativity can be understood as a dialectical complement of adolescent individuation (King 2013, pp. 105, 181), it describes the ‘totality of available or provided attitudes and resources’ as well as ‘the position and ability of effectiveness to be achieved in the process of individuation’ (ibid., p. 276). The concept of adolescence that is significant here thus unites both the everyday conditions of the possibilities of action and orientation, as well as the process—not limited to a single stage of life—of negotiating and working on social position and participation in necessarily intergenerational respects. However, we assume that the position of the individual gained by crossing and adhering to boundaries is contingent in the context of a social context; this means two things: it did not have to happen this way

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(although the reasons why it did happen that way can of course be explained) and it can change, making the position precarious, i.e. revocable. In a chemical experiment, various elements are mixed together, and the reaction is observed and evaluated with regard to the verification or falsification of a previously formulated hypothesis. A psychological experiment is a controlled method of inquiry in which, under conditions as systematic as they are manipulative, the behaviour of the subject is observed not by the subjects of action, but by test subjects. Known conditions act here as independent variables, and unknown reactions are called dependent variables. In contrast to this, the social experimentation of adolescence, especially under conditions of the post-traditional and intergenerational traditions of diversified and accelerated societies, is not methodically structured, and for those engaged in experimentation, is generally characterised by that fact that the ‘variables’ depend on the circumstances of experimentation which are uncontrollable and unpredictable. In the course of this routine experimentation under non-laboratory conditions, processes of Bildung that are constitutive for the process of individuation and generativity take place: the experimental testing of modes of action and the experience of boundaries and possibilities in a given situation has consequences that manifest themselves cognitively as well as physically and socially. These consequences affect further action, orientation, and the relationship to the self and the world. This process functions in a less goal-oriented way than the prototype of the scientific experiment described in books and is characterised by a (necessary) willingness to take risks, a high degree of affective commitment, and the challenge of being able to deal with possible failure, which cannot be predicted but can be interpreted individually and situatively. Making mistakes and experiencing conventional, legal, and moral resistance not only means the risk of weakening or injuring oneself, but also offers the opportunity to position oneself with regard to social rules in a way that confirms them and allows for the development of alternative modes of reading and acting. The social experimentation of not-yet-adults and no-longer-adults (and soon-tobe-adults-again) can be described as a process structured by a pronounced readiness to engage in the dialectical interplay of knowledge and non-knowledge, of the culturally familiar and the unfamiliar, of social belonging and non-belonging, to shape this game by oneself, and to immerse oneself socially and societally in the design of the game. In contrast to the romantic youth film and sometimes also the retrograde phantasm of one’s own growing up, the realms of experience of adolescence are not free or empty, and their limitations, as the space metaphor already suggests, can be sensed by those individuals who act within them and thus become subjects. These spaces are structured by social orders of belonging and their specific rules. Experimentation within these spaces has its limitations: prescribed somewhat by relations between generations, through the rules of the school or the school system, or through the code of specific (youth) cultural groups. The experience and (re)narration of these limitations and boundaries, as well as one’s own positioning from and within them, represent experiences that constitute the subject. ‘Experience’ can be understood pragmatically as the attribution of meaning and representation, not epiphenomenal but constitutive for actions, arising in the

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context of actions. As John Dewey (2000) suggests, experiences are neither active nor passive, but result in the entanglement of ‘doing’ and ‘suffering’: ‘We affect the object, and the object affects us back […]’ (ibid., p. 186). Negotiating interactions with peers, with other non-adults, in confrontation with plausible authorities, i.e. persons who occupy a position of trust and/or respect in the relationship context of the non-adult, lead to the development of their own styles and practices of action. Dewey refers to everyday action and communication processes that move without hindrance in their usual environment, and their unbroken experience, the symbiosis of experience and object, as ‘primary experience’. However, this experience becomes precarious as soon as situations turn out to be problematic, i.e. as soon as seemingly reliable patterns of interpretation can no longer serve as a basis for tried and tested modes of action. In this new situation, processes of reflection make it possible to abstract the concrete, to construct a framework for questionable aspects of the situation, such as the consequences of one’s own actions, which reduces possible consequences to a manageable number and thus allows for a provisional capacity to act. Dewey called this reconstruction (or new construction) of meaning ‘secondary experience’ (Neubert 2004). Käte Meyer-Drawe’s phenomenological-subjectivation-theoretical concept of experience expands this pragmatist perspective by two further moments: negativity and power. To explain a central negative moment of learning, Meyer-Drawe uses the term ‘epagoge’, with which she refers to Günther Buck: This term describes the ‘negative character [of experience]. I.e. it draws attention to the fact that we only make an experience when it compels us to turn around, to restructure our foreknowledge. […] Learning is understood as relearning against the background of the disappointment of inappropriate anticipation, the negation of the authoritative horizon of experience in current experience’ (Meyer-Drawe 1996, p. 89). Thus, every experience also takes something from the subject and initiates the necessity to work on their relations to the self and the world. At the same time, in the process of experience we are always confronted with something outside our own selves, with a radically different other that challenges our conception of ourselves and calls for an answer: ‘Sociality as a basic mode of human existence points to the fact that the ego is always co-constituted by others, that ego development is kept in motion by an excess of non-identity, that in a sense I will always remain alien to myself, that my sphere of peculiarity always exists intervened by interventions by others’ (ibid., p. 94).

It is in this moment of reflection upon one’s own action, as well as its consequences and the development of new meaning, that we find a central axis of adolescent creativity, agency and transformation. Individual representations of this transformation, such as narratives, memories, and concepts of the self and the world are structured on the one hand within the dialectic of (risky) action and (reflected) consequences of experimental ‘forays’ through the realm of experience and possibility. But effective action, emotional participation, and representation of change (difference) and staying the same (identity) are simultaneously shaped by the certain orderliness of social contexts, which structure the range of possibility of adolescence against the background of, for example, societal conceptions of belonging and not belonging.

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2 Natio-Racial-Cultural Coded Orders of Belonging The abstract understanding of adolescence as complex of individual agency und reflection, that is to be assumed a fundamentally social space, needs to be discussed in the context of recent societal conditions. The late modern is characterised by the existence of several patterns of inequality, affected by global developments and power structures. One of the most crucial might be Migration. Even if migration is not an exclusively modern phenomenon, it is nonetheless characterised by specifically modern conditions In recent times, cross-border movements of people have attained a particular significance for individuals and societies worldwide and are one of the main sources of what is addressed as globalisation. The importance of global and globalising migration in the present is generally related to the following (Mecheril 2018): a) Migration increases with the proliferation of modern thought and vice versa. The characteris-tically ‘modern’ idea is increasing in importance due to migration phenomena. Migration can be understood as the attempt in a very basic sense to take charge one’s own life with regards to geo-graphical, ecological, political, and cultural location., and it thus serves as a model of a modern lifestyle—with all of its ambivalences, illusions, and questionable incidental consequences. b) Migration increases with global inequalities and the consciousness of injustice: Due primarily to the brutality of modern warfare on account of its weapons technologies, the uneven distribution of poverty and wealth in the world, and varying degrees of ecological change and the associated destruction of natural resources, the intensity of global inequality grows. Given this manifestation of inequality, the total number of people living in this world, and given the spread of global knowledge (increasing representation of the world in people’s minds, through information technologies such as television, and computers), global maladjustment and inequality has never been so pronounced as in the present; c) The modification of time and space: The ‘shrinking’ of the world with regard to space and time due to technological developments in transport and communications is characteristic of the present, particularly with regards to economic resources. This is quite significant for people’s understanding and perception of themselves and their opportunities in this world of transformed time and space relations. Furthermore, this facilitates movements across borders, or at least encourages attempts to cross borders. Migration shapes and reshapes familiar and existing boundaries. Political and everyday discussions of migration always address the question of how and where a nation state sets its boundaries and how it deals with difference, heterogeneity, and inequality within these boundaries. Migration problematises boundaries. Here, the term boundaries refer less to concrete territorial borders and more to symbolic boundaries of belonging. Migration turns the question of belonging into an individual, social, and societal issue—not just for migrants—because it problematises

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that type of order of difference that is one of the most fundamental social mechanism of differentiation, the order that distinguishes between ‘inside’ and ‘outside’. It is therefore not sufficient to define migration solely as the process of crossing borders. Instead, it is important to recognise that migration is also a phenomenon that involves the discussion and problematisation of the boundary between ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ and between ‘us’ and ‘not us’, thus potentially questioning but also strengthening the fundamental differentiation of social order. Against this backdrop, it becomes clear why experiences and phenomena of belonging are currently so significant: in immigrant societies, relationships of belonging have become blurred and belonging has therefore become an issue—both as a topos and an experience. We speak of belonging because belonging has become a problem—from both an individual and a superindividual perspective. In order to make this more precise, we connect to Meyer-Drawe and thus go further than Dewey and understand ‘experiences’ as phenomena that are, strictly speaking, socially, linguistically, culturally, and politically contextualised. Experiences do not just happen or ‘pile up’ nor do they exist in isolation, but rather they are heavily embedded in discursive contexts within which they are also produced. We see experiences—whether they are prelinguistic (e.g. changes in attention, orienting responses, intense emotions or affects that are immediately felt) or linguistic (e.g. diary entries, narratives, theories) in nature—in a radical sense as having been imparted by microcultural norms that enable specific attributions of meaning and forms of practice while preventing others. In immigrant societies, orders of belonging give adolescent experiences a meaningful structure, although other factors also play a role. Not only do adolescents encounter these orders, some of which can be defined as fundamental—gender, race, class—due to their basic social, political, and individual meaning, they are already familiar with them because the orders have a structuring effect on experiences, ways of understanding, and forms of practice in early life. Orders of belonging have an educating effect (Bildungseffekt) in the way that they impart self-concepts in a practical, i.e. cognitive and explicit, and even more importantly, sensual and physical manner. These self-concepts reflect social positions and stratifications just as they impart an understanding of the social world in which one’s own position is represented. Orders of belonging are particularly orders of hegemonial difference; within these orders, consequential differences are marked, people become acquainted with one another, and routines are created that determine how we treat our bodies, how we speak, and the way we think, thereby signalling our place in a series of hierarchically structured positions that are stable without being rigid. The interplay of orders of belonging could be reflected in the image of a multidimensional realm of social inequality and injustice (an image that transcends the human imagination). Gender, class, race—all represent dimensions of inequality

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and difference1 that affect the interests, temperaments, and identities of every human being: (fundamental) orders of belonging have a subjectifying effect. Since it is not uncommon to use the term ‘identity’ in discussions of adolescence—renowned scientists have called the development of an ‘ego identity’ the most important function of adolescence (Erikson 2017)—we would like to briefly discuss why we chose to examine adolescence from the perspective of theories of belonging instead of identity. ‘Identity’ is a (social) psychological category that examines the appropriateness of individual life scripts against the backdrop of an individual’s abilities as suggested by his or her life history and basic social conditions. From the perspective of the individual as well as in relevant social contexts, there are both successful and unsuccessful forms of identity and both, pleasant as well as unpleasant answers to the question ‘who am I?’ By contrast, ‘belonging’ from a theory of subjectivation is a much more explicit reference to a relationship, and if we look at ‘social belonging’ the relationship between an individual and a social context in which practices and concepts that differentiate between ‘belonging’ and ‘not-belonging’ are constitutive for this context. The term belonging focuses on the relationship between the individual and his or her social context, whereas identity emphasises the abilities of an individual that were socially acquired but for which the individual alone bears the responsibility. Within this relationship, the paradox of ‘being like no one else’ and ‘being like everyone else’, which George Herbert Mead is widely acknowledged to have identified, must be practically, cognitively, and emotionally balanced and represented. Identity is not given to an individual but is instead ‘assigned’ (Böhme 1996) to them and must be performed and asserted. In addition, certain skills are needed in order to be able to assert one’s identity. These skills are socially imparted but primarily play a role on an individual level, e.g. ‘empathy’, ‘role distance’, ‘the ability to tolerate ambiguity’, and ‘the ability to express identity’ (Krappmann 2000). The term identity asks how individuals establish personal coherence, continuity, and consistency or how they deal with or productively deal with incoherency, discontinuity, and inconsistency. By contrast, the term belonging asks under what social, political, and societal conditions individuals understand, recognise, and honour their sense of belonging to a specific context and examines the individual circumstances created by these conditions. Experiences of belonging are phenomena in which individuals experience their position within social contexts and become acquainted with themselves via these contexts. For the dimension of belonging, which is generally addressed when we consider how relationships of belonging have become blurred due to migration phenomena, terms such as ‘ethnic’ or ‘cultural’ belonging are often used. We have chosen to use the term natio-racial-cultural coded orders of belonging (Mecheril 2003). This dimension of belonging, which structures the adolescent realm of experience and possibilities in an immigrant society, will be examined in more detail 1 Other

important dimensions would be: sexual orientation, the status of physical and intellectual normality… In other words, this chapter does not aim to address which orders of belonging define fundamental orders under specific social conditions, how their modi operandi are related, how they are special, how specific the subjectifying effect of each of the orders of belonging is etc.

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using a differentiating, analytical approach (additional dimensions of belonging and the complex ways in which they interact with one another have been omitted here). When seen from the perspective of the individual, natio-racial-cultural coded contexts of belonging are factual and imaginary spaces that do not stand in opposition to individual members. In these spaces, individuals can gain and express an understanding of themselves that influences basically how they act. In natio-racial-cultural coded experiences of belonging, individuals put themselves in relation to natio-racial-cultural coded contexts of belonging and through these experiences, they put themselves into relation to these symbolic and imagined contexts, which allegedly refer to ideas of territorial boundaries. Overarching structures of knowledge, action, and well-being are produced by the dialectic relationship between self-relationing and the relationing of others, both, to put it somewhat simplistically, positive and negative experiences of belonging, the relationship and profile of affirming and negating experiences of belonging. These structures allow individuals to understand their status of belonging within a specific context. Experiences of belonging create conceptions of belonging. Conceptions of belonging refer to emotional, epistemic, practical, and bodily patterns that integrate, abstract, and reinforce situative experiences of belonging. These patterns are structured by positive and negative experiences, while at the same time they themselves structure experiences of belonging. Conceptions of belonging are systems of selection and construction. They organise and attribute meaning to each experience within the overall context of individual belonging. Experiences of belonging or not-belonging contribute to the development of a conception of belonging, especially in the experimental and developmental space that is deemed adolescent—and/or can be described as adolescent—in which the negotiation of social categories of belonging plays a central role. Based on these conceptions of belonging—which are incomplete and in constant transition, yet continue to shape social and epistemic relationships to oneself, others, and the world—individuals act and understand themselves within social contexts, thus enabling further experiences of belonging. The relationship an individual has to a context of belonging depends on the relationship that, so to speak, the context of belonging adopts towards the individual and how this relationship is demonstrated via social requirements, via everyday experiences and the resulting expectations. Conceptions of belonging are active acts of positioning and depositioning that are influenced by the structure of the social field in which these acts are situated. Subjective conceptions of belonging refer to relationships in which individuals understand themselves in relation to social contexts. These relationships are shaped by the conceptions of ‘others’. The opinions of specific people inside and outside a context of belonging—who provide direct or indirect information about who belongs—and expectable, confirmed, and imagined feedback from people in general, constitute one’s own conception of belonging. Statements by others about belonging—a gesture, a question (‘Where do you come from?’), a comment (‘Your German is very good’)—establish the structured and structuring pattern of one’s own sense of belonging (Solórzano and Pérez Huber 2020).

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Experiences of belonging that shape natio-racial-cultural coded conceptions of belonging are only possible because a political, interactive, and semantic order of natio-racial-cultural coded belonging exists. Without orders (of belonging), experiences (of belonging) would be impossible.

3 Concluding Remark—the Power of Belonging In this chapter we have followed the goal of presenting a concept of adolescence that, on the one hand, takes a critical position with regard to more structuralist approaches, and thus understands adolescence as an experimental space in terms of cultural theory and power analysis. Beyond this abstract perspective and with regard to global migration movements, we have developed an approach in which the complex negotiation of selfhood and sociality must be conceived as contextualised practice which we call a negotiation of contexts and authorisations of belongings. The term ‘order of belonging’ indicates that these orders of belonging should be understood as powerful contexts that productively influence and constitute individuals via a complex form of facilitation and regulation, and of symbolic, cultural, political, and biographical inclusion and exclusion. This is particularly important when looking at adolescence in the context of global migration movements. Orders of belonging are contexts and spaces that produce subjects.2 They can be described as structured and structuring contexts in which individuals become subjects. With regard to the connection between orders of belonging and power, three central aspects can be identified from an analytical point of view: First, natio-racialcultural coded orders of belonging are powerful because they apply means of disciplining, habitualising, and binding subjects within their sphere of influence. Second, natio-racial-cultural coded orders of belonging are powerful because in general they represent contexts of domination in which certain forms of natio-racial-cultural coded categories of belonging are typically privileged over others on a political and cultural level. Finally, natio-racial-cultural coded orders of belonging are powerful because they are orders that operate on an exclusive logic and demand that individuals express and understand who they are within this exclusive order. Orders of belonging can be described as structured and structuring contexts of differential subjectification. In a space structured by orders of belonging where possibilities and limitations are experienced in the dialectic of doing and suffering, adolescent subject formation results in a positioning that is permeated and supported by the power of orders of belonging.

2 Since

the education system (and especially schools) is a national system, it has always been an important instrument of formal processes of belonging and must therefore be understood as a significant institution for producing subjects that belong or do not belong (Bourdieu et al. 1971).

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References Böhme, G. (1996). Selbstsein und derselbe sein. Über ethische und sozialtheoretische Voraussetzungen von Identität. In A. Barkhaus, M. Mayer, N. Roughley, & D. Thürnau (Eds.), Identität – Leiblichkeit – Normativität. Neue Horizonte anthropologischen Denkens (pp. 322–340). Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp. Bourdieu, P., & Passeron, J.-C. (1971). Die Illusion der Chancengleichheit. Untersuchungen zur Soziologie des Bildungswesens am Beispiel Frankreichs. Texte und Dokumente zur Bildungsforschung. Stuttgart: Klett. Dewey, J. (2000). Demokratie und Erziehung. Eine Einleitung in die philosophische Pädagogik. Weinheim: Beltz. Erikson, E. H. (2017). Identität und Lebenszyklus. Drei Aufsätze. 28. Auflage. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp. Hoffarth, B. (2019). Dekorierte Körper in der weiblichen Adoleszenz. Prozesse der Inkorporierung als illusio. In T. Böder, P. Eisewicht & G. Mey (Eds.), Stilbildungen und Zugehörigkeit. Materialität und Medialität in Jugendszenen. 1st ed. 2019. Erlebniswelten. Hurrelmann, K. (2012). Bachelor | Master: Sozialisation. 1. Aufl. Weinheim: Julius Beltz (Pädagogik 2013). Hurrelmann, K., & Bauer, U. (2020). Einführung in die Sozialisationstheorie. Das Modell der produktiven Realitätsverarbeitung. 13. Auflage (Pädagogik). King, V. (2013). Die Entstehung des Neuen in der Adoleszenz. Wiesbaden: VS. Krappmann, L. (2000). Soziologische Dimensionen der Identität. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta. Löw, M. (2001). Raumsoziologie. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Mecheril, P. (2003). Prekäre Verhältnisse. Über natio-ethno-kulturelle (Mehrfach-)Zugehörigkeit. Münster: Waxmann. Mecheril, P. (2018). Orders of belonging and education: Migration pedagogy as criticism. In D. Bachmann-Medick & J. Kugele (Eds.), Migration: Changing concepts, critical approaches (pp. 121–138). Berlin: De Grutyer. Melzer, G. (1976). Sozialisation in der Schule. Sozialpädagogik hilft Lern- und Verhaltensstörungen heilen. Freiburg: Herder. Meyer-Drawe, K. (1996). Vom anderen lernen. In M. Borelli & J. Ruhloff (Eds.), Deutsche Gegenwartspädagogik (pp. 85–98). Hohengehren Schneider-Verlag. Neubert, S. (2004). Pragmatismus. Thematische Vielfalt in Deweys Philosophie und in ihrer heutigen Rezeption. In L. Hickman, S. Neubert, K. Reich (Eds.) (2004). John Dewey. Zwischen Pragmatismus und Konstruktivismus. Münster: Waxmann. Solórzano, Daniel G., & Pérez Huber, L. (2020). Racial microaggressions in education. Using critical race theory to respond to everyday racism. New York: Teachers College Press (Multicultural education series). Winkler, Ch. (2005). Lebenswelten Jugendlicher. Eine empirisch-quantitative Exploration an Berufsschulen zur sonderpädagogischen Förderung im Regierungsbezirk Oberfranken. Dissertation an der LMU München (Fakultät für Psychologie und Pädagogik).

The Nature of Youth. Or: On the Assumed Disappearance of Youth in the Present Society Michael Winkler

1 On the Current Discourse on Youth In relation to scientific discourses, sometimes there is value in naively trusting common sense and the language of everyday life. After all: every scientific statement begins with the pre-conceptual. And this calls for an objection to an assertion that is being widely disseminated today as regards the state of research in matters of youth. The assertion claims as follows: Youth no longer exists, the debate about youth is over and no longer needs to be conducted. This assertion is nonsense. The philosopher Harry G. Frankfurt would refer to it as bullshit and would state for the record something that seems quite banal: Of course, adolescents exist and furthermore, so does youth. And yet, the proposition prevails. It became established during the shift towards the social sciences, when youth research increasingly followed a sociological orientation. This youth research expressed the criticism that youth is a naturalising concept, and one which must be deconstructed, inspired by the theory of power. This renders obsolete the notion of youth, which allows—at the very least—for a naturally given conception and reality, based on biological development processes. In this respect, youth dissolves sociologically. Paradoxically, psychology comes to the aid of this view, whereby the way in which the discipline thinks in terms of disorders or optimisation, too often focuses on domains that are linked to cognition, appearing uncoupled from the phases of life. And so, we find, for instance, that developmental psychology has vanished from the canon of teacher training. The consequence is that puberty arises as a reality shock for teachers, who were equipped with statistical reports about the This text draws on considerations first presented at the University of Cologne in January 2019 on the subject of ‘Youth Today’. I would like to thank Jutta Ecarius, Anja Schierbaum and the students attending the seminar for their critical comments and contributions. M. Winkler (B) Department of Educational Science (Retired), University of Jena, Jena, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 G. Knapp and H. Krall (eds.), Youth Cultures in a Globalized World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65177-0_5

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social provenance and the conditionality of the life situation of schoolchildren, but were unprepared to meet adolescents in real life. The sociological and social science-led approach initially justifies its assumption of youth as non-youth, to use a paradoxical phrase, by claiming that modern societies are abandoning the concept of youth because and provided that they are pluralised and fragmented to such an extent that common, socially determined life situations can no longer be identified. Three lines of argumentation can be traced here: According to the first, youth is solely a social phenomenon, ultimately emergent from given societal conditions. A second refers to the findings of empirical social research focused on milieus in order to dissolve the uniform and collectively valid concept of youth; it posits that there now exist numerous youths, which exist side by side and have nothing to do with each other. A single youth par excellence, in other words, the associated generational stratification, can consequently not be determined. (This is further underpinned by a form of youth research that operates with qualitative, biographically reconstructed processes. These are helpful, but due to the refinement of the instruments they create the fatal side effect of shifting individual life processes into focus to such an extent that structures simply disappear. Biography research— as pursued by the Shell Studies, for instance—is then limited to examining the life of the adolescents x, and nowadays scarcely considers whether and to what extent they were or are exposed to a collective situation, other than at school.) The third line of argument claims that modern societies no longer permit an identification of life phases. Individualised individuals take the place of groups or age cohorts, flexible and idiosyncratic, each concerned with running their life in a singularised manner and as a project, basically from the start of life until its conclusion (cf. Boltanski n. y.; Reckwitz 2017). This, it is claimed, is coupled with the requirement to work continuously or, more than anything, to consume—which emerges as leitmotif. Regardless of one’s age, be it one, six, or fourteen, be it as twenty- or as forty-year-old, at the age of seventy or ninety—one has to acquire products, possibly accompanied by the efforts described as life-long learning. All this is overlaid by a form of new beginnings and juvenilisation; one usually faces the inventions of the consumer world like an apprentice, no matter how old one is. It is hardly possible to deny these insights. But are they sufficient to abandon youth as a concept? One could at least object that it would be fundamentally and above all methodologically questionable to simply reproduce the possible disappearance of youth as a moment of social change in scientific observation, without critically commenting on it. Apart, perhaps, from the fact that youth is currently manifesting itself as youth once again, possibly in the remarkable fusion of a perspective focused on the natural conditions of human life with that in which the nature of one’s own life, i.e. the nature of youth, becomes the theme. Speaking emphatically: Nature refers to a basic condition of our existence, but at the same time it reveals a resistance to social processes of appropriation. Perhaps young people today remind us of human nature, that is, of the fact that people depend on a natural context in order to preserve humanity. The following considerations therefore do not only criticise the social science duplication and thus affirmation of social conditions. Rather, they recommend that

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we perceive human phases of life in their natural conditionality, incidentally as far as the insight that nature opens the view upon individuality and uniqueness. Yes, they are intended as a provocative essay on the one hand, as a kind of rambling and even gambling way of thinking to inspire some new (or even old) ideas in a discourse which could be seen as dominated by—what one might call—the mainstream. The aim of the (naturally) more or less philosophical considerations is to reconsider that—not only for logical reasons—we need a general and coherent concept of youth to understand developments in this important phase of the human lifecycle. Researchers usually emphasise differences between different clusters of young people and different cultures and societies. Instead, I will argue that there are not only many more similar cultural and social patterns that support the assumption that youth can be considered as a transcultural phenomenon. Here, I will point out some tendencies in the life of youth which can be observed worldwide, at least in modern societies. In fact there is a common distinctive similarity to observe worldwide, so to say as a global tendency: Young people are protesters, they are strongly involved in struggles for more democracy and for more personal freedom and independency. Youth has to be seen as working towards personal autonomy—and that can be regarded as a global feature. But: As a background to this argument I secondly consider that research should not only refer to social and cultural processes but should think of youth as an anthropological and natural phenomenon. My uncommon idea is that movements like “Fridays for Future” will show us a specific sensibility for nature which is connected to the natural status of youth. Yes, this idea sounds a bit crazy, but, looking at the ecological status of the world, considering climate change and so on, one should think of resources to stop dramatic changes in the life of humankind itself. Emphatically speaking: It is time for a new narrative of the concept of youth. My considerations will help to prepare the way to it, well knowing that the final destination is not clear as yet.

2 Observations on the Life Situation of Young People The theory of the disappearance of youth has become popular through the latest German report on children and youth (Deutscher Bundestag 2017)1 . This can be regarded as symptomatic of the implied social-scientification of the view of youth or, respectively, of the resulting disregard of youth as a key concept, and one which at least broaches the issue of reality. Surprisingly enough, the German Youth Report is not consistent at all. In its major parts it shows a picture of youth as no longer coherent, but rather as existing in many different ways of living, depending on milieus or sometimes on classes the young people belong to; sometimes caused by different 1 The

German Reports on Children and Youth are singular worldwide: They are published by the national government and delivered first to the parliament, once in every legislation period. An independent group of researchers work on the situation of children and youth and developments in youth care. The reports deliver important sources and information for professionals and researchers.

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experiences of families, for example by migration. The idea is that one cannot speak of a concept of youth in modern societies. But in the Report’s introduction one will find strong arguments that youth should be considered as an important time of life, especially for processes of democratic development and political learning. One can speak therefore of a paradox in the findings of the report: There is no youth at all, on the one hand, but this time of life works as an introduction in at least political learning towards democracy, on the other hand. However, the 15th Youth Report does reflect, broadly speaking, what happens to anyone who wants to gain a clear picture of youth of the youth phase. Meanwhile, contrary studies, such as those conducted by Schierbaum remain rare (cf. Schierbaum 2018; cf. also Bock et al. 2013). Yet the assertion, also echoed by the Youth Report, has prevailed: Youth is no longer really happening, neither in public and political circles, nor in specialist debates. Even the disputes about models of interpretation, i.e. about understanding youth as a moratorium or a time out, or as a transition or passage, seem outdated. Youth as a phenomenon or fact, or even as an interpretative concept, has simply been abandoned. Even in the most recent editions, specialist articles, including those in reference books, doubt whether youth can still be thematised at all; conceptual ambiguity and genuine confusion go hand in hand; the dissolution of structures and of boundaries, fragile relationships and fluid transitions between education and work dominate—as stated, for instance, by Sander and Witte in the latest edition of the compendium ‘Soziale Arbeit’ (transl.: social work). Interestingly, they include references to studies that span a period lasting close to three decades (cf. Sander and Witte 2018). What is truly astonishing is that reservations about the theories of destructuring and delimitation have so far failed to find expression. In contrast, what trends can be identified for the situation of young people—at least if one adheres heuristically to what is perhaps only a vague concept of youth? Which, by the way, cannot be avoided methodologically even then. As ridiculous as it may seem: The concept of youth is still needed, even if it is to determine its own disappearance.

2.1 Demography and the Labour Market The assumption that youth is disappearing is based, first of all, on population statistics, i.e. on demographic findings as they pertain to the Central European societies. These events are substantiated by statistics in the first instance. In many countries, the proportion of young people in the population declined during the second half of the twentieth century—though rising birth rates in the recent past as well as a period of sustained immigration urge us to tread cautiously here. A decline also means that the associated demographic change is reducing the political weight of the younger generation. Compared to a growing number of older and very old people, the opportunities for participation and impact are dwindling, even if the importance of young people for the future is repeatedly invoked by politicians, quite aside from any claim to participation. The decline in political weight is also related

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to two developments in the labour market: On the one hand, over time, automation and, at least in the short term, the greater participation of women in this sector will mean that fewer young people will be needed; a particularly fatal effect can be seen in the fact that the service sector was long favoured as a mass labour market, but is especially affected by digitalisation and the reduction of the workforce. On the other hand, importing labour from abroad, often at cheaper rates, satisfies the demand; businesses prefer this option, as these workers can more easily be shed in times of economic crisis. In this context it is certainly worth reading a critique of migration, from a left-wing position and without racist or xenophobic undertones, as presented by Hannes Hofbauer (Hofbauer 2018). Moreover, we must assume that the demand for higher qualifications and the promise of better life chances underpinning this demand will tend to be broken. Of course, these developments are far from consistent, both regionally—where there are massive differences—and systemically. Pro-fertile population policies, as in France, have achieved the opposite of what they had intended; against all forecasts, the low birth rate in Germany is transmuting into a boom in childbirth. This confirms the long-known insight that fertility behaviour is difficult to predict. Moreover, immigration has—at present—refuted the overall forecasts for population development, with young adults representing the greatest share of immigrants. On the whole, therefore, it can be assumed that the population of young people is growing. In the context of the market for training and employment, the demand for apprentices in trade and industry has increased significantly, so that the position of adolescents and young adults has certainly been strengthened. Nevertheless there are some astonishing discrepancies: Not only academisation still unabashedly promoted, based on nonsensical international comparative surveys; for no consideration is given to the fact that and how core European countries provide qualifying vocational training, while other countries (including Great Britain) require higher education as a basic qualification, even for semi-skilled occupations. This then becomes the standard of the surveys. At the same time, a discrepancy can be identified between the programmatically declared demand for qualifications and the experience of actually searching for a job; even the engineers or IT specialists allegedly in high demand cannot be sure of being hired on the spot.

2.2 Children Rather Than Young People The dethematisation and the construction of youth as non-youth that may be generated in this way are related to the fact that—as can be proven empirically—social and cultural attention, but also the necessary economic and human resources of the welfare state, have shifted to childhood; this was certainly also the reason for focusing the 15th Children and Youth Report on the subject of youth. Indeed, child and youth welfare services had to point out that the majority of their clientele belongs to the age group of fourteen- if not sixteen-year-olds. The weight of social and socio-political attention has shifted decisively towards childhood, specifically to early childhood,

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and to the family; admittedly, this was and still is seen as a risk factor. However, the famous ‘gap children’, i.e. those between nine and twelve years of age, have disappeared from consciousness, and this applies all the more to the adolescents. Their situation, their wishes and needs, the crises of the phase of life were increasingly overlooked, as well as the situation of their parents, and this, by the way, also includes that of single parents with adolescents. One can certainly speculate about the motives that have led to this politically intended fading out; one rather steep, but temporally coincidental theory proposes that access to children promised greater success in relation to preparing them for neoliberalism than addressing the youth group already lost to neoliberalism. In any case, politicians and the professional public have acted as if there were no crises in adolescence, as if everything could be solved by the participants themselves; indeed, as if (all-day) school could ultimately eliminate all problems. In fact, school has a highly stressful effect on this age group, combined with the fact that young people develop a fine sense for the fact that they represent a lost generation often enough—especially when they are not privileged. And this has long since included average incomes. What is remarkable in this respect is the following: Childhood poverty is intensively discussed, often rather prospectively, namely with reference to a potential risk of poverty that must be counteracted. Youth poverty, on the other hand, is not mentioned, although it must have occurred among young people, which would appear to be a danger. But here, too, youth appears to be ignored, bitter though this reality is: There is some evidence that young people are slipping through all security systems and are quite literally being forgotten socially.

2.3 Youth in Their Assigned Space In practice, however, the young do return to the public sphere; the demographically caused decline goes into reverse, albeit with the somewhat macabre effect that young people are again more likely to be associated with delinquency. Nevertheless, two things apply: It is true that it is publicly stated how much we need young people; after all, they are the future. They are needed as raw material, as the precious gold to be lifted from heads. They are the addressees of heteronomy and instrumentalisation—symptomatic of the fact that education, though still proclaimed, has long since been transformed into training. But then, more seriously: a social public that is heterogeneous due to visible age differences is transformed into a highly homogenous public of individual consumers who are, so to speak, legitimately in the public sphere. Age does not matter, but purchasing power does. Even the debate about poverty is somewhat soured. It is indeed scandalous that young people are more likely to be threatened by or exposed to poverty—though some risk scenarios should be treated with caution, especially when they are vociferously associated with the word ‘participation’. The first thing that catches the eye is that and how this omnipresent massive social division is clearly reflected in the younger generation; processes of exclusion

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take place everywhere, in all age groups, and they are particularly dramatic in the generation of the young, because they have a lasting effect on biographies: For some young people the world is wider open than ever before, they enjoy travel and educational opportunities that were previously only available to members of the upper class. Others cannot move beyond their own doorstep, their horizon barely reaches further, experiences which would allow them to develop remain closed to them. And yet: Opportunities to travel and cultural insights have little to do with the experience of impact. In truth, political participation and co-shaping are only of limited importance here. Those complaining about a lack of participation are actually complaining that the younger generation cannot consume in the manner that a consumer society expects—and needs for the sake of its own profit. Above all, however: At the same time, the young are being shifted to their own spaces. What we are witnessing is surely a creeping, secular process of spatial planning, which has been going on for centuries. Social segmentation into age groups always takes the form of spatial organisation, as almost all social processes have to do with the allocation of places and locations (cf. Sennett 2018). One may simply call to mind the diffusion that can be seen in the famous painting Children’s Games by Bruegel the Elder; neither group affiliations nor specified spaces can be identified there. Nowadays, this is completely different, with the effect that certain groups are no longer present in public—and if they do show up by mistake, suspicion immediately arises that they are skipping school. That is where young people belong. And in the evening they sit in front of the computer or maybe go to the disco. Youth is therefore only admitted in certain places; a rule that is enforced with a rigidity that occasionally surprises: CCTV monitors public places and spaces to sound the alarm when young people wander across them, maybe even with a different skin colour or meandering at a slow pace (cf. Davis 1992). This has been taken to extremes in England, starting with the social behaviour orders, which turn mere loitering into an occasion for interventions and temporary incarceration, followed by electronic devices that drove young people out of shopping malls by playing high-frequency sounds that are only perceived by the young—they have simply become customers via the Internet. Brexit, it may be argued, does make a certain kind of sense, because it shows what happens, when young people do not make use of their obligation to vote as democrats but behave as consumers, only.

2.4 Social Problems Rather Than Youth Problems In addition to this spatial separation, there is a form of segmentation in which the focus is no longer on young people, but—and I am exaggerating a little—on problems that are then no longer seen as associated with youth. For example, young people from a migrant background are seen as a problem of migration that must be dealt with, although they certainly attribute this to themselves. In terms of social integration this is nothing less than fatal, because the young people no longer regard themselves as a group of young people in a society, but as young Russians or Kazakhs, thus

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defining and separating themselves ethnographically—much to the annoyance of their own parents, who view this ethnic isolation with deep concern. This is even more pronounced in the case of refugees. Flight is perceived as a central moment in life or, to phrase it more politely, as a task to be accomplished politically or professionally. The dilemma is that a life situation is no longer understood as a situation of youth (or more precisely: of young people), but primarily as a situation of migrants, if possible differentiated further according to the mode of migration or provenance. These, then, are the Russian kids, that hang around the petrol station—but they are not regarded as youths. This is due to the effect produced by the legal situation that unaccompanied juvenile fugitives are solely perceived as such, but not in the sense that they are struggling to understand and cope with their situation without their parents. How are young people supposed to cope with an extreme situation without familial cohesion, which is a characteristic feature of youth at the same time as being a source of tension? It is remarkable how the deviant behaviour of young people under the influence of alcohol is either seen as evidence that—according to the right-wing variant of the Minister of the Interior—the repatriation of nota bene unsolved asylum cases should be dealt with more quickly, or—according to a variant put forward by left-wingers—should be regarded solely in terms of criminal law. Perhaps it is simply typical for young people.

2.5 Temporal Destructuring—How Lifetimes Disappear At the same time, however, the above-mentioned destructuring must not be completely overlooked. The observation thereof involves an illusion, first and foremost. In a way, it has, of course, always been wrong to speak of youth per se, because this caused us to lose sight of fundamental social differences. Siegfried Bernfeld never tired of pointing out the differences between proletarian and—according to him: ultimately—upper-middle-class membership and thus the situation of youth, in order to make it clear that risks, expectations and above all perspectives were distributed very differently (cf. Bernfeld 1994). A differentiated analysis would certainly have to be applied in this respect, not least because especially the young people from the group of successful established workers—who, for example, could easily afford a home help—as well as the owners of small shops or craftman’s businesses and those from the civil service differed in many ways. The decisive factor has always been the amount of time that has been made available to actually be a young person; while some went travelling and caught syphilis in brothels, others had to work in the family business or—an even worse proposition according to autobiographical testimonies—in their parents’ shop. Young people from the households of civil servants were again expected to behave in a particular way, which in turn led to a sense of pride about belonging in some areas, such as the railways. All this was combined with different rules concerning time—photos prove that for the 14- or 15-year-olds

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who entered an apprenticeship, youth was already over; today, it appears that the people depicted face us with a habitus more akin to grandparents. In fact, these temporal orders have now changed in two ways. On the one hand, they have become homogenised; young people are young people in training, and resemble each other in this, even if the places differ. On the other hand, adolescence is fraying at both ends. Some claim that puberty is commencing earlier, and pubescent behaviour is being reported in relation to older children—although caution is called for here, as with the allegation of increasing violence. There are no reliable, conclusive findings; violence among primary school children was more common in the past. Rather, there seems to be a growing pressure to succeed, which corresponds to increasing control and discipline exercised by a school, of which this is also expected—incidentally, this occurs in an interaction of success-oriented parents and migrants who expect traditional disciplinary behaviour on the part of teachers. At the same time, the menarche in girls has shifted forward slightly—and has done so across the globe—and occurs earlier. What is even more noticeable is the increasing absence of an end to youth. Whereas in the past it was completed by the age of 20 at the latest, now for at least another decade it is possible to speak of young adults who—as J. J. Arnett puts it so nicely—are on the long winding road to adulthood (Arnett 2004). Across Europe, poor job and employment opportunities are having an impact here, with the result that young men, in particular, remain in their parents’ homes for long periods—sometimes up to the age of forty. Youth has become a longterm project, a mirror of social insecurity and destabilisation, but it is not perceived as a collective experience.

2.6 The de-Dramatisation of the Family Adolescence seems to be disappearing because the dynamics of inter-generational conflict is changing. The classic dispute between parents, adults and teenagers hardly exists anymore, hair, clothing, music, leisure activities barely differ, risky journeys of the young have long since given way to organised adventure trips, which are also enjoyed by older people; even hotels have converted to the friendly culture of the informal address, age differences have been levelled. In any case, spending time abroad is considered to be an important part of a young person’s life experience; what distinguishes here, is merely the question of whether it can be financed. Astute observers like Martin Dornes (2012) point out that a kind of family conference has become established; young people have long since become de-theorised within the family, and rarely (have to) fight battles with their parents nowadays. It is likely that a number of people have the feeling that they jointly belong to a rare community of fate, shared by those who live as a family. In practice meanwhile, the family situation has become so complicated that parents and adolescents have no choice but to close ranks and cooperate, be mindful to each other’s needs and take them seriously. In other words, adolescence is disappearing because it is becoming more important for all those involved to shape and manage the common protective space

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of the family beyond their current lifetime phase—and by the way, this includes the fact that young people (and even children) worry about their parents, are involved in stressful situations such as separation and starting a new family, are confronted with forced early independence, particularly in instances when mothers enter into a new relationship, which may include spending the odd night elsewhere. Here, young people may benefit from the fact that and if they have gained independence at an early age, for example, because parents were or are absent due to work. To date, there has never been any serious discussion about how children and young people cope with the fact that and when their parents are absent due to shift work, extended opening hours or simply because they have a more or less unlimited working day; in other words, when they are required and expected to manage their lives themselves. Adolescents as almost adults who, despite their dependence on their parents, have to lead and manage their own lives, adults who have to come to an arrangement with and rely on their offspring, tend to form a community of fate—in which each seeks advice from the other, as all youth studies ultimately prove. Incidentally, it is also normal for the parties involved to withdraw once in a while, and that they return when they face a crisis once they have started to live separately; there are mothers turn to their daughters for a shoulder to cry on after separating. As bitter as this may seem in the individual case: We can observe a de-dramatisation, which basically renders a concept of youth superfluous, if not incomprehensible, but which allows us to tackle that which has been shown empirically, namely the coming together of those involved, both in everyday life and in situations of severe stress. Here, once again, we must urge caution, particularly with regard to child and youth welfare: At first glance, there is some evidence to suggest that the assertion of the conflicted and dramatic nature of family life was itself a kind of fiction; a kind of hyped-up family criticism that had little to do with real life experience, but was helpful when it came to promoting the expansion of family-related social services, to name one example. But then: Along with immigration, incidentally also from Eastern European countries, more traditional patterns are re-establishing themselves in generational relations. Ancient conflicts are re-emerging, as are classic controversies. In public, youthful behaviour—barely remembered—causes provocation. Its existence had simply been forgotten.

2.7 Youth as School Population Above all, youth is vanishing because it is concealed behind the walls of schools and educational institutions. Today, youth happens in what can be described as a closed shop. The significance of school, the relationship of those involved, i.e. parents and young people, to school is changing very dramatically: Over a period of several decades, roughly starting in the Eighties and continuing in the Nineties of the previous century, school diminished in its significance, while at the same time, parents started to intervene on behalf of their offspring to a greater extent. This was the beginning of a trend that involved regarding school as a service, though this was initially still

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combined with pleading for an understanding of young people, enforced, if necessary, by legal means. This has disappeared completely, but parents are now exerting much more pressure on their own children, while at the same time expecting the school to make much more effort in terms of supporting and optimising young people. To this end, every means is justified, even the use of medical diagnoses, which are accepted in order to secure the child’s academic success and thus a possible market position. In the meantime, school and training have become the central themes and tasks by which the youth situation is defined, increasingly in a bizarre struggle for cognitive performance and success, which is forced upon individuals, families and society as a whole. The pressure has become tremendous, there is a strange battle situation, because status in society and status of society as a whole is made dependent on the performance of the schools. As a result, we no longer have youth, we only have pupils. Scholarisation comprehensively shapes the first decades of life, accompanied by the—alleged—professionalisation of all practices of dealing with developing or learning persons. Age distribution recedes into the background, the heterogeneity of those involved is deemed important—paradoxically, consideration for individual development processes is also dwindling. Instead, people are normalised and standardised, so to speak, both in perception and in processing. Their actions and abilities are measured in order to assign them to types that are much more strictly defined than would be possible with comparatively general and abstract ideas of childhood and youth (cf. Horvath 2012; Link 2013). This undermines the often conflict-laden debates that are exciting for young people, and that lead back into society—as the findings of older youth research show; people are used to ultimately prepare them for a consumption-oriented society, despite all the invocations of competence far removed from all cultural substance, because people should actually no longer dispose of anything that is connected to the world as it is. Young people have long since learned this lesson: Forget it. Or: No idea—exactly. After all, one can quickly connect to and network with digital memories without even having to be oneself: it says so online! School ignores youth as a special phase by totally dominating it. The more and the longer young people are exposed to this scholastic system, the more comprehensively they are controlled, and their activities are restricted to what the standards set by experts on behalf of social development prescribe. Comprehensive access takes place through spatial and temporal segregation, then through a little discussed act of violence: This is because young people are forced into collective contexts at a stage in their lives when they are beginning to choose their partners and peers themselves. In most cases this works quite well, as the young people themselves testify. They like going to school because they make friends there. But this does not change the total structure of this system, which is by no means limited to the time of physical presence in terms of its definitional claims. School regulates the entire daily routine, socialising for and within it, always geared towards the goals that this system is supposed to achieve—escape routes, paths to other worlds rarely exist, especially in view of the growing pressure exerted by parents to successfully complete this system—in the competitive situation of the individualised addressees this means among each

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other—and by the way, it is symptomatic for the whole event that people talk about addressees, and not about actors or subjects. The bottom line is that school presents itself as an institution that uses test procedures to objectify the performance of individuals who are themselves already standardised and measured (cf. Mau 2017; Schlaudt 2018). The outcome defined by the institution is the measure of all things, a pedagogical or developmental psychological perception of young people in their particular phase of life, as well as their specificity, have been sacrificed to the apprehension of a de-individualised, abstract individual. Adolescents have now been constructed and objectified as pupils, they have been made workable, measurable and they are defined as a problem if they make a nuisance of themselves. However, the pedagogical relativisation of an activity as something that is both individual and at the same time youth-specific, a task which poses a complex challenge and demands professional expertise and discretion, is not even addressed. In practice, even teachers lack an idea of what youth can mean and how it determines action. This corresponds, as has been indicated above, to the fact that statistically objectified clinical pictures are recorded in order to be processed—where, once diagnosed, young people are forced out of normal education and transferred to special forms of treatment. The entire system turns into a closed circuit, which leaves no space outside. The fact that youth must be observed and considered as something that is closely linked to school now becomes normative, it steers both the public and the political debate, as well as a scientific field of research which follows these debates, but it does so at the price that youth itself is pushed into the background. Youth-specific lifestyles associated with school no longer occur, there are only school problems or, more precisely: the successful accomplishment of the life tasks associated with school. Incidentally, this has also led to the fact that the interesting questions about that which was—possibly mistakenly—summarised as informal and non-formal learning have themselves moved shifted out of focus. Little attention is paid to the fact that the German Youth Institute was able to determine how learning progress can be facilitated to a significant extent outside of the school, though this is achieved at the cost of deepening the differences caused by social origin; similarly, the form that the leisure activities of adolescents take also draws comparatively little interest.

2.8 The Youthfulness of Society This, once again, points to a twofold development that seems to have accelerated the process of the disappearance of youth. On the one side, society and its culture have become more juvenile overall. The implied commonality arises because the elderly are becoming younger in terms of their lifestyle, so to speak, even though this is subsequently practiced at rather strange disco parties for the over-30s or even over-40s, where worries abound about impending heart attacks or, at the very least, torn ligaments. The ladies and gentlemen present there are not all that fit, unless they trained for the triathlon beforehand. I make conscious mention of this, because the

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sphere of sports does indeed feature a shift, leading us to expect a reformulation of the requirements that a sports badge demands. Suddenly, physical values or demanded of the sixty-year-olds, which even the young failed to achieve in the past. Whatever we focus our gaze at, age-related differences are disappearing—because age is shifting at the same time: Sixty-year-olds are still regarded—as the rather condescending saying goes—as spring chickens, and are expected to perform proper work, quite apart from the fact that the following duality applies: They are denied the wisdom of age, and they most probably do indeed lack it. Incidentally, this makes communication easier, although critical situations in everyday life are encountered less frequently, not least because business-related communication tends to be automated or takes place via digital communication. Young people hardly ever feel the need to complain about the odd elderly person who may be demanding good behaviour—that older person no longer exists and the good behaviour is no longer required, though the price we pay for this may well be a reduction in the complexity of human communication. The double-coded, tongue-in-cheek reprimand concerning behaviour simply no longer takes place, albeit the effect produced is that ambiguous communication and with it the cognitive differences, which actually make us think and learn in social and everyday life, no longer occur. On the other hand this means that areas of freedom for young people in the context of social life, i.e. the awareness of differences which, in turn, can structure biographies, are disappearing. Age-based differences are normative orders, which do not only exert a socially structuring effect, but also determine and enable biographical designs and, thus, autonomy. They make it possible to develop one’s own perspective as an individual life plan, which is oriented towards possible future stations. If these time frames disappear and one becomes merely an individual subject of consumption, an important moment in the development of perspective planning and even in one’s dignity is shattered; one is literally reduced to a contemporary existence, which must be realised in the here and now. No more, but also, no less. Forever young is the motto, there really are no more big surprises—at most, perhaps, the transition to the next higher grade at school, the new generation of smart phones or the change of a fashion label. In addition, however, we must consider this: In spite of the economic dependence, until now, youth has been accompanied by certain freedoms; hanging around, messing about, moving in the intermediate spaces of legality and deviation—all this were essential characteristics, quite apart from the first experiences of sexuality. In the literature this has been described as a control gap, a reason to engage in youth work, especially in organising youth leisure time; even those adolescents who organised themselves in associations were engaged in activities beyond the adult world, usually only partially supervised. Today, control has become almost overpowering, you always know who is where, the relevant apps stay on the smart phones, the contact does not break off.

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2.9 The Dictates of Work In the meantime, however, young people and older people alike are subject to the pressure of a society that formally codes itself and its living conditions through work and education, demanding performance in project existence above all; in the project existence of the organisation of one’s own life. One should become and remain successful, in a continuous process that drives one to the point of exhaustion without any hope of achieving lasting success (cf. Boltanski and Chiapello 2006; Boltanski n. y.). Quite the opposite: All people, especially the young, are driven with promises that are rarely kept: Allegedly, companies are desperately looking for new workers. However, experience teaches us that rejection follows after the internship phase, that even the apparently sought-after qualifications cannot secure sufficient income for independent living. Especially the education sector or, to be more precise, the system of school and higher education have long since been unmasked as a place of broken promises. And yet, what politicians have long claimed is now true: There is no alternative. Thus, singularised subjectivity is demanded and permanently exploited, ironically by the actors themselves. Hence, subjectivity, which is not subjectivity, because it lacks world references and contents. Performance is disguised as competence, as the young people all too often realise, who then run out of knowledge. They tie themselves, on the one hand, to the supposed success in the market of—prestigious—consumer goods, while on the other hand they are increasingly assessed, with performance indicators which themselves remain hidden and can hardly be explained in their relevance. Symptomatic for this we have lists distributed by the media of the so-called in or out, which are increasingly shifted to social networks, which betray approval or rejection with thumbs turned up (and also down, as in the case of YouTube); however, they do not apply to the product, but rather refer to the person portrayed. Bullying in this context should therefore hardly surprise us. It already begins where a young person does not meet an ideal image of physicality, but perhaps only uses the mobile phone of two generations ago or manages without brand clothing.

2.10 An Inevitable Fact: Digitalisation Of course, the problem is only beginning to become apparent in the background— and it is essentially linked to what is, in turn, being imposed on young people by politicians and the public, namely the digitalisation of life. Everything is subject to this imperative, the generation of the young in particular should conform to it, not in a manner that is coolly matter of course and in which they use digital devices, but in a kind of act of sanctification, in which the digital world is placed upon them. It is often said that they are the digital natives after all, but this could turn out to be a kind of scam to force young people into a system that can be recognised

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as a new form combining social power and domination structures: They are to be subjected to surveillance capitalism, that exploitative practice of empowerment in which individuals are initially only valuable as suppliers of data, not as genuine subjects. But then, in a next step, they should be exposed to the practices of behaviour control, realised by means of targeted consumption responses based on their extracted data (cf. Zuboff 2018, especially pp. 511–543). Nothing more is said about the fact that they were previously classified as risk groups in order to be prepared for a purely formal existence in this digital field, or that they are then subjected to a despiritualisation mechanism disguised as an educational system—the school report merely states that one successfully used digital media. Fortunately, most schools today lack the necessary equipment, not to mention fast Internet access.

2.11 The Price of Market Radical Capitalism All of this now adds up to the decisive tendency that currently dominates modern societies and is particularly evident in the lives of young people: This society is subject to a force—the extent of which may be suspected and yet still remains unimaginable—of something that is trivialised as market radical capitalism; some call it neoliberalism, but it is part of the dirty games even of the social sciences to immediately back down, complain about polemics and call for greater differentiation. A clear concept could ultimately deliver clarity. Several things are happening in this market radical capitalism: On the one hand, all living conditions and practices are subjected to what Marx called a value-form; they are examined in terms of capitalisation and are converted into capital if it is deemed worthwhile; if they are marketable, can be exchanged if they generate additional income; profit, not from the exchange but from the production of behavioural information. One punchline is that this applies to almost everything. People are reified, objectified, made into shells, and at the same time their—to use old-fashioned concepts— human powers of being, their thinking, feeling, wanting and acting are extracted. The transformation of the world into a digital one obviously performs precisely that extraction; market radicalism takes place as an extraction mechanism, so perfidiously designed that the self-expropriating subjects can then still be used in their subjectivity. What is worthwhile about them is stored and played back to them in the form of nudges and incentives, so that they feel honoured and inspired to contribute with their energy (cf. Crouch 2015): That’s cool, I’ve always wanted to have that, now I’m putting all my energy into it. One can also call this de-subjectivation through subjectivation (cf. Gelhard et al. 2013). The crucial fact here is that naked individuals are connected to a digital world dominated by the big five of the business world (Dugain and Labbé 2016)—albeit the young people gladly submit to this as ‘followers’; they no longer have any alternative references, other than school, which they have long since ceased to lend their confidence (cf. Meinhardt 2019). Those who do not or cannot join the game are discarded; wasted lives, as Zygmunt Bauman called it (Bauman 2005). The process can be observed in every school

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where, although it is stated programmatically that no one should be left behind, a not insignificant proportion of young people are left behind and forgotten. Abuse, hate and cruelty are poured upon them—but moral blindness pays a part here too (Bauman and Donskis 2013). It must not be forgotten that these devaluation and exclusion mechanisms can affect everyone; what is valid or rejected is largely volatile, only the spectacle, now well controlled and staged, which can be transformed into the currency of attention and exploited, is decisive: One is quickly tipped out of the project existence of one’s own performance is not appreciated by someone. One or two social media posts, a few sneering remarks on Facebook, Twitter or a picture on Instagram suffice; the classic conventional media may add to this the shout that ‘the web’, ‘the online community’ has spoken and made its judgement, possibly citing a shitstorm—though this is most likely to have been launched by trolls. By the way: comedians play a cruel part here, because they do for the so-called intelligentsia, what celebrity magazines do for the somewhat clueless. All of this works perfectly, because we are dealing with neoliberalism after all, with the absolutely unlimited power of digitalised capital, that is able to create its own currency; we are dealing with a massive release of individuals, who go on to culturally exaggerate this as singularisation. Yes, we’re liberated and doing our thing. We are not impressed by old ties, by norms and rules, values—these things are as obsolete as the church, which has robbed itself of its claim to validity with stories of child molestation. We ask ourselves: Why is the world of sports being attacked, which cannot claim to be any better? The answer is that it is easier to capitalise sports, while faith lags behind—maybe God has also abandoned it because it disappeared into the Internet and digitalised itself there. The bitter consequence of all this is twofold: On the one hand, every form of solidarity, of togetherness, is eradicated—and the social sciences contribute to this by an almost solemn form of exaggeration. There are simply no longer any groups, there are no longer young people who collectively experience such experiences and thus find a task through which to define themselves. On the other hand, this creates the danger–and this is where the matter becomes explosive—that humanity will indeed lose its basis for life. People can no longer rise up to intervene collectively against this threat; as individuals they must represent their interests in competition with others, in the market, if they still have the strength to do so. For this is also part of the bitter punch line of market radicalism: Submerged in its reality, people are not even mere commodities, but are simply powerless against those who ally themselves for the sake of profit.

3 Solace: The Nature of Youth Some solace still remains: One the one hand, even and particularly faced with diagnoses stating the disappearance of youth, it is nonetheless true that the observations briefly outlined here offer a thoroughly structured picture of the situation of young

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people, challenging as it may be. They reveal a society that places the younger generation in front of specific tasks, all the more so because older people have already been culturally contaminated, so to speak, for current and future developments. Yes, of course, the observed and mentioned developments look a bit erratic, but regarded as tendencies one can observe worldwide, they do show a global process of some complexity. Differences are based more on the political reactions towards the situation of young people on the one hand, on the general tendency of societies and governance strategies to go along with the neoliberal concept. For example, some societies have privatised the educational system with the effect that differences between the social classes will emerge in a dramatic way, never seen before. The recent pandemic has an additional impact. However, taking on a global perspective we will see young people in a new struggle against traditional and authoritarian social and political structures; they fight for democracy, for freedom and liberty, they stand up for autonomy. They have done so in the Arabic Revolution, as Nasser Tolba has shown in the study on Egypt (Tolba 2019), they are doing so in Hong Kong, and they are doing it worldwide, as the International Project on The Extension of the Human Right of Education gives evidence of (Korkmaz et al. 2020), supported by many student groups worldwide writing for PoliTeknik International, delivering up-to-date reports on the situation of education and young people in their countries. There is a global movement on education run by young people, united by the fact that they belong to youth taking on responsibility for a better world—globally and united by their age. Based purely on the social and cultural situation and on the associated task structure, it does not seem right to speak of disappearance. The findings outline—firstly—a generational situation which may differ depending on the circumstances of life, but which nevertheless remains youth-specific. It is worth noting that—from a methodological perspective—this is not new: In science, youth has always been viewed in terms of the structure of tasks that a society addresses to it; in the past, this may have been linked to the term ‘growing up’, more concretely perhaps to finding a job or starting a family, perhaps even as gaining independence. In the end, these tasks continue to exist, sometimes a little modified, but structurally quite similar—and those who examine qualitative youth studies carefully will quickly realise that and young people define their status in terms of how they accomplish these tasks. Sometimes they are peculiarly traditional and almost conservative in thinking, but even here this is true: we neither lose our ties nor do we drop out of history altogether. Quite the opposite. What may have changed is the way in which the conflict with the older generation, with the parents, is staged; peace seems to be descending here, especially as grandparents, who tend to be more relaxed, are increasingly seen as the more important conversation partners. Youth exists, at least in a kind of social and economic addressee status; those who deny its existence also deny themselves the opportunity to examine and tackle these assumptions. This is followed, on the other hand, by the fact that young people are distinguished, perhaps not in the majority, but nonetheless to a remarkable extent, by the fact that they are aware of the cruel game being played here: Young people are not easily instrumentalised, even if, as digital natives, they sometimes seem strangely

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naive when they run roughshod over the elderly—though it is by no means clear who has actually lost sight of the plot while staring at the smart phone. There is another way of looking at this, by the way, drawing on a rather old insight: Those who are more or less unproductive, i.e. the young people and the elderly as well as the aged, then no longer fit properly into this new form of exploitation mechanism. Secondly, and this may be of even greater significance from the systematic point of view: Social analysis suggests to speak of a more or less objectively given situation and requirement structure. However, this implies caution towards a purely sociological-socialisation-theoretical approach, in which youth is seen as a mere derivative of society. In contrast, something completely different is emerging, especially in the shape of protests organised around ‘Fridays for Future’. It may well be—and this is once again symptomatic—a case of escaping school, an initially unreflected form of fun or ‘Hetz’, as they say in Austria; a fun moment, a game. However, the very seriousness with which young people are now discovering themselves as the ones fighting for their survival by denouncing the climate situation and the associated failure of politics, draws attention to a difference: They are beginning to explore and address the nature of this world, the foundations of human existence, in order to discover themselves as part of it – and they are doing so in a dual sense: As human existence in its natural conditionality and determinacy. One might argue that only small sections of the youth taking to the streets—but this does not invalidate the argument that this is where youth is to be found as youth, in their naturally given constitution, which allows them to be particularly sensitive and yet endangered at the same time. So this, in the end, is the finding: The current renders the existence of youth visible, possibly as a social formation and resting, in this formation, on a naturally given category.

References Arnett, J. J. (2004). Emerging adulthood: The winding road from late teens through the twenties. Oxford: University Press. Bauman, Z. (2005). Verworfenes Leben. Die Ausgegrenzten der Moderne. Hamburg: Hamburger Edition. Bauman, Z., & Donskis, L. (2013). Moral blindness: The loss of sensitivity in liquid modernity. Cambridge: Polity. Bernfeld, S. (1994). Jugendbewegung und Jugendforschung. Schriften 1909–1930. In S. Bernfeld, Sämtliche Werke. Band 2. Weinheim & Basel: Beltz. Bock, K., Grabowsky, S., Sander, U., & Thole, W. (Eds.). (2013). Jugend. hilfe. forschung. Baltmannsweiler: Schneider Verlag Hohengehren. Boltanski, L. (n. y.). Leben als Projekt. Prekarität in der schönen neuen Netzwerkwelt. Polar – Politik/Theorie/Alltag. Polar #2. http://www.polar-zeitschrift.de/position.php?id=10. Accessed 17 March 2011. http://www.polar-zeitschrift.de/polar_02.php?id=69. Accessed 13 October 2019. Boltanski, L., & Chiapello, Ève. (2006). Der neue Geist des Kapitalismus. Konstanz: UVK. Crouch, C. (2015). Die bezifferte Welt. Wie die Logik der Finanzmärkte das Wissen bedroht. Berlin: Suhrkamp. Davis, Mike. (1992). City of Quartz. New York: Vintage Books.

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Deutscher Bundestag (2017). 15. Kinder- und Jugendbericht. Bericht über die Lebenssituation junger Menschen und die Leistungen der Kinder- und Jugendhilfe in Deutschland. Berlin: Bundesministerium für Familie, Senioren, Frauen und Jugend. Dornes, M. (2012). Die Modernisierung der Seele. Kind – Familie – Gesellschaft. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer. Dugain, M., & Labbé, C. (2016). L’homme nu. La Dictature Invisible du Numérique. Paris: Plon – Robert Laffont. Gelhard, Andreas, Alkemeyer, Thomas, & Ricken, Norbert (Eds.). (2013). Techniken der Subjektivierung. München: Fink Verlag. Hofbauer, H. (2018). Kritik der Migration. Wer profitiert und wer verliert. Wien: Promedia. Horvath, W. (2012). Glücklich standardisiert. Vom heimlichen Nutzen der Bildungsstandards. Wien: Löcker. Korkmaz, Z., Mührel, E., & Winkler, M. (Eds.) (2020). Extension of human rights to education. Politeknik 2020, http://politeknik.de/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Extension-of-Human-Rightsto-Education-the-BOOK.pdf. Link, Jürgen (2013). Normale Krisen. Normalismus und die Krise der Gegenwart. Konstanz: UVK. Mau, Steffen (2017). Das metrische Wir. Über die Quantifizierung des Sozialen. Berlin: Suhrkamp. Meinhardt, E. (2019). Generatio follower. Profil. Medien spezial September 2019, 14–16. Reckwitz, A. (2017). Die Gesellschaft der Singularitäten. Berlin: Suhrkamp. Sander, U., & Witte, Matthias D. (2018). Jugend. In H. U. Otto et al. (Eds.), Handbuch Soziale Arbeit. Grundlagen der Sozialarbeit und Sozialpädagogik. 6th revised edition. (pp. 697–707). München: Reinhardt, S. Schierbaum, A. (2018). Herausforderungen im Jugendalter. Wie sich Jugendliche biographischen und gesellschaftlichen Anforderungen zuwenden. Eine rekonstruktive Studie zu weiblicher Adoleszenz und Sozialisation. Weinheim & Basel: Beltz-Juventa. Schlaudt, O. (2018). Die politischen Zahlen. Über Quantifizierung im Neoliberalismus. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann. Sennett, R. (2018). Die offene Stadt. Eine Ethik des Bauens und Bewohnens. Berlin: Hanser. Tolba, N. S. (2019). Student culture in a changing world: The paradox of politics, education, and Religion. Kindheit-Familie-Pädagogik Bd. 4. Baden-Baden: Ergon. Zuboff, S. (2018). Das Zeitalter des Überwachungskapitalismus. Frankfurt & New York: Campus.

Lifeworlds and Political Participation

Lifeworlds and Cultures of Australian Youth in a Globalised World Anita Harris and Sherene Idriss

1 The Global Context of Australian Youth Lifeworlds Young people in Australia are situated within generationally unique conditions of socio-economic change wrought by economic and cultural globalisation. To some extent, these are trends that are evident across the world, albeit with important local distinctions: a differentiation that is increasingly acknowledged in youth studies. As Nilan (2011) points out, economic insecurity, labour market casualisation, migration for work, extension of education, graduate unemployment, delays in partnering, independent living and parenthood are conditions faced by young people across the global North and the global South, owing as they are to global forces, even while they play out differently in local contexts. Further, as Arnot and Swartz (2012, p. 1) note, ‘the effect of economic and cultural globalisation has been to reshape the progression of youth to adulthood’ across income-rich as well as developing countries, especially in regard to economic independence and the negotiation of the politics of belonging and efforts for citizenship and social inclusion in the context of global migration. In addition, the effects and affordances of the Internet, transnational cultural flows and digital media, and the globalisation of some aspects of youth culture produce ‘global sources’ from which young people worldwide routinely derive information and inspiration (Nilan and Feixa 2006, p. 6), and do much of their identity, belonging and connection work. One of the major tasks of contemporary youth culture studies has been to understand how these global trends manifest in specific regional, national and local contexts, against the potentially problematic, homogenising contention that youth A. Harris (B) · S. Idriss Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia e-mail: [email protected] S. Idriss e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 G. Knapp and H. Krall (eds.), Youth Cultures in a Globalized World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65177-0_6

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today simply constitute a ‘global generation’ (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2009) in their experiences of or responses to these global forces. As Nilan (2011, p. 21) has argued, As youth sociologists, we need to evaluate what is subtly arriving in the way of generational trends and, at the same time, muster analytical resources effectively to address what is coming. To do this we need to shore up relevant research network connections and discussions beyond our own national boundaries. The theoretical and interpretive paradigms that have long informed youth sociology need to broaden and yet be available for local analysis at the same time. The insights of youth researchers in other cultures are vital for such a task. However, there seems to be an epistemological gap between youth researchers from different parts of the world.

For Australian youth culture research, which traditionally draws on and produces Northern theory, and is positioned within the ‘WENA’ hegemon also made up of Western Europe and North America (Cooper et al. 2019) that has claimed the centre of youth studies, it has become increasingly pressing to more incisively analyse its distinctiveness from and continuities with the other WENA constituencies; to understand and articulate the politics of its relationships to theories and scholarship elsewhere, and to contribute to a more interconnected youth studies that is responsive to the local sources and effects of global change and differentiations, and the intersecting processes that shape young people’s lives and cultures. In this tradition, then, we begin by outlining the historical and political conditions that have shaped Australia’s national and regional specificity in which young people are positioned simultaneously as passive recipients and active agents of change. From here, we turn to the prevailing conceptual frame of the British subculture/postsubculture paradigm that has been brought to bear to analyse Australian youth cultures, and then explore some critical responses to this. We then highlight the emergence of scholarship in Australian youth studies that has recast the youth culture question beyond subculture/post-subculture, to consider Australian youth cultural formations that are emerging around diasporic, transnational and mobile youth experiences in an interconnected, globalised and digital world.

2 Youth Lifeworlds in Australia: A De-industrial Multicultural Settler-Colonial State in the Asian Region It is important to situate and describe the specific circumstances of Australian youth in national and regional context in order to understand how Australian youth culture studies might be developing theoretical approaches and research agendas that address global issues and also respond to local conditions. Australia is a nation ‘which has been built through colonisation and immigration over the last two centuries’ (Castles and Miller 2003, p. 198), initially via the theft of Indigenous land and widespread violence against First Nations peoples who populated the country for tens of thousands of years, and the establishment of the settler-colony. Connell (2007, p. 72) suggests that Australia is uniquely positioned in a complex of contradictions. She

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defines it as a nation that is small, rich, peripheral and deindustrialised, increasingly culturally diverse but affiliated with the Empire and the West, geographically outside of but dependent on metropolitan power and international capitalism, and riven by racial anxieties. Her picture of the Australian multicultural settler-colonial state is of a small European community parked on the edge of Asia… [where] the relation between settler and Indigenous people has become… an unresolved issue. Identification with the metropole plus geographical remoteness plus economic dependence have led to chronic difficulties about identity. (Connell 2007, p. 72)

It is critical to acknowledge that Australian youth lifeworlds and cultures are produced, enacted, enabled and constrained within the context of this multicultural settler-colonial state, and especially to understand how Australia’s colonial history continues to have effects into the present. As de Finney (2015, p. 170) explains, Australia is one example, along with Canada, the US and Aotearoa (New Zealand) of ‘former British colonies that remain active colonial states’: […] As opposed to ‘postcolonial’ nations and territories (e.g., India, Hong Kong, Morocco) where the colonized regained their independence, European settlers ‘never left’ (Tuck and Yang 2012, p. 5) their Western colonies. They remain the ruling demographic and political majority, reasserting their control ‘each day of occupation’ (5) while Indigenous peoples in these states live in what the United Nations calls deplorable ‘fourth world’ conditions, their existence continuously threatened by neocolonial effects of chronic poverty, social exclusion and political, cultural and territorial disenfranchisement.

Alongside these colonial realities, post-World War Two British and European immigration schemes and the abandonment of the White Australia Policy in 1973 (which had restricted immigration to white Europeans only since the federation of the nation in 1901) saw the commencement of large-scale Asian immigration and more recent immigration from the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Africa, often following political and/or economic crises (Castles and Miller 2003, p. 202). Australia has experienced particularly rapid population growth since the 1990s, mainly owing to immigration. Approximately 49% of the current Australian population is born overseas or has one parent born overseas (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2017a), and population growth is still driven primarily by overseas migration (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2017b). Twenty-five percent of young people aged 12–24 are from a Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) background, and this population is growing at a faster rate compared to the total population in this age group (Hugo et al. 2014). Moreover, 5% of the Australian youth population (aged 10–24), or about one in every 20 young people, is Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare 2018, p. 3). Australian youth are growing up in times of the normalisation of diversity and greater recognition of Indigenous sovereignty. These changes are evident at a cultural level, such as greater representation of diverse voices in the media and popular culture and strong support for multiculturalism, along with the growing mass movement to recognise the origins of ‘Australia Day’ as pertaining to systemic violence against First Nations peoples and widespread campaigning for a treaty and constitutional recognition acknowledging Indigenous rights.

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Further, Australia’s location in the Asia-Pacific, as an English-speaking country that belongs to the Commonwealth, is a geopolitical as well as identity paradox (see also Takayama 2016). This has led to ongoing regional tensions as well as affinities. Trade and mobility between Australia and its neighbours have generally been celebrated and supported. Young Australians grow up with international destinations in Bali, Thailand and Fiji imagined as quintessential Australian holiday locations, are engaged in everyday intraregional cultural flows via popular culture and media, and are increasingly educated for life in the ‘Asian century’ via language programmes, student mobility schemes and cultural exchanges. Asian migration to Australia is longstanding, with migration on the part of Chinese and Indian skilled workers and students increasing rapidly, and together with Asian tourism to Australia—particularly after the boom of Chinese markets—has been integral to the local economic landscape (Rogers and Wiesel 2018). These trends exist alongside historical racial anxieties and myths of ‘Asian invasion’; explicit racism against Chinese communities dating back to the pre-Federation gold rush era of the nineteenth century and contemporarily manifesting as moral panic over the purchasing power of wealthy Chinese property investors ‘buying out’ local Australians in the housing market (Rogers et al. 2017) and ‘Tiger’ parenting of Asian-Australian students (Butler et al. 2017) as an explanation of how they outperform Anglo-Australian students en masse. Thus, Australia’s location in its Asian regional context is an important backdrop to young people’s lifeworlds and cultures. Australia is also unique in relation to other Western nations in its distinctive geography in terms of its physical isolation from the West, its large island land mass, and its topography and demographic spread across the land. Although 80% of the population lives in cities along the east coast (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2016), most of Australia’s enormous land mass is composed of rural and regional areas (and much of it inland), and these places are vital to the economy, have considerable political power, and are an enduring dimension of the national imaginary. As Australian youth studies theorists Wyn and White (2015, p. 31) argue, ‘the orthodoxy that young people in the (Western) metropolis represent the vanguard of social change has been challenged by youth researchers through a focus on social change in rural places’. This is particularly evident in the Australian context, where there is much research on young people’s lives in rural communities that maps the ways they are affected by global social and economic processes as much as urban youth, but may negotiate their belonging, sense of place and aspirations differently (Butler 2018; Cuervo and Wyn 2012; Farrugia 2014). Finally, Australian youth, like young people around the world, are also growing up in times of significant change in economic conditions, with young people today facing employment insecurity and precarity in a radically restructured labour market. This is fundamentally altering their pathways to citizenship, adulthood and full participation. As Wyn (2013, p. 59) demonstrates, the shift from industrial to postindustrial society has radically changed the nature of work, with young people facing a future of flexible and precarious employment instead of a career for life. However, unlike young people in many other WENA nations, young Australians have not suffered the most severe effects of the global economic crisis, and the Australian economy has remained

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relatively healthy compared with patterns of recession elsewhere. At the same time, young people are staying in education longer to improve their employment prospects, with tertiary education becoming ‘the new mass education sector’ (Wyn 2017, p. 92), as young people attempt to meet the labour market’s demand for perpetual learning and credentialing. Youth are dependent on their families for longer and have far reduced access to state support. This has a direct effect on young people’s capacity for economic security, but also their ability to establish the kinds of stability and autonomy associated with adulthood in previous generations (Wyn 2015, p. 61). Here we have offered an overview of some of the distinctive features and local conditions of young Australians’ lifeworlds. These shape youth experiences of what are sometimes represented as general global forces. Although Australia shares many similarities with other countries of the global North, and especially other WENA nations, we have demonstrated how it is better understood in a more nuanced way as one of the ‘rich peripheral countries’ (Connell 2007, p. 228); with some key features evident from this brief snapshot, especially its status as a de-industrial multicultural settler-colonial state located in the Asia-Pacific region. Against this backdrop, next we interrogate the key intellectual framework in which Australian youth culture studies have been situated, and discuss how the British subculture/post-subculture paradigm has been used as well as contested to respond to Australia’s distinctive conditions. We then turn to new directions in Australian youth cultures research, especially work that engages with the challenges and affordances of superdiversity, transnationalism, mobility and the digital.

3 Australian Youth Culture Studies and the British Intellectual Legacy of the Subculture/Post-subculture Paradigm Australian youth cultures research, which, like youth cultures studies in many other places, has focused on youth style, consumption, subcultures, scenes and creative engagement with popular culture and media, has been particularly strongly informed by the UK subculture school of thought developed by the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS), established in Birmingham in the 1970s. Indeed, Wyn and Harris (2004, p. 274) argue that it is common to document the history of Australian youth research through ‘a series of theoretical and empirical genealogies’ that trace this origin story. This tradition and influence continue today. As Bennett (2015, p. 13) argues, ‘in terms of the existing landscape of Australian youth culture research… there are clear and very firm links with the theoretical discourses established by the CCCS’. However, he suggests (2015, p. 18) that these usages owe much to ‘semantic convenience’ of certain terms than with ‘any critical engagement around the fit’ between them and the ‘specificities of Australian youth culture’. In other words, it is partly habit and convenience that has seen the subculture theoretical discourse endure in Australia. It is also a result of what Turner (1992, p. 424) has described as a

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‘neo-imperialist operation of cultural studies’ knowledges’, whereby a British intellectual tradition such as ‘subculture theory’ reproduces itself as the centre through normalising and mainstreaming conceptual frameworks, methodological techniques and academic conventions. Against this tendency, Bennett makes a case that under closer critical interrogation, Australian youth culture specificities cannot be adequately explained through this traditional ‘subculture’ frame because it is fundamentally redundant, being too much of its time and place. As he writes (2015, p. 11), ‘given the distinct differences—geographically, economically and demographically—between Australia and the United Kingdom, there may be pertinent reasons for reappraising the value of subculture in a local context’. One important reason for this reappraisal is to understand how the concept of subculture is in fact born of a specific place and time: a kind of attention to historical and political context that can interrupt neo-imperialist operationalisation of theory and demand engagement with local context that produces new theorisations. For example, there is contestation amongst Australian youth culture scholars as to whether the British class system to which the CCCS subculture theory responded had or still has any real resonances with the Australian context, and therefore if classic conceptualisations such as ‘resistance through rituals’ and style as expression of white working-class male youth class struggles could easily map on to local formations of class structures and identities. This is not to say that there is no link between Australian youth cultures and class stratification, but rather that there is a need for a more nuanced approach. For example, France et al. (2018, p. 364) argue for an Antipodean perspective on class in youth studies that accounts for the specific gendered and raced class structure established through colonisation (see also Threadgold 2018a). Idriss (2018) suggests that young Australians’ aspirations about work and life are underscored by tacit, interwoven understandings of class and ethnic differences, as well as first-hand experiences of racial and religious prejudice, which constrain future opportunities for some young people who come from communities that have been constructed as a national Other. Ethnicity and class are intertwined in the Australian context in nuanced ways, relying on historical social relations, migration patterns and media portrayals, which are identifiable for many young people through symbolic markers of taste, consumption and urban geographies. In this schema, some young people belong to communities that are perceived through the lens of ‘unpanicked’ multiculturalism (Noble 2009a; see for example Aquino’s research (2018) on Filipino Australians), where other ethnic communities become constitutive of a particular kind of underclass that is seen as insular, ghettoised and responsible for their own poverty vis a vis their seeming inability to assimilate. For example, analyses of Australian media portrayals of dangerous ‘youth gangs’ comprising young men of Sudanese background (Windle 2008) do not simply reveal a ‘moral panic’ about uncontrollable youth, but demonstrate how representations of Australian youth cultures entwine tropes about race, class, gender and youth opportunity in a postindustrial economy. In turn, these reveal underlying assumptions about who can be included in the multicultural compact and on what terms, and how aspirations and self-made opportunities

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for social and economic mobility are expected to be publicly performed by youth of migrant background. These more fine-grained and locally sensitive analyses are particularly important in undercutting perceptions of Australia as a ‘classless’ society by comparison with the United Kingdom, but also for situating youth culture theory in the complex and intersecting forces of stratification in Australian society that may render a straightforward ‘subculture’ approach less relevant. Some other re-appraisals of the British subculture tradition have led to the adoption of alternative terminology and conceptual frames more consistent with a ‘postsubculture’ approach; that is, towards conceptual frames such as tribes and scenes rather than subcultures, which Bennett (2015) and others defend as more relevant in the contemporary Australian context. For example, Threadgold (2018a, p. 13) analyses creative DIY music cultures in Australian cities as ‘scenes’ because this term ‘affords more diversity in terms of the people participating (and) it brings to the fore geographical and virtual links between the local and the global’. Unlike ‘subculture’, it does not assume resistance or oppositional identities, but can more subtly capture practices of struggle. Threadgold explores how young people in these scenes attempt to convert their creative, cultural practices into DIY careers, and in the process try to self-manage the precarious youth labour market and create transitions to employment on their own terms, even while structures of opportunity and inequality embedded within the Australian socio-economic order militate against this. Others, such as White (1999/2012), one of the original scholars of Australian youth culture, are less concerned with utilising new concepts than centring uniquely Australian cultural formations in research on youth. This involves a movement beyond what Turner (1992, p. 424) has called ‘the ritual kicking of the corpse of British subcultural studies’ to develop a distinctively Australian cultural studies that account for the specific political and cultural context of the Australian nation-state and the youth cultures that it produces. Taking this approach, as Feldman-Barret (2015, p. 258) writes, Australian youth culture scholars have often shown how the country’s geographic isolation, unique topography, Indigenous communities, historic ties to Britain and the rural/urban divide have created a unique experience for those born and/or raised here.

There is thus much Australian research that contextualises and analyses Australian youth cultures in terms of local expressions of internationally known scenes (such as hardcore, skinhead, hip-hop, riot grrrl). For example, Sim and Baker (2015) explore the experiences of the small and marginalised group of young women in the Australian straightedge scene. Morgan (2015) analyses the take up and development of hip-hop culture amongst young urban Aboriginal men (see also Minestrelli 2016). Others have considered opportunities for youth culture in light of new constraints and opportunities that face the current generation of Australian youth, such as the impact on sociality of the time constraints that are caused by casualisation of work and the gig economy (Woodman and Wyn 2015). Some studies bring to light less explored experiences of unique groups of Australian youth, such as the social and political cultures of rural queer youth (see for example Cover et al. 2019), or groups that coalesce around particular ethnic or cultural identifications in ways that emphasise

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the specificity of the Australian national and regional context (for an overview see White (Ed.) 1999/2012; Baker et al. (Eds.) 2015). Others consider the ways hegemonic masculinity, heteronormativity and whiteness are produced in scenes such as heavy metal through specifically Australian experiences and contours, such as racism against Indigenous peoples (Kennedy 2018); or in manifestations of nationalist and white pride identities such as those enacted by the young white male beach goers whose collective, violent expressions of ownership and acts of exclusion against ‘non-locals’ and especially Arab Australians resulted in the Cronulla Riots (Noble 2009b). Thus, much Australian youth culture research emphasises the local and distinctive expressions of youth culture; and this in turn may implicitly or explicitly press the limits of a traditional British-defined ‘subculture’ or even ‘post-subculture’ formation. However, it is also valuable to not only consider research on how Australian youth cultures may be different or similar to those elsewhere, or illustrations of the ways new terminology or definitions may be better suited to local manifestations than the conventional ‘subculture’ concept, but to explore how Australian youth studies is also capturing emergent youth cultures that respond to local and interconnected conditions of diversity, mobility, and digital worlds in a globalised world. Some emerging youth cultures scholarship is thus concerned with exploring how young Australians are forging transnational cultures, communicative practices, communities and identities in the context of ever-diversifying patterns of diversity, the collapse of traditional pathways to and possibilities for conventional political expression, and the advantages and demands of mobility and digital connectivity. Next we outline three key areas of focus that illustrate these developments: (i) theorising diasporic and hybrid youth cultures and enhancing concepts of cultural identity; (ii) transnational creative, digital and political cultures and solidarities; and (iii) intersections of the local, digital and global in the everyday cultures of mobile youth.

4 Theorising Diasporic and Hybrid Youth Cultures and Enhancing Concepts of Cultural Identity Australian youth culture studies are increasingly attentive to critical concepts of race, ethnicity, culture and intercultural relations in diversity in ways that are highly relevant to an increasingly mobile, interconnected and culturally complex world. This has been important in a field that has grappled with theorisation of such identifications and social constructions that is responsive to the complexity of youth experience, and also in a context where cultural diversity is the norm. As Noble (2015, p. 68) argues, race and ethnicity still tend to be addressed poorly in youth studies, treated either as a sociological category of division that “intersects” with class and gender, or as a cultural category that is “expressed” through cultural practice. Either way, the dynamism of ethnicity as an evolving experience is diluted.

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Often youth studies regard young people as members of what are perceived as fixed ethnic groupings, with their cultural identifications imagined as a socially given reality that then shapes their engagement with society and their forms of selfexpression. Some researchers have demonstrated how a tendency to focus on and sometimes reify ethnic identity (combined with a policy interest in enhancing social cohesion amongst youth of different backgrounds) has meant that race, ethnicity or cultural identity are not sufficiently situated in the messy contexts of youth social worlds that are simultaneously structured by gender, class, sexuality, locale and other dimensions of stratification and identification. Rather, racialised youth tend to be apprehended and constructed in research as representatives of ethnic groups, whose ethnicity becomes foregrounded and detached from the broader youth culture context within which they negotiate their everyday lives (Noble et al. 1999; Harris 2018; Herron 2018; Idriss 2018). In response to this tendency to see ethnic identity as pre-existent and primary, Noble (2015, p. 66) instead argues for analysing ethnicities as ‘formative assemblages’ rather than pre-existent social categories, and calls for analyses of the processes and ‘labour of cultural formation’ (2015, p. 70). He invites the question, how do young people accumulate and deploy resources (economic, cultural, social) to produce these assemblages of ethnicity? These kinds of analyses of the processual character of ethnicity are becoming a core component of Australian youth culture research; which is not surprising given the exceptional cultural diversity of the Australian youth population. Thus there has been a large body of research on the collective, dynamic and strategic negotiation of hybridised or ‘ethnic’ subject positions through youth culture practices (Noble et al. 1999; Idriss 2015; Zwangobani 2016); hybrid youth practices of dynamic cultural fusion (Butcher and Thomas 2003); constructions and elisions of whiteness amongst youth (Kennedy 2018; Butler 2018; Johns 2015; McLeod and Yates 2003; Schech and Haggis 2000; Bulbeck 2004); the production and staging of intercultural exchange, cross-cultural friendship and multicultural citizenship in conditions of cultural complexity and mixity (Butcher and Thomas 2003; Harris 2013; Harris and Herron 2017; Herron 2018); racism, racialisation, Islamophobia and minoritisation (Idriss 2015; Abdel-Fattah 2018; Johns 2014; Harris and Hussein 2018). Some of this scholarship is also concerned with the interrogation of traditional approaches to youth research that fail to identify normative racialising tendencies in studies of youth culture through categories such as class, gender or taste. Research on the creative cultures of diasporic or culturally diverse youth has opened up some of these new directions for theorising Australian youth cultures in current times. Recognising that these cultures are increasingly hybrid, Butcher and Thomas (2003) have established a new frame for considering Australian youth cultures as processes of dynamic cultural fusion. Their collection illustrates how young Australians of many backgrounds create new spaces of community and new cultural and national identities through production and consumption of media, fashion, music, art, information communications and technology, dance and other cultural expressions that are taken from a vast range of sources and blended together to create something new.

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Taking this into a more contemporary and transnationally connected context, Anne Harris (2017) explores the faith-shaped creative practices (dance, music, visual arts and so on) of South Sudanese and Samoan background Christian youth in Melbourne, Australia. She demonstrates how they generate creative capital from a position of local embeddedness in a Southern, subaltern, diasporic context that nonetheless always intersects with global, mobile and virtual networks. She illustrates how ‘migrant and refugee background youth from the global south are participating in dynamic global networks regarding their faith and creative practices and futures’ (Harris 2017, p. 207), showing how diasporic youth cultures enable processes of creative hybridisation and animate the local–global nexus in the everyday lives of young people. This research draws on Hickey-Moody’s (2013) notion of ‘little publics’ to understand how young people are building community outside, and at times in defiance of, highly managed institutional contexts and regimes of integration and transition. This kind of research shows how creative practices allow youth to simultaneously inscribe local maintenance of culture and religion, network globally, market themselves in transnational creative and cultural industries, and generate processes for individual and collective reflexivity about identity and community. And importantly, it also explores the complexity faced by young people who seek to express agency, politics, connection and creativity locally and at the same time pursue global visibility and cachet through the commodification and commercial applications of their image and output. These emerge as not so much contradictory impulses as a reflection of the multiple meanings and uses of creative identities for young people in times that reward creative entrepreneurialism, aspiration and display as signs of good youth citizenship (as we explore further below) and also offer unprecedented possibilities for empowering and joined-up experiences of expression and connectivity.

5 Transnational Creative, Digital and Political Cultures and Solidarities There can be close links between what we have described as diasporic youth cultures and more explicitly political or civically engaged networks, which is what we turn to here. For example, Nilan (2017, p. 180) focuses on young Australian Muslims in demonstrating how young Muslims in the diaspora can connect with one another and especially use youth culture formations to push back against both Islamophobia and a radical Islamist meta-narrative through what she describes as ‘neo-theo-tribalism: group formations of youthful cultural sociality and consumption that span the faithbased offline and online worlds’. Drawing on and extending Bennett’s (1999) reformulation of subculture as ‘neotribe’, she argues that through consumption, production and contestation of popular culture, practices of and communications about gaming, and fandom and celebrity in Muslim music cultures, young Muslims form transnational cultures of connection and belonging that enable shared responses to

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oppressive forces in their lives. At the same time, these function as what Nilan (2017, p. 181) describes as ‘spaces of safety’ or in Hage’s (2011) term, ‘immune spaces’ where ‘a racialized person can “pick up the pieces”’. Others such as Harris and Roose (2014) and Johns (2014) have illustrated how youth cultures as expressed through digital and everyday spaces are being developed and utilised by young Australian Muslims to forge new participatory practices and express political voice. Membership and engagement in youth cultural life ‘where ethics and aesthetics meet’ (Stephenson 2010, p. 11) is important for groups such as young Muslims in the West, who are simultaneously marginalised from and highly surveilled by formal political institutions. In light of Islamophobia that sees young Australian Muslims excluded from formal politics and which denies them opportunities to participate in mainstream political life, these new practices often emerge out of ordinary youth culture. For example, online spaces, social and non-mainstream media, creative arts practice, fashion design, music-making and so on are integral to young Australian Muslims’ forms of social, civic and political expression, connection and agitation both within Australia and in terms of forging transnational networks (Harris and Roose 2014). The affordances of digital and mobile media are clearly an important part of young Australians’ youth cultural expressions for political engagement and mobilisation. As Harris and Johns (2020, p. 10) have demonstrated, in Australia, digital practices have been found to increase diaspora communities’ political agency in addressing inequality and exclusion from traditional political participation and civic engagement, especially for youth. The Internet and social media also provide unprecedented opportunities for members of dominant groups to engage in intercultural learning and anti-racist civic action.

These digital practices and spaces blur the boundaries of youth cultures and politics. For example, Australian youth researchers Abidin and Cover (2019) explore the representations and followers of queer-identifying You Tubers to demonstrate how youth cultures that emerge around celebrity influencers have an important political role to play. They show how young people who become influencers by creating digital media content that attracts a large public following often engage in advocacy, activism and community-building through their self-representation as well as their status in online networks, even while they may not produce explicitly political content. Relatedly, Hanckel and Morris (2014, p. 872) have shown how online spaces for queer youth cultures provide a space for young people to develop a sense of membership and connection, but also articulate a collective voice and take action for social change. In their study of one online group, they find that ‘the community not only provides a sense of belonging for the participants and reduces their experiences of isolation, but also connects them to resources and networking opportunities that foster political participation’. Another example of this is the use of social media by Indigenous youth to build solidarity, express political identity and engage in activism. As Carlson and Frazer (2018, p. 1) demonstrate, ‘Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander people have always been early adopters of technology and use social media at rates higher than nonIndigenous Australians’. In their research, they have found that Indigenous people

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use social media as a new ‘meeting place’ for coming together and building community, which is particularly important in the context of forced removal of people from family and land. It is also productively used for expressing Indigenous identity, facilitating cultural knowledge translation, offering new ways to respond to racism, and enabling political activism. Carlson and Frazer (2018) document formal Indigenous political movements and campaigns that social media facilitates, such as Indigenous X and Recognise, and note the ways that the digital enables transnational political connections across Indigenous groups, such as local Australian chapters of the Canadian Idle No More political group, and the international support for the Australian campaign SOS#BlakAustralia movement. At the same time, they document a variety of everyday engagements on social media that have political intentions and effects, such as Internet memes, even while they sit outside the traditional definitions of political acts. Another emerging area of inquiry for Australian youth researchers is how local and transnational youth cultures, including those practices that may be called hobbies, are situated in relation to the development of a DIY career in insecure employment markets. Threadgold (2018b), looking at young people in punk scenes, finds that creative expression outside of formal institutions offers a way for young artists to resist mainstream labour markets. These young people draw on the authenticity extracted from their participation in these youth scenes as forms of subcultural capital (Thornton 1995). The symbolic properties of ‘authentic’ youthful expression have been explored as an essential ingredient for some entrepreneurially-oriented young people trying to make their way in an insecure world and using youth-based style and markers of taste to do so (Threadgold 2018b; Howie and Campbell 2016). Farrugia et al. (2018) highlight how young people, but particularly young women, make use of subcultural expression as a form of capital to leverage in their experiences of work in sectors that rely on performances of specific forms of ‘sexual sociality’ such as in bar work. This capital may give them an edge in a precarious youth employment market where the capacity to enact forms of classed, gendered and raced subcultural personae is integral to the ‘affective labour’ being undertaken in workplaces such as bars, festivals, cafes and clubs. Relatedly, Morgan and Wood (2014) see creative-based employment, the kind of aspirational work many young people seek out, as a template for the chronic exploitative conditions of contemporary work and the ways these are masked by emphasis on youth and youthful forms of sociality. For example, Morgan and Nelligan (2018) make the case that unpaid internships that are on the rise in Australia across a range of employment sectors blur the lines between student/apprentice/worker, seemingly offering an opportunity for young people to build their work portfolios but without any job guarantees at the end (and indeed ‘the end’ of the internship is itself poorly defined). The material conditions of the new world of work for young people, and its blurring of leisure, pleasure and labour, has thrown up new questions for youth culture studies in Australia. Local cultural practices, styles, scenes, consumption and production among young people reveal deep ambivalence about the ‘politics of aspiration’, reflexivity and unfettered choice-making that characterises the current economic and political landscape in which young Australians grow up.

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The post-GFC landscape has especially intensified the experience of job insecurity for racialised young people, especially when coupled with increased anti-refugee media rhetoric and racial profiling of some groups such as newly settled AfricanAustralian communities. Youth cultural practice is implicated in these processes in complex ways. Some young people enact local/global and digitally mediated performances of defensive class identities and boundary work as strategies for survival and mobility, relying often on problematic reductionist rhetoric to make sense of local and global changes to work in racialised terms (Butler 2018). On the other hand, some research has demonstrated how attention to local youth cultures can enhance understandings of young people’s embodied anti-racist strategies (Aquino 2018; Herron 2018). These youth-based cultural expressions emerge as forms of solidarity and collectivism against global changes to work and the political landscape, as young people try to resist the demands on them to overlook structural instability and focus instead on personal responsibility (Idriss and Atie 2020).

6 Intersections of the Local, the Digital and the Global in the Everyday Cultures of Mobile Youth Another body of Australian youth research engages with the everyday experience of mobility as it affects young people’s cultures today. While much traditional youth culture research focused on locally bound practices and emplaced groups, there is now increasing attention to transnational and translocal youth culture expressions as young people are living ever more mobile lives. This is particularly relevant in Australia, which is not only a hub for international students, young workers and travellers, especially for those in the Asian region, but where youth constitute the largest number of outward-bound temporary departures to destinations abroad. For example, notwithstanding COVID, for some time now, most people who are on the move between Asia and Australia are aged 20–29 (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2012). The current generation of Australian youth, more than any other, is expected to incorporate mobility options into their life plans (Skrbis et al. 2014, p. 617; Robertson et al. 2017) and as Wyn (2015) argues, mobility is now central to contemporary Australian youth transition regimes to enhance their employability in a global labour market. Transnational mobility in particular is reshaping youth cultures, creating new opportunities for local affinities and transnational and translocal networks and identities, but also disrupting emplaced forms of youth cultural practice and exposing challenges for local social connection when on the move. As Harris et al. (2020, p. 7) have written: Much research has shown…the challenges faced by mobile youth in establishing relationships with ‘locals’ … For example, restrictions of work or the demands of study for those designated ‘transient’ create temporal-spatial discordances for mobile youth who become ‘out of sync’ with others, which sees them struggle to form satisfactory local relationships (Gomes 2018). On the other side, for those designated ‘locals’, pre-existing and

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For example, migrant student-workers in Australia are challenged by fragmented schedules of study and shift work, often across multiple jobs, which can leave them ‘disconnected from the mainstream “nine to five” rhythms of their local peers in urban contexts’ Robertson (2016). Butcher’s work (2011) similarly illustrates how young Australian mobile workers in global cities such as Singapore and Hong Kong struggle to achieve synchronicity and develop meaningful social ties and intimate connections with locals, because of frequent work travel and intense work schedules. Therefore, they do not always establish local communities of belonging beyond ‘expat’ youth cultures, in spite of their desires to become more cosmopolitan and deepen their local connections and intercultural capacities. However, new kinds of youth cultures are also emerging in light of these spatiotemporal discordances in the lives of mobile youth. Wong and Hjorth (2016, p. 57) show how international students in Australia create new kinds of ‘home communities’ that are not so much connected through shared physical locality, but constitute ‘a diaspora of fellow travellers scattered across various countries, united only by past memories of shared experiences together’. Digital activities bring these communities together, such as online gaming, resulting in online cultures or communities of young gamers living all over the world who share a diasporic identity. For example, as Martin and Rizvi (2014) demonstrate, Chinese and Indian international students in Australia use digital media to facilitate networks and places of belonging not simply in ‘home’ and ‘host’ contexts, but in a ‘diasporic mediasphere’ that connects them with other diasporic youth living elsewhere. Transnationally mobile youth in Australia also use different digital platforms to create multiple communities and networks. For example, they may be using Facebook to engage with local English speakers and to hear about events and activities in the Australian cities where they are studying or working where they can connect with other who have similar interests, and WeChat or Weibo to connect with, for example, other Chinese-speaking international students in Australia and in the diaspora to discuss Chinese pop culture as well as to maintain social circles ‘back home’ (see Zhao 2019; Martin 2017; Wong and Hjorth 2016; Gomes 2018). These mobile and digital conditions facilitate new youth culture modes that go beyond simple, binaristic ‘local’ versus ‘distant’ formations. Social groups, scenes and networks are enacted simultaneously across these boundaries through different media platforms as well as in place, as young people move around and engage with multiple others who are also mobile. Importantly, as Harris (2013, p. 182) has written, these new formations of youth culture do not automatically signal the failure of local emplaced attachments and engagements. Such experiences may ‘facilitate more diffuse, multilayered and interconnected kinds of place-making. They do not replace community in situ but interweave with local, physical connections’. Dolby and Rizvi (2008, p. 1) have thus described mobile youth as producing new spaces of youth culture belonging and association precisely through, rather than in spite of, the

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experience of mobility. In their words, ‘the movement itself constitutes a new space of identification, of belonging’.

7 Conclusions While youth studies as a field acknowledge that young people around the world are subject to some fundamental megatrends, including economic insecurity, life-course changes, greater mobility and the ubiquity of the digital, there are increasingly calls for youth research to deepen understandings of how these trends play out in local context and to connect research responses by engaging across national boundaries. As Nilan (2011, p. 25) has argued, ‘the future of youth sociology must incorporate conceptual and interpretive frameworks that have the potential to cross cultures’ and that ‘for a culturally inclusive future, youth sociology needs to deploy conceptual and interpretive frameworks that can apply across the many different settings and circumstances in which young people live, study, work and make decisions’ (2011, p. 20). In this chapter we have discussed the lifeworlds and cultures of youth in the Australian setting, demonstrating how these are situated within distinctive historical, political and socio-economic conditions. Global forces are always refracted through national and local context; and in the Australian instance, this context is one of a rich, peripheral, de-industrial multicultural settler-colonial state. Paying attention to local and national context in a globalising world is not just about noting differences, but understanding the genealogies of theory. Conceptual paradigms in youth studies have histories, and can become orthodoxies. A closer interrogation of the ways they work, and do not work, in various contexts can enable a productive appraisal of the history and politics that come with theory, and new interpretations and approaches can in turn be developed for different places and new times. We have considered the British intellectual tradition of ‘subculture/post-subculture’ theory in particular here, as this has been a highly influential frame for Australian youth culture research, normalising, universalising and mainstreaming a specific conceptual paradigm. This has enabled some youth culture research approaches and questions to be legitimised and others to be evaded or exceptionalised. We have noted how Australian youth culture studies have engaged with and moved beyond this framework, centring distinctive elements of young Australians’ lifeworlds that in turn shape the ways their cultural formations emerge. In addition to demonstrating how Australian youth culture research has engaged with this British intellectual tradition we have also showcased empirical and conceptual work that considers new youth culture conditions of diversity, mobility and digital worlds in a globalised world. Doing youth culture studies today mean being more responsive to the complexity and interconnectedness of youth experiences, moving beyond rigid conceptualisations of young people’s identities, and in a diverse, digital and mobile world, being attentive to transnational networks and flows as well as collective practices and solidarities. As Jeffrey (2010, p. 502) argues, this allows us to see ‘the translocal, including global, processes that influence children and youth

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in different settings and, in turn […] how the actions of young people in one place might affect the constraints and opportunities that influence young people in other parts of the world’. We have shown how much contemporary Australian youth culture research draws together questions of diversity, globalisation, participation, mobility and the digital, highlighting not only what is happening now in Australian youth cultures, but also bringing new approaches to what it means to do transnational, regional and local youth culture studies in a global and interconnected world.

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Globalising Local Voices: Youth Cultures and Participation in Democratic Processes in Uganda Janestic Mwende Twikirize, Laban Musinguzi Kashaija, Stanley Wobusobozi, and Harriet Gimbo

1 Introduction Young people constitute more than three quarters of Africa’s 1.3 billion people.1 More than 77% of this population is aged below 35 while youth between 15 and 25 years constitute 18% of Africa’s population.2 Needless to say, Africa has the youngest population in the world and it is the only continent where the youth population is on the increase. Although the United Nations’ definition of youth considers those aged between 15 and 25,3 from a sociological point of view, the definition is not so much about age but the contextual description of the transitional period between childhood and adulthood. According to Honwana (2012, p. 11), youth is the period between childhood and adulthood, taking into account both chronological age and the biological process of maturation. It is also commonly conceptualised as a period of transition in which young people strive to meet the social markers of adulthood, such as getting work, starting families and being recognised as full and productive citizens (Banks 2015, p. 1). In most African countries, the official definitions of youth might extend to persons aged between 15 and 35 years. Thus it is not uncommon for national constitutions to place the threshold for holding critical leadership positions such as that of president at 35 because that is what is considered as a mature age. Youth in Africa have been presented mostly as an asset and potentially as the anchor for the future that Africa hopes for. This is premised not just on their sheer J. M. Twikirize (B) · L. M. Kashaija Department of Social Work and Social Administration, Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda e-mail: [email protected] S. Wobusobozi · H. Gimbo ActionAid International, Kampala, Uganda e-mail: [email protected] 1 http://worldpopulationreview.com/. 2 http://worldpopulationreview.com/. 3 https://www.un.org/esa/socdev/documents/youth/fact-sheets/youth-definition.pdf.

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numbers but also on the fact that they demographically constitute an energetic and productive category which can be leveraged for better development outcomes. Honwana (2012) describes youth as a time of growth, of searching for meanings and belonging; a stage of moulding characters, interests and goals; a process of constructing and reconfiguring identities; a creative period with both risks and possibilities. This demographic dividend can be harnessed if the increasing youthful population is translated into social and economic growth and human development. However, the irony is that as the world continues to move towards integration, the youth appear to be kept in the fringes of critical decision-making processes and seldom fully participate in economic development. Africa’s youth are confronted with myriad challenges ranging from high unemployment levels to social and political exclusion, lack of access to social services including education, health and social protection; armed conflict, homelessness, and the ravaging HIV/AIDS epidemic among others. With youth unemployment estimated at 63% in Sub Saharan Africa, the youth constitute the vast majority of jobless and almost disenfranchised population categories. According to the African Development Bank (ADB 2018), one-third of Africa’s nearly 420 million youth aged 15–35 are unemployed and discouraged, another third are vulnerably employed, and only one in six is in wage employment. Unemployment translates into poorer living conditions, fuels migration out of Africa, and contributes to conflict on the continent (ADB 2018). Apart from unemployment, youth seldom participate in political decision-making processes and leadership despite the allure of democracy as a globalised ideal. Diouf (2003) has termed this trend as institutional hostility towards the youth, which excludes them from the arena of power, work, education and leisure. Youth in Africa are at the same time associated with struggles against social injustice. They have the ability and dynamism to create change within the existing political systems. For example, what became known as the Arab Spring is associated with youth dissatisfaction with the economic conditions (Ansani and Daniele 2012). Several African countries including Uganda have established platforms for youth participation to bring the views of young people into mainstream decision-making processes. Uganda has deliberately established structures and systems that offer young people opportunities for meaningful participation. For example, the 1993 National Youth Council Statute provides for the establishment of National Youth Committees at all administrative levels.4 There is also a department of youth affairs in the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development5 and several other local processes including club formations in schools, and the existence of youth-led organisations among others. One can therefore argue that in terms of the foundational prerequisites, the aforementioned suggest that Uganda has indeed progressed. Yet, as our results suggest, youth participation in the formal structures of democratic engagement remains a challenge. Many youths are unable to voice their concerns and even when they do, they are hardly noticed. So the question would be, are such 4 These

administrative units are at village, parish, sub-county, district and national level.

5 This unit is headed by the Minister of Youth Affairs and it is responsible for the policy formulation

and coordination of youth affairs in Uganda.

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structures that appear to suggest existence of opportunities for the youths simply cosmetic? Some writers have argued that the problem lies with lack of the required capacity within youth organisations (Mugisha et al. 2016). Citing examples of such loose youth groupings as the ‘jobless brotherhood’, Mugisha et al. (2016) further argue that most youth activities tend to be weak with no grassroots penetration. In this chapter, drawing on Uganda as an example, we show how youths in Africa navigate constricted formal spaces of youth participation and create the cultures of engagement in democratic processes. The youths have found ways of navigating such spaces through engaging ad hoc struggles based on specific issues as they emerge, making it difficult for the powerful structures to suffocate the struggle. The youths also have tended to take part in activities that provide excitement during democratic elections while some have developed a laid back attitude. A combination of these processes constitutes emerging norms and practices that characterise youth behaviours in democratic participation. We conceptualise youth participation within the globalisation discourse and show that while global processes such as democracy and youth participation have been embraced within the local discourse, the youths have yet to realise their full benefits. While our results are based on the youths aged 15–30 years, we conceptualise youth as socially constructed, varying culturally and historically from one person to another and from society to society (Kurebwa and Dodo 2019). This is particularly important because youth participation is largely contingent on specific social, cultural and political contexts. In several parts of Africa, social norms play a significant role in shaping not just youth participation but the resultant youth cultures, which while they develop locally are also given a voice through such global movements.

2 Globalisation, Youth Cultures and Participation Available literature indicates that countries in the Global South have made significant progress towards democracy in the years following the economic and financial transformations of the 1980s (Rudra 2005). These gains lend credence to the theory that ‘globalisation pressures’ that hit countries of the Global South were responsible for improvements in democracy (Rudra 2005). The argument is that exogenous forces, including pressures of globalisation, have the potential to trigger ‘elite schisms’ and create opportunities for people to participate in decision-making for a greater good (Rudra 2005; Dralega et al. 2010). With increasing clarity on what constitutes globalisation, there is a general consensus that globalisation transcends global economic and financial market integration with which it was long associated (Jeffery 2002; Kaplinsky 2000). Globalisation impacts on different aspects of people in various places of the world including their ways of life, work opportunities and living conditions (Rudra 2005). This also calls into question the common assumption that “local problems require local solutions”. While youth in Africa continue to relate to local social structures including expectations from their own societal and familial structures, they also increasingly draw upon and are strongly connected to the global

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culture (Honwana 2012), particularly through technology and cyberspace which have led to an information explosion and totally removed barriers to communication and access to information. At the international level there are global commitments such as the UN sustainable development goals that countries commit to within the framework of a globalised world. However, there is little international legislation directly focusing on youth that is binding on states. Some of the existing relevant frameworks include: the 1998 Braga Youth Action Plan (World Youth Forum), 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, 2001 Dakar Youth Empowerment Strategy, 2005 Resolution concerning youth employment, ILC, 93rd session, Geneva, 1996 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, 1998 Lisbon Declaration on Youth Policies, among others. There are also regional provisions enshrined in charters, such as the African Youth Charter that commit individual African states including Uganda to the cause of youths and young people. As some writers have noted, while some of the global processes have greatly challenged the local models of governance and participation, not all those who are involved are enjoying the social promises of a global democracy (see for example Moore 2001). Globalisation has had positive and negative impacts on youth cultures in Africa, definitely in much more profound ways than the extent to which such cultures inform the processes of globalisation. Africa’s youths are often at the receiving end of the global culture. Today, youths in Africa are better connected with the rest of the world than earlier generations of Africans (Honwana 2012). This interconnectedness is largely shaping their sub-cultures and lifestyles as they strive to be and do like the rest of the world, particularly the developed world, whose lifestyles they consider as more modern and desirable. It has also been argued that due to technological advancement globalisation threatens cultural values and beliefs, thereby undermining the embedded local meaning. In fact Uganda’s National Youth Policy (MoGLSD 2001) notes that the western culture, usually through the influence of western media, challenges and undermines ‘traditional control on behaviours of youth’. Globalisation in that sense creates tension. As Maathai notes, culture can be both empowering and a threat to empowerment, self-expression and self-identity (Maathai 2009). Traditionally, young women and men were not expected to participate in leadership positions. Youths were often exempted from critical decisions, including those that directly affected them, on the assumption that they were too inexperienced and young. Even in many contemporary African cultures, young people are generally not expected to speak in public as they are regarded as immature and lacking in knowledge and expertise (McGee and Greenhalf 2011). While this appears to be generally true, what is also apparent, especially with advancements in technology, is that young people can easily mobilise their voice and achieve global recognition within the framework of democratic participation as those yearning for change of the status quo. Wherever young people feel dissatisfied and their space constricted, they have also found ways to create space. Africa in particular is awash with examples of young people facing up to the forces of social injustice. In constrained democratic spaces, young people have agency to navigate such barriers. Through this process

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they create a voice to express themselves and their concerns. Some writers (see for example Bennell 2007) have argued that young people need to be supported to have a voice in political and economic processes; and that they need to be empowered with information and skills to confront the challenges they face. In this paper, the local cultural contexts and beliefs about youth participation inform our analysis of how the global processes impact on local processes of youth voice and engagement. Using the concept of voice, we examine the extent to which young people’s voice has become globalised through such global processes as youth participation. We seek to articulate the impact of globalisation focusing on the processes of youth participation in democratic governance. We show how the push for democratic governance in Uganda has opened up spaces for youth to voice their concerns. These spaces are reflected in what we refer to as youth cultures in relation to democratic governance. Some of these youth cultures include faces of youth resistance, laid back attitudes and excitement during democratic processes such as elections.

3 The Context Uganda has one of the youngest population in the world. According to the Uganda National Population and Housing Census 2014, over 55% of the country’s population is below the age of 18 and 23% are aged 18–30 years (Uganda Bureau of Statistics [UBOS] 2016). With a median age of 15.9 years, Uganda is the second youngest population globally (second only to Niger at 14.9). Poverty levels are very high with an estimated 27.7% of the population living on less than one dollar per day (UBOS 2018). The country is dogged with rising youth unemployment, estimated at 83%, the highest on the continent.6 The highest majority of youth who work are employed in the informal sector with 71% of them engaged in vulnerable employment (UBOS 2015), which essentially constitutes the working poor. The majority of the population (82%), including young people, live in rural areas and engage in agriculture (UBOS 2016). Young people often desire to and some migrate to urban areas in search of job opportunities and other social amenities and they end up constituting a majority of the urban poor. In Uganda, the common term used to describe the unemployed youth in urban centres is “idle and disorderly”, which in fact constitutes a legal offence. Given the high population of young people and the dwindling economic and social opportunities, it is tempting to believe that there is a youth crisis. And yet, the young population presents opportunities, if the demographic dividends are well harnessed (Republic of Uganda 2014). In terms of institutional mechanisms for participation, the National Youth Policy provides a unique opportunity for improving the quality of life of all Ugandan youths. The policy focuses on youth empowerment, participation and involvement 6 https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2014/jan/16/uganda-unemployed-graduates-

held-back-skills-gap.

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and improving the economic situation of the youths. Over the years, it is also not uncommon for politicians to make campaign promises that include fighting youth unemployment. Other programmes that target the youths have also included interventions in the education sector such as Universal Primary Education; in the health sector with specific interventions on adolescent sexual and reproductive health as well as civic engagement platforms such as U-Report, a UNICEF supported platform for young people (Orrnert 2018). Within the national parliament, five slots are reserved for youth. Yet, while all these pronouncements and policy provisions exist, youth development has remained at the periphery of real development (Bennell 2007). For many, this amounts to a “youth crisis”, the resolution of which requires innovative, wide-ranging “youth-friendly” policies (Bennell 2007). Within the globalisation discourse, some writers have called for a committed leadership to ensure that the benefits of globalisation can be achieved by all (Ruda 2005). Uganda’s legal, policy and institutional frameworks of a well-functioning state encapsulated in the 1995 Constitution, regular elections, and a decentralised system have created little to attract youths as an active and engaged citizenry in the governance wheel. However, beyond these constricted spaces, young people are finding a collective voice and making their way of resistance part of their culture. The focus of this paper is largely from the perspective of youth participation highlighting their experiences, understanding and actions taken regarding democratic governance in Uganda. Our arguments are based on the findings of the study that was conducted in 10 districts of Uganda including Gulu, Busiiki, Kampala, Katakwi, Masindi, Nebbi, Mubende, Kapchorwa, Pallisa and Kumi. The results are part of a bigger study commissioned by ActionAid International Uganda (AAIU),7 which had, among others, the objective to describe the existing leadership and economic opportunities and constraints that young people face in their respective communities. The study was conducted between February and April 2018. For this paper, our analysis is focused on the voice reflected in youth participation which, as already mentioned, is discussed within the broader framework of globalisation and youth cultures. We argue that real empowerment for young people at the local level can only happen if the existing leadership and economic opportunities for young people stimulate the active use of voice. This is particularly so as some commentators have argued for a new face of globalisation that demands commitment from national leaders (Amah 2019).

4 Methods A mixed methods approach combining quantitative and qualitative approaches was used. The process was highly participatory involving a variety of relevant stakeholders and partners at different levels using tested participatory methods. Power 7 ActionAid

International Uganda is an affiliate of ActionAid International; a global justice federation working to achieve social justice, gender equality and poverty eradication.

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analysis tools were used to bring to the fore youth’s understanding of and use of the different forms of power to promote social justice. The use of a mixed methods approach was intended to generate quantitative and qualitative information. While the study was conducted as part of a bigger study that assessed general issues of social justice, results reported in this chapter relate mainly to the young people and the spaces available for their democratic participation. A structured questionnaire was administered to a district-based sample of 553 youths aged 15 and 30 years selected at the household level from 10 districts. The questionnaire was administered to collect data on key issues around leadership and economic opportunities for the young people. Quantitative data was complemented with qualitative data generated using participatory methods giving voice to the participants to tell their own stories and contribute to the overall interpretation of the data collected. A total of 10 focus group discussions with young people to explore issues around youth participation and engagement were conducted. In addition, a total of 10 key informant interviews with staff of local governments and civil society organisations were also conducted. The study also drew from document reviews of relevant policy and programme documents as well as previous research on the subject. The findings are triangulated and an integrative approach is used in this contribution. Qualitative interviews were transcribed and exported into Atlas Ti for further management while quantitative data management involved assigning entry codes using the Epidemiological Information (EPI-INFO Version 6.0). After cleaning, the data were exported to the Statistical Package for the Social Scientist (SPSS) for further analysis. Data were collected by the authors with the support from a team of competent, highly trained and supervised data collectors. The necessary ethical procedures were followed including seeking consent, protecting participants’ privacy and confidentiality and anonymity.

5 Results 5.1 From Patronage to a Laid Back Youth Culture Our results show that while there has been a deliberate effort in Uganda to have youth involved in democratic governance through leadership at various levels, only 26% of young people aged 15–30 years were involved in leadership positions, with almost no differences between males (27%) and females (25%). Table 1 shows the levels and nature of participation in leadership and democratic governance by youth. Almost three quarters (74%) of the young people were not involved in any leadership position. Further analysis revealed that the majority of the young people that hold any leadership position do so at the lower levels such as school (45.8%) and village (25.7%) levels. This means that there is also a low level of involvement in leadership at higher levels of influence such as district, national and even at the

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Table1 Participation in leadership and democratic governance by young people Response

Freq.

Percent

Yes

144

26

No

409

74

Group level

15

10.4

Village

37

25.7

Parish

4

2.8

Sub-county

7

4.9

School

66

45.8

Others

15

10.4

Holds a leadership position at any level

Level at which leadership position is held

Proportion of young people who attended a community meeting in last 12 months No, but would do if had the chance

139

39.4

No, would never do this

23

6.5

Yes, often

61

17.3

Yes, once or twice

77

21.8

Yes, several times

53

15.0

Did you raise any issue with the local authorities in the previous 12 months (N=339) No

251

74

Yes

88

26

Access to clean water and sanitation

4

3.8

Discrimination/exclusion of some

1

0.9

What was the issue about?

Other

7

6.6

Poor roads and other infrastructure

10

9.4

Poor social services

41

38.7

Security

32

30.2

Unfairness in distribution of government resources

3

2.8

Violence against women and girls

1

0.9

Youth unemployment

7

6.6

Was the issue attended to by the relevant authorities (N=146) Yes

45

31

No

81

55

Don’t Know

20

14

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regional and continental level, which in turn limits young people’s ability to influence decisions and alter the nature of injustices that are often generated at the higher levels. If the assumption that being in a leadership position places one in a better position to influence policies and decisions that favour the causes of young people, then this result suggests that young people are currently not well positioned to influence decisions in the democratic dispensation. It can also be argued, however, that even at the lower levels, young people can influence change by adopting the style of leadership that challenges injustice and thus cultivating a culture of responsive and accountable leadership. Attendance of community meetings: Young people were asked if they had attended a community meeting in the past 12 months and if they had an opportunity to get together to discuss issues that affect them. About 22% reported attending at least once or twice, 17% attended often, while 15% attended several times. Even among those who did not attend any community meetings, about 39% reported having interest in attending and would attend if they had a chance. This somewhat hides a lack of active searching for opportunities or very limited information on the right to participate, since community meetings are often open to any member of the community. Another 7% mentioned that they have never attended and would never attend even if they had the chance. Generally, the results show low levels of engagement with the duty bearers to address social injustices that might affect them and the rest of the community. Engagement with local authorities: Young people were asked if in the past 12 months they got together as a collective to influence others to raise an issue of concern to the local authorities. As presented in Table 1 above, about a quarter (26%) of the young people had raised an issue of importance with the local authorities in the past 12 months. Most issues raised revolved around poor social services (39%), security (30%), poor road infrastructure (9.4%) as well as youth unemployment (7%). About 31% mentioned that the issues they raised with the local authorities were attended to, while the majority (55%) said the issues raised were never attended to and another 14% did not know if the issues raised were attended to or not. This suggests that it is not enough for young people to raise issues with the authorities but that something must be seen to be done to address the issues raised. However, sometimes young people feel helpless in ensuring that action is taken by those in authority who are often deemed to have more power to cause action. In this regard, when asked if they thought they had the power to cause the leaders to act on their concerns and address their needs as young people, only about 43% said they feel they have such power, while more than a half of the young people (57%) did not feel empowered enough to challenge the power of their leaders (Fig. 1). Nonetheless, young people appreciate the benefits of using their “power” to hold leaders accountable and responsive to their needs. For example, young people in Kapchorwa district during a power analysis group activity, while acknowledging that most power lies with political leaders, identified the benefits of engaging their local authorities:

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Fig. 1 Proportion of young people who feel empowered to demand action from leaders

Young people who feel empowered to demand acƟon from leaders 44 42

Yes

56 58

No 0

10

20

30 Male

40

50

60

70

Female

When we involve them they don’t relax and do their own wishes, in fact they are tasked to work hard. Community participation in meetings and Barraza’s promotes transparency and accountability among our leaders. It also ensures quality service delivery by respective offices. (Young people’s FGD, Kapchorwa)

The results point to the difficulties that young people face as they seek to attain the level of influence that is needed for them to influence decisions and alter the nature of injustices that go on at the higher levels. Some of the challenges that young people face relate to deeply rooted cultural beliefs and stereotypes that characterise or depict young people as lazy, difficult and unable to take advantage of the opportunities available to them. This was evident in the responses of key informants. What is disappointing in young people is that they are very lazy. They just want ready money such as in the boda boda (motorcycle taxis) business. (Interview with Assistant Community Development Officer, Nebbi district) Youth are a very difficult lot of people to handle; they are lazy, not ready to work, they want money above other things. (Interview with production officer, Pader district)

The above results point to a negative generalization of youth as unable to take up responsibilities on their own or even advance their own agenda, while conversely, youth blame those in positions of power for marginalising them. In fact, in many African societies, young people are often considered as immature irrespective of their age (McCarthy and Adams 2019). One would argue that these constitute adult cultures about young people. The characterisation of young people as lazy, young and naïve has created a culture of dependency among young people. We found that some young people have also developed the culture of waiting on those with opportunities to provide for them. This has created a culture of low confidence and a level of resignation among young people. The young people who would be demanding services in form of accountability from the leaders are low in confidence.

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5.2 Emerging Youth Cultures: From Laid Back to Confrontation While some sections of the youths tend to follow a pattern that fits the characterisation of young people as lazy, naïve and laid back, our results also show evidence of young people taking up the confrontational approach against the injustices they face. A significant number of young people who were interviewed had participated in key events such as the national general elections for 2016 and were planning to do the same in future. Their participation ranged from attending election rallies, mobilising community members to turning up to vote and exercise their voice. The results are shown in Table 2 below. Although the proportion of young people who took steps to get engaged was minimal compared to those who said they did not and would never do any of the mentioned actions, there was also a significant number for each of the listed actions that mentioned that although they did not do anything, they would if given a chance. This means that young people are willing to get engaged in leadership and undertake certain actions in democratic governance processes if given the opportunity. As Christiansen, Utas and Vigh (2006) suggest, rather than characterising youth as living a predefined life-stage, it is critical to look at youths as being in movement or in a duality of being. For the majority of African youths, this seems to be the pattern of engagement where they are able to defy the label of children under control to Table 2 Young people’s participation in the 2016 general elections % (N = 553) No, but would do if I had the chance

No, would never do this

Yes, often

Yes, once or twice

Yes, several times

Attended a voter education meeting

54

18

2

19

6

Got together with others to discuss who to vote for

35

17

4

23

21

Reported a campaign malpractice or incident

53

27

3

10

7

Attended an election rally

27

12

8

23

30

Participated in a political party primary

51

27

3

9

11

Participated in a 28 demonstration or protest march

60

4

4

4

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being people who are able to nurture their own shared norms and practices and are able to influence other actors.

5.3 Adhoc but Effective Youth Cultures in Confronting Social Injustice In many communities youths have developed a culture of spontaneity which is also difficult to restrict and control. I can conclude that we still don’t have a permanent kind of movement of youths who normally run behind the duty bearers to look for issues to address. It’s now adhoc and involvement is based on issues as they emerge…if any issue happens they keep on advocating like that. (M&E Officer, AAIU Pader district)

Issue-based resistance by the youths was reported to be effective. In Nwoya district, for example, we found what is known as the Wang Kwa Road Oil Waste resistance. The resistance is reported to have been started by the youths in response to oil spills along the road. Youths blocked the road, considering the oil to be hazardous. The communities demanded that the oil waste management firm (Epsilon Uganda Limited) compensates the communities for waste that had spilled on Wang Kwa Road in Nwoya district, which was done. In Amuru district a youth group, Activista, managed to mobilise against the misuse of public resources by public officials in the district. Activistas are youth movements which are very powerful, they can demand from government. After making their monitoring, they come with their findings of course and call for interface meetings with the key stakeholders. Here, they blocked the government vehicle from going to Gulu because all the staff were coming from Gulu and coming to work here in the evening they go back to sleep. They understood it as wastage of resources like fuel. (Interview with Program Officer, AAU Amuru district)

The activistas have organised into a network that follows and monitors services delivery in different districts, thus demonstrating a culture of activism among the youth.

6 Discussion and Conclusion In this paper we have shown a growing interest of youth to participate in democratic governance albeit amidst a restricted environment. While opportunities appear on paper in formal policies and guidelines, it is obvious that these opportunities for participation are not actualised. Hence, the youths are marginally participating in formal spaces in terms of leadership and democratic decision-making processes. Ighobor (2006) argues that this exclusion, coupled with high levels of unemployment, render the youth desperate and hopeless which in turn makes them prone to

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violence and exploitation. Conversely, Muzwakhe (2004, p. 2) argues that the current marginalisation of youth participation in the decision-making processes marks the undemocratic exclusion of the majority of Africa’s population and poses a serious threat to social stability and good governance. When youths are drawn into gangs, rebel activities and other criminal tendencies, more often than not, it is a reaction to their social, political and economic marginalisation. The marginalisation in leadership is especially dramatised by the age gap between the population and the leaders: whereas the median age of Africa’s population is 19.5 years (the lowest in the world), the average age of an African president is 62, making it the largest age gap between the governor and the governed globally (Yahya 2017). Youth have developed particular norms and practices to respond to injustices and influence decisions. In some cases, youths conform to the characterisation of young people by those in authority as young, naïve and unresponsive who only work under control. Some youths have responded to such characterisations with a laid back attitude exhibiting less interest in issues where they have no support. While opportunities for participation in leadership exist through platforms such as youth councils, they have remained hierarchical and infused with patronage. The structures of youth engagement have not benefited the youths (Bennel 2007). Their voice in such structures continues to be silenced. Our results indicated that a small proportion of young people hold leadership positions. For those who hold positions of leadership, this is often within the lower rungs where their influence on the existing unjust power structures faces an insurmountable challenge. In other cases, however, young people have actively devised ways to have a voice and make sure they are heard. The culture of confrontation is emerging from such activities. However, due to the risks associated with a confrontational approach, many young people respond in an ad hoc manner. The ad hoc approach appears to be effective because they become difficult to detect and control by the authorities. This also explains why in many countries in Africa, some of the youth struggles do not become visible everyday movements, because of the underhand methods used by governments and open hostility towards the youth movements as they threaten the status quo. With the increased globalisation fuelled by advances in technology, local voices have become global voices and are taken up by international actors to champion the causes of young people. The lack of adequate democratic space for youth participation in socio-political and economic arenas coupled with high levels of joblessness and the quest for survival have sometimes been thought to be the driving force behind the youth-led risings across Africa including, for example, the political risings in Libya, Tunisia and Kenya, the frequent xenophobic uprisings in South Africa and most recently the political demonstrations in Sudan that saw the toppling of the Bashir government in early 2019. In Uganda, recent examples include the youth-led demonstrations following the passing of the social media tax by the Ugandan parliament in May 2018. Young people fronted by the youthful Member of Parliament, Hon. Kyagulanyi Robert a.k.a. Bobi Wine, mobilised fellow youths to oppose the social media tax and the mobile money tax (Ashaba and Taodzera 2019). The youth-led resistance attracted action from government and the president was forced to reduce the mobile money tax by a half. Another example is the #FreeBobiwine campaign, which followed the

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arrest of Hon. Kyagulanyi Robert in August 2018. The youth-led movement grew into a ‘the #FreeBobiWine movement’, drawing support from within the East African region, Ugandans and non-Ugandans in Europe and the USA (Ashaba and Taodzera 2019). In fact, the European Union Parliament passed a resolution against the arrest of the youthful legislator and called on the government of Uganda to cease harassment of people opposed to it.8 The spontaneous emergency of other youth movements such as the “Jobless Brotherhood”9 and “NRM Poor Youth”,10 in the run-up to the 2016 general elections are examples of what has also been described as a form of revolutionary youth model (Abrahamsen and Bareebe 2016; Eneji and Ikeorji, n.d). These are seen as part and parcel of youth culture that has been sanctioned by the global interconnectedness and a rising awareness and resolve among the youth to fight for their rights and for social justice. In Uganda and indeed in Africa, youths are using their agency to undertake activities that represent their own voice. The spaces that young people create to confront the powerful structures on injustice have become global movements and set agendas for the youths all over the continent. Through these movements, young people have become agents and faces of change (Kadoda and Hale 2015). In fact, some commentators have argued that the waves of youth activism in North Africa helped shape a new form of youth culture in Africa (Kadoda and Hale 2015). Through the power of social media, the youths are able to globalise their voices and are proud to be associated with such movements. Rather than responding passively to a restrictive institutional set-up that stifles their voices, the youths have adopted a culture of engagement “at all costs”. As argued by Honwana (2012, p. 3), youths in Africa are rising up against unemployment, socio-economic marginalisation, unsound economic policies, corrupt governments, political exclusion and lack of respect for their rights. Thus, while Africa’s youths might lack formal spaces to influence political and economic decisions, they use their agency to remain politically engaged while at the same time they have to struggle for survival in the face of shrinking economic opportunities. Young people have an interest in working as a collective to transform societies and address the injustices they face. As Dominelli (2002) suggests, people may not necessarily have power to influence decisions but what is critical is the will and agency to resist oppression by the powerful and take action against injustice. Those who believe that they have the power to influence what leaders do have also forged informal connection which they use to influence decisions. In order to empower youth to demand for their rights, and effectively participate in democratic governance, there is a need to ensure that young people have access to opportunities that increase their voice. As argued by Orrnert (2018), voice is critical for youth initiatives to have a meaningful engagement with government and civic life. Meaningful engagement means that people continue to hold governments 8 EU

parliament debates rights abuses in Uganda, Daily Monitor, 16 September 2018. loose grouping of young people resisting the rising levels of unemployment in the country. 10 Another one of the many youth groupings that spearhead ad hoc demonstrations against what they deem as government’s marginalisation of young people. 9A

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accountable for their actions and decisions (Ackerman 2004). Initiatives to support young people ought to derive from and empower youth agency.

References Abrahamsen, R., & Bareebe, G. (2016). Uganda’s 2016 elections: Not even faking it anymore. African Affairs, 115(461), 751–765. Ackerman, J. (2004). Co-governance for accountability: Beyond “exit” and “voice”. World Development, 32(3), 447–463. African Development Bank. (2018). Jobs for youth in Africa: Catalyzing youth opportunity across Africa. Available at https://www.afdb.org/fileadmin/uploads/afdb/Images/high_5s/Job_youth_ Africa_Job_youth_Africa.pdf. Accessed 17 July 2019. Amah, O. E. (2019). The new face of globalisation: Effects on leadership in Africa. Globalisation and leadership in Africa (pp. 75–89). Cham: Palgrave Pivot. Ansani, A., & Daniele, V. (2012). About a Revolution: The Economic Motivations of the Arab Spring. International Journal of Development and Conflict, 2(03), 1250013. Ashaba, I., & Taodzera, S. (2019). Uganda. In Political chronicles of the African Great Lakes region, 2018/Reyntjens, Filip [edit.] (pp. 91–117). Banks, N. (2015). Understanding youth: Towards a psychology of youth poverty and development in Sub-Saharan African cities. The University of Manchester, Brooks World Poverty Institute Working Paper 216. Available at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2704451. Accessed 12 July 2019. Bennell, P. (2007). Promoting livelihood opportunities for rural youth. In IFAD governing. Christiansen, C., Utas, M., & Vigh, H. E. (2006). Navigating youth, Generating adulthood: Social becoming in an African context. Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet. Diouf, M. (2003). Engaging post-colonial cultures: African youth and public space. African Studies Review, 46(2), 1–12. Dominelli, L. (2002). Anti-oppressive social work theory and practice. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Dralega, C. A., Due, B., & Skogerbø, E. (2010). Community re-engagement of youth: eParticipation realities in Uganda and Norway. Information Technologies & International Development, 6(1), 94–108. Eneji, A. P., & Ikeorji, C. R. (n.d). Youth political participation and electoral violence in the 21. World Journal of Innovative Research, 4(6). Available at https://media.neliti.com/media/public ations/262477-youth-political-participation-and-electo-79eea16d.pdf. Accessed 12 July 2019. Honwana, A. M. (2012). The time of youth: Work, social change and politics in Africa. Boulder and London: Kumarian Press. Ighobor, K. (2006). A seat at the table. Available on www.africarenewal/author/kingsley-ighobor. Accessed 12 July 2019. Jeffery, S. (2002). What is globalisation? The Guardian, 31, 2–3. Kadoda, G., & Hale, S. (2015). Contemporary youth movements and the role of social media in Sudan. Canadian Journal of African Studies/Revue canadienne des études africaines, 49(1), 215–236. Kaplinsky, R. (2000). Globalisation and unequalisation: What can be learned from value chain analysis? Journal of development studie, 37(2), 117–146. Kurebwa, J., & Dodo, O. (Eds.) (2019). Participation of young people in governance processes in Africa. Hershey: IGI Global. Maathai, W. (2009). The challenge for Africa: A new vision. London: Random House. McCarthy, D., & Adams, M. (2019). “Yes, i can still parent. Until i die, he will always be my son”: Parental responsibility in the wake of child incarceration. Punishment & Society, 21(1), 89–106.

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McGee, R., & Greenhalf, J. (2011). Seeing like a young citizen: Youth and participatory governance in Africa. Young Citizens: Youth and Participatory Governance in Africa, 12. MoGLSD (2001). Uganda national youth policy. Kampala: Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development. Moore, D. (2001). Neoliberal globalisation and the triple crisis of ‘modernisation’ in Africa: Zimbabwe, the democratic republic of the Congo and South Africa. Third World Quarterly, 22(6), 909–929. Mugisha, M., Ojok, D., Kiranda, Y., & Balaba, B. K. (2016). Youth participation in political processes in Uganda: Exploring opportunities and constraints. Journal on Perspectives of African Democracy and Development, 1(1), 55–61. Muzwakhe, A. S. (2004, October 10–15). Perspectives on youth and governance in Africa. A paper presented on the occasion of ADFW on youth and governance symposium, Addis Ababa. Available at https://www.uneca.org/sites/default/files/uploaded-documents/ADF/ADF4/sadc_-_ perspective_on_youth_and_governance.pdf. Orrnert, A. (2018). Youth initiatives: Supporting citizen engagement with government and civic life. GSDRC Helpdesk Research Report. Birmingham, UK: GSDRC, University of Birmingham. Republic of Uganda. (2014). Harnessing Uganda’s demographic dividend. Kampala: National Planning Authority. Rudra, N. (2005). Globalization and the strengthening of democracy in the developing world. American Journal of Political Science, 49(4), 704–730. UBOS. (2016). Uganda population and housing census, 2014. Kampala: Uganda Bureau of Statistics. UBOS. (2018). The Uganda national household survey, 2016/2017. Kampala: Uganda Bureau of Statistics. Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS). (2015). Labour market transition of young people in Uganda highlights of the school-to work transition survey 2015. Kampala: Uganda Bureau of Statistics. Yahya, M. (2017). Africa’s defining challenge. United Nations Development Fund. https://www. undp.org/content/undp/en/home/blog/2017/8/7/Africa-s-Defining-Challenge.html. Accessed 17 July 2019.

Youth in the Anthropocene: Questions of Intergenerational Justice and Learning in a More-Than-Human World Reingard Spannring

1 Introduction: The Anthropocene and Young People The term “Anthropocene”, first presented by Crutzen and Stoermer (2000), has widely attracted attention among scientists. It refers to the current geological age in which human activities have had a substantial impact on the functioning of the Earth System and continue to do so. The human species has always had an impact on the Earth, especially since the agricultural revolution. However, this force has become increasingly dominant with respect to global biogeophysical cycles since the industrial revolution (Oldfield et al. 2013). One important driver of anthropogenic change are greenhouse gas emissions, which the report by the Intergovernmental SciencePolicy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services notes have doubled since 1980, raising average global temperatures by at least 0.7 °C. Consequently, land and ocean surface temperatures have warmed and sea levels risen, the spatial and temporal patterns of precipitation have changed, and the frequency and intensity of El Niño events have increased (IPPC 2002). Climate change severely affects human economies, livelihoods, food security, health and well-being worldwide. Climate change is a direct driver of change in nature from the level of ecosystems to that of genetics (IPBES, no year). Other drivers of anthropogenic change include: the transformation of the planetary landscape into a largely manufactured landscape, e.g. through deforestation and desertification in the course of industrialized farming, and the depletion of metal, stone and sand in the service of urban sprawling; the alteration of the geo-chemical structure of the Earth by polluting the atmosphere, water and land, and influencing metabolic processes; and the biotic consumption and manipulation based on the dominance of human beings and their animals (livestock and companion animals) over all other animal species (Meyer 2006). Climate change, environmental degradation and loss of biodiversity not only bring to the forefront R. Spannring (B) Department of Educational Science, University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 G. Knapp and H. Krall (eds.), Youth Cultures in a Globalized World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65177-0_8

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ecological, but also developmental, economic, social and ethical issues that demand a fundamental transformative change with respect to technological, economic and social factors, including paradigms, goals and values (IPBES, no year). Foregrounding the environmental and climate crisis as a global phenomenon that puts young people’s lifeworlds and cultures under pressure, this chapter meanders through a new researchscape and carves out some of its dimensions. Section 2 addresses the recent global climate strikes that can be read as the awakening of a new political and ecological consciousness and emerging global youth culture. Young people protest against the inertia of the older generation and power elites, that severely impact young people’s future, and grapple with sustainable solutions in their own lives. Section 3 turns to three dimensions that challenge the view of a simple generational change and uniform development of a global youth culture in the Anthropocene despite the global occurrence of climate change and environmental degradation. The first two dimensions are straightforward in that they show how time and socio-ecological space produce a more complex pattern of ecological awareness, resources, lifestyles and (emerging and evanescent) cultures. The third dimension is an aspect that youth research has not paid attention to so far. It speaks to the failure to consider non-human life in the lives and cultures of young people and the anthropocentric beliefs and practices. Young people are implied in these not only as perpetrators contributing to the exploitation of animals and nature, but also via interrelated systems of discrimination and oppression. The critique of the humancenteredness of most societies and research in the face of massive anthropogenic change is carried over to Sect. 4, where the need for transformational learning is discussed. The chapter concludes by arguing that youth research and youth work would do well to integrate the “more-than-human world” (Abram 1996) as essential part of young people’s lifeworld and cultures.

2 Young People’s “Skolstrejk för Klimatet” Since the First World Climate Conference under the umbrella of the United Nations (UN) in 1979 in Geneva, Switzerland, international efforts to combat climate change have been going on with little effect in national politics and policy-making. More recently, young people around the world have entered the public stage with demands for quicker, more courageous and effective responses to the climate emergency: And you continue to feed the richest the one per cent, one per cent, one per cent cent cent You build the runways and burn the fossils and let the planet pay. But you don’t realize the cake’s not growing you take away, take away, take away way way.

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You build the runways and burn the fossils and let the planet pay. Burn all the fossils heads full of gossip The lobby pays, lobby pays, lobby pays pays pays You build the runways and burn the fossils and let the planet pay. You sit at tables discuss the future with greedy hands, greedy hands, greedy hands hands hands We are the students who fight the system because we have a world to win. We are the students who fight the system because we have a world to win.1 On March 15, 2019, across the globe over 1.8 million students went on strike for the climate, in 2378 cities and towns, in 134 countries on all continents.2 Soon afterwards, 26,800 scientists in Germany, Austria and Switzerland signed a petition supporting the students’ strike by confirming that the students’ claims have a valid scientific basis.3 Other parts of the population have started to show solidarity: Parents for Future, Teachers for Future, Artists for Future, Farmers for Future, building a broad social alliance for courageous climate politics and policy. Inspired by the Swedish 16-year-old Greta Thunberg, who demonstrated peacefully every Friday in front of the Swedish parliament, students all over the world are engaging in peaceful protest instead of going to school. In addition to strikes, different formats serve the initiation of dialogue and cooperation with schools, universities, politicians, city councils, media and businesses in order to demonstrate solutions and options for action. While many adults doubt that the students are interested in climate mitigation but rather use it as an excuse for skipping school (an allegation often levelled against young people’s political activism), a study of participants in the German city of Konstanz shows that they are politically motivated, knowledgeable and idealist. The protesters are between 11 and 27 years old. Girls are overrepresented with 62% as well as students from academically oriented secondary schools (59%). 94% are convinced that they can influence politics with their activities. For many, climate change has been a topic of particular interest for some time: 82% report that they had already informed themselves before the demonstrations. Many young people draw consequences for themselves like using public transport, abstaining from air travel or meat consumption. For their protest, students are willing to accept sanctions for skipping school such as extra homework. Many young people are not newcomers to political activism. Forty percent say they have already demonstrated. The study also 1 https://www.fridaysforfuture.at/uploads/We-Have-A-World-To-Win-Bella-Ciao.pdf;

to the melody of the Italian revolutionary song Bella Ciao; download 22.5.2019. 2 https://fridaysforfuture.org/events/list; accessed 22 May 2019. 3 https://www.scientists4future.org/; accessed 22 May 2019.

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disproves the allegation that young people are sent by their parents: mobilization primarily takes place at school (45%), among peers (60%) and through social media (75%). Other local studies in the German cities of Berlin and Bremen have revealed similar patterns, so that the author concludes that the young people are by no means only playing with their smart phones, but they are a political generation that is raising its voice peacefully and is excellent at organizing itself (Koos 2019). In the context of the European parliamentary elections (May 23–26, 2019), two other remarkable incidents took place. One was a video by the young German YouTuber Rezo that drew widespread attention and discussion just before the EU elections. In the nearly one-hour-long video Rezo, who is well-known for his music and comedy videos, accused the German Conservative Party of destroying “our life and our future”, of being inactive with respect to climate change, and of making politics for rich people. Within a few days, the video went viral reaching nearly ten million viewers in Germany and beyond. It also quickly reached the highest ranks within the German Conservative Party, where their leader, Annegret KrampKarrenbauer, responded cynically by wondering whether the politicians should not also be made responsible for the seven plagues in Ancient Egypt. Two days before the EU elections, another short video appeared on Rezo’s YouTube channel, in which 70 other YouTubers solidarized with him.4 The video was also reported in newspapers and thereby became more widely known than just by voters using social media. The two major German parties, Conservatives and Social Democrats, found themselves on the defensive and political scientists expected a strong mobilization among young voters.5 After the elections, one newspaper headline read: “The new people’s party of the youth”. The article reported a massive gain by the Green parties in Germany and Austria thanks to the mobilization of voters below the age of 30.6 Increasing in strength by 10% compared to 2014, the German Green Party displaced the German Social Democrats from second place. 33% of the under 30-year olds voted green and thereby constitute an electorate in this age group that is equal to that of the conservatives, social democrats and liberals together. In Austria, 28% in this age group voted for the Green Party, and together with the young voters of the liberal party outvoted their peers who supported the traditional people’s parties. The German Newspaper Die Zeit called it an “attack from the nursery room” that has turned the European parliamentary elections into an ecological vote. Intergenerational conflict is now based on the massive opposition of material interests, argued the journalist. Whether temperatures rise by one and a half, two, three or five degrees is only a gradual question for older citizens, while for young people it is an existential question. As a response to the youth challenge, politicians first tried to discredit the young citizens, then to embrace them clumsily, unable to resolve the crash of the surging waves of globalization, digitalization and climate change on the ageing societies of the Western world. The absence of appropriate meaning making and political 4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xpg84NjCr9c;

accessed 22 May 2019. (Austrian Broadcasting Company) online; 25 May 2019, 19:56. 6 ORF online; 29 May 2019, 08:00. 5 ORF

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action demonstrates the older generation’s lack of willingness and ability to secure a liveable world for the succeeding generations and thereby breaks the generational contract.7 These political developments are particularly meaningful for youth research that has been focusing on young people’s political participation. In Western societies, lamentation about young people’s alienation from politics and lack of political engagement has been going on for decades. Youth research, however, has repeatedly demonstrated that the rigid structures, procedures and ideologies of political parties do not match young people’s demand for spontaneity, flexibility and solutionorientation. Post-democratic politics, in which corporate interests weigh more than the citizens’ or environmental concerns, and older politicians’ positions more than young people’s needs and visions, are unattractive and often not worth legitimizing by casting a vote. Instead, young people have been involved in social and political movements, campaigns and lifestyle politics all along (e.g. Spannring et al. 2008). Nevertheless, the global climate emergency demonstrations are not only telling as an instance of youth political participation. The long shadow of the Anthropocene challenges youth research with a number of issues, in particular with questions of power relations and injustice. Anthropogenic climate change and other symptoms of environmental destruction force us to acknowledge the central role of the human species, its social systems, beliefs and concepts in this drama. This confessional moment invites youth research to become more conscious of the intersectionality of marginalization and exploitation including the annihilation of millions of domesticated animals, the extinction of wild species and the destruction of their habitat. Like ecology, youth research and pedagogy are concerned with the succession of generations of living beings, their communities, knowledge and practices. In the context of the Anthropocene, questions of whether and how human and non-human animals will live, and what kind of knowledge and practices are conducive for a just and sustainable more-than-human world, assume unprecedented urgency. The following sections will therefore give some considerations to intertwined relations of injustice and to pedagogic relationships, respectively.

3 Relations of Injustice and Exploitation Anthropogenic climate change confronts current and future generations with increased morbidity and mortality due to excess heat, air and water pollution, infectious diseases, food insecurity, economic losses and destruction of homes and livelihoods due to extreme weather events, floods, droughts, wildfires and rising sea levels. There will also be a trend to more conflicts over environmental resources and their differential exploitation (e.g. water), conflicts over the transnational displacement of environmental hazards such as pollution and conflicts around climate-induced migration (White 2009; UN 2010). Climate change affects chances and risks in all aspects 7 Bernd

Ulrich Die Zeit online, accessed 26 May 2019, 22:56.

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of everybody’s life, but the vulnerabilities are unevenly distributed by structures of injustice and inequality. While there are many more dimensions of inequality such as gender, class, ethnicity and culture (Cudworth and Hobden 2011), the considerations in this section will focus on temporal, spatial and species injustice.

3.1 Temporal Injustice The problem of intergenerational ethics lies in the fact that climate change constitutes a “temporally severely lagged phenomenon” (Gardiner 2006, p. 402). CO2 is a long-lived greenhouse gas. Its impacts are palpable only as the results of emissions in the past and the cumulative effects of the current production of CO2 will only materialize in the future. Because of the obscurity of the causal connection, motivation and ability to respond are low. On the one hand, politicians who think and act within the frame of election cycles are limited in their capacity for advance planning. On the other hand, the benefits of present-day economic activity based on cheap energy and the exploitation of the environment accrue to the present generation, whereas the harm associated with it has to be shouldered by future generations. This problem of intergenerational collective action is carried forward through a domino effect, as every successive generation that is in decision-making power is likely to deflect costly responsibility. It can hide behind “weak and largely substanceless global accords […] when really it is simply exploiting its temporal position” (ibid., p. 408). Even more problematically, climate change is accelerated by non-action and may cause disproportionate harm for the generations yet to come as the discourse on the ecological tipping point suggests (Groffman et al. 2006). It is therefore no surprise that younger adults are more likely than older adults to see climate change as extremely dangerous and to hold stronger pro-environmental attitudes (Franzen and Meyer 2010; Marquart-Pyatt 2012; European Commission 2009). Although the data cannot distinguish between ageing and cohort effects, some researchers see the latter as more plausible than expecting concern for climate change to decrease with age (ISSC and UNESCO 2013). Other researchers tend to believe that young people are less integrated in society’s power elites and interest groups and therefore more critical of industrial and governmental policies (Boevede Pauw and Van Petegem 2010). However, the empirical data do not support the view of a generational opposition but rather give the impression of gradual change. In the Special Eurobarometer 2009, 55% of the 15–24-year olds, 54% of the 25– 39-year olds, 52% of the 40–54-year olds and only 44% of the 55+ respondents saw climate change as the most serious problem (European Commission 2009). The comment of an adult demonstrator at the climate strike in Innsbruck highlights that it is not simply a question of the older generation shunning their responsibility: “I am a grandfather-for-future. My grandchild was born just a few weeks ago. When he is my age, it will be 2080. I wonder what the world will be like then, so I have

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decided to give my grandchild a voice today”.8 It is certainly legitimate and fruitful to question intergenerational relations, to understand conflicting interests, and to see young people as a potentially transformative power. However, the issue is also one of social change (cf. White 2011) that is speeded up or slowed down by various individual and structural factors. Among these factors age, gender, education, subjective level of information, residency in urban settings play an important role (European Commission 2009). Income has a positive effect via higher educational levels and a healthier living environment. Politically left-wing, liberal and religiously non-committed individuals are more informed, less sceptical and more pro-environment as well (Boeve-de Pauw and Van Petegem 2010). Beyond the individual level, Inglehart (1995) has tried to account for cross-national differences with his postmaterialism thesis: As societies become wealthier, their members are less concerned with economic constraints and freer to pursue postmaterial goals such as democratic participation, self-fulfilment and environmental protection. However, Inglehart had to reformulate his thesis to include not only subjective values but also objective problems in order to fit his data. The latter converges with the Environmental Deprivation Theory (Tremblay and Dunlap 1977) which foregrounds exposure to local environmental problems. Using the data of the Program for International Student Assessment 2006 (PISA), Boeve-de Pauw and Van Petegem (2010) were able to confirm both the positive impact of the richness of one’s environment (based on the National Biodiversity Index) and the positive effect of environmental degradation (based on the Environmental Performance Index) on pro-environmental attitudes. However, researchers have also repeatedly demonstrated the gap between proenvironmental attitudes and behaviour. The willingness and ability to take adaptive or mitigative steps depends on many physical, psychological, social and political factors (e.g. Kollmuss and Agyeman 2002; Norgaard 2011). Pro-environmental behaviour may for example be linked to social roles and particular stages in the lifecycle that involve certain decisions, e.g. choices of food, kind of transportation and number of children. Thus, women being predominantly responsible for the household shoulder a larger proportion of activities carried out in the name of sustainability than men (MacGregor 2006). Children are generally sensitive to ethical and environmental issues and often much more rigorous in drawing behavioural consequences than adults, e.g. when it comes to meat consumption (Herzog 2010). However, there is little research on children’s pro-environmental influence on family consumption (Larsson et al. 2010). Young people in affluent societies find themselves in a conflicting position between a strong environmental and ethical consciousness and the demands of consumer society mediated not least by peers and (social) media. Lacking a culturally shared narrative and the practice of a sustainable lifestyle, pro-environmental behaviour boils down to waste separation and engaging in a green discourse (Autio and Heinonen 2004), which nevertheless remains removed from the young people’s lives. As White (2011) reminds us, global dynamics only indirectly influence youth 8 Personal communication at the “Fridays for Future” demonstration in Innsbruck (Austria), 24 May

2019.

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identities and experiences. The latter are more directly shaped and affected by the family, friends, neighbourhoods, school and community. These are the places where ecological identities and movements may find their source and power. One insightful example for youth environmentalism is the movement to protect Babakan Siliwangi forest in Bandung, Indonesia, from commercial development. The forest is not only home of myriads of plant and animal species including three endemic primate species, it is also vital for the city, since it neutralizes carbon dioxide, absorbs heat and stabilizes soil in times of heavy rain. Further, it has deep meaning for young people’s identities and sense of belonging since it provides space for Sundanese art and cultural activities, sports, leisure and socializing. The young environmental activists involved in the rallies, marches and art performances against the government plans saw their protest in the context of a political climate in which young people’s ideas and aspirations are not accounted for. Thus, the protest site became a place of socio-ecological struggle with direct relevance for young people’s everyday lives and political empowerment (Alam 2016).

3.2 Spatial Injustice Two dimensions that obviously cut across the generational divide are the unequal distribution of environmental risks, on the one hand, and the stark differences in social context, which play an enormous role in the development of responses to these risks, on the other hand. Most authors converge on the assessment that global climate change will have a greater impact on the global South. Those countries, which are already struggling with droughts, floods and inadequate food security, will face further deterioration. Often, the destruction of the South’s environment is associated with the colonial period, which nevertheless has not stopped with the end of the European empires but continues via the export of damaging substances, material and practices from the industrialized North (Cudworth and Hobden 2011). The following examples serve to illustrate the challenges of climate change. The Algerian steppe, which constitutes the livelihood of agro-pastoralists by feeding 15–23 million livestock animals, has repeatedly seen droughts since the 1970s. The lack of grazing leads farmers to adapt their practices, for example by reducing their livestock, starting to irrigate land and buying supplementary fodder, decreasing transhumance or giving up cattle breeding and their nomadic lifestyle altogether. Two structural components frame and aggravate this socio-ecological process. On the one hand, the population density increases and job opportunities in the industrial or service sector decrease. On the other hand, urban dwellers gain purchase power and consequently demand more meat for consumption. Government subsidies for irrigation and fodder together with investment in extensive sheep farming by urban stakeholders intensify the problem of overgrazing and increased exposure to wind and water erosion of the land (Bédrani and El Amine Benhassine 2013).

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The Ningxia Autonomous Region in northwestern China is facing a noticeable warming trend, declining rainfall, land degradation and desertification. In combination with the already existing poverty in this region, the livelihood of rural communities has become very precarious leading people to seek seasonal jobs in urban areas, become migrant workers or to relocate altogether. The Ningxia government has supported the resettlement of more than one million people to less vulnerable areas (Zheng et al. 2013). Climate refugees challenge the megacity of Dhaka in Bangladesh by pouring in from the southern coastal region, which is affected by rising sea levels, increased water salinity, riverbank erosion and extreme climate events. The United Nations estimates a population increase to nearly 23 million by 2025. While Dhaka itself already suffers from flooding and increased summer temperatures straining the urban infrastructure, migration will further intensify demand for housing, water and jobs. With the region’s lack of financial and institutional resources, there is a real danger of social and infrastructural collapse (Ahmed 2013). In the Sahel zone, climate change is driving armed conflict over arable land and water between herders and farmers from different ethnic groups. Al-Qaeda and Islamic State fighters’ groups further fuel these conflicts. Concurrently, the floods exacerbate the damage done by armed attacks. Loss of crops, livestock and housing leads people to migrate to cities, seek security in refugee camps or join an armed group. With the population doubling every 20 years, every successive generation becomes more vulnerable.9 Thus, risk in the context of climate change is not only determined by geographical location but also by the level of poverty, development, stability and quality of governance of a region or state (White 2011). Further factors for vulnerability are social class, household size and distance from risk areas, education, risk awareness and membership in supportive networks (Oluwatayo 2013), which are incidentally also risk factors in the global North where public spending is cut and social security systems are dismantled (Klein 2014). Gender also plays a significant role. More women than men, and particularly young women, die through natural disasters such as droughts, floods and storms, because women are more likely to be poor. Women are more at risk because they are responsible for the supply of the family with natural resources such as water, food and fuel for cooking and heating. Both, the climate-sensitive resources (e.g. rain-fed agriculture) as well as the women’s activities involving these (e.g. covering longer distances to find water) are associated with risk (Chimanikire 2013, pp. 273ff.). Young people and especially children are vulnerable to a loss or decline in the quality of caregiving since they are dependent on supportive family structures and resources. They may also suffer more from posttraumatic stress disorder in the case of ecological disasters (Kronenberg et al. 2010). These issues highlight the need for a global perspective on the quality and effects of ecological and social conditions, especially with a view to the distinction between the “environmental victims” and the “privileged” (White 2011), and possibly a group of 9 BBC

report: The battle on the frontline of climate change in Mali, by Lyse Doucet, 22 January 2019; https://www.bbc.com/news/the-reporters-46921487; accessed 16 June 2019.

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“winners”. For the privileged young in the global North objective risk and subjective perception, individual, family and community resources for coping with risk, political participation and innovative, pro-active behaviour are very different from their peers’ in the global South. The experiences of the “environmental victims” of the South may elicit feelings of helplessness, hopelessness, anger, resentment and disconnection and foster strategies of survivalism including gangs to provide protection, riots or “illegal” migration (White 2011). Political structures and policies as well as (religious) beliefs and interpretations of the ecological changes (e.g. climate change as God’s wrath), that do not allow for individual action and responsibility, may further disempower them (Wolf and Moser 2011, p. 560).

3.3 Species Injustice The Anthropocene, however, not only draws our attention to the impending harm of environmental destruction and climate change for present and future generations of humans. It also questions humanity’s role in the evolving drama and its consequences for non-human species and life. In 2014, National Geographic portrayed six species in decline due to climate change. Among them are the orange-spotted filefish (oxymonacanthus longirostris) which is completely dependent on its coral reef habitats, which are endangered by the rising ocean temperature. The polar bear in the Arctic sea and the Adélie penguin in the Antarctic sea are losing their hunting and feeding grounds as sea ice retreats. The golden toad (bufo periglenes), endemic to Central America, has recently gone extinct not least because her habitat, the mountaintop cloud forests, has disappeared due to drought and other climatic changes.10 The BBC reported in summer 2018 that Australian rangers found 90 dead and dying horses in a dried-up waterhole near Alice Springs, in the Northern Territory. Dehydration and starvation had come with a heatwave of 49.5C.11 This year (2019), Namibian authorities declared a national disaster as meteorologists expect the deadliest drought in as many as 90 years. In order to limit the loss of wildlife and to raise money for conservation, they approved the sale of at least 1,000 wild animals—including elephants and giraffes.12 However, vulnerabilities are not only created through global warming, but also by many other human activities. Migrating birds in Canada relying on the eggs laid by horseshoe crabs as their primary source of food famish as the crabs are overfished.13 Agricultural pesticides and pollution contribute to the mass insect extinction within a century threatening to cause a “catastrophic” collapse of 10 https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/03/140331-global-warming-climate-change-

ipcc-animals-science-environment; accessed 14 June 2019. 11 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-46981750; accessed 14 June 2019. 12 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/16/namibia-drought-auction-1000-wild-animals; accessed 19 June 2019. 13 https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/03/science/bird-migration-horseshoe-crabs.html?action= click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage§ion=Science; accessed 14 June 2019.

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nature’s ecosystems.14 Plastic pollution leads to many forms of prolonged mortal agony including suffocation, strangling and starvation through ingested plastic.15 Animals are silenced, marginalized, abused, exploited and killed by the millions, while their lives are intimately intertwined with human lives. We adore the little kitten on our lap, find our peace of mind listening to bird song, find entertainment in zoos or when hunting wild animals, eat animal bodies, consume other animal products or products based on animal experimentation and “develop” land that is the habitat of wild animals. Land used for human settlement, industry and agriculture displaces its indigenous (non-human, and often human) inhabitants, pollutes and carves up their lebensraum, and disrupts their natural migration patterns. Animals who do not serve human purposes or fulfil human expectations of “naturalness” are deemed pests or invasive and are rigorously exterminated. Youth research has largely neglected the embeddedness of young people’s lifeworlds and cultures in the natural environment and their multifaceted relationships with and dependencies on the non-human world. Bringing it into view uncovers a dominant belief system and power structure that deeply colours young people’s lifeworlds and cultures and touches on all aspects of their lives including school, work and leisure. We are speaking here of the anthropocentric belief that humanity is the apotheosis of natural history standing above nature and beyond natural constraints, and that the human subject is the measure of all things and defined by its opposition to the non-human, animalistic, natural and wild. The denial of the only partially human’s, sub-human’s and non-human’s subjectivity has facilitated their marginalization, exploitation and annihilation. The long tradition of European anthropocentric and dualistic thought profitably combines with capitalism. The large-scale and industrialized exploitation of nature and non-human living beings is a significant and unquestionable pillar of Western economies. It has rapidly spread to other parts of the world in the course of globalization and financialization of capital as it is driven not by consumers’ demands but shareholders’ interests (Spannring 2018). Young people are implicated in these norms and practices primarily through consumer culture and lifestyles. Animal-based products and products or activities that involve high levels of energy and water, pollution and the destruction of habitats are difficult to forgo since they are essential markers of identities and belonging in consumer society (Autio and Heinonen 2004; Brisman and South 2015; Spannring 2019). Another important aspect are young peoples’ job opportunities that directly or indirectly contribute to animal exploitation and nature destruction and are not negotiable for young people as long as governments do not influence the industry towards a more sustainable, “green” or ethical economy. Young people in a Canadian region characterized by a rapid development of the oilsands, did “perceive the need to balance environmental risks with economic growth but provided a range of risk justifications (i.e. companies are good environmental managers, oil was a societal 14 https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/insect-extinction-nature-climate-change-franci sco-sanchez-bayo-sydney-science-a8773326.html; accessed 14 June 2019. 15 https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2018/06/plastic-planet-animals-wildlife-imp act-waste-pollution/; accessed 14 June 2019.

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necessity, […]) in articulating their understandings” (O’Connor 2019, p. 273). The reproach that young people are going on climate strike while not being ready to change their lifestyle fails to acknowledge how deeply steeped societies, economies and cultures are in the objectification and commodification of animals and nature and how difficult it is to step outside this system. Large sections of young people are further entangled in interacting and mutually reinforcing systems of oppression and exploitation, such as the gendered division of labour, the exploitation of the global South by the wealthy global North and the destruction of the natural world under global capitalism (Mies 1998). Exploitation on many levels is also visible in connection with the animal industrial complex where profit making goes with the slaughter of millions of animals, large-scale deforestation and pollution, the destruction of small-scale farming communities, the exploitation of migrant workers in the slaughterhouses and social disintegration of their communities (Nibert 2013). In fact, all cases of environmental risk for humans always implies that non-human forms of life have already been harmed. Oppression based on race, gender, class, species and other criteria is not accidental but the result of measuring the worth and expendability of life forms against the norm of the white, male middle-class human (Snaza and Weaver 2014). By paying attention to the material commonalities and interdependencies between humans, animals and nature, as well as their interrelated vulnerabilities to power and violence, youth research could contribute to social transformation and liberation in the Anthropocene.

4 Intergenerational Learning Generation and education are basic pedagogic concepts, which are closely related in that education often implies interactions between generations. The word generation originates from the Latin word geratio or gerare, which means both “descending from” and “producing”. It is associated with the image of a family tree, which passes knowledge, skills and values from one generation to the next (Ecarius 2008). However, generation as a pedagogic relationship is not restricted to families, but also applies to other contexts such as schools, workplaces, political, social and cultural organizations and local communities. Thus, intergenerational relations exist as pedagogic relations in formal, non-formal and informal settings. The Anthropocene calls into question the utility of the notion of education as the transmission of knowledge, skills and norms. Certainly, Mead’s concept of a postfigurative culture (Mead 1970), in which the lack of social and ecological change is connected with intergenerational learning that predetermines young people’s future lives and identities, is no longer applicable in societies that have to grapple with very fundamental ecological change. Under the impression of the student movement in the 1960s Margaret Mead ascribed enormous transformative power to the young generation. At that time, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962 [2002]) inspired the green movement against environmental destruction. Anti-Vietnam protests and the Flower Power movement propagated peace. A little later, the anti-nuclear power movement and Greenpeace

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appeared and Amnesty International made itself known worldwide. Against this background of social and cultural transformation, Mead developed her concept of prefigurative culture, which relates to an unknown future. In the face of the Anthropocene, which likely involves ecological change hitherto unexperienced by humanity, Mead’s concept seems appropriate in that there is no longer a valid frame of reference, which the older generation could pass on. All generations are immigrants in a new era. The young climate strikers, however, are not starting with a clean slate. Rather, they find themselves in a co-figurative culture. Here, culture is oriented towards change, but the frame of reference is pregiven. Young people choose their peers as role models and develop new behavioural patterns, but within unquestioned boundaries. Intergenerational learning in contemporary Western culture takes place in the name of the production of the future flexible worker and good consumer for the global market, within the confines of achievement orientation and measurement (Biesta 2016), the Western values of individualism and utilitarianism (Jarvis 2008) and an unshakeable adherence to capitalism and anthropocentrism. In the past decades, young people have not so much been drivers of social or cultural change, as they have been driven by the dynamic developments in technology, labour markets and consumer culture. Innovations by young people tend to be quickly used for marketing strategies and absorbed by mass culture (Chisholm 2005). As the Anthropocene moves the exploitation of human and non-human beings as well as nature more generally into our vision, we need to be critical of how the education system reproduces these beliefs and practices. Pedagogy largely presents human–nature and human–animal relationships as if they were a natural state rather than the outcome of social constructions and power relationships. The curriculum, disciplines, discourses and practices in the education system police the human–non-human border and lack a critical approach to the philosophical, social, political and economic roots of the ecological, social and ethical crisis of the Anthropocene. The pedagogic silence on the exploitation of nature and animals fosters the reproduction of structural violence against them and its interrelationships with other forms of oppression. Pedagogy’s almost exclusive consideration of cognition and abstract knowledge, human interests, artefacts and space prevents the fully embodied participation in and responsibility for a more-than-human community (Spannring 2017). The education system thus prepares young people “to be more effective vandals of the earth” (Orr 2004, p. 2), rather than—as would be needed in times of ecological emergency—becoming a place of ecological healing (Jardine 2000, p. 14). A similar concern exists with respect to education for sustainable development (ESD) (e.g. Kopnina 2012). In the context of international efforts, the Belgrade Charter (UNEP 1975) focused on the protection of the environment from human activities, whereas subsequent developments turned towards environmental management and justice, i.e. the sustainable use of natural “resources” and “ecosystem services” and their fair distribution. With the integration of ESD into school curricula, an education may be reintroduced that is biased towards humanity and obscures moral obligations towards other species and ecosystems. On the level of upper secondary education, in particular, ESD seems to promote the acquisition of skills

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and knowledge necessary for the green economy thereby fostering anthropocentric and capitalist ideologies and securing corporate power (Kopnina 2012). The oxymoron “sustainable growth” brings two contradictory concepts together (Wals and Jickling 2002). It undermines a critical understanding how sustainable ecological processes are threatened by economic growth, profit-orientation and consumerism (Clark and York 2005; Klein 2014; Eurostat 2019). It further contributes to the de-responsibilization of the public sphere from the protection of the ecological community by relegating responsibility to the individual consumer (Schindel-Dimick 2015). The question of how to live ethically and sustainably in a more-than-human world necessarily leads to an acute eco-political awareness and practice. It starts from the recognition that we all live in ecological communities, which are dependent on a shared environment and the flourishing of all its human and non-human members as the irreducible common good (Curry 2000). While the ESD discourse rather obscures the human supremacy complex, power relations and political conflicts, and education generally rejects politicization (Biesta 2016), critical environmental educators call for a “politicised ethic of care” (Russell and Bell 1996) or a “political ecology of education” (Lloro-Bidart 2015). Caring for the ecological community in the Anthropocene implies understanding complex ecological and socio-political contexts, deconstructing anthropocentric and neoliberal power relations, belief systems and cultural practices, and decentering the human (Russell and Bell 1996; Lloro-Bidart 2015; Schindel-Dimick 2015). It involves learning about, for, with and in multispecies communities (Russell and Bell 1996; Lloro-Bidart and Banschbach 2019). Seen from the perspective of intergenerational justice and learning, then, it is the responsibility of this generation’s educators to open up space for a prefigurative culture, which enables learning for change, i.e. fostering deep social change through pedagogic practices, and learning in change, i.e. a new understanding of learning and education policy (Sterling 2001, pp. 34f.). This challenge moves concepts like social learning (Wals and van der Leij 2009) and social participation (Wenger 1998) centre stage. They emphasize the bodily, sensual, spiritual and social dimensions of learning, which are more prominent in non-Western ways of learning than in Western concepts (Merriam and Kim 2011). Learning, moreover, always involves political dimensions (Freire 1970 [2014]; Kahn 2010; Spannring 2018). An example for collective learning for change is urban gardening. Urban gardening projects have been launched in contexts of youth work and community development in order to open green spaces, care for ecosystems, improve community integration, foster public participation, counter urban dependence on global food systems and recover socio-ecological memories and skills of food production (Barthel et al. 2015; Travaline and Hunold 2010). Socio-ecological knowledge that is no longer put to practice tends to be lost over time so that it has to be revived, renewed and reorganized. Collectively managed gardens resemble “living libraries” (Barthel et al. 2015, p. 1326) that contain—often tacit—knowledge about plants, soil fertility, micro climate and practices, but may need to be updated with new scientific knowledge and ethical considerations, e.g. concerning the protection of animal residents and facilitation of biodiversity. Political questions quickly arise as urban green

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space is highly contested by real estate interests (Barthel et al. 2015, p. 1328), or the inclusion of disadvantaged groups of the population in access to and decision-making in urban gardening projects is not safeguarded (Travaline and Hunold 2010). In other geographical and cultural contexts, political legacies of colonialism can preclude the teaching and learning of ecological subsistence lifestyles. This is the case with the conservation ethic and community-based natural resource management of the Lakota people, where tribal, state and federal land policies restrict access of Lakota households to the land. These structural barriers separate the First Nation people from their means of subsistence, alienate them from local ecological relationships and expose them to increased social and ecological vulnerability. By contrast, the traditional ecological approach, symbolized by the free-roaming buffalo, is the basis for everyday hands-on experience with nature and non-human animals, local institutions, culture, identity, sense of place and responsibility within an ecological community. The future of Lakota youth who struggle with social trauma involving drug abuse and gang violence thus depends very much on their empowerment, autonomy for tribal institutions and the revival and transmission of a stewardship model for all who dwell in this landscape (Pickering Sherman et al. 2010).

5 Conclusion: Youth Research and Youth Work for a More-Than-Human World Youth research can find much inspiration from environmental sociology that seeks a “deeper understanding of the human dimensions of climate change and its social, institutional, and cultural dynamics” (Brulle and Dunlap 2015, p. 2). It recognizes that anthropogenic climate change and environmental destruction have their origins in human daily routines, habits and beliefs formed by social, political and economic power structures as well as cultural and philosophical traditions. While the sustainability discourse tends to portray solutions as consensual, apolitical and universal and individuals as merely in need of incentives and encouragement, environmental sociology warns against behavioural engineering, technocratic management and governance, which leave the wider social context and institutions unexamined and vested interests unaccountable (ibid.). The demand to go beyond anthropocentric social sciences (Urry 2011; Latour 2004) is of acute relevance for youth research, where the basic question might be the following: “What does it mean to grow up in an era of large-scale nature destruction, mass extinction and industrialized death?” Researchers are just beginning to understand the importance of nature and non-human animals for children, adults and communities (Melson 2005; Myers 2007; Louv 2008; Hartig et al. 2014) and to recognize how human and non-human lives are intimately intertwined in terms of evolution, genetics, ecology and culture (Haraway 2007). This understanding seems to grow at a time when the human species has already set a spectacular destruction in motion. For youth research, this phenomenon suggests a perspective on present and future human generations’ ways of participation in and

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impacts on the ecological community. It must therefore overcome the human/animal and culture/nature divide and the exclusion of the non-human in its disciplinary selfunderstanding. We already share our world with animal co-citizens (domesticated animals), denizens (feral or wild animals living in or near human settlements) and sovereign animal communities (wild animals) (cf. Donaldson and Kymlicka 2011). Ignoring their interests and our interdependence with them amounts to jeopardizing the life and prospects of future generations of all who dwell here. Sociology and youth research share a self-understanding of reflexivity and social critique, working towards a deconstruction of power relations and ideologies in order to empower citizens to participate meaningfully in the reformation of unethical and unsustainable structures and practices. The endeavour to “create the conditions for a future that is more forgiving and generous rather than exploitative of humans, environments and animals” (White 2011, p. 18) necessarily involves fundamental ethical questions, particularly as they touch on economic power, (bio-) technological possibilities and political decision-making. This field of concern is illuminated by Benh Zeitlin’s drama film Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012) about a marginalized community struggling for survival and autonomy in the context of environmental damage caused by a flood. Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel Oryx and Crake (2003) of Foucauldian biopower in a post-apocalyptic era might even more drastically sharpen it. These alarming visions compel youth research to shift attention to young people’s socio-ecological identities and practices as well as the potential for ecopolitical empowerment within the respective stratified social structures, economic and technological practices and manifestations of political power. Such a context suggests a critical pedagogy that benefits from a range of approaches including ecofeminism (Russell and Bell 1996), eco-pedagogy and critical animal studies pedagogy (Kahn 2010; Spannring 2018), posthumanist education (Snaza and Weaver 2014), indigenous thought and common world pedagogy (PaciniKetchabaw and Nxumalo 2016; Taylor 2017). It addresses the intersectionality of oppression and examines the mechanisms through which the education system reproduces not only racism, sexism and classism but also speciesism and anthropocentrism. It further seeks to develop a counter-discursive education, which challenges dominant assumptions and practices, and probes alternatives (Russell and Bell 1996). The intellectual, ethical and emotional journey towards an ecological community begins with a sense of wonder and affinity and involves an embodied, sensual experience of other beings and our connections with them (ibid., p. 74). Fostering compassion and an active engagement with and for the more-than-human world is not restricted to wild places but can take place in the schoolyard, the local park or neighbourhood. Critical eco-pedagogy is therefore relevant for the full range of pedagogic settings from kindergartens, schools, to youth work and community development, and on all levels of participation starting from youth information and education, youth consultations and co-decision-making to youth-lead organizations and lobbying. An illustration of such a critical ecological learning process is a common world investigation in a degraded neighbourhood lagoon in the middle of a new housing development in south-western Sydney, Australia. The children’s encounters with the animal inhabitants of the wetland—a swamp hen, a turtle and an eel—inspired an

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affective and creative engagement with their habitat and questions of environmental responsibility, urban land use and water management. The young people expressed their concern over the well-being of these animals in rap songs, a dance, a picture book, and in letters to local and federal authorities. In a learning process that “opens towards the future”, the students developed an awareness of a shared responsibility for a community that includes not only themselves and their playground but also non-human animals, plants, water, garbage bins, fences, streets, buildings and the intersections und interdependencies between them (Gannon 2017, p. 17). “Youth in the Anthropocene” thus invites us to embark on journeys to highly differential yet interlinked vulnerabilities in a complex matrix of socio-ecological change. Awareness of the compound causes and consequences of environmental issues, which have an impact on all inhabitants of this more-than-human world, however, also affords us an intergenerational learning process that reconceptualizes economic relationships and socio-cultural practices towards a more just and sustainable future.

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Youth Cultures, Right-Wing Extremism and Violence Hannes Krall

1 Introduction Right-wing extremism is a growing phenomenon across Western countries, challenging all aspects of social and political life. The international scene of right-wing extremists is connected via social media and other online sources. They can organize joint demonstrations, sports-fan-club activities and events like right-wing-rock concerts. International networking is accompanied by the distribution of specific products, clothes and symbols to demonstrate cohesion. These developments seem to be driven by contradicting societal forces. A process of globalization in all areas of social, cultural and economic life on one side, and a rise of nationalistic, ethnocentric and authoritarian attitudes on the other. The lifeworlds of young people and their youth cultures are shaped by these processes. What might be experienced by many as an advantage of being part of a global society—in terms of education and work, social and cultural events, travelling and consumption, etc.—by others might be seen as a threat of losing identity, social status and orientation in life. Political and ideological patterns of right-wing extremism seem to fill this gap by offering a fictitious world to fight for, and one in which young people would experience social identity, status, recognition and power as well as security and orientation. Therefore, the rise of right-wing extremism among young people needs to be seen in the context of globalization and changing lifeworlds. In professional fields like social work or counselling, one is mainly dealing with young right-wing people whose life problems are the main focus. However, an approach that seeks to understand the importance of this political phenomenon in connection to the adolescents’ coping in life should not ignore that right-wing extremism is violent and directed against other people—against democracy and a H. Krall (B) Institute of Educational Sciences and Research (IfEB), Alpen-Adria-University, Klagenfurt, Austria e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 G. Knapp and H. Krall (eds.), Youth Cultures in a Globalized World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65177-0_9

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society based on human rights. And yet, juvenile right-wing extremism does not represent the strangeness and destructiveness of another world, but rather is an expression of the world we live in—above all, the everyday life of young people. In this chapter, case studies of right-wing young people in Austria will illustrate how biographical experiences of violence, neglect, maltreatment or stress due to conflicting family relationships can be related to the adolescents’ development of right-wing orientation. Therefore, it is imperative to include their biographical and lifeworld perspectives in order to understand phenomena of juvenile right-wing extremism. Based on case studies, the following contribution emphasizes that young right-wing people need to re-organize their everyday life with the help of professional educational support and social work.

2 Right-Wing Extremism—Definitions, Prevalence and Theoretical Explanations Although there has been a long discourse about different terms like the new right movement (Nouvelle Droite), far right, radical right, neo-nationalism, right-wing populism and right-wing extremism, there is still no consensus of how to label current political groups which are emerging throughout European countries (Gingrich and Banks 2006; Greven and Grumke 2006; Wodak et al. 2013; Miller-Idriss and Pilkington 2017; Hufer 2018). Right-wing extremism is a collective term of political thoughts and activities, which are based on an anti-democratic authoritarian society and a nationalistic and anti-pluralistic ideology. It denies claims for social and legal equality for everyone, and it includes totalitarian orientations such as neo-Nazism, racism and/or antisemitism. In addition, violence is accepted in order to transform the nation-state into an authoritarian national and/or ethnic “community”. The term right-wing extremism originated within the practice of constitutional law in Germany, where since the 1970s it has described a politically “right-wing”, anticonstitutional, nationalist and racist view (Kiess and Decker 2010, p. 10). Later on, this term was adopted in science. Heitmeyer (1987) suggested to distinguish between right-wing extremist action (especially violence) and right-wing extremist attitudes. “Right-wing extremism is an attitudinal pattern whose unifying characteristics are the notion of inequalities. These express themselves in the political sphere in the affinity to dictatorial forms of government, chauvinist attitudes and downplaying or justification of National Socialism. In the social sphere, they are characterized by anti-Semitic, xenophobic and social-darwinistic attitudes” (Kiess and Decker 2010, p. 18). At the level of action, the acceptance of violence alongside an “ideology of inequality” is a key determinant of right-wing extremism. “Acceptance of violence” includes the understanding of violence as a “normal” form of conflict resolution and the willingness to engage in violent behaviour for political reasons. The ideology

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of inequality includes the devaluation and exclusion of individuals and groups of “unequal value”. “Right-wing extremist orientation patterns and modes of action are therefore named as such when the two basic elements converge, i.e. when the structurally violent ideology of inequality is combined with variants of the acceptance of violence as a form of action” (Heitmeyer et al. 1992, p. 32). Hopf et al. have a similar definition for the term. However, instead of non-equality they use the concept of ethnocentrism, emphasizing the specific idealization of the in-group and the devaluation of the out-group. Furthermore, the justification or trivialization of National Socialism is cited as a criterion (Hopf et al. 1995, p. 32). If the term “right-wing extremism” is used in scientific studies (Borstel 2011, pp. 5ff.), very often it is not assumed that there is a clearly definable ideology, but rather a sum of ideological fragments or set pieces. Therefore, the phenomenon of right-wing extremism is also seen as a “syndrome” of different characteristics (Schubarth and Melzer 1993, pp. 59ff.). Among the most frequently used attitude elements are: nationalism, hostility towards foreigners, ethnocentrism, racism, antiSemitism, authoritarianism, anti-democratic attitude, anti-pluralism and a positive attitude towards National Socialism (Kleinert and De Rijke 2001, p. 170). The theoretical concepts for the phenomenon of right-wing extremism are usually based on models that include personality models and socialization, the social environment, socio-structural and cultural phenomena and societal processes of change (Kleinert and De Rijke 2001, pp. 186f.; Winkler 2001, pp. 49ff.; Heitmeyer 2002, pp. 511ff.). Integrative theoretical models try to combine the various factors of influence. Thus, Ottomeyer interprets the right-wing extremism syndrome as an interaction of three large groups of factors that develop their dynamics in the social everyday life of adolescents: “firstly character and familial dispositions, secondly unsettling changes on a social macro level which threatens safety and a stable identity, and thirdly, demagogic influences and fear-mongering of politicians” (Ottomeyer 2002, p. 13). Longitudinal studies show that overall a right-wing attitude pattern is widespread in society. In a representative survey, Decker and Brähler (2018) examined the extent and prevalence of right-wing extremist attitudes in Germany. They used six dimensions to capture extreme right-wing attitudes: advocacy of a right-wing authoritarian dictatorship, chauvinism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, social Darwinism and belittlement of National Socialism. Follow-up examinations revealed a longitudinal course (Decker and Brähler 2006, 2008, 2018; Decker, Kieses et al. 2010a). Out of the six dimensions of extreme right-wing attitudes, xenophobia and chauvinism are the most widespread among the population (see Decker et al. 2018, p. 91). Adolescents and young adults (14–30 years) represent 27.2/15.8% of xenophobic and 12.0/13.7% of chauvinist attitudes. A smaller segment of this particular age group (3.8/3.4%) represents anti-Semitic positions. This pattern of attitudes is surpassed by the older populations. Differences in the results are related to differences in education, gender, employment status and age. Women and people with a high school diploma have much lower scores. Right-wing extremist positions are represented to a much greater extent by people without a high school diploma (Table 1).

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Table 1 Manifest right-wing attitudes and age (Decker et al. 2018, p. 91) Dimensions of right-wing attitudes

Support for dictatorship

14–30 years East/West N = 92/387 %

31–60 years East/West N = 237/1062 %

>60 years East/West N = 169/469 %

4.4/3.4

7.2/2.8

8.3/1.9

Chauvinism

12.0/13.7

19.1/19.2

21.3/23.7

Xenophobia

27.2/15.8

36.7/22.7

24.9/26.8 6.6/5.0

Anti-semitism

3.8/3.4

4.6/4.1

Social Darwinism

2.2/2.9

6.3/2.8

3.6/2.6

Belittlement of national socialism

1.1/3.1

3.4/2.2

3.6/3.0

In general, the authors emphasize in their results the high levels of approval for extreme right-wing opinions. They conclude that “a far-right attitude in Germany has relatively stable roots. In times of economic or social crisis, these attitudes can lead to action” (Decker et al. 2003, p. 76). This circumstance seems to be confirmed later on, especially in the years of the financial crisis (Decker, Weizsmann et al. 2010b). On the basis of research studies, it can be shown that there is a clear correlation between problematic socialization conditions—especially biographical stressors— and right-wing extremist attitudes. In a longitudinal study by Ihle et al. (2003), the development of right-wing extremist attitudes and violence was examined starting from childhood up to adulthood. In the evaluation, a distinction was made between slight and strong expressions of right-wing extremist attitude. 14.3% of the respondents reported slight and 2.4% strong extreme right attitudes. With regard to violence, 10.7% showed a slight and 3.6% a strong increase in violence. Low-socioeconomic status, a low intelligence quotient and academic failure were identified as risk factors for right-wing extremist attitudes. With regard to the inclination to violence, it was possible to identify adverse family circumstances and the existence of expansive disorders in young adults as contributing factors (Ihle et al. 2003, pp. 135ff.). Correlations between biographical aspects and extreme right attitude patterns are also highlighted in other studies. In a representative survey of the state of North RhineWestphalia, the attitude towards right-wing extremism and violence was studied among young people. Adolescents with extreme right attitude patterns show above average bad childhood experiences and they believe to an extent above average that life circumstances were not in their favour. According to their own assessment, they have little influence on shaping their lives, are “highly insecure and have strong feelings of helplessness and powerlessness” (Rechtsextremismus und Gewalt 2001, pp. XXIff.). Decker and Brähler also showed in their studies that a combination of psychological and social factors determines the strength of right-wing extremist attitudes. Right-wing attitudes are stronger, if adolescents describe parents as punishing and overburdened. Instead of expressing emotional warmth, parents reject their children

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and behave disrespectfully. “The less emotional warmth was experienced, the higher the right-wing extremist attitude amongst respondents. The higher the right-wing extremist attitudes, the more likely the respondents described themselves as suspicious and rather dominant. The capacity for self-reflection decreases to the same extent as the right-wing extremist attitude increases” (Decker and Brähler 2006, p. 125). The findings in a study by the Criminological Research Institute in Lower Saxony demonstrate that violent parental behaviour is accompanied by an increased risk of young people developing right-wing extremist attitudes. Furthermore, the study emphasizes the importance of leisure time activities in connection with violent media and alcohol consumption (Baier et al. 2009, pp. 126–127).

3 Lifeworlds and Right-Wing Extremism of Young People Political right-wing positions of young people are a multifaceted problem. In the public discourse and enacting of right-wing extremism among young people one can easily find a mix of ideological attitudes connected to aspects of their coping with daily life challenges. Adolescents are looking for their values and answers for essential questions concerning their life, self-assertion, search for security, orientation and social affiliation. The socialization process has an impact on developing a right-wing identity. It can be a way of coping with experiences of deprivation and disintegration and of showing their protest against established social groups (Salzborn 2015). Adolescents tend to integrate what ideological elements they find in their social environment. Current longitudinal studies strongly demonstrate that right-wing extremist attitudes are much more prevalent in adults (31–60 years) and especially in the elderly (over 60 years) (see Decker and Brähler 2018). Against the background of educational support and social work with right-wing youth, Krafeld emphasizes that young people “as a rule re-produce those patterns of interpretation and action that are dominant in their social environment” (Krafeld 2001, p. 281). However, they not only passively adopt the existing patterns of interpretation, they also actively shape them to gain orientation (see Krafeld 2008, p. 293). These young people find, at least temporarily, answers and solutions to their life questions within right-wing youth groups. The contact is usually made via friends and acquaintances in connection with right-wing youth culture—especially related to sports or music events—as stated in the report of the Austrian state protection authorities (“Verfassungsschutz”): “This young right-wing extremism is a ‘transitional scene’ (‘Durchgangsszene’) and a predominantly male phenomenon of adolescents, which is overcome by the majority after some time. It was found that only a few people continued to develop from primitive to ideologically oriented rightwing extremism” (Verfassungsschutzbericht 2011, p. 33). Whether vulnerable young people can manage this “transitional phase” constructively depends to a large extent on their social support. “Turning away from the right-wing extremist scene is almost

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impossible for adolescents without outside help, because structures of recognition no longer apply and friends, and with them a large part of the social environment, have to be abandoned” (Bauer and Mernyi 2011, p. 480). Case studies can provide a better understanding of how young people find their way to join political right-wing groups, but also how they can leave them behind. Many followers’ affiliation to right-wing groups is looser than it might appear. In professional fields like social work or counselling, one is mainly dealing with young right-wing extremists whose life problems are in the foreground. Educational intervention needs “to start from a standpoint of empathy for the uncertainty and precarity of young people’s lives, the contexts in which they live” (Davies 2008, pp. 620–621). In her case analysis of young right-wing extremists, MenschikBendele emphasized that “many young people who demonstrate right-wing extremist behaviour have been particularly discouraged, traumatized, abandoned and seduced” (Menschik-Bendele 2002, p. 291). Therefore, it is imperative to include a biographical and a lifeworld perspective of the affected in order to understand phenomena of juvenile right-wing extremism. In this contribution, biographical and social experiences of the affected and their subjective processing are examined in order to understand right-wing extremist patterns, orientation and action. If one follows the biographical traces of young Skinheads, different developments come to the surface. A more detailed biographical analysis provides insights into the subjective meanings of right-wing extremist behaviour, which can often be understood in connection with coping with life issues. On the basis of the biography of three young Skinheads, psychological and social moments of strain and coping can be traced—the scenes on the social stage of their lifeworlds.1

3.1 Breaking Up Relationships and Violence—“Behind the Gates of Valhalla” David was 17 years old when he hanged himself in a forest near his home. Before his suicide he left messages on doors and walls in his apartment. “Valhalla, I’m coming!” In Valhalla, the afterworld of the Germanic heroes and warriors, he would meet his mythological ancestors, “behind the gates of Valhalla, where the brave warriors live for all eternity”. He was found in a bomber jacket, Nazi-boots and swastikas on his head, which had been shaven bald. David was part of a group of extreme right-wing Skinheads who were “led” by an older teenager. The group was in touch with German neo-Nazis, whom they called their “comrades”. The “leader” had been sentenced several times and was in prison at the time of David’s suicide—a “hero in prison”, as David put it. The group was 1 The analysis of the included biographies of young adults had originally been published in German:

Krall, H. (2007). Trauma bei Kindern und Jugendlichen - Szenische Arbeit in Psychotherapie und Pädagogik. Münster, Wien: Lit Verlag.

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responsible for several violent attacks, thefts and vandalism. Molotov cocktails were thrown against a foreign restaurant and a foreigner’s home, property was damaged in a church and walls smeared with swastikas. The adolescents were reported, brought to trial and convicted.

3.1.1

Family Conflicts, Discouragement and Loss of Relationships

David’s mother worked part-time as an office worker. The father had to give up his manual work due to a physical handicap and had completed a retraining course. When David was five years old his parents divorced after their relationship had been under strain for years. The contact with his father was reduced to occasional visits. The mother reported that David behaved aggressively during the divorce period. When he started to go to school, the conflicts worsened. David had to change school after only a few months because of aggression, misbehaviour and difficulties at school. The mother asked her sister, who lived in another city, to take care of David. Due to the long distance, she saw her son only irregularly on weekends. Only a year later the mother took her son back to her house. Conflicts in the family and at school were part of everyday life—aggression towards the mother, withdrawal and provocative behaviour, truancy, thefts. At the age of eleven and a half, the tensions between mother and son became unbearable, which led her to contact the Youth Welfare Service (“Jugendamt”). They arranged accommodation at a boarding school against David’s will. David insulted his mother and became violent. He destroyed furniture and refused to leave the apartment. He was then picked up from home and hospitalized in a psychiatric hospital for children and young adults. For David, this was a shock. In the following three months a detailed diagnostic procedure was undertaken and further social care was prepared. The psychiatric assessment revealed no psychopathological abnormalities. However, David was described as a “rather discouraged child”, who considered everything to be pointless. The detailed diagnosis concluded that he was a boy of average abilities. The strained family climate was not able to provide enough affection and orientation.

3.1.2

Educational Support, Social Work and Psychotherapy

After the inpatient stay on the psychiatric ward, David was transferred to a shared residence with educational support from a social worker. In addition, he was offered psychotherapy. The first therapy session was challenging. David limited himself to “yes” and “no” answers. He described his situation as “alright”. Emotions were blocked off. At school, “everything is fine” too, even though he was not fond of the teachers. “Some of them are o.k.” His shared residence pleased him, but he would rather be with his mother.

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In a therapeutic game, he chose bird puppets and performed the story of a young bird. On a tree it shared a nest with its mother. When David wanted to sit in the nest as a baby-bird, he fell off the tree. Just in time, the father of the bird came to rescue him, caught him and brought him back to the mother. Together, a new stable nest was built for the little bird. However, this “nest” could never be built in his family home or later at his accommodation. After only a few weeks, he shared in his therapy session that he was making every effort to get back home to his mother. According to the social worker he had “destroyed the whole flat”. David forced the social worker into the role of the powerless: “I do whatever I want, and you can’t do anything about it”. With destructive aggression he tried to retrieve what he had lost: affection and self-determination. David received unexpected support from his mother, who suddenly—after repeatedly rejecting her son—wanted to take him back. As if David had to be rescued, he announced that his mother would “get him out”. David was taken back to his “nest”, from which he had been kicked out several times before. He threatened the social worker to turn the flat upside down again, if he was not permitted to go. Finally, the social worker agreed. Even though as a 13-year-old boy David did not have right-wing contacts back then, he was already fascinated by classmates who were able to exercise power over the weaker. David admired one of his classmates, whom he described as “cool and strong”, because he was ignorant towards the teachers and only did what he wanted. “He attacks anyone he doesn’t like”. He described clashes between his friend and “foreigners” in the classroom, whom he attacked with a hockey stick. His friend would fight them, because, in his eyes, the foreigners were “retarded” and were talking about “stupid things”. Their own feelings of helplessness and powerlessness are projected onto the “retarded foreigners”, who are crushed instead. Destructive aggression replaces constructive self-assertion.

3.1.3

School Exclusion, Skinheads and Violence

When David moved back in with his mother, the family conflict pattern was repeated. After returning to his aggressive behaviour, he was permanently excluded from school. Without graduating, he applied for an apprenticeship in the field of gastronomy. At the age of 15, he joined the local Skinhead scene, which regularly met in pubs and bars consuming a lot of alcohol. This soon led to the dismissal from his workplace and the loss of his apprenticeship. In the role of a Skinhead, the spiral of destructive aggressive behaviour continued. David was convicted for physical assault and for the use of Nazi symbols (“Wiederbetätigung”, transl.: re-engagement in National Socialist activities). With his friends, he sprayed swastikas on walls and threw Molotov cocktails into a Chinese restaurant and a foreigner’s home. Over the course of a year, he committed acts of vandalism. In one church, they destroyed a Bible and defecated in front of the “King of the Jews”.

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After criminal convictions, he was assigned a social worker, who cared for him over the course of more than six months. Although David did not fully reject the contact with the social worker, he was not very cooperative. He was fascinated by violence, telling her proudly about committed crimes and repeatedly expressing violent fantasies. He thought it was “cool” to hurt others. David was attracted by horror movies and brutal wrestling battles, where he found himself identifying with the aggressor. In a “sick horror film” he saw a man’s stomach burst open as he was possessed by a monster who then attacked others—a suitable image for his uncontrollable, destructive aggression. During that time no family support was left. Towards his father, who he was barely in touch with, he felt nothing but “hatred”. He refused any contact and spoke about him derogatively. In addition, two months before his suicide, he was kicked out by his mother and stepfather—for the final time. There was no one there to “rescue” him again. Under the title “Death under the Swastika” the local newspaper reported that David adored Hitler and believed in Valhalla. He chose to die a “hero’s death” and therefore committed suicide. This case study highlights the limitations of a social care system that provides help without any commitment of the family and the affected person involved. It shows how social care and psychotherapy mirror the family’s interaction and ultimately reflect the family system: revealing non-binding relationships that can be manipulated at any time. Based on this case study, it is possible to reconstruct how a teenager goes through a multitude of social care and psychotherapeutic activities and how thereby a traumatic loss of essential relationships is re-enacted in a largely uncoordinated system of helpers. He experienced repetitive and re-traumatizing relationship demolitions: at the end, there is resignation, despair, violence and ultimately a “heroic” suicide, which in his eyes enabled him to find in the afterworld what he was missing in his lifeworld: A permanent place in a “Line of ancestors of brave warriors in Valhalla”, as he stated in his farewell message. Social work with young right-wing extremists requires—as the following examples will show—long-term and continuous work based on a supportive relationship between adolescents and social workers. The copying of rigid role-patterns within a right-wing youth culture should be overcome and a creative role extension should become possible again. The relationship between the teenager and the social worker forms the basis for social learning. Coping with the everyday life and lifeworld orientation is in the foreground of educational support and social work. The aim is to break the cycles of failure and social exclusion, which gradually result in the loss of relationships. The social network erodes—the vacant spaces are replaced by structures of relationships that bind young people to the far-right subculture. Working on social networks is therefore very important. They can be interpreted as a “possibility for the creation of security, sense of belonging, home and meaning of life” (Stimmer 2000, pp. 72f.).

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3.2 Mistreatment and Disorientation—“a Chameleon on the Scout” Marko had Hitler’s battle cry “Sieg Heil!” tattooed on the back of his head, several swastikas on his arms, wore combat boots and a bomber jacket with the words “German Empire” (“Deutsches Reich”) on it. He took part in “national meetings” of the right-wing scene. By belonging to the Skinheads he found social connection and recognition. Above all, he was fascinated by the group’s cohesion—including alcohol consumption and brawls. After breaking the nose of a “comrade”, he was brought to justice and convicted. Emotional neglect, rejection and experiencing abuse had shaped Marko’s childhood and youth. He changed his place of residence and work several times and got caught up in arguments that led to relationships being broken off and being excluded from social networks. Marko was 17 years old when, due to a conflict, he lost his apprenticeship and the option to live with his grandparents. He accepted the offer of accommodation in a shared residence with educational support by a social worker. He wanted to learn how to be “independent”, how to live “a life of his own in an apartment and everything that goes with it”.

3.2.1

Neglect, Violence and Loss of Relationships

Up to the age of 15, Marko lived in a small apartment with his parents and three younger siblings. The living space was cramped and the family had to move repeatedly due to financial hardships and evictions. According to Marko, his biological father never took care of him, and later on refused to contact him, which was a result of Marko joining the Skinheads. According to the social worker, the mother could “provide Marko with at least a minimum level of acceptance and support and is Marko’s only family point of reference”. When Marko turned 15, his parents divorced. His mother said that it had become particularly difficult during this period. In the same year she married her new partner, who turned out to be violent towards her and Marko, mistreating him repeatedly. His mother recalled an incident in which the stepfather slapped Marko’s face and pushed him against the radiator. In addition, Marko witnessed several attacks directed against his mother. Since the mother was unemployed and felt unable to cope with the financial situation and the task of raising children, Marko lived with his paternal grandparents. The grandfather, who consumed alcohol excessively, was described as “very strict”. Many conflicts worsened the situation. After Marko lost his apprenticeship, the grandfather kicked him out. As a result, Marko had no permanent residence and alternated sleeping at his friends’ homes and his mother’s flat. According to her own statements, she was overwhelmed by the ongoing conflicts at home. The social worker reported that she didn’t like dealing with his friends and that he would never come home on time.

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Social Educational Care—“Two Steps Forward, One Step Back…”

Marko tried to give his life meaning and orientation and to find a social grip by joining the far-right Skinheads. But deep down he had a feeling of isolation, lack of selfesteem and identity. Seeking reliable relationships turned out to be a starting point for educational support by a social worker. In order to solve the upcoming problems, Marko agreed to cooperate. Their priority was to arrange a new apprenticeship and to resolve financial issues. Since Marko was motivated to resume his previous training, he soon found a new position where, after a few weeks, he was integrated into everyday working life once again. Nevertheless, his impulsiveness and violence brought Marko into financial distress, as he had to pay for compensation and medical treatment as a result of previously inflicted injuries. Since managing money was never one of Marko’s strengths anyway, he soon accumulated a considerable amount of debt. By gradually building up trust towards his social worker, they established a good working alliance, which allowed them to achieve progress in their educational work. A strict ban ensured that there were no Skinheads visiting Marko’s apartment and a consistent planning of his expenses was introduced. These arrangements enabled Marko to gain some distance from the Skinhead scene and to bring his financial problems under control. The social worker attributed the improvement of the circumstances to the fact that Marko showed himself to be strongly suggestible and able to adapt to new situations—even if only superficially. Indicating an “inner disorientation” that became apparent during the work with Marko, the social worker described the adolescent as “uprooted and easily influenceable”. Marko is a “chameleon”, changing his superficial features like external appearance in order to adapt to his environment. Streeck-Fischer sees the mentioned adaptational efforts as an attempt to cope with fear. Due to traumatic experiences the youngsters would live with a persistent feeling of threat. Adapting to the expectations of the environment gives them a sense of security. However, it makes them easy to manipulate. These young people “do not become leaders – they are fellow travelers who can be manipulated based on their own traumatic experiences” (Streeck-Fischer 1998, p. 171). After promising developments over several months, the U-turn followed: In his spare time, Marko increasingly sought contact with his “comrades” in the Skinhead scene. And at his place of apprenticeship, conflicts were back on the agenda. Calling in sick without explanation strained the relationship with his employer. The social worker tried to help Marko to hold on to the apprenticeship. However, since Marko refused to cooperate, these attempts were without success. The company terminated his contract. Additionally, new conflicts arose in the shared residence. Marko was accommodating an acquaintance with a previous criminal record, who influenced him negatively. He animated Marko to break into several parked cars in order to steal valuables and sell them. They were caught, placed in pre-trial detention and found guilty at the subsequent trial. Marko was sentenced to several months in prison.

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Role Expansion and New Perspectives

In a joint meeting with the responsible social worker, it was discussed whether and under what conditions further help can be offered. Marko expressed his wish for further assistance, as he had lost every single contact. Even his mother, who had up to this point provided him with emotional support, turned away from him. She did not visit him once during his stay in prison. The social worker and Marko agreed upon new goals, which included how to keep contact and provide help during his detention, accompaniment during his trial, finding financial agreements with the bank, and to clarify future perspectives. Marko prepared for the final apprenticeship examination in custody, which he passed a few months later. After the imprisonment, with the help of the social worker, a new apartment was organized and employment opportunities were sought. The main focus, other than fostering a good working alliance, was on dealing with everyday life issues. Despite all the setbacks, the adolescent finally managed to distance himself from the Skinheads. In her report, the social worker stated that Marko was able to develop a critical view on the neo-Nazis and their activities. Marko let his hair grow again and discarded his bomber jacket and combat boots. The adolescent managed to get back on the right track again, however, the described process sets an example for how unstable and fragile social work can be. Suggestibility and the desire for quick answers to life questions and solutions will always remain a risk for further development. In positive terms it can be noted that Marko always returned to the social worker’s support and advice in critical moments and wished for continuous assistance while taking the initiative himself. However, progressive steps during the development of traumatized adolescents depend on a “basic structure of the self” (Streeck-Fischer 1998, p. 164). This self-assurance can be (re) established on the basis of a supportive relationship—the repeated, constructive management of conflicts in cooperation with the social worker is a necessary prerequisite. The established working relationship provided him with trust and someone to rely on, which gave Marko a completely different experience of what social contact could look like—the opposite to the relationship he had with his violent father and the Skinheads. The support team was also able to offer lifeworld-oriented assistance when looking for an apprenticeship, housing finance, debt repayment, etc. A learning process with regard to the challenges accompanying his private and professional requirements was possible because—despite an eroding social network—trustworthy and reliable contacts were provided and enabled social and emotional continuity in everyday private and professional life.

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3.3 Sexual Violence—“My Right-Wing Attitude Is My Personality” Gerit was 14 years old when several conflicts came to a head. There were violent clashes between her mother and her, as she did not follow any rules, stayed away for nights and consumed drugs. During this time, she joined the far-right Skinheads and often used xenophobic slogans: foreigners “are dirt!” She started replacing drug abuse with alcohol consumption. Gerit met with other Skinheads—as she said—in order to further develop her personality: “My right-wing attitude is my personality!” She had a low tolerance for frustration and found it difficult to deal constructively with her aggression. Her performance at school deteriorated and she skipped lessons without offering an explanation. Verbal conflicts and “dangerous threats” led to reports and convictions. It was proposed that she should join a socio-educational flat-sharing community, which she accepted.

3.3.1

Family and Social Environment

Gerit’s parents divorced when she was four years old. Gerit stayed with her mother, who had sole custody. The separation of the parents was conflict-ridden and afflicted her into adolescence. Arguments between mother and daughter arose regularly as Gerit didn’t want to comply with what was expected from her. She accused her father of wanting to control everything—her friends, the school, the social care. Furthermore, he would devalue everything—“Everything I do is bad”—and violate her personal boundaries. Gerit reported that when they went abroad she accompanied him to brothels and saw him dating prostitutes. Gerit was 13 years old at that time. After Gerit moved into the shared residence, the relationship with the mother improved. Her social worker reported that Gerit split off all her negative emotions from her mother and transferred them onto her new social environment, which made it difficult to be accepted. Her social worker concluded, “She has no friends, no one!” On the other hand, she found social connections in the Skinhead scene, where she took part in several activities. With her new “comrades”, Gerit even celebrated Hitler’s birthday. Violating the house rules, Gerit permitted one of her “comrades” to visit her at her accommodation. They drank alcohol and threw firecrackers out of the window. The police were informed by the neighbours. In her imagination, “Germany” became a substitute for home: “Germany is my life, my home”. And, unlike others, she found her “comrades” to be “honest people”. When she fell in love, she faded out reality. As a result, she easily ended up in abusive relationships.

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Experiences of Sexual Violence

One evening, Gerit called her social worker, telling her that she had been raped in her room. The social worker went to see her immediately. Gerit explained that she had been out that evening and met a man, who after accompanying her home, forced her to have sexual intercourse. The social worker encouraged Gerit to report the incident to the police, who sent her to the hospital. The social worker described this nocturnal odyssey as “an insane marathon”, watching Gerit stiffening more and more the longer it took. The social worker came up with the image of a soldier: “Head up, look straight ahead!” Gerit showed the characteristics of a paralysis that is typical for victims of abuse. She insisted that her mother must not be informed about the rape. Rather than expecting protection, she seemed to be afraid of being blamed. It was only after three months that the alleged perpetrator was found by the police. However, a court case against him was thrown out, because Gerit’s statements would have been too sketchy and contradictory. As a consequence, Gerit didn’t want to talk about the rape anymore. During this period, it emerged that Gerit had already experienced and reported a similar incident two years previously, which was also not pursued due to insufficient evidence. Gerit was disappointed and expressed her frustration: “Nobody believed me, it was pointless, why should I try again?” Traumatized victims of abuse often find it difficult to deal with social closeness and distance. They tend to either isolate themselves completely by withdrawing and avoiding social contacts or they expose themselves to the risk of re-traumatization by violation of personal boundaries in intimate situations. Gerit deliberately distanced herself from classic female features: “You don’t need femininity. Strength and toughness are important!” Her aggressive and pointedly “male” outfit also suggested an inner identification with the male aggressor. This “frees the external environment from evil, so that the illusion of sufficiently good external objects can be maintained” (Hirsch 2005, p. 128). Even if Gerit did not want to talk about her experiences of sexual abuse anymore, the social worker was perceived as a reliable and trustworthy contact to whom she could turn to in emergency situations.

3.3.3

Problems at School—a New Start in a “Men’s Profession”?

Gerit wanted to complete an apprenticeship and pursue a job that is accepted in her environment. It was important to her “that you have a good social status, that you are not a parasite or anti-social!” She started looking for an apprenticeship in a “male job”, preferably a stonemason. “I can’t deal with girls”, she said about her schoolmates. However, the search turned out to be without success. Despite expanding their search to joiners, electricians, locksmiths and electricians, it was not possible to find an apprenticeship.

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Gerit then decided to switch to a technical college with a focus on weapons technology. The school psychologist advised her against it. The social worker tried to change her mind due to the expected time required for studying. But Gerit was convinced: “I know that it is not easy, I know that it will be hard, but I want that!” The school turned out to be the wrong decision. Although Gerit was motivated and learned a lot, failures soon arose. For a long time, presumably because of the fear to fail again, she denied her problematic situation. “I can do it!” Was her slogan. But Gerit repeatedly stayed away from school and was often found drunk. After being negatively assessed, she did not want to keep attending school.

3.3.4

Role Expansion and New Perspectives

The social worker introduced Gerit to other leisure activities such as educational outdoor activities. She took part in climbing and horse-riding projects. In doing so, she met a new friend who turned out to be “nice and responsible” and had a positive influence on her. From this time onwards and with her friend as a new resource, Gerit began to re-orient herself. The social worker observed that she increasingly distanced herself from the Skinheads, which was evident in her clothes. Her bomber jacket was left in the closet. The combat boots were “no longer needed”. She changed her appearance, let her hair grow and maintained close contact with a friend in her shared accommodation. They often went to a night club, whose visitors they had criticized before. She informed her social worker of other friends that she was going out with. Gerit deleted right-wing songs from her computer and gave away Nazi-literature like “Mein Kampf”. She bought new clothes and attended interviews for an apprenticeship. Further meetings with the social worker over a period of six months showed a continuance of this positive development. Over the course of this challenging relationship, the social worker became a trustworthy person for Gerit, with whom she could discuss important issues, such as problems at school, love and friendship relationships, relationships with parents and relatives, etc. Despite difficult and conflicting times within the relation with the social worker, a constructive “relationship model” was developed and reinforced, which helped to overcome dynamics of idealizing, conflict-avoiding and escalating behaviour. Their cooperation not only provided lifeworld-oriented support, but was also a place for social learning—expressing feelings, checking self-perceptions and perceptions of others, getting involved and setting boundaries, etc.—which could be explored and practiced in order to be transferred to daily social life. Relationships with peers gradually improved when Gerit was finally able to break away from the Skinhead scene.

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4 Resumé In times of globalization and its impact on lifeworlds, political right-wing movements seem to be attractive for a growing number of people in Western countries. Although these right-wing movements vary in their actions and messages, they seem to provide simple worldviews and emotional answers to complex challenges in the current world. Globalization has brought many changes and innovations in areas like social and cultural exchange, education, work, travelling, consumption, etc., which people take for granted in daily life. However, globalization can also be seen as a threat to the existing or idealized life situation of marginalized people who are afraid of losing their social identity, status and recognition in society, which might be expressed in the self-image of “second-class citizens”. Right-wing names and slogans like “Proud boys” in the US or being “loud and proud” in the English Defence League (Pilkington 2016) express their need to be heard and reassured. It is not surprising that these emotional messages are attractive for young people who are looking for orientation, models of “strong” identities and ways of expressing their protest and frustration. Young people, in particular, who are in precarious life situations and therefore facing hardship, are more likely to join right-wing groups. Being part of this subculture and by adopting its ideology they gain a social identity, which seems to help them cope with feelings of isolation, powerlessness and experiences like social exclusion in their families, education or work. If social work engages in youth cultures of right-wing extremism, it is necessary to understand the underlying psychosocial needs of young people. Miller-Idriss and Pilkington conclude that “Interventions seeking to limit the engagement of young people in violent radical right actions cannot therefore create universal curricula but need to understand the concerns, fears and motivations of particular youth populations” (Miller-Idriss and Pilkington 2017, p. 138). The case studies in this chapter show how biographical experiences of violence, neglect, maltreatment or stress due to conflicting family relationships can be related to the development of right-wing orientation of adolescents. Those affected are “often reminded of their personal history when everyday problems arise, which has great influence on their psychological balance” (Scheidle 2001, pp. 57f.). Stressful life situations, failures and social exclusion lead to restrictions within their the role repertoire—active role-creating is replaced by the uncritical adoption of right-wing extremist role patterns. It is striking that in the three observed cases social disintegration processes had occurred as a result of conflictive interactions (in families and schools). The relationship and identity which is offered by the rightwing subculture quickly filled the empty spaces in the social environment—which at least temporarily, conveys a sense of belonging, support and orientation. Young people try to overcome their life issues with the help of far-right subcultural ideologies, interaction patterns and symbolizations. Wearing appropriate outfits, the public appearance provides structure and promotes a feeling of (self-) confidence.

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The social inclusion in the right-wing extremist group—whether real or envisaged— conveys a sense of social identity. Though, integration into this particular subculture leads to social exclusion, such as the loss of employment or housing. In addition, it prolongs the stagnation of personal development, which is manifested mostly in the adolescents’ rigid behavioural pattern. The psychosocial dead-end is covered up by those affected through extreme and violent acts, which give them a feeling of superiority and social control overlaying powerlessness and depression. The role-change from being helpless and dependent to an active role-player in their lifeworld fails. Consequently, their aggression turns into a violent and destructive protest. Though if this no longer opens up new options, the search for a better world can be projected into the world of Germanic gods. In order to overcome the above-mentioned psychosocial dead-end, educational work focuses on competences that help youngsters to face the challenges of their respective life situations: “For young people, the problem doesn’t consist in the issues they cause as right-wing extremists, but their own internal dilemmas. Therefore, the centre of attention is not on ‘fighting’ or ‘repressing’ right-wing extremism or their violent behaviour, but on the external support when facing their everyday lives” (Buderus 2001, p. 80). However, this specific approach requires that the destructive patterns of interaction and relationships are not repeated in the educational support and social work, which may have been the reason for burdening or traumatic biographies in the past (Finger-Trescher and Krebs 2000). Social work requires a balance of accepting the adolescent’s views and nevertheless being able to keep a professional and critical distance. Krafeld opposes “helpless antifascism” with an accepting approach that involves listening to them and showing interest in their life situation. He emphasizes that every action has a subjective reasoning. Therefore, they will only be willing to change their behaviour, if they see a purpose in doing so (Krafeld 2008, p. 303). The confrontation with right-wing extremist orientation must therefore be based on growing personal relationships, which takes into account the respective individual, his/her experiences and his/her everyday lifeworld (Krafeld 2001, p. 288). It is therefore crucial to learn from each individual experience and reflect on successful and failed occurrences. The case studies demonstrate how within educational support role extension can be encouraged and how relationships can be established outside the far-right subgroup. Working on building a stable relationship between the social workers and the adolescents in connection with lifeworld-oriented support is essential in order to help them cope with their daily challenges.

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Identity and Cultural Diversity

Research on Chinese Youth’s Values in the New Era Yuhang Wang and Hang Yu

Abstract The implementation of the reform and opening-up policies within the last four decades have brought China a deeper connection with the whole world. Benefiting from actively integrating itself into economic globalization and the current world order, China has experienced profound social and economic changes, which promote value changes or even shifts of Chinese at the same time. As the most active group in a society, youth is like the barometer of social development, from which we can clearly see value changes in the society. Thus, the study focuses on Chinese youth’s values and explores how socioeconomic development exerts its influence on individuals. The article begins with a literature review of both foreign and domestic research on Chinese youth, from which the research gap—Chinese youth’s values— is pinpointed. It then briefly describes the theoretical background, followed by the methodology and results. Discussion will be given as the final part.

1 Introduction The implementation of the reform and opening-up policies within the last four decades have brought China a deeper connection with the whole world. Benefiting from actively integrating itself into economic globalization and the current world order, China has experienced profound social and economic changes, which promote value changes or even shifts of Chinese at the same time. As the most active group in a society, youth is like the barometer of social development, from which we can clearly see value changes in the society. Thus, the study focuses on Chinese youth’s values and explores how socioeconomic development exerts its influence on individuals. The article begins with a literature review of both foreign and domestic Y. Wang (B) School of Marxism, University of International Business and Economics, Beijing, China e-mail: [email protected] H. Yu School of Foreign Studies, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an, China e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 G. Knapp and H. Krall (eds.), Youth Cultures in a Globalized World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65177-0_10

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research on Chinese youth, from which the research gap—Chinese youth’s values— is pinpointed. It then briefly describes the theoretical background, followed by the methodology and results. Discussion will be given as the final part.

2 Literature Review When people around the whole world are stunned by the spectacular social transformation of China during the past four decades, scholars have begun to turn their eyes on Chinese youth, the core group of individuals who have been described as the sun at eight or nine in the morning since Maoist time and who will “play a vital role in China’s transition and its future activities” (Liu 2011, p. 1). In particular, while the post-1980 cohort surprised the Chinese society in mid-2008 by behaving “unselfishly or even heroically” (Liu 2011, p. 141) in the earthquake relief work of Wenchuan and showing their support for the Beijing Olympics as volunteers, they also attracted many scholars’ attention, which can be seen from a clear growth of academic research published since 2008 (see Fig. 1 below). Scrutiny of the published research showed that they had conducted a full investigation of Chinese youth in manifold aspects. For example, scholars from sociology have devoted their attention to the following social issues of China’s youth: the health problem of youth (Fu and Land 2015; Leung et al. 2017), juvenile violent offending (Zhou et al. 2017), parental migration and youth development (Jordan et al. 2014;

Fig. 1 The volume of academic research published in the SSCI database. (Notes The authors chose “youth” and “China” as the key index words and in the SSCI database, found 214 results whose title includes both index words)

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Wen et al. 2015), youth suicide (Blum et al. 2012; Li and Zhang 2012; Zhang and Liu 2012), influences of the Internet on youth and their interaction (Bax 2014; Liu 2011; Wang 2014), and tobacco and/or alcohol use among youth (Guo et al. 2017; Okamoto et al. 2012; Xiao et al. 2019; Zhi et al. 2016). In spite of focusing on different topics, research in this field share a common feature, namely that they accentuate the close relation between Chinese youth’s issues and the larger social and cultural context of today’s China. Liu’s (2011) work is such a good illustration, in which he argues that young people’s everyday life actualities embedded in the present-day society and culture of China have influenced their experiences and shaped their perceptions of the Internet and their online identity work. Chinese youth’s education is another focus in previous studies. For example, Woronov (2016) and her assistants devoted their attention to vocational education in particular, and explored the social, economic and historical settings of vocational schools in China. By scrutinizing almost everything about vocational students from Nanjing, the capital city of the prosperous Jiangsu Province, they found that these “subjects entertained no fixed identities, whether of place, language, dialect, or residency status, but instead tended to form friendships that crossed the usual boundaries of belonging, and that family connections mattered much more in job searches than did anything to which the schools exposed their charges” (Solinger 2017). Likewise, vocational education piqued many other scholars’ interest, but was explored from quite different perspectives, e.g., youth employment (Schucher 2015; Tang and Shi 2017) and human capital (Koo 2015; Wang et al. 2018). Apart from vocational students, youth career education (Xie et al. 2019) as well as migrant opportunities and the educational attainment of rural youth (Brauw and Giles 2008) are also hot topics in this field. Scholars in this field try to not only reveal social issues of Chinese youth and their education reality but also depict the youth culture of today’s China. For example, after examining youth cultures in China around three historical points, i.e. 1968, 1988 and 2008, Clark (2012, p. 192) argued that “youth in China since the 1960s has been a site for complex interactions between and reworkings of local and international influences”, which means the present-day youth culture in China has both international and local roots. Specifically, the Red Guards and sent-down youth of the Cultural Revolution Era (1966–1976) carved out a space for themselves, asserting their distinctive identities in spite of tight political controls; twenty years later, Chinese-style rock music represented by Cui Jian, sports and other entertainment began to influence Chinese youth in the late 1980s; another twenty years later, Chinese youth in the twenty-first century were offered a new and broader space for expressing youthful fandom and frustrations by the Internet. Just as Vadrevu (2013, p. 277) remarked, Clark wove “a complex argument about the continuities and discontinuities between Chinese youth in the past and the present”. Instead of exploring every aspect of the youth culture in China’s society as a whole like Clark (2012), Bergstrom (2012) focused on the role of China’s youth as consumers in the international market, and found that youth are moving “swiftly away from the idea

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that foreign brands are innately better and recasting local brands as stylish and relevant choices” (ibid., 2012, p. 202), which forces foreign brands to learn from their local competitors. Besides, cultures of specific youth groups have been discussed by other scholars as well. Kloet (2010) scrutinized youth as the audience of popular music and focused on the dakou youth culture, a new and vibrant urban phenomenon emerging in the roaring 1990s and represented by the post-1980 cohort. Qiu (2013) examined the online non-mainstream (feizhuliu) culture among mainland Chinese youth, in particular urban female youth. The literature review above shows that despite the clear increase of relevant research, scholars’ interests in Chinese youth linger on certain areas, and many other aspects of the youth group have been rarely discussed yet, e.g., political attitude and engagement (exceptions are Ash 2013; Jiang et al. 2012), youth values, family life and so on and so forth. As a matter of fact, this is also what happens in reports from internationally influential media. By analysing reports about Chinese youth from seven leading media (CNN, BBC, FRANCE24, CBC, Spiegel, ANSA and Japan Times) around the world, Wang and Song (2017) found that these media cared more about youth employment and their social issues, through which the negative side of Chinese youth has been portrayed. Consequently, this on the one hand does not present the real image of Chinese youth in front of the whole world, and on the other hand, leaves us more room to delve into this specific group. Considering that individual values are an indicator of social changes, the study focuses on Chinese youth’s values, one of the research gaps in this field, and investigates how socioeconomic development impacts this particular group.

3 Theoretical Background A representative in the research field of political culture, Inglehart (1997) focused on modernization and post-modernization for decades and came up with his theory of intergenerational value transformation, which refers to value changes of the two generations born before and after the Second World War, that is, the change from materialism to post-materialism. To be specific, the older generation put more emphasis on materialistic values—material needs and security, while the younger generation put more emphasis on post-materialistic values—quality of life, selfexpression and happiness. Based on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, Inglehart (1997) identified twelve value indicators, among which six indicate materialistic values while the other six indicate post-materialistic values. For the former, it includes price-rising resistance, stable economy, economic growth, order maintenance, crime fighting and strong national defence force; while the latter contains more speech rights in government decision-making, a more humane society, freedom of expression, focusing on ideals and beautiful cities/nature. Meanwhile, Inglehart (1997) emphasized that intergenerational value transformation is not unique to the developed world; instead, it exists universally in the world and will happen as long as the state economy has grown dramatically over decades

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so that young groups are able to form a significantly higher sense of economic security in their growth when compared with older groups. As for the reason behind the universality, a revised version of the modernization theory proposed by Inglehart and Welzel (2005) is a reasonable explanation, because it integrates socioeconomic development, cultural change and democratization under the overarching theme of human development. Admitting that the classical view of modernization developed by Marx, Weber and others has a basically right insight, Inglehart and Welzel (2005) utilized a massive body of evidence to demonstrate that as socioeconomic development takes place, the basic values of beliefs of the public are changing in a predictable direction, which in turn brings about important consequences for how the societies are governed. Specifically speaking, as the societies advance, changes appear on the system level, e.g. the development of economy and technology, the universal improvement of schooling, and the growing expansion of mass communication; meanwhile, these changes further bring about transformation in needs of personal belonging, self-esteem and self-actualization as well as in social participation on the individual level, which in turn promotes the evolution of the social system. Inglehart and his colleague’s studies above enlighten us greatly in observing Chinese youth’s values because the last decades have witnessed a dramatic growth of China’s economy and young groups in today’s China have quite different living conditions from their parents, let alone their grandparents. Such differences owing to socioeconomic development, according to Inglehart (1997) and Inglehart and Welzel (2005), will surely bring changes in youth’s values. Thus, with Inglehart’s points above as a theoretical background, the present study explored Chinese youth’s values through investigating their responses to 34 detailed questions (see Table 1), which can be categorized into six dimensions, i.e. safety, economy, aesthetic, knowledge, belonging and self-actualization as well as individual values.

4 Methodology 4.1 Subjects A total of 1085 subjects, who are current undergraduate/postgraduate students at the University of International Business and Economics (UIBE) or alumni of UIBE and their family members, participated in the study. Since there were and are more female students than male students at UIBE, the number of female participants (806) exceeded that of male respondents (279). The age of all subjects ranged from 14 years old to 35 years old, and their education background covered all levels of primary school, middle school, high school and college. Subjects held diverse jobs in society, and agreed to participate in the study when contacted through email. What needs explanation is that all subjects were told before answering the questionnaire that their answers are anonymous and will be used exclusively for academic purposes.

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Table 1 Specific questions used in our questionnaire Dimension

Q No. Question contents

Question type

Safety

1

Fighting crime can ensure personal safety

Five-point scale

2

Social security measures (such as medical care, unemployment insurance, pension system, etc.) can guarantee personal safety

Five-point scale

3

Public security measures (food safety, information Five-point scale security, social security, public health security, behaviour safety of asylum seekers, urban lifeline security, etc.) can guarantee personal safety

4

Self-protection and self-defence measures can ensure personal safety

Five-point scale

5

Economic globalization is helpful for human development

Five-point scale

6

Global or regional financial crises affect individuals

Five-point scale

7

Trade liberalization (buying foreign milk powder, cosmetics, clothes, wine, etc.) improves my quality of life

Five-point scale

8

The stable development of the country’s economy is very important to me

Five-point scale

9

The country’s policy of promoting employment helped me to find a job

Five-point scale

10

The government’s policy to curb housing prices has reduced my pressure to buy a house

Five-point scale

11

A good family/personal income is very important to me

Five-point scale

Economy

Aesthetic

12

Consumption is important to me

Five-point scale

13

A good ecological environment helps to improve the quality of life

Five-point scale

14

What do you think the relationship between man and nature should be?

Multiple choice

15

Do you think there is a need for facilities such as green belts, parking spaces and fitness equipment in residential areas?

Multiple choice

16

Do you think the environment of public transportation (such as sanitary conditions, facilities, etc.) is important?

Multiple choice

17

How often do you go to live movies, plays, concerts, etc.?

Multiple choice

18

Do you think it is important to maintain your external image (such as clothes, makeup, hair)?

Multiple choice

19

Do you think the decoration in the home is important?

Multiple choice (continued)

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Table 1 (continued) Dimension

Knowledge

Q No. Question contents

Question type

20

Do you think the environment (such as decoration, Multiple choice setting, etc.) of entertainment places (restaurants, cinemas, KTV) is important?

21

Do you think the working environment (such as decoration, sanitary conditions, facilities, etc.) is important?

22

Which of the following knowledge of human and Multiple choice society do you think is the most important to learn?

23

Which of the following knowledge of natural science and science do you think is the most important to learn?

Multiple choice

24

Which of the following practical skills do you think is the most important to learn?

Multiple choice

25

Which of the following learning channels do you think is most important?

Multiple choice

Multiple choice

Belonging and 26 self-actualization

Relationships and emotions with others—family, Five-point scale love and friendship—play the most important role in my life

27

I think participating in various community Five-point scale activities, such as volunteer activities, community activities and public welfare activities, can give me great satisfaction, and I am very willing to participate in these activities

28

I like working and living in a team very much. I Five-point scale love the various teams I belong to, and I am proud of my team members

29

When I do something, I want to be recognized by others

Five-point scale

30

I care a lot about what others think of me, both positive and negative

Five-point scale

31

I always want to play an important role in the team. If I make a contribution, I want to be recognized and praised by all the team members

Five-point scale

What do you think is your standard of value judgement?

Multiple choice

33

What do you think is the most important factor in realizing your value?

Multiple choice

34

What do you think is the most important meaning of working hard?

Multiple choice

Individual values 32

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4.2 Procedure Subjects received through email a webpage link to our questionnaire including 34 questions shown in Table 1. At the very beginning of the questionnaire, subjects were told that their answers are anonymous and will be used exclusively for academic purposes. Nineteen of these questions used a five-point scale to measure to what degree participants agree with certain statements, while for the remaining fifteen questions, participants were supposed to choose the most appropriate answer from different choices. After answering all 34 questions, participants just needed to click the submit button.

5 Results Results of all 34 questions are shown in two separate tables according to their specific question type. Table 2 presents results in percentage of all 19 scale-response questions, while Table 3 illustrates those of all 15 multiple choice questions along with Table 2 Results in percentage of all scale-response questions Question No.

Strongly agree (%)

Agree (%)

Moderate (%)

Disagree (%)

Strongly disagree (%)

Q1

68.39

27.83

2.67

0.74

0.37

Q2

59.54

32.81

5.71

1.11

0.83

Q3

69.22

28.02

1.84

0.65

0.28

Q4

49.31

43.04

5.62

1.84

0.18

Q5

33

63.87

1.75

1.29

0.09

Q6

28.39

63.13

3.32

4.33

0.83

Q7

39.17

55.12

4.88

0.37

0.46

Q8

72.53

25.71

0.74

0.74

0.28

Q9

37.88

46.82

5.35

9.03

0.92

Q10

31.06

38.53

2.86

22.58

4.98

Q11

42.76

54.56

0.92

1.11

0.65

Q12

9.49

84.88

1.29

3.13

1.20

Q13

43.45

54.55

0.86

0.93

0.21

Q26

65.35

25.62

7

1.29

0.74

Q27

48.85

31.98

14.65

3.32

1.20

Q28

45.71

33.92

16.50

3.12

0.74

Q29

52.81

32.26

13.09

1.39

0.46

Q30

26.36

39.08

23.23

9.86

1.47

Q31

28.29

39.63

22.95

8.20

0.92

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Table 3 Results in percentage of all multiple choice questions Q No.

Choice A

Choice B

Choice C

Q14 Humans Humans can utilize Humans are closely should control natural resources connected with nature nature 5.99% Q15 They are desperately necessary in life 71.24% Q16 Very important 76.59% Q17 Frequently 16.50% Q18 Very important 51.24% Q19 Very important 53.27% Q20 Very important 59.17% Q21 Very important 61.01%

31.71%

59.91%

It will be It may be inconvenient in life inconvenient in life without them without them

Q23 Universe, astronomy, meteorology, geography 15.39%

2.30%

0.09%

Having them or not is not a matter

25.99%

2.12%

0.65%

Important

Unimportant

22.21%

0.65%

0.55%

Sometimes

Occasionally

Seldom

Never

48.94%

25.35%

7.93%

1.29%

Relatively important

Important

Unimportant

It depends 1.47%

42.67%

4.15%

0.46%

Relatively important

Important

Unimportant

41.11%

3.96%

1.66%

Relatively important

Important

Unimportant

36.41%

3.50%

0.92%

Relatively important

Important

Unimportant

36.50%

1.66%

0.83% Politics and law None of them

22.74%

11.71%

9.86%

Mathematics, physics, biology, chemistry

Medical and health care, medicine, disease prevention

Communication None of information them technology

40.46%

29.49%

14.01%

0.65%

Housekeeping skills

None of them

8.48%

1.01%

Q24 Item-repairing Health-maintaining Communication skills skills skills 12.72%

Choice E

Humans should None of be governed by them nature

Relatively important

Q22 Literature and Economy and Language art, history financing, business and traditional and management culture, philosophy 49.68%

Choice D

27.74%

50.05%

1.01%

(continued)

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Table 3 (continued) Q No.

Choice A

Q25 School education 65.53% Q32 Fortune 8.94% Q33 My own efforts 65.44% Q34 Social contributions 19.35%

Choice B

Choice C

Choice D

Choice E

Training institution Self-learning

Communication None of them

3.23%

23.96%

7%

0.28%

Social status

People’s evaluation

Social contribution

Talent and ability

10.97%

5.90%

36.87%

37.33%

Social circle

State policies

Family background

Social contribution

4.88%

20.37%

6.45%

2.86%

Better family life

Self-accomplishment More money

Fame and reputation

22.21%

47.10%

0.92%

10.41%

every detailed choice, from both of which we can see participants’ responses to these six topics.

5.1 Safety The first four questions investigated Chinese youth’s attitude towards safety, among which the first three concerned governments’ actions while the fourth dealt with personal actions. Table 2 clearly shows participants’ responses. For Question 1 to Question 3, over 90% of participants agreed or strongly agreed that personal safety can be guaranteed by fighting crime, social security measures and public security measures, with which only less than 2% disagreed or strongly disagreed. Therefore, it can be seen from the results that most young people believe in the important role of governments’ actions in personal safety protection. For Q4, 92% of participants agreed or strongly agreed that self-protection and relevant measures can ensure personal safety, though 5.62% were not sure about this point and about 2% threw their doubt on it.

5.2 Economy From Question 5 to Question 12, participants were supposed to evaluate to what degree the internal and external economic environment as well as family and personal economic status exerted influence on themselves. For Question 5 to Question 10, over 90% of participants or even more agreed or strongly agreed about the close connection

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between their daily life and the state of global and/or national economy like economic globalization, global/regional crises, trade liberalization, a stable national economy, employment policies and housing policies. Meanwhile, around 97% of participants agreed or strongly agreed about the important role of family or personal income when they encountered Question 11. As for Question 12, the statement that consumption is important to me was agreed or strongly agreed by over 93% of participants.

5.3 Aesthetics Chinese youth’s attitude towards aesthetics was analysed from four sub-dimensions, i.e. ecological culture, convenience of living and working, pursuit of beauty as well as the importance of decoration, which covered the next nine questions (Questions 13– 21). In terms of ecological culture, 98% of participants’ responses to Question 13 was that they agreed or strongly agreed about the significant role of ecology in improving our life quality, and for Question 14, about 60% thought that humans are closely connected with Nature while 32% believed that humans can utilize natural resources but there is a limit. As for the convenience of living and working, public facilities in residential areas (Question 15) and hygienic conditions of public transportation (Question 16) were considered very or relatively important for around 95% of participants. When it comes to the pursuit of beauty, over 93% of participants thought that maintaining a good external image is very or relatively important (Question 18). For the importance of decoration, around 94% of participants agreed that the decoration of the home (Question 19), of entertainment places (Question 20) and of working places (Question 21) is very or relatively important.

5.4 Knowledge Questions 22 to 25 concerned Chinese youth’s attitude towards different knowledge. Results showed that in the field of humans and society (Question 22), knowledge about literature and art, history and traditional culture as well as philosophy were considered the most important for around half of the participants, while in the field of natural science and science (Question 23), grasping the knowledge of mathematics, physics, biology and chemistry was considered the most important, followed by that of medical and health care, medicine and disease prevention. As for practical skills (Question 24), more than half of the participants considered communication skills the most important in practice. Concerning learning channels (Question 25), school education was regarded as the most important way of learning by over 65% of participants, while around 24% believed in the importance of self-learning.

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5.5 Belonging and Self-Actualization Six questions were used to measure Chinese youth’s attitude towards belonging and self-actualization. To be specific, the sense of belonging was tested by Questions 26 to 28, results of which showed that the importance of relationships with others was admitted by 91% of participants, while 80% agreed that they got satisfaction from community activities and 79% agreed that they hold their passion for teamwork. As for self-actualization, 85% of participants agreed or strongly agreed that they want to be accepted by others when doing things (Question 29), around 65% agreed or strongly agreed that they care about other’s opinions (Question 30), and about 68% agreed or strongly agreed that they want to be important in their team (Question 31).

5.6 Individual Values Questions 32 to 34 were designed to measure participants’ individual values. Results showed that around one-third of participants thought social contribution is their standard of value judgement, while a further third chose talent and ability as their criterion (Question 32). In realizing one’s value (Question 33), over 65% of participants treated their own efforts as the most important factor. When asked about the meaning of working hard (Question 34), around a half chose self-accomplishment as their answer, followed by 22.2% choosing “making my family a better life”.

6 Discussion In this article we explore Chinese youth’s values from six different dimensions on the basis of Inglehart’s (1997) theory. Our results reveal the specific features of values among young groups in today’s China. First, young people in China have realized the important role of cracking down on illegal crimes, strengthening social security measures and public security measures, and strengthening self-protection awareness in social and personal safety. Second, to a large extent, Chinese youth can rationally recognize the influence of the domestic and foreign economic environment as well as family and personal economic conditions on themselves, and accept the favourable policies adopted by the state for economic security. Though most of them agree that consumption is important, it does not mean that they are materialistic or concentrate only on their material needs. On the contrary, consumption is becoming a way for the young group in today’s China to show their attitude towards life (e.g. enjoy the present moment or pursue a better quality of life). Third, young groups have begun to devote more attention to ecological culture, liveability, pursuit of beauty and the decoration of the surrounding environment, which shows a higher aesthetic ability on the whole. Fourth, most young people value humanistic knowledge, basic science

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knowledge and interpersonal communication skills most, and generally attach importance to formal school education. Fifth, most young people think highly of social belonging, and show their enthusiasm for teamwork, their desire to be recognized by others, and higher self-esteem. Finally, most young people have proper individual values, regard social contribution as the standard of value judgement, and emphasize the significance of their own efforts. From the value features analysed above, we can see that youth’s values in today’s China present a tendency of being postmaterialistic, because for this particular group, materialistic needs such as economic security and national security have been largely satisfied, and they have begun to reduce their materialistic demands and have turned to emphasize the importance of self-expression while improving personal happiness and life quality, aesthetic, belonging and self-esteem. As a matter of fact, the change or shift from materialistic values to postmaterialistic values, according to Inglehart (1997), is also a reflection of China’s socioeconomic development in the new era. Owing to the reform and opening-up policies, China’s productivity level has undergone fundamental changes, along with remarkable achievements in economy and social development. It is widely seen that in the new era, people’s increasing material and cultural needs have been met, and the need for survival is no longer their main focus. At the same time, what is advocated by post-materialism, such as life quality, personal value and social participation, have finally converged into people’s need for “a better life”. As Inglehart and Welzel (2005) proposed, there is an interaction between value formation and social development. For China, positive values are conducive to alleviating the main social contradiction and promoting social development, which requires the state, the society and the young group to work together in order to form a positive value orientation in the whole society. To be specific, it is necessary for the state to adhere to the people-centred development concept, and to take the improvement of the people’s lives and their well-being as the starting point and goal. Meanwhile, the state must attach great importance to the practical concerns of the people in the course of economic and social development, for example, to improve the social security system and welfare policies, to enhance the sense of social security and equity, to promote the coordinated development of material and spiritual civilization, and to create a favourable and relaxed environment for the development of individual abilities and the realization of individual values. Only in this way can individual development be achieved in a free and all-round way. What’s more, as values are mainly formed in adolescence, the role of family and school in value formation cannot be overlooked. For family members, they should pursue a balance between emotions and materials, which means that there is no excessive emphasis on both. For educators at school, they are supposed to guide the young group with positive values, excellent cultural traditions and strict moral requirements, cultivating students’ personalities properly. As for the youth themselves, they should consciously learn positive values by taking the initiative to participate in social practices and cultivate their sense of responsibility and empathy.

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Acknowledgements The authors gratefully acknowledge the support provided by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities in UIBE (No.CXTD11-03) and the Theory and Practice Research Center for Collaborative Innovation among Beijing Universities for Building Open Economy, UIBE.

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Opening up Localities to the Wider World and the Postmigrant Generation: New Forms of Resistance and Self-Assertion Anita Rotter and Erol Yildiz

1 Cosmopolitanized Spaces of Action To characterize current societies we employ the metaphor “opening up localities to the wider world”. What we mean by that is that people in their everyday lives are confronted permanently by different and contradictory (cultural) elements that are embedded in a worldwide context of communication. Concepts such as “cosmopolitanized spaces for action” (Beck 2017) and “transnational spaces” (Pries 2007) express this change. Global references and relations have become normalcy in everyday life. Globality is experienced as something lived with and embedded in virtually every person’s existence and can be understood as a transformation and new interpretation of the contexts in which our lives unfold (Tomlinson 2002, p. 140). It is precisely the lifeworlds of young adults that impressively demonstrate this shift: they show that their spaces of action, experience and conception are global in scope and outreach. And this appears to be a constitutive component in their designs for living, a mode of “banal cosmopolitanism” (Beck 2003, p. 33). Seen from this vantage, much of what we experience and interpret as “national” is in actuality already long since denationalized. Saskia Sassen speaks in this context of the “paradox of what is national” (2008). The opening up of localities and biographies to the wider world generates uncommon pathways of relocalisation, in which global phenomena appear in ever further localized versions and variants. Roland Robertson (1992) has this interdependent interaction specifically in mind when he speaks about glocalisation. The tension between the global and the local is relevant for the development of cultural and political orientations. New hybrid forms, symbiotic combinations spring forth from these A. Rotter (B) · E. Yildiz Migration and Education, Department of Education, University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria e-mail: [email protected] E. Yildiz e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 G. Knapp and H. Krall (eds.), Youth Cultures in a Globalized World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65177-0_11

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various different global and local practices. Numerous local developments, forms of identification and milieus in youth culture from all parts of the planet encounter one another and interplay in local spaces. They are combined by young people one with the other, developing a spatial manifestation and condensing into new cultural orientations and designs for living. The salsa and hip-hop cultures and the cultures of music and dance as a whole are deterritorialized and denationalized within the compass of their worldwide spread, and thus are also cut loose and freed from their original spatial connections. Yet at the same time, however, they are also relocalized in other places such as Berlin, Munich, or Vienna, where they are implemented and adapted locally by youths and young adults, and infused with respective local meanings. As the empirical data from differing German and Austrian cities prove, local groups in different towns and cities, under specific social living conditions in situ, develop their own distinctive readings and formations, which are open to different forms of appropriation, reinterpretation, and synthesis. That can be clearly shown as particularly exemplified in migration as an important element of globalization and transnationalization. Movements of mobility and migration give rise to new modes of bonding and networking, which automatically function to interconnect and thus transform various localities. The worldwide flows of migration that serve to call into basic question the myth of “sedentariness”, of being settled in one place, offer empirical evidence for how new conceptions of space and constructs in lifeworlds are being generated. Cosmopolitanized spaces for action clearly function to express this new understanding of the everyday, namely the shaping of local lifeworlds on the basis of global society. In this connection, Regina Römhild (2009, p. 234) speaks of a “new cosmopolitanism from below”, meaning by this a kind of transversal movement. It is bringing together—on a local plane—regions, cultures, and modes of thinking that are often distant from one another geographically and in terms of time. In the process, as Martin Albrow (1997) has noted, different sociospheres come into being, which present differentially situated combinations in society and lifeworlds, planetary in their compass and spread. Local stories and lives nowadays are always embedded in contexts and connections extending far around the globe. As a result of geographical mobility, almost everyone these days has relatives or acquaintances and friends in different countries, and their biographies reflect worldwide connections and webs of communication and interaction. Differentially situated and structured personal and collective sociospheres arise in this way. For that reason, societies and cultural phenomena can be non-homogeneous, nonmonolithic, and non-autarchic. Rather, over the course of time, they absorb and incorporate differing elements stemming from different areas of the earth; they arise and are shaped by the synergy of the most diverse thoughts and ideas, cultural and religious orientations, values, norms, and techniques. Central here is a dynamic interplay of ideas, appropriations, experiences, and dependencies (Said 1994, p. 296). Seen from this perspective, the fact that youths and young adults today are developing a worldwide sense of attachment and belonging and manifold, multifaceted designs for living would appear to be an unspectacular aspect of normalcy within

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emergent lifeworlds. Thus, forms of living and milieu have arisen that intermix and combine distant components one with the other, opening up new horizons of thinking and experience, as well as spaces for differential processes of learning lying beyond the bounded perimeters of national ideologies. Even if young people were to remain stationary and not move from the spot, so to speak, a condition which nowadays seems scarcely conceivable—even under the impression of severe lockdown and constraining restrictions within a planetary pandemic—the world around appears to be swirling in permanent movement. The realities of everyday life and cultural practices of self-positioning within the “postmigrant” generation, which are the exemplary focus of discussion and analysis in this chapter, clearly show that globalization and local differentiation go hand in hand with new relations within everyday lifeworlds, which are of core significance for the designs for living of those here focused on locally. Ulrich Beck is correct in speaking of the “Metamorphoses of the World” in his 2017 book, stressing there that what was yesterday inconceivable and unimaginable is today not only possible, but rather has long since become concrete reality. We observe radical changes from which other constructs for living spring forth, another kind of being-in-the-world. The wider world has become the reference point of everyday action. Through geographic and biographical movements, all human beings nowadays have a kind of world or global background in their lives and actually have become in a sense “weltheimisch”, “at home in the world”. However, alongside these processes of opening up we can also observe opposed, contrary, and antagonistic developments: processes and modes of closing off and exclusion, which go hand in hand with new nationalisms, fundamentalisms and modes of racism, as are evident at the moment in Europe. The opening up of the localities of the wider world is foiled, thwarted by tendencies toward renationalization. As Wolfgang Kaschuba (2001, p. 20) has correctly pointed out, the current thematization of national and ethnic self-imaging in the context of migration constitutes a new staging of the national as a cultural concept of integration. Precisely because borders have become increasingly more fluid and porous, the walls of perception are being reinforced and cemented anew in mentality. Denationalizing processes further the dynamism of nationalization, as demonstrated by the increasing renationalizing of policies on migration in several European countries. Because to the same extent that national borders are losing significance in the European context, they are becoming ever more formidable barriers for specific groups (migrants, refugees, the non-legalized), who are perceived as undesirable persons. Thus, geographical mobility is not valid for one and all in the same way or degree. Such a global hierarchy of mobility is a component in a new distribution of privileges and disadvantages and losses on a worldwide and local level (Bauman 1998, p. 70). Similar to the first generation of migrants, the members of the second and third generation, the so-called “postmigrant” generation—persons who were born and have grown up in Austria and Germany—find themselves confronted with discriminatory and exclusionary structures and practices. As our examples illustrate, the successor generations seek to grapple with the restrictive conditions for living locally,

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endeavoring in this struggle and confrontation to find new orientations. In this context, differing, contradictory, ambivalent, and resistant perspectives collide and clash in the everyday lives of the persons involved. They are dealt with individually and in common, and condense and coalesce into local structures, cultural orientations and forms of resistance.

2 From Hegemony to Everyday Practice Up to now, large segments of not just the political but also largely the academicscientific discourse about migration are still taking place under the guiding concept of integration. This situation is rooted in a specific understanding that predominates in the migration context: societies, cities, cultures are conceived of ideal-typically as homogeneous units. In the process, a more or less explicit distinction is constructed between cultures of origin that have immigrated and the indigenous majority culture. For that reason, from its very inception, migration research has been researched on foreigners or foreignness, otherness. The central focus has not been on trans-border, transcultural phenomena but on achievements in integration that were demanded from migrants and their offspring so as to accommodate and conform to the host society. From this perspective, all relations and orientations that the persons had to their places of origin were, in a virtual knee-jerk reaction, categorized, disparaged, and devalued as conducive to dis-integration. The widespread talk of a cultural rift, a fracture and inner turmoil congruent with the pattern “morning in Germany – evening in Turkey”,1 expresses this public dramatization. The demand was raised for a clear and unambiguous commitment to the national “majority culture”. In other words, integration meant to totally “self-liberate”, sundering ties to contexts of migration and origin—and to restrict oneself to the local social circumstances, i.e., to become so-called “full-Germans” (“Voll-Deutsche”). The following quote from a study on the situation of the second generation in Germany in 1979 all too clearly expresses that: “These children, enculturated here via a mixed culture and later striving to assimilate, will for the most part identify with the foreign culture (or now simply their homeland culture); they are quasi-‘New Germans’ and in a sociological sense full-Germans!” (Schrader et al. 1979, p. 71). This common mindset has long left its formative mark on conventional migration research in the German-speaking area. All too familiar is the differentiation between

1 In

the common public and academic discourses on migration, the view is expressed that people are “torn”, broken, fractured within, due to the multiple self-positionings and senses of where they belong—or that they are, as the saying goes, “sitting on the fence”, or “caught in the middle”. This antiquated, binary construction in perception is also underscored by the formulation “morning in Germany – evening in Turkey”. Yet the biographical narratives and designs for living of the successor postmigrant generations in particular show that heterogeneous, multifaceted lifeworlds and senses of belonging that transverse borders can be readily combined and interwoven, creatively supplementing one another.

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“societies of origin and host societies”, “natives and migrants”, “us and them”—that to date is still explicitly or implicitly the more customary practice. As the title of this chapter suggests, we argue here for a turnaround in perspective, one that takes leave from the collectivizing and generalizing images regarding immigrants and their descendants—a perspective that makes necessary a critical encounter with such established orders of knowledge. This implies another kind of approach, a contrapuntal gaze, as Edward Said (1994) proposed and practiced, a reading that deconstructs the hegemonic discourse of migration from the perspective and lived experience of migration. This, at the same time, means an epistemological rupture with well-rehearsed and practiced certainties. Attention here focuses on fractured stories, ignored kinds of knowledge, transcultural and trans-local interlacings beyond national stagings (see Yildiz 2018). Seen from this shift in perspective, hegemonic normality and the linear way of thinking underpinning it, with their categorygrounded separations, appear increasingly questionable. What matters here is what is excluded, forgotten, marginalized—in short, ignored experiences and perspectives. Migration research that views itself as research about migrants is not in a position to venture out beyond classifications by category and the binary manner of thought about “us” and “them”, and to engage in an appropriate, contemporary analysis of actual society in the globalized world. The idea of shifting the phenomenon of “migration” from the margin to the center and to see it as an integral component of global-societal developments has in recent years been partially addressed in new approaches that term themselves “postmigrant” (see Foroutan 2019; Schramm et al. 2019; Thiemann 2019; Hill and Yildiz 2018; Foroutan et al. 2018; Ritter 2018; Caglar 2016). In this respect, the prefix “post” does not simply refer to a chronological “coming after” but rather to a shift in perspective, a different reading of social conditions, a critical confrontation with the restrictive and generalizing discourse on migration, as a form of resistance against hegemonic conditions. “Postmigrant” also means in this connection to counter a hegemonic historiography and production of knowledge, and in doing so to illuminate other and new historical and contemporary connections and contexts (Römhild 2015). The present chapter proceeds from that focal point, exploring the resistant practices of positioning and counter-hegemonic attitudes of the successor generations that they develop in daily confrontation with restrictive social conditions. In this confrontation interstices emerge, “transtopias as realized utopias” (Yildiz 2018, p. 57), in which experiences of migration are written anew and represented—a kind of “epistemological disobedience” (Mignolo 2019).

3 Migration Background Turns Underground: Counter-Hegemonic Attitudes In the library of the Dept. of Philosophy stood a 5-volume work on the meaning of the verb sein (to be) in all known languages. We learned such fine differentiations. Today I’m engaged with defending against false quotations from the Koran and distancing myself from terrorism. (Sezgin 2011, p. 52)

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The concept of “migration background” has become common in recent years in public discourse. This term is also being increasingly employed in connection with the successor generations born and raised in Austria.2 In this way, the impression is given that all you would need to do is to invent a new rhetoric in order to better understand or come to grips with the current situation. Yet the associated questions in this context are seldom raised: What benefit are such distinctions intended to have? Why are human beings being classified and categorized according to specific criteria? Although the neologism “migration background” is politically correct, those labelled with such a term often react with annoyance to this practice of designation. They do not wish to be reduced to their supposed migration background. “Natives” repeatedly confront them as self-appointed experts in connection with questions about origin, they research further on their actual roots and a planned return to their “actual” homeland, if the answer they give is not in keeping with their expectations—as if they wished to uncover the actual non-belonging of those individuals thus questioned, seeing through their deceptive game. Such labels make a significant contribution to constructing an artificial group of people who display few other shared features aside from the fact that they are the descendants of immigrant families and were born here. Categorial classifications of this kind are not neutral. Rather they shape the public perception of migration. They function as powerful instruments of knowledge (Maurizio 2018), serve to create realities and channel the perception of reality, and impact in this way back onto society. At the same time, they impair the view of complex realities of life. In regard to the designation Second or Third Generation, we find differing interpretations: Some reject the concept because of its generalizing and stigmatizing effect. Others, in turn, employ it consciously in order to make clear that those affected did not just arrive in town the day before yesterday (see the Unmündigen below). In addition, the concept of the Second and Third Generation can also be read as a resistant attitude in the struggle against ascriptions of somehow being an “alien”. With the designation “postmigrant generation” used in this chapter, we seek to call attention to specific positionings and attitudes practiced by the successor generations under discriminatory living conditions, a kind of “counter-hegemony” in Gramsci’s sense (2012; see also Brand 2005). It has been possible in recent years to observe how members of the successor generations formulate their own perspectives and tell their own narratives. In these they confront and discuss both the migration (hi)story of their parents or grandparents and also confront the society in which they grew up. In doing so, they create new designs for living and strategies for social positioning and develop their own political self-understanding, as the examples below illustrate. Young adults of the 2 “With

the notion of ‘migration background’, not only was a statistical construct created but also a supposed pattern of explanation that can be frequently employed in order to understand or to determine the behavioral patterns, manners and self-positionings of youth coming from this specific background” (Ammann and Kirndörfer 2018, 34).

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second and third generation are occupied with their own life story, familial biography and their differential experiences in everyday life, in the context of education and work, in the political and social spheres, and in civil society. They increasingly discuss and foreground experiences of discrimination and racism they have suffered, for example due to a “foreign-sounding name” in a job interview (Topçu et al. 2014, p. 126), when apartment-hunting or in interactions within institutional contexts. The successor generations report unceasingly about anecdotes from their private or family life, their circle of friends or at work that induce them to smile, laughter or to reflect, or cause them feelings of irritation and uncertainty. They deconstruct prejudices and established stereotypes in which they react, for example, to reductionist conceptions regarding their (familial) origin and religion by answering with an ironical twist: “Well, I’m supposedly a Kurd” (Cindark 2004, p. 301) or “Who’s gonna prove to me that I’m a foreigner”? (ibid., p. 301). Such and similar statements imply (new) positionings and subversive responses to a supposed social knowledge intent on expressing who belongs to the community and the “we”—and who doesn’t. However, the successor generations show that all who happen to be here now are now from here. In order to express their convictions, ideas and political criticism regarding the mechanisms of exclusion and unequal treatment interwoven with certain processes and aspects of participation, these make use, on the one hand, of media formats and their media presence. On the other, they acquire forms of presentation and possibilities for expression, such as music or comedy, and in this way reach a mainly younger public, whose biographies have been constituted by similar experiences with migration and mobility. Several examples are mentioned below that show how a rapping brother-sister duo, a rebellious comedy program, a “migrant” periodical and a group of self-appointed “non-adults, Unmündige” modify everyday discourses in everyday life, discourses in the public sphere, and from this design and utilize new, postmigrant and counter-hegemonic praxes and practices of resistance.

3.1 Media: The Periodical Das Biber—Mit Scharf The use of media, such as periodicals, in online and print media, the consumption of TV programs and online series and feature programs have in the meanwhile become everyday reality and are unfolding quasi en passant. Precisely, a younger generation have in predominant numbers grown up with diverse media and media formats; for the most part, they make regular, satisfied use of them. Given their huge outreach, so-called “social networks” such as FB play a decisive role in influencing public and political discourse on current social topics such as migration, living together in society. In particular, the power of language(s) and stereotypical formulations that are constantly repeated, such as “wave of refugees” and “migration crisis” are especially powerful and efficacious. They creep into the manifold debates of everyday life and politics, reaching a point where they are perceived as

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self-evident and are employed quite casually. Conventional and established mainstream media write and report—often with reflection and especially through visual imagery—on phenomena of migration, refugee flight and “integration”. In doing so, they rarely or never allow persons who themselves have migrated a “voice”: either to write about that or speak themselves, narrating their experiences and views in their own words. A medium that consciously has taken a different path is the journal “biber” (beaver in English), which is available in print form in Vienna, and also as an open access online magazine (for more details, see Ratkovic 2018). The range of authors contributing is as heterogeneous as their readership. Nonetheless, biber authors and readers resemble one another. That is because both groups shape and live their everyday stories of multiplicity—stories that are, albeit not exclusively, determined by their own or familial experiences of migration. Biber attracts readers using the slogan “mit scharf ” (“spicy stuff”), targeting in particular teens and young adults from the second and third migrant generation in Vienna. This target group, which at the same time could be their own Biber authors and vice versa, is described as “young, stylish, migrant” (see https://www.dasbiber.at/%C3%BCber-uns). The authors themselves, in turn, refer to themselves as a “pack of young, ambitious journalists from a Turkish, Bosnian, Serbian, Croatian, Kurdish, Brazilian, Carinthian, Upper Austrian, Slovenian and etcetera-ish background […]”, who provide for “… authentic reports” (ibid.). In their articles, they endeavor by means of good research— making use of image symbolism and humor, linguistic provocation, a light touch and keen acumen—to address new and explosive topics, and to stick as close as possible to the lifeworlds and life realities of the second and third migrant generation. The magazine espouses a journalism that is positioned far from the traditional or “bourgeois”, middle-class media—or seeks to break with those media by means of reports on pertinent topics. Thus, in one recent number it explores inter alia the question how millennials would behave, the author concluding that she and her generation are “blatant philistines”. In an earlier number, a man from the third generation, who is made a caricature of by the catchwords “thirty, Turkish, bachelor)” (das biber, April 2015a, p. 30), reacts ironically to the attempts by his family to find him a wife. The comedian Serdar Somuncu, in turn, argues in a detailed interview with biber about why demonstrations as a response to right-wing violence and racism no longer suffice. Instead, in his stage program he reads aloud from Hitler’s Mein Kampf . Commenting on this, he notes: I wanted to give another answer and started to deal in the struggle with Mein Kampf . I wanted to understand how right-wing radical ideas come about and where the susceptibility to such ideologies lurks hidden in the case of ordinary people. […] Young persons in Germany and Austria were hungry for that and interested in the topic. And when I read to them aloud from the book, they understood the whole mess of manure that it contains.

He also points to the fact that the media tended to happily misunderstand his action, and that he was “treated with hostility and censored, because as a Turk I’m citing Adolf Hitler” (das biber, April 2015b, p. 65). A magazine like biber fits in well in the case of a city like Vienna, because both the metropolis and also the periodical would be inconceivable without migration movements and the heterogeneous migration

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experiences of the migrants and their successor generations. One of the centers of life of all journalists who report for biber is (contemporary) Vienna, which is why a majority of the reportages and articles are set or take place there, linking up with the stories of people who live their (hi)stories of hybrid multiplicity day by day.

3.2 Comedy Grenzgänger (Comedy Border Crossers) A further “genuine Viennese guy”, as it says on his homepage, is Omar Sarsam, a comedian, paediatric surgeon and, moreover, moderator of the comedy show “Comedy Grenzgänger (transl.: comedy border- crossers)”. Sarsam’s biography has a postmigrant sound and feel: born in Vienna, the son of Iraqi parents, educational climber, multilingual, with an affinity for dialect, and an urban and transnational border crosser. He tells in an interview that although people speak many languages, there is nonetheless much that knits them together: “like constipation for example. That’s a worldwide problem, and somehow it also binds people together” (https://www.tt.com/kultur/buehne/15572388/chirurg-undkabarettist-omar-sarsam-bloedelei-ist-mir-heilig). So, Sarsam now regularly invites German-speaking comedians with a migrant background to appear on TV and in a hall on stage, whose performances have the motto “Foreigners up (onto the stage)!” (see https://www.puls4.com/Comedy-Grenzgaenger). The guests are all young comedians who, as the name already suggests, don’t let themselves be penned in or restricted by social boundaries and antiquated conceptions of what humor and satire supposedly are and can permit. The comedians deal with the dissolution of boundaries, the creation of specious limits and especially the detonating of borders and conventions. To that end, they reinterpret phenomena, problems, and hassles in everyday life. The idea of this Austrian TV program format, introduced in 2019, is to let comedians from the migrant third generation (in particular) have the word: to talk, tell stories, but also to accuse and discomfit, to unsettle the audience. While in Germany postmigrant forms of expression in the form of theatre or comedy are now long established, in the Austrian mediascape they are relatively new. That is mainly because to date there are a certain limited number of artists who are deemed established and “homegrown” who remain dominant in the TV shows and their stage programs. Yet desirable are a shift in generations in the art- and mediascape and a change in respect to both the topics treated and the forms of expression. And it is Comedy Grenzgänger, for example, who show that the young comedians have a great deal to tell and talk about. Often it is precisely prestigious and more costly theatrical performances and cabaret programs and satires that are attended mainly by persons with a specific “middle-class” habitus. As a rule, comedy shows are more affordable and more often tend to invite individuals from the most diverse and sundry contexts. Thus, it is also an aim of the Border Crossers to establish comedy as an art form “for all” and not to stick just to specific milieus and familiar topics, because ultimately art is there for everyone. Consequently, comedy also entails, among other things, reviewing the previous (self-)understanding about who should or is allowed to

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attend certain amusement shows and leisure time activities—and interpreting them anew. It is important to emphasize to comedians that they should “do more than just chink-Chinaman comedy”! (see ibid.), because they are speaking from within their own everyday life. What they talk about is sometimes banal, sometimes inconceivable, they speak about their own subjective experiences, about things funny or embarrassing, and also about discrimination and racism. But in the process they do not allow themselves to be reduced to their “origin” or their (familial) experiences of migration. They read their own biographies and stories, which they present through a lens of counter-hegemony, and analyze them eloquently and in a humoristic fashion. The Comedy Border Crossers decide themselves what forms of self-designation to select and what role designations and descriptions as “strangers” should play in their programs. The spectators in turn seem on the whole to be amused, but frequently also confused. After a sketch is concluded, it is virtually a standard practice to leave the audience, at times addressed by the familiar German “du”, ruminating back in their own thoughts and reflections.

3.3 EsRap A further possibility for reaching young people with criticism of established opinions and antiquated discourses and conceptions of what is normal is music. The bro-and-sis rap duo Esra and Enes, known as EsRap, makes use of rap as a political and emancipatory means of expression, positioning itself in this way against decrepit old discourses no longer contemporary—bygone narratives that endeavor to present people with migrant experiences and biographies as being on the margins of society and not a part of it. In their powerful texts, EsRap champions a society in which migration is understood as an everyday and normal phenomenon. Esra and Enes are the grandchildren of Turkish “guest workers” and live in the third migrant generation in Vienna. In their rap texts, they illuminate just how many prejudices they are confronted with in the cycle of everyday life. Their strategy is to highlight these prejudices and negative experiences and to oppose them vociferously in their rap. In doing so, they do not produce cliché-ridden gangster rap—rather they reinterpret patriarchal conceptions about how women and men should supposedly position themselves in society. Rap, today still largely dominated by male voices, enjoys utilizing, along with specific stereotypifications about gender and role allocations, swear words and insults as well. By contrast, in the bro-and-sis duo, the focus is on stories and anecdotes from their own biography, “inspired by the lively Austrian hiphop scene […] and coming from a self-confident Turkish migrant Viennese perspective […]” (see https://www.esrapduo.net/about-us). EsRap combines the melodious (Turkish) singing of Enes with the thundering and powerful German speech songs of his older sister Esra, as in this video: (see https://youtu.be/Lh2VdX8M8eI?list=RDd NXZpTk-FeQ and this, at a school: https://youtu.be/dNXZpTk-FeQ?list=RDdNXZ pTk-FeQ). Transnational, local, and global (musical) elements flow into their music.

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Rap emerged as part of the hip-hop culture in the 1970s in the Bronx in New York City (Seeliger 2018, http://www.bpb.de/apuz/265102/rap-und-gegenidentitaeten-inder-migrationsgesellschaft). Back then it was important for the young people, like for EsRap today, to articulate “… their experiences of marginality both among one another and also over against the majority society […]” (ibid.). EsRap also knows these “experiences of marginality”, even if the benchmark reference values have changed. Esra, for example, is very successful as a doctoral candidate in gaining a higher academic degree, and the two have achieved differing forms of being established, for example in the sub-cultural sphere. Nonetheless, their social origin and the geographical origin of their grandparents are rendered problematic. The two defend themselves and lash out against that by consciously and subversively playing with the diverse assorted clichés. In addition, they use conceptions that conventionally are regarded as insults and alter them, so that “Tschusch”—originally a derogatory designation for minorities (something like the US-American “Chink” applied to Chinese)—becomes a self-description and self-designation. To simply refer to oneself henceforth as “Tschusch” and in this way to take away the prerogative of interpretation from one’s opponent can be read as a postmigrant and counter-hegemonic strategy. From an insult something new can spring, as something initially disconcerting is appropriated, and from a defamation to some extent a self-designation and also a sense of self-assurance is developed. So EsRap takes the concept “Tschusch” and creates for this a fictive country with the name “Tschuschistan”, where all the “Tschuschen” gather together: Welcome to Tschuschistan, a country in the desert, in the neverland of fantasy. All those who in their country are Tschusches live there. The experience as a Tschusch is the basis that brings them all together. They tell stories from their past life, about experiences of discrimination, and about a time in which the societies in which they lived did not allow them to dream of any kind of future. In all these shared dreams of a future and the stories of the elders Tschuschistan was born. (http://clubhavera.weebly.com/musik-video–-esrap-tschuschistan.html)

Tschuschistan is, in this discourse, a “place of encounter”, in which the questions pertaining to the migrant society are discussed as topical themes. But it is also a space “… where racism, subjugation and exploitation are now just stories in the Cloud archive of memory, and continued to be narrated as hazard warning signs for coming generation(s)” (ibid.). Thus, with Tschuschistan, the EsRap duo reacts to repeatedly experienced mechanisms of exclusion and oustings, displacements from the common “we”. But the song also expresses a hope that springs from the inter-generational transfer and passing on of (negative) experiences. The younger generations could profit from the narratives of the elders and shape and regulate living together in the migrant society in future by including, for example, the heterogeneous resources and competences of all citizens in a more inclusive way. In this manner, the younger generations are allotted a high degree of efficacy and influence in respect to collective coexistence.

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3.4 The Non-adults: Those in Tutelage A striking example of engagement in civil society is The Non-Adults. Those in Tutelage (“die Unmündigen”), a Mannheim-based autonomous NGO that since 1992 has been active across regional boundaries; it fights for the rights of migrants and their families on several levels. Here is their website: http://www.die-unmuendig en.de/. The Non-Adults have perfected their efforts to gain influence, through their activities in the social sphere and civil society and with their unconventional ideas, on total-societal systemic processes, prerogatives of interpretation and decisions. Commonly and in legal parlance those who are classified as “minors”, “non-adults” (“unmündig”), are persons in the sense of lacking “majority” or “maturity” and in a condition where they—in a Kantian sense of Mündigkeit and the lack thereof— are disempowered to speak (and hence to think) for themselves. It is a category comprising those who because of their age or due to mental illness are deemed to be incapable of assuming an adult status. Kant defined Unmündigkeit as a “condition of tutelage”, noting “Enlightenment is man’s release from his self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage is man’s inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another. Self-incurred is this tutelage when its cause lies not in lack of reason but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from another” (Kant 1785 [1963], p. 1). Kant defined “enlightenment” as emerging from such a condition of “minority” or “immaturity”. These common categorizations relating to age (below the age of 18 or 21) or mental incapacity do not apply in the narrow sense to the Unmündigen, consisting of individuals from the second and third migrant generation. Nonetheless, they see themselves as deprived in many cases of their full civil rights (see http://www.die-unmuendigen.de/die-unmuendigen/sel bstda/wir_text/wir__text.html) on the basis of their migrant (hi)stories and migrant experiences. The members of this collective repeatedly demonstrate their will to resist, which they express and stage publicly in an effective way through actions of art, such as “Art against Racism” and by vociferous interference in debates and discourses. We are neither “guests” nor “strangers” nor “foreigners”: “guests” don’t remain for half a century, “strangers” are not persons you meet every day and “foreigners” live abroad. The expression aimed to conceal, “foreign fellow citizens”, cannot satisfactorily mask the fact we are citizens of this country being kept politically “unmündig”, bereft of our “maturity”. (http://www.die-unmuendigen.de/die-unmuendigen/selbstda/wir_text/wir__text.html)

Consequently, the youth and young adults fight back against being kept small and confined by policy, politics and the majority society. To that end, first of all, they employed targeted provocation; second, they articulate counter-hegemonic perspectives (Cindark 2004, p. 305); third, they act to unsettle conceptions of normality and questions of (non-)belonging; and fourth, they stress their power to take action and rebel against being stylized as victims (Cindark, ibid.). The Unmündigen do not wish to tell stories of victimhood, just the opposite: they write stories day in, day out about resistance, holding up a revealing mirror to the (migration) society they are marginalized in. The successor generations thus seek to articulate their

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chagrin over disguised experiences of discrimination and stymied possibilities for participation. This discontent begins already with the essential question regarding what designations would be adequate for a group of young persons with similar experiences of marginalization yet very specific and heterogeneous life realities. On this they note: “Guest workers, foreign workers, foreigners, foreign fellow citizens, immigrants, migrants, non-Germans, as well as concepts lying in between, such as Kanaks [derogatory term for Turks], garlic gluttons (Knobi-Fresser) and many other terms are not appropriate” (ibid.). That is why they prefer—before politics, politicians and society also perceive and really recognize them as Mündige, fully fledged adults, and even more importantly, also treat them as such—the term Unmündige, i.e., those in tutelage, guardianship (Vormundschaft), imposed social “immaturity”. A significant strategy for the action of the Unmündigen is not to react to offers of integration and concessions—and also not to support general divisions into so-called “good” migrants and “bad” migrants. Instead, for example, as one of the members in the public panel discussion argued, to answer with the striking comment “you’re the guys who are dangerous” (Cindark 2004, p. 304), and thus to reverse the logic that contends: migrants are supposedly endangering social cohesion and living together. These kinds of articulation and argumentation posit a responsibility for all residents and participants in society in equal measure, because, as is argued, “racism exists independently from the behaviour or degree of integration of the migrants, and thus constitutes the greatest problem in the coexistence of the majority and the minorities – which is why it must be combated” (Cindark 2004, p. 305). In order to energize a process of rethinking in the population and to achieve a paradigm shift, they respond, for example, with the art exhibition “gesternJahre – 50 Jahre gastArbeiter” (“yesteryears – 50 years guest workers”) (see http://www.die-unmuendigen.de/die-unmuendigen/ges_heu/ projekte/thema/foto_im_werden/fotoaus.html) and point out that labor migrants and their families did not arrive the day before yesterday, they have been here for quite some time. The exhibition is not on display in a traditional museum—but rather in various migrant associations, this is in order to directly address both those potentially interested and also the migrants themselves. A further aim is not to objectivize the stories and experiences of the labor migrants in a museum-based setting—but rather to let the contemporary witnesses and subjects speak and interpret things themselves. A further initiative is the annual “Festival of the German Fellow Citizen”. This festivity is considered a counter-measure to the numerous intercultural festive events in which “the Greeks”, the “Turks” the “Italians”, are celebrated and lauded by “Germans” as “good neighbours”. By shifting the focus of attention to the “German fellow citizens”, the Unmündigen wish to point satirically to the one-sided measures of integration and the deepening “ghettoization” of their German neighbors. Since, in intercultural festivals, food seems to always play a substantial role, the Unmündigen offer various “delicacies” inter alia, such as sauerkraut served in a pita and date tree beer. Along with such large-scale actions like the “Festival of the German Fellow Citizen”, in panel discussions and smaller-scale appearances they use their ability to present a powerful argument, to craft biting caricatures, and to rouse the people. Since

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they make use of self-determined and emancipatory discourses, they are successful in criticizing binary conceptions—and also in calling local and national topics and issues pertaining to migration, racism, and discrimination to the attention of those who think these phenomena do not affect them. We neither lick wounds of identity imputed to us, nor do we dance like monkeys at festivals of integration. We do not engage in the politics of origin. Our homeland is where the centre of our lives is – here in Germany. And as “foreigners” in our own country, we want to contribute to a revision of the concept of what is “German”: “Germans” are not only those who descend from “Germans”, i.e. “ethnic Germans”. People who were born here and/or have lived here for years/decades, are also “Germans”, i.e. “Germans politically”. (http://www.die-unmuendigen.de/die-unmuendigen/selbstda/wir_text/wir__text.html)

3.5 Secondos and Secondas In the course of the bilateral recruitment agreements with Italy and Spain, a concept was sought in Switzerland which would be the best way to designate the children of the “guest workers”. Initially they simply borrowed the Italian term “Secondi”, which when translated means “the Seconds”. Based on the Spanish “guest workers” and their families, the concept ultimately was given a Spanish plural form and was thus restyled as “Secondos”. Secondos initially functioned as a relatively neutral collective concept—albeit in any case devoid of reflective analysis—for migrants from the most diverse and sundry contexts. Primarily then it thus served to designate not just the second generation that had been born in Switzerland; its compass was broader. Triggered by protests on May 1, 2002, at which, according to the media and the police, “young migrants” went on a wild rampage, Secondos was now employed more specifically to refer to the young adults of the second generation. The concept in the meanwhile was restyled as a negative designation and attribution, and thus became part of the collective (negative) use of language. Today the term is still largely negative in its connotation and goes hand in hand with the assertion that integration has been a complete failure or only a partial success (see Fibbi et al. 2015). Young adults of the second and also the third generation are grappling with this association and description, and simply refer to themselves as Secondos or, in the feminine form, Secondas. These forms of self-designation are self-confident and non-conformist, since they are run counter to any kind of external attributions by others. But at the same time they are also highly political, since they disclose the fact that they are prevented from participating in political processes; simultaneously, they also strive for a politicization and subjectivizing of the successor generations. Who may take part in political elections is guided by Swiss civil law and can be equated with the possession of Swiss citizenship. The Swiss law of descent, juss anguini, regulates the right to citizenship biologically. Children whose parents or a single parent are Swiss citizens “inherit” Swiss citizenship. By contrast, other children, largely born locally in the country, do not acquire citizenship. Consequently, the Secondos and Secondas are excluded by law from specific participatory practices

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and spaces for action. This drives a process of de-politicization among the young adults and does not do justice to their claims for a “voice”, being able to be active and participate in co-determination on all levels of society. Secondas and Secondos are self-selected, not sociological or academic designations, with which the young adults point out that they live locally, work, study, and wish in diverse ways to enter into society, and also actively fight for expanded rights, such as the right to vote. The assertion that they supposedly fall between two chairs is absurd and outdated. Rather, the projects of the successor generations within civil society, such as the cross-party working circle “Secondas” in Zurich or the “Café Secondas” in Basel, show that they are standing up pro-actively for their rights, interests, and values on a local, regional, and national level, and contribute ideas regarding how a prosperous community and society of diversity can succeed and thrive. The colour of the passport plays no role for us – all can become a member in our organization and/or actively work together with us. People of very differing origin, with a range of diverse professions and of different age are working with us – it is precisely this diversity that ensures interesting discussions and sustainable solutions. (https://secondas-zh.ch/uber-uns/)

4 Summing Up: Subversive Resistance From the reversal of the perspective, it becomes visible how youths and young adults develop creative designs for living and political strategies for social self-positioning under asymmetric relations of power (Yildiz 2010). The examples demonstrate how the members of the postmigrant generation, who themselves were not migrants from elsewhere, narrate their own stories, in which they mesh and weld together differing and contradictory world-elements into hybrid biographies and cultural orientations. Characteristics for their life realities appear to be the following: They live within and between different worlds, they are engaged in a constant confrontation with the social framework and conditions under which they grew up, and they demand that their ways of life be granted recognition. As the examples show, they move in spaces strung between global reorientation and discriminatory conditions of life locally. From these they develop different and hybrid designs for living and resistant self-positionings. In this respect, these new orientations and self-positionings constitute a kind of transcultural praxis that demonstrates the opening up of the localities. Thus, social practices like those described here, which from a hegemonial perspective seem to comprise disintegrative and deficient elements, can unfold a creative and resistant potential, and appear characteristic for their designs for living and their attitudes grounded on solidarity. In particular, their creative and ironic reinterpretation of negative features attributed to them into a subversive political strategy, and the attitudes arising from that, are examples of new positionings in their lifeworlds in dynamic confrontation with the hegemonial conditions and relations they must grapple with. It also becomes clear that the members of the postmigrant generation are quite capable in their concrete life circumstances of developing attitudes both for survival as well as for subversive solidarity. Thus, they create their own spaces

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within lifeworlds that strongly evade the rigid grid of ethnic-nation attributions and ascriptions. That is clearly expressed in the following quotation by the writer Feridun Zaimoglu from Berlin: Still the mistaken illusory idea of two cultural blocks, and either being in this one or that one or ground down between them […] I’ve never felt myself to be a commuter between two cultures. Nor have I ever had a crisis of identity. Rather, I knew that there is not just one German reality but there are many realties. (Zaimoglu 2000, p. 46)

Abstract political and sociological concepts like “integration” prevent such developments, new stories, cultural and political practices from being at all properly recognized and understood. The mythical concepts of integration say very little about how the members of the postmigrant generation manage to cope in globalized everyday life and how they confront and grapple with the conditions they find they are facing, developing from that encounter designs for living and resistant attitudes. Such rigid concepts can tell us nothing about the constructs for living, processes of self-positioning, anxieties, hopes, and expectations and their forms of expression in the everyday world of youths and young adults. In respect to the practices of positioning and resistant attitudes of the successor generations, generally speaking, parallels exist with Karl Mannheim’s “theory of generations”. Mannheim conceptualized generation as a social category in his famous 1928 essay, meaning that persons from the same age cohort who are living under comparable social conditions and in a specific historical context can fall back on shared experiences, and on this basis act to develop a common mutual understanding (Mannheim 1928 [1952]). As the above examples amply demonstrate, members of the second and third generation are endeavoring to formulate a mutual shared consciousness and political understanding counter to discriminatory structures and negative attributions, and to implement this in different political and, in part, subversive forms of action. The struggle against social relations of power and injustices appear to us of great significance for the challenge of living together in harmony as a whole and for the democratization of society (exemplary on this are Gilroy 2004; Back and Sinha 2016; Yildiz and Ohnmacht 2020). Note: Translated from the German by William Templer.

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Online Documents das biber: https://www.dasbiber.at/%C3%BCber-uns, accessed 21 August 2019. Comedy Grenzgänger: https://www.puls4.com/Comedy-Grenzgaenger. Accessed 21 August 2019. Secondos und Secondas: https://secondas-zh.ch/uber-uns/. Accessed 21 August 2019. TirolerTageszeitung: https://www.tt.com/kultur/buehne/15572388/chirurg-und-kabarettist-omar-sarsam-bloedelei-istmir-heilig. Accessed 21 August 2019. EsRap: http://clubhavera.weebly.com/musik-video–-esrap-tschuschistan.html. Accessed 21 August 2019. https://www.esrapduo.net/about-us. Accessed 21 August 2019. https://youtu.be/Lh2VdX8M8eI?list=RDdNXZpTk-FeQ. Accessed 16 September 2019. https://youtu.be/dNXZpTk-FeQ?list=RDdNXZpTk-FeQ. Accessed 16 September 2019.

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Body, Gender and Beauty: Modified Bodies Between Youth Culture Designs, Constructed Identity Models and Coping Strategies Julia Ganterer

1 Opening Remark In the twenty-first century, the body has become a commodity and an asset, being at the mercy of social standardizations and economic interests (cf. Unterdorfer et al. 2009). Every day, humans (un)consciously modify and design their bodies. This indicates a worldwide phenomenon concerning (more or less) all humans. Since the postmodern era, an increasing tendency to design one’s visual appearance has been observed. There are (almost) no limits anymore for the body to become a performing object and scope of action (cf. Gugutzer 1998; Villa 2007). Cognitive processes dealing with constructions of identity/identities are becoming ever more subtle, because changed life situations are found in the globalized world. Due to major interventions of neo-capitalistic environments, existing identity models are becoming fragile, giving rise to the need to find alternative standardizations and new orientations. Social realities of young people are shaped by diversity and heterogeneity. Simultaneously they need to socialize to get around ideas of what is “normal” and what is not. These ambivalent re-quirements of customization and pluralization on the one hand and standardization on the other hand, create a big area of tension, especially for lesbians, gays, bisexuals, trans, inter and queer people. Discussions on gender identity/identities, hegemony of heterosexuality and traditional ways of life as natural body-based classifications (cf. Villa 2000) show that actions and guidance are also required by the profession as well as by research in the social, cultural and educational sciences. These are needed in order to comprehend globalization processes and youth cultures, the (personal developments of) adolescents as well as finally one’s own (social) pedagogical work in theory and practice. To do so, a reflexive approach to theoretical contents, personal attitudes and social practices is necessary, which could be achieved, among others, by a feminist and bodily J. Ganterer (B) Institute of Social Work and Social Pedagogy, Leuphana University, Lübenburg, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 G. Knapp and H. Krall (eds.), Youth Cultures in a Globalized World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65177-0_12

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phenomenological style of thinking. This chapter reflects on the tension between gender order, body scheme and beauty ideal within the framework of adolescent processes of intersubjectification and further considers wherein lies the importance of enhanced perception of body, intersubjective experience and living environment in the (social)pedagogical practice with young people. The contribution is based on a feminist-phenomenologically and socialpedagogically oriented qualification project on body modifications and bodily experiences in adolescence (Ganterer 2019).1 The research aimed at highlighting the connection of modified bodies and bodily experiences of young adolescents. To show this, 14 episodic interviews (cf. Flick 2011) were conducted in Italy (South Tyrol) and Austria (Carinthia) with young adolescents between the ages of 18 and 23 and evaluated with the objective hermeneutics (following Oevermann et al. 1979). Then followed a so-called body-phenomenological frame (among others Meyer-Drawe 2003; Waldenfels 2002; Butler 1997; Merleau-Ponty 1966), which means that those interview sequences appearing (to the author) to be especially concise and permeated (e.g. Meyer-Drawe and Schwarz 2017) were additionally analyzed with a body-phenomenological eye. An epistemological look at body modifications and bodily experiences (2) can only happen fragmentarily here, prior to describing the context of body, gender and beauty (3) for the case example (4). The evaluated data illustrate the ambivalence and interrelation of body (norms), gender (identity) and beauty (ideals) (5). The contribution ends with an open discussion on the significance of bodily and intersubjective perception for working with youth cultures resp. their representatives.

2 Body Modifications and Bodily Experiences: An Epistemological Approach Body modification is a general term encompassing a number of practices and invasive procedures carried out on the human body, especially on and beneath the skin, in order to change the body scheme of a person (Schilder 1923; Merleau-Ponty 1966). In general, a body modification is defined as a permanent or semi-permanent change carried out voluntarily on the human body without medical reasons, which is performed surgically or not surgically (cf. Kasten 2006, 2010; Brammson 2010; Borkenhagen et al. 2014). In the twenty-first century, body modifications are regarded as a mass phenomenon, being practiced, tolerated and accepted in different ways according to era, culture and society (cf. Bammann 2007). Body modifications may (but do not have to) have a ritual, cultural or religious background. Modified bodies have long since been part of the modern mainstream and “youth cultural 1 The

basis for and excerpts of this article were published in the series of the ÖFEB section Sozialpädagogik (Vol. 3) under the heading “Körpermodifikationen und leibliche Erfahrungen in der Adoleszenz. Eine feministisch-phänomenologisch orientierte Studie zu InterSubjektivierungsprozessen” 2019 by Budrich Publishing.

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Fig. 1 Hair and hairstyles are a communication medium with which youth cultures incorporate and represent social norms and ideals (photo by the author)

design” (Rohr 2009). Furthermore, the modification does not always have to leave visible signs on the skin or be recognizable for others and oneself immediately and everywhere (Fig 1). At the same time, visible signs and symbols do not always have to be meaningful for the bearer (cf. Ganterer 2019, p. 58). In the Western-Capitalist countries, the prevalence of tattoos and piercings has risen in the last 20 years (cf. Brähler and Hofmeister 2009), which, according to Kosut (2000), are visual expressions of the self and serve self-definition and identity building in particular. From the point of a feminist-phenomenological view a clear distinction must be made between a body modification and cosmetic surgery, as the cosmetic surgical interventions primarily correct and optimize the body, whereas, e.g. tattoos, piercings or cuttings design it (cf. Meyer-Drawe 2007, p. 222). Body modifications are not fixed or static, as they are in a constant process of change: a tattoo on the skin moves, shapes and ages together with the person bearing it. In the same way as the bearer lives in a constant process of change and development, the vision of body, gender and beauty transforms. Therefore, modified bodies and bodily experiences are not viewed separately but as a dynamic system of inter-bodily relationships.

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In the discourse on the determination of the physicality–body relation, Waldenfels’ interpretation is represented tracing back to Husserl (1977), Plessner (1975) and Scheler (1973) and referring to a specific connection of physicality and corporeity (cf. Waldenfels 2000, p. 252). From a feminist perspective, the question arises whether the concept of “body” suggests an androcentric worldview where the body seen as a universal basis reproduces a heteronormative and male-centered traditional system of values (cf. Butler 1997, pp. 157f.; Stoller and Vetter 1997, p. 9). Furthermore, at the center of feminist criticism, there is the general neglect of gender in the development of the phenomenology, which, among others, can be justified with the predominantly gender hierarchical power structures and the two-gender-models prevalent in the Western world (cf. i.a. Butler 1997; Stoller 2010). Despite these critical comments, Landweer and Marcinski (2016) point out that the feminist phenomenology has always been characterized by Merleau-Ponty’s works and his examinations of the phenomenon gender and sexuality.2 The reference to major representatives of the body philosophy and phenomenology illustrates the connection between subjectivity and physicality. Bodily intersubjectivity finally means that the self is able to develop only in interaction with others. Intersubjectivity therefore is deemed to be viewed as a mutually dependent binding structure between one’s own body and someone else’s (cf. Meyer-Drawe 2001, pp. 181, 133) (Fig 2). Intersubjectivity is based on experiences, which settle down in the body as memories and observations and manifest themselves in linguistic, acting, symbolic and practical forms: It is the body where gender and beauty are sensed and felt, if the body has gender and beauty, about and with which one talks and negotiates (cf. Ganterer 2019, p. 94). The body theories subsequent to the bodily feminist phenomenology make it possible to perceive both the practices and reproductions of gender and beauty categories as materiality, discourse and construct, as well as soma, affect and emotion (Fisher and Embree 2000; Stoller and Vetter 1997).

3 Body, Gender Order and the Power of Beauty This opening remark, among others, should indicate that originating from the body, gender and beauty are interrelated. The knowledge, the structures and meanings thereof are temporarily, spatially as well as socially constructed. Physicality is sensed and intuitively known rather than grasped by conscious thought (cf. Duden 2002, p. 417; Lindemann 2017, p. 2). The same is true for beauty, which is never neutral, but just as the gender body, is socially constructed, culturally formed and of a political character. Beauty and gender advance to a bodily reality only in the course of linguistic and medial movements. By the invocation of the self (according to Louis Althussers 1977) the socially constructed gender formats and beauty patterns are performatively incorporated so that they are experienced as a natural order of 2 Moreover,

works from and on Sartre, Heidegger, Schmitz or Böhme are selected, in order to deal with the increasingly complex feminist topics.

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Fig. 2 There are a variety of body modifications tattoos, piercings, implants, tongue splitting, branding, cutting, flesh tunnel, face painting, hairstyles (photo by the author) (photo by the author)

things and self-determination. Hence, body (modifications) are mostly associated with gender assignments because every human has (at least) one gender—in whatever materiality, relevance and meaning—gender is a category of structure and orientation and correlates with the body (cf. Duttweiler 2013). If young adolescents in the course of their intersubjectification phase do not comply with the demonstrated style sheets or deviate from them too much, conflicts with oneself and the others may occur. On the level of subjective awareness, these norms and regulations express themselves as including and excluding fog lights, for instance by appearing in the form of visibility or invisibility or by fading into the mist. Intersubjective habituations directly enable a communication of collectives, simultaneously identifying borders between one’s own world and the alien one. In the feminist-phenomenological perspective those sexualities or (aesthetic) physicalities, which cannot be classified within one’s own living environment, lead to irritations, normative evaluations and prejudices from others. This “power of beauty” (Ganterer 2019, p. 74) goes together with the idea that in a globalized world one’s own body remains the only object of control, self-perception and performative design possibility of one’s own identity (cf. Hein 2003, p. 71). With a pluralization of lifeforms and lifestyles the possibilities of individual design and freedom also increase. Young people have more opportunities to design their own life. The “normal biog-raphy” becomes the “choice biography” or “handicraft biography” (cf. Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 1993). On the cost side of

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this development stands a growing personal design responsibility for the own life plan. For young people, the social and global pluralization is relevant in a particular way, since the youth phase is per se through processes of exploration and testing the identification, the development of own values and the design of your own body and lifestyle. In the living environment of the adolescents, these bodily experiences become especially obvious because the body moves into the focus of one’s own experience in an especially irritating manner. “The sprouting adolescent body thereby strikingly contradicts the generally perceptible, social forfeiture of the body’s importance as well as the modern body culture […],” according to Rohr (2009, n. p.). Young people both live in the physical tension of being adolescents and in a globally caused social tension. To resolve these conflicts, they are partly left alone feeling overwhelmed so body modifications might be their coping strategy and their form of expressing social overload (Fig 3). Taken from the research project conducted by Ganterer (2019), the case study of Mika shall help to document the diversity and possible alternatives of gender images, body schemes and intersubjectivity and remind us that humans build themselves and their own realities, revealing themselves only in the dichotomy of their own foreignness (Waldenfels 2000, 2002).

Fig. 3 Processes of acceptance and recognition, external and self-perception as well as exclusion and inclusion of a global community are central in the course of their intersubjectification (photo by the author) (photo by the author)

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4 Mika: “I Think My Identity Changed the Moment I Said: I Still Don’t Want to Be a Boy!” Mika, 21 years old, lives in a small town with her mother and younger brother. She works as a piercing artist in a studio and has been practicing body culture for some years. This means that she regards her body as a “project,” striving for a personal ideal image of physical attractiveness in order to become herself. Mika describes her character as follows: “Wallflower. I was quiet, reserved, no self-confidence. I was somebody nobody pays attention to, in terms of my character. Visually I have always stuck out, but regarding my character I have always been reserved” (Ganterer 2019, p. 149), quoting Mika. Mika describes herself as a loner who prefers enjoying nature in the woods alone with her dog to being among people. Whenever she is among people, she wears headphones to mute comments and glances. She feels the people staring at her body, with her headphones she tries to protect herself against the verbal comments and statements. With regard to sexuality and gender, it should be noted that she does not assign herself to any particular sexual orientation and it is only in recent years that she has felt that she belongs to the gender category woman. Mika’s whole body is streaked with piercings and decorated with tattoos, including parts of her face, such as forehead, cheeks and neck. Almost her entire body shimmers in shades of black and green. Repeatedly, the swastika symbol3 in various forms and sizes appears on her skin. Over the next few years, Mika plans implants for upper arm and cleavage, moreover elves’ ears and tattooing of the eyeballs. Mika’s ideal image would be to tattoo every inch of her skin. The face, in particular, should be totally colored by ink eventually. Mika’s latest tattoo, a swastika symbol on her forehead, has been done in the colors green and black, aesthetically matching her other tattoos. She had not looked forward more to any other tattoo and states that now she feels “better, more content, more self -assured and happier.” If she had not been convinced that she would feel better afterward, she would “not have done it” (Ganterer 2019, p. 276). The modification of her body has given Mika the opportunity to express her physicality, sensuality and intersubjective experiences and she describes the process as a kind of self-assertion (cf. Ganterer 2019, pp. 149–150). The following sequence with Mika shows how body modifications and gender representations of young adolescents may look, because they are seen as opportunities to deal with tensions and associated painful experiences, happening due to somatic, emotional and social processes of change during adolescence. When asked how long she has been thinking about her looks, she answers as follows: Hm ((smacks lips)) I think, primarily as a child, because I was constantly a little overweight. Anyway, a lot more than now. And, logically, in school I always had to suffer a lot because of my excess weight and the others. And, logically, I worried about it, because if the other kids always (.) ((clicks her tongue)) call one fat and so, one starts to think about it. And also, 3 A swastika is a cross with four equally long angled arms, which is regarded as a symbol of luck in

some religions whereas it is forbidden as “Hakenkreuz” representing the ideology and the crimes of National Socialism in Germany and Austria cf. DWDS (2019, n. p.).

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about my beauty ideal because the others could not understand why I dressed or styled like a boy. Logically, the other kids were not able to relate to that. This combination of overweight and dressing like a boy, logically, that had always been an issue and, logically, I had a lot of conflicts in my childhood with the other kids. But still, I carried on as I thought right, I did not adjust or change because of this. I think there sure is a connection as to how I am today. (Mika, 53–63)

The acoustic sound of her tongue, the smacking of her lips, makes it possible for Mika to put her experience with her beauty ideal into words. In the course of the smacking Mika begins to talk about her (painful) experiences regarding her excess weight and her body scheme. As the other children in school were not able to understand why she dressed like a boy, she started to think about her beauty image. The others’ vision of her weight and gender renders her speechless. The other children do not understand why she would dress and style herself like a boy even though she is a girl. Subsequently, Mika experiences otherness because she confuses the children, as she does not comply with that classical gender image taught and exemplified to the children. Mika does not represent an unambiguous gender according to man* and woman*.4 With regard to her biological gender she complies with a Cis-woman,5 socially she associates herself to the male gender category. This ambivalence resp. ambiguity leads to confusion, as “the borders of the body’s ‘naturalness’ are being dissolved” (Rendtorff 1996, p. 13, emphasis in original). Mika uncovers that gender is not an expression of natural necessity but a category we take up, based on social structures and cultural norms. Merleau-Ponty describes gender as a metaphysical kind, which does not transcend but is a transcendental movement, which “makes the existence of an actual situation its own, and being changed” (Merleau-Ponty 1966, p. 202); thus creating variable spaces of possibility. Consequently, gender is “not an empirical phenomenon but a transcendental breach of nature. Therefore, the process of sexual differentiation is a procedural process of differentiation, which builds itself up and is filled variably, and not preconstructed by immediately established truths” (Andermann 2012, p. 6). As can be seen with Mika, beauty and gender become embodied sensuality only by expression and practice and subsequently meaningful perception by others. In the course of which Mika takes up the children’s reactions. As she knows about the existing heterosexual matrix and predominant gender dualism she is aware of her otherness and unconventionality. Nevertheless, she has stuck to this “beauty image” and has continued in the way she deems right. It is not clear what conflicts have happened to her. Mika meets the conflicts speechlessly, does not make verbal statements, but faces the situation physically. She does not change her 4 The gender asterisk (*) serves as a reference to the constructional nature of “gender.” The asterisk

behind “women” and “men” is intended to make it clear that it refers to all persons who define themselves under the designation “woman” or “man,” are defined and/or see themselves made visible. A consideration is also given here to trans*, inter and non-binary people with regard to disadvantage and discrimination. There is an awareness that even classifying gender diversity under the term “women *” is a repetition of discriminatory violence and can therefore not be understood as a solution, but only as a process. 5 The prefix “cis” refers to the consistency of one’s own gender identity with the gender assigned at birth. Using the name “cis” is the endeavor to avoid that cis-persons are considered “the normal” and all others as “the deviation.”

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body scheme, does not want to assign herself to a gender category and, thus, keeps on modifying. Mika’s wording expresses her experience of necessary gender-specific identity patterns. She uses the word “logical” a lot to express her subjective understanding of perception. Mika has reflected on the development since her childhood up to her present situation. Based on the self-reflection it is self-evident to Mika that, up until today, she does not comply with the general logic and the social norm. She was different and remains different, as she differs from the other children in her sexuality, physicality and idea of beauty. Consistently, the other children behaved differently toward her, as they were not able to compare themselves with Mika’s behavior. Here, sexuality is projected onto Mika’s total being, whereas gender is not all, but a special part of human physicality. Mika’s otherness manifests itself in the fact that her appearance does not comply with the social norms of gender construction. The rising intonation and intensity in her voice make audible that the children’s reactions do not have enough weight (following Butler 1997) for her to make Mika change her looks. Which does not mean, though, that there could not be other reasons to make her adapt to a female look. Mika does not have a definite explanation for herself, although believes that her childhood experiences are associated with her nowbeing: “I think that there has to be a relation somewhere with who I am today.” Mika, however, weakens the meaning and interference of her experience of being different through the other children’s glances by adding the word “somewhere,” which means as much as maybe or possibly. By markedly speaking the sentence out loudly, she immediately emphasizes the interrelation of biographical experiences and intersubjectivity. Indirectly she thereby affirms her childhood experiences with gender order, body scheme and beauty with her present body modifications. The idea of gender norms, body images and beauty ideals is based on an experience-before-reason and acquired knowledge thereof. Already Simone de Beauvoir (1992) analyzed the sexual existence as a bodily situation based on a social construction. Only in the course of sensual experience do gender, body and beauty become existential necessities. Mika makes obvious that in the course of the intersubjectivity process there exists a conflict dispute between what is one’s own and what is foreign consisting of one’s own physicality and the affective habituation. By modifying her body she demonstrates that gender and beauty for the individual become sense/sensual and meaningful only through the eyes of others. According to Meyer-Drawe “[glances] evoke our awareness, speech, action and thought. They are the reason to talk about them at all” (Meyer-Drawe 1999, p. 332) or to think about them at all, as is the case with Mika. Because Mika stays true to her beauty image, does not succumb to the existing body, gender and beauty images, the body becomes perceptible as being. After all, the subject only becomes the gender or the beautiful (or the ugly) in the course of human reactions. Due to the fact that Mika’s appearance does not seem compatible with the others’ (previous) experiences and gender-body images, irritations and conflict relationships occur between her individual world and the social environment (cf. Ganterer 2019, p. 208).

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5 Summarizing Reflection Looking at the case study has shown that biographical experiences, social norms and discourses inscribe themselves on the body. In regard of gender norms this means that the subject has learned what a gender is, how to behave as man* or woman*, what knowledge/ignorance, ability/inability, behavior/misbehavior it needs or what activities, ways of thinking and acting it is allowed to, has to, can or may not exercise. Mika’s making gender physical and her negotiations with beauty ground on an offer of symbolic representations, which dialectically consist of verbalized and pictorial elements as well as incorporated experiences. In general, the intersubjective process between subject and environment is the basis for creating gender structures and social norms. Intersubjectivity is to be comprehended in a universal and profoundly social context. As seen with Mika, subjective identifications and experiences, which are expressed by body modifications, happen in childhood. The young adolescents negotiate the identification and/or differentiation they have experienced by means of modification. Body modifications are masks protecting the young adolescents as an (in)visible, solid shell from other peoples’ glances and at the same time serving as a staging of their own living environment. Mika tried to express her felt gender with her body practice, and made the experience of otherness, as her look triggered confusion and irritation. The others were not able to identify themselves resp. come to terms with her. This may also be related to gender and body reacting to an interiorized matrix. The culture and social environment Mika lives in limit gender and body diversity. It surfaced strongly in the further interview that those limits profoundly characterize her intersubjectivity. Already Butler analyzed that the body “always [is] an embodiment of possibilities, which are conditions and encroached by historical conventions” (cf. Butler 2002, p. 40). The I and the we, the self and the foreign stand next to each other and within each other. In particular, the subjects’ ligation to power and its powerful open or close their modes of perception and creative possibilities. In Mika’s tale those powers first become audible in the way she presented her present self, as it again came to disputes with experienced conflict relationships. Thereby, relationship experiences were reactivated implicitly and explicitly. Mika is not able to express this experienced mode verbally and therefore it comes to a bodily expression. Body modifications are interpreted as a mouthpiece of “mute experiences” (Husserl 1977) and felt physicality, contributing to the visibility of diverse body, gender and life models.

6 Conclusion and Outlook The feminist-phenomenological view demonstrates that bodies, gender identities and beauty ideals are interwoven and interrelated intersubjective-bodily activities. Intersubjectivity and physicality designate the immanent, pre-predicative and prereflexive relation to the world (cf. Merleau-Ponty 1966; Husserl 1977). According

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to Merleau-Ponty, the living environment is embedded within “the subject itself,” which creates “[all] its experiences from a field.” Just as the body can never be “completely constructed” just so the world remains an “incomplete work” (MerleauPonty 1966, p. 462, emphasis in original). Body-phenomenological considerations may offer a possible explanation why these days the body can be seen as a lifetime project, being pierced, plucked, burned or cut, without ever reaching completion. Consequently, disciplining, optimizing and modifying are deemed as a produced effect and mechanism of an intersubjective world. Which furthermore implies that the increasingly cross-border experiences of the present also have an effect and impact on the body. Subsequently, one can talk about a globalized physical embodiment, which shows itself primarily in youth cultures and their representatives: The global commercialization leads to a bodily obsession and culturalized bodily oblivion. Finally, a disciplined body shall serve to form, to create and manipulate the will, the mind and the feeling of a human so that they completely, autonomously and self-determined subject themselves to the global power structures. These pluralization tendencies are countered by highly effective notions of normality, which (can) have a contradictory or at least ambivalent effect on young people. Regarding one’s own body, in terms of identity and in bodily terms, achieving the perfect style, fashionable clothing and physical fitness are seen as desireable ideals, especially for young people. Media presentations, such as influencers, convey prevailing ideals of beauty, body and lifestyle and one can also follow countless tutorials on YouTube to achieve these ideals (cf. Schulz 2015). This ambivalent relationship gives rise to a “contradiction” (Waldenfels 2015, p. 247) between aesthetic ideals and normative images of beauty. But it is only when something or someone is seen, has come into the gaze of others, that this body gains expression and shape. Only when something is expressed, can a sense of being beautiful or ugly arise. The emotional expression reveals something that was hitherto unremarkable. It is only in the interaction process, “in an inter-bodily expressive event” (MeyerDrawe 2016, p. 20) that beauty takes shape. Being beautiful or becoming beautiful is dependent on the appraisal of desire and the assessment of given ideals and standards. Whether we encounter someone as “some-body or as no-body” is determined by the “devotion” (ibid.) with which he/she is desired by others, how much other persons value the sight of him/her. These appraisals and assessments are increasing in the pluralized-globalized lifeworld (mainly through the media) (cf. Ganterer 2019, p. 62). Social concepts are particularly strong notions of normality, if it is about sexual orientation and gender. Heterosexuality and the two gender categories female and male are mostly unquestioned as a premise. Both are given as naturally respected and remain largely unquestioned. Subsequently, the challenge of modified bodies as expressional spaces in (social) pedagogical work and research lies within the nuanced and open guidance of perception processes, which have to do with incorporation, assimilation, (de)construction and appreciation. If we look at those aspects demonstrated by Mika sociologically, pedagogically and social-psychologically, they yield a series of points of reference, which play a main role in the interaction of pedagogically, psychologically and therapeutically qualified personnel, young people

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and peers. However, those points of reference are often afflicted with discursively constructed attributions (cf. Orlikowski 2020, p. 269). The reference to sensual perception, physicality, intersubjective experiences and body practices is not only important for the theoretical and practical realization in the field of the social and sexual process of identity-finding. The dispute with socially constructed identity and life models as well as the questioning of normative body images refers to the general profession of social, pedagogical and psychological practice which needs to be rendered in order to be able to adequately accompany young people in an increasingly global and transnational world. Even though this contribution does not address the multicultural and transnational life, family, education and job models, nor the view of medial representations, it should nevertheless be noted that the modern media constitute a major part of the young peoples’ day-to-day world where they are frequently surrounded by body images representing a design beauty ideal but no real role model. Young people lack real-life guiding principles to orient themselves. Ultimately, youth cultures do not modify and design their bodies in order to please themselves but to obtain acceptance. One’s own body is staged so as to obtain acceptance from a special audience (resp. youth culture) in order to achieve a sense of well-being and a state of balance with the self and one’s own experience of the body (cf. Ganterer 2019, pp. 314f.). The appeal is directed at a body- and self-reflexive form of researching and working with adolescents to strengthen their identity and selfassurance. To achieve a successful process of understanding and education between researchers and practitioners of the social, cultural and educational sciences and the youth cultures, these complex dynamics of juvenile identity and design constructs have to be included. It is about a reflexive process of looking, listening, understanding and supporting the youth culture representatives’ processes of subjectification, pluralization, individualization and globalization, when they utilize their bodies as a medium to cope with conflicted and biographically difficult body experiences.

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Youth and Interculturality in Vienna: Gaming Intervention in Intercultural Contexts—Two Project Cases Gerit Götzenbrucker, Vera Schwarz, and Fares Kayali

1 Introduction Living and learning in digital contexts have become ubiquitous and pervasive, and it has had impacts on many aspects of the lives of adolescents and young citizens all over the world (Miller et al. 2016). Especially young students and apprentices depend on teaching and learning infrastructures in state-organized—mostly nondigital—settings, but increasingly, they spend their leisure time on activities with and within digital environments like social media, computers, and online gaming. This kind of contradiction has been addressed in two of our research projects, in which we attempted to uncover distinct digital practices, expectations, and desires of youths in Vienna in both immigrant and non-immigrant milieus. Our focus was social learning within games, creating games using project-based learning, and addressing the Internet as a playground for adolescents’ social and private activities. Society has changed in Vienna over recent decades as immigrants and refugees have moved in, and as a result, challenges of and questions about social participation, acculturation, and integration have emerged. The traditional school system, youth centres, and social workers must manage multiple expectations and demands in this regard. Our projects were undertaken to address and to intervene in these integration processes

G. Götzenbrucker (B) Department of Communication, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria e-mail: [email protected] V. Schwarz Centre for Teacher Education, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria e-mail: [email protected] F. Kayali Digital Education and Learning, Centre for Teacher Education, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 G. Knapp and H. Krall (eds.), Youth Cultures in a Globalized World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65177-0_13

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under the premise of technology assessment, i.e., to adjust imbalances in both societal and school-learning processes. Our research focus is driven by a creative approach, the social aspects of learning and gaming, social interaction, and the attempt to transform game expertise into relevant knowledge and critical thinking about technology development and its impacts on society. The case studies might also invite readers and scholars to consider local practices, literacies, and competences of becoming globally relevant in youth cultures.

2 How to Accomplish Intercultural Learning, Social Integration, and Participation Through the Medium of (Online) Games 2.1 Project Case 1: “Serious Beats” The intervention study titled “Serious Beats: Internet Use and Friendship Structures of Young Immigrants in Vienna: The Question of Diversity within Social Networks and Online Social Games” from 2011 to 2013 (http://igw.tuwien.ac.at/seriousbeats/) deals with online gaming habits of teenagers with and without migration backgrounds (first- and second-generation youth from working-class families) in Vienna, Austria. Basically, the project focuses on differences and similarities of teenagers’ social media use, social activities (offline and online), habits, and personal networks with respect to their gender, age, and ethnic backgrounds with the aim of answering questions about teenagers’ social attitudes and friendship cultures. As friendship and collaboration are core topics in globally distributed computer games, special ideas of these conventions are inscribed. Therefore, a virtual playground, “YourTurn! The Video-Game,” was created in cooperation with young Viennese people from different cultures to support non-conventional integration processes by means of establishing connections among teenagers from different Viennese districts and to expand and diversify their social networks. The central research question was: “Can an online, positive-impact game allow Viennese teenagers to reflect on their understanding of cultural diversity in order to overcome cultural/ethnic boundaries within an online social game?” The research comprises diverse scientific approaches that involve media and communication studies, game studies and game design, political science, and computer science. The action research and methodological triangulation consist of qualitative in-depth media interviews and ego network analysis as well as quantitative video structure analysis and gameplay metrics. In a nutshell, the gaming intervention showed positive effects on the size and homogeneity of the teenagers’ networks.

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2.2 Project Case 2: “Sparkling Games” In recent years, the spread of technological developments has increased rapidly. This results in new areas of social tension of great importance for youth globally and their everyday life. Questions about the vulnerability of users with regard to copyright and intellectual property, privacy and surveillance, social media, and big data have developed from marginal issues to become central issues of sociopolitical discussion in a short time. Consequently, the consideration of appropriate content in the classroom becomes more and more significant. Our study addresses an Austrian educational context, but might show relevance for other school systems around the globe. The “Sparkling Games” project (http://igw.tuwien.ac.at/hci/projects/sparkling games) was conducted because media education, media literacy, and critical computer science instruction are not sufficiently addressed in Austrian schools’ academic curricula. In our educational research and schools project, high-school students were asked to analyse already existing games using a database tool (Kayali et al. 2017) and design games in order to facilitate the integration of content and questions from the subject area “informatics and society” in classrooms. We collaborated with three different Viennese schools. Launched in 2015, the project was funded by the Sparkling Science funding program, which aims to facilitate the transfer of academic research to schools. Therefore, our research question asks: “How can concepts from the field of gamebased learning be used to develop learning methods and materials covering the topic informatics and society?” The aim of the project was the creation of educational games on topics from the field of “informatics and society” by the participating students; we attempted to address the project participants’ diverse gender and culturally specific conditions and needs. The range of games created included board and computer games, which were later presented at the trade show “Game City” in Vienna. The project also hypothesized that the game-design process itself is a valuable learning experience (Fig. 1).

3 Theoretical Considerations 3.1 (Digital) Games and Project-Based Learning Dealing with “serious games” (Abt 1970), researchers from different disciplines are concerned with computer games and their application in the field of teaching and learning, for example, media pedagogy (Franke 2009; Guyne 2007; Jenkins et al. 2003), human–computer interaction research, and media and communication studies (Gee 2003, 2007 and 2009; Prensky 2003 and 2005; Markovi´c et al. 2007; Kayali et al. 2018, etc.).

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Fig. 1 Students playing together at the Game City trade show (photo by the authors)

Several terms are used, such as “game-based learning” (GBL) or “digital gamebased learning” (DGBL) as well as “serious games” (Pias 2009) or “educational games” in other contexts, and currently, there are no precise definitions of these terms (Fromme et al. 2010). All concepts are connected by the approach of using games with “serious intentions,” i.e., for the acquisition of knowledge or for educational purposes (Bevc and Zapf 2009) or for interactive simulation (Smith 2005). For educational games, the content, structure, and gameplay are designed for social impact but, at the same time, contain key features of games (Meier and Seufert 2003). Klimmt (2009) deals theoretically with the potential of serious and learning games in particular. Studies such as De Freitas’s “Learning in immersive worlds: a review of game-based learning” (2006), Mitgutsch and Alvarado’s “Purposeful by design?: a serious game design assessment framework” (2012), and Fromme et al.’s “Educational potential of digital games and game cultures” (2009) provide an overview of not only existing commercial games used in the classroom but also games specially designed for the classroom. Moreover, mobile game-based learning settings have been discussed and tested (de Souza e Silva and Delacruz 2006; Petrovic and Brand 2009). Game-based learning can foster digital literacy, skills development, and cognitive growth, as well as motivation and engagement through intrinsic motivation and immediate feedback. Learners are specifically encouraged to take an active role and to show increased motivation. Embedding “computational thinking” (Kayali 2019) in learning environments and social learning processes supports empowerment and social participation for learners. The inadequacy of curricula as well as escapism and inattentiveness by students are limitations we came across (Schwarz et al. 2015;

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Kayali et al. 2018). Thus, media education in terms of a “critical media literacy” (Kellner and Share 2007, p. 3) especially for teens (Boyd 2014) should aim to analyse and understand the shape of media representations—represented globally: as “programs tend to unproblematically teach students the technical skills to merely reproduce hegemonic representations with little awareness of ideological implications or any type of social critique” (ibid.). Moreover, project-based learning (PBL) (Schmidt 1983, Connor et al. 2015, Herro et al. 2016, Oner et al. 2016) is an ideal concept for fostering both an understanding of social problems and technologically driven developments because it enables a broader view instead of a narrow focus on grades. PBL is a teaching method that empowers learners to find a solution to given problems independently. The term STEAM education describes the extension of education into subjects associated with science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), with the addition of the arts and humanities (A). In particular, the Sparkling Games project combined informatics with creative approaches from the arts. Most research in the area of STEAM education appears to follow an educational philosophy closely related to Dewey’s (1938) notion of learning by doing and also is related to project-based learning. It further involves active learning (Christensen and Knezek 2015), inquirybased learning (Spector 2015), and a focus on understanding knowledge (Boy 2013). The goal is to teach youth life skills that are directly transferable to working in STEM jobs, such as communication and collaboration (Christensen and Knezek 2015), reasoning skills (Spector 2015), inter-, trans- and multidisciplinary work (Spector 2015, Henriksen 2014, Boy 2013, Connor et al. 2015, Oner et al. 2016), creative thinking (Henriksen 2014), and holistic approaches (Spector 2015). Additionally, the inclusion of arts and humanities aims to make STEM education more approachable to a wider range of youth (Connor et al. 2015).

3.2 Acculturation and Social Participation Both research projects address diversity research and social learning processes in teenagers’ lives for the purposes of: (a) enhancing social participation, supporting diversity, and expanding ego networks through game playing; and (b) learning about “informatics and society” in diverse settings by developing games. Based on Berry’s (2001) acculturation concept, the enhancement of a diverse view of oneself in regard to the society in which one lives is outlined as follows: Integration as seen within the acculturation concept occurs when people are able to adopt the cultural norms of the dominant or host culture while maintaining their original culture. Integration leads to and is often synonymous with bi-/multiculturalism as opposed to assimilation (whereby individuals reject their minority culture and adopt the cultural norms of the dominant or host culture), separation (rejecting the host culture while living within enclaves), and marginalization (rejecting both one’s culture of origin and the dominant host culture).

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The most important aspect in the integration process is establishing interethnic and class-overlapping relationships and understanding (Götzenbrucker and Franz 2010). Thus, we gathered information about social relations, concepts of friendship, and ego networks in order to analyse inner ethnic and interethnic bonds. The gameplay of “YourTurn!” as well as the game-developing process within the “Sparkling Games” project show several impacts, as discussed later. Furthermore, social capital theory (e.g., Hollstein 2007) and the homophily thesis (McPhearson et al. 2001) are relevant to the topic. These theories describe social relations as a resource that can offer more security and social embeddedness and is crucial for social participation and integration. Social capital can be expanded by using social media such as social networking sites like Facebook because these systems support weak networks; weak relations are less solidarity-bound, enable more out-group relations, and provide access to alternative resources and ideas. Weak networks might, therefore, reduce social exclusion, in opposition to strong ties, which Portes (1998, p. 15f.) labelled as negative social capital because social control is strong and can be inhibiting. Social Network approaches are appropriate also in other cultural contexts, e.g., Asian and non-Western contexts (Chua and Wellman 2015).

3.3 Social Connections and Friendship Cultures Friendships among young people are usually established in gender-homogeneous structures (and culturally homogeneous ones). Intercultural studies in Thailand and Austria for instance show rather homogeneous gender bonds, and only slight differences in the composition of friendship and strength of social bonds in terms of trust and reciprocity of ties (Götzenbrucker and Köhl 2014). This is shown by the contrast between close friendships (cliques) and looser acquaintanceships. The latter, less intense relationships are almost exclusively a consequence of geographic proximity. In addition, homogeneity based on age and interests/hobbies is prevalent within our researched teenage groups. This relates clearly to the homophily thesis (Lazarsfeld and Merton 1954), which states that people who are sociodemographically similar tend to like each other more. Nevertheless, relationship deficits of this kind can be partly compensated for by computerized (computer-mediated) communication, and new relationships can be formed via the Internet or online gaming (see, among others, Ellison et al. 2007; Götzenbrucker 2001; Götzenbrucker and Köhl 2009; Haythornthwaite et al. 1997; Hemminger 2011; Utz 2001; Vogelgesang 2000; Wellman 2001). Moreover, there are numerous gender differences regarding the use of social media and games (Sehidoglu 2009), not only game gender ratios comparable worldwide (more men playing 59/4, Entertainment Software Association USA). Male teenagers use the platforms mostly to represent themselves and to get to know women. Female teenagers of, e.g., Turkish descent are much more careful with their data. They prefer

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the use of personal messages and of cell phones. Their main reservation about Facebook, etc., is the fear that their private data (including photos, expressions of feelings, and relationships) will become public and that their family and social environment will find out about them. Thus, we took care that anonymity within our game “YourTurn!” was guaranteed in order to enable the establishment of culturally overlapping contacts.

4 Mixed Methods and Challenges of Research Several methods of social sciences and computer sciences (human-computer interaction) were combined in both research projects in order to design the interventions. Learning to understand Viennese youths’ lifestyles and expectations, in the first project we conducted qualitative in-depth media interviews in combination with participatory observations in youth centres. Moreover, an ego network generator tool collected the adolescents’ data before and after the gaming intervention to measure ego network impacts. In the second project, a quantitative pre- and post-questionnaire was used to, first, better understand and, later, measure the changes in knowledge about aspects of informatics and society. Workshops supporting the students’ game-design competencies and project gatherings as well as a (public) presentation of the games were combined in order to provide a sustained learning experience. The combination of several qualitative, quantitative, and network analysis methods ensures deeper insights and offers interpretation frames that cannot be achieved with the application of single methods only.

4.1 Gaming Intervention Within a Mixed-Methods Design Within our project “Serious Beats,” an exploration of the field first outlined that many teenagers, young immigrants, and members of the second or third generation inhabit digital environments in addition to their physical worlds. In these virtual environments, they often playfully design identities in a spontaneous way without any particular purpose. With these activities in the digital environments, however, they might gain media-cultural symbolic capital (Vogelgesang 2000) and engage in communication and social relations (Kuhn 2009) (Fig. 2). Additionally, our participatory observation of a “gamer party” at a youth centre supported our thesis that avatars can be used by teenagers as virtual representations and to experiment with different identities within a virtual environment not subject to social control by adults. This enhances the immersion into games and allows a personality and identity development to occur within a sphere that is largely anonymous. Thus, learning by gaming as well as self-enhancement and empowerment by gameplay were addressed within our “YourTurn!” game design.

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Fig. 2 Home screen of the Facebook game “YourTurn!”

We relied on methodological triangulation of qualitative in-depth media interviews (Internet contents collected by bookmarking sites together with the interviewees on a laptop) and ego network analysis as well as quantitative video structure analysis (to get insights on different styles of collaboration) and gameplay metrics. Our core research process was an action research setting involving a threemonth gaming intervention. The target audience comprised Viennese working-class teenagers with and without an immigrant background. We were looking for ways to use the game to intervene in Viennese teens’ real lives and to directly connect it to their (social) media behaviour. Following Jane McGonigal’s (2011) view on the potential of games to have real-world impact, we also built a game that enables the transfer of online relationships to the real world. We conducted two sets of semi-structured personal media interviews (51 interviews in the first set and 40 in the second set with the same teenagers—ages 14–17 and 15–18 years, respectively, 50% boys and 50% girls) after the gaming intervention (Table 1). The use of a game itself can be considered action research. Almost half our interviewees played the game and were asked about the gaming experience afterward. Additionally, we used (direct and participatory) observation (in youth clubs and on Facebook) to gather in situ information. The teenagers’ ego networks were measured to demonstrate changes in networks over time and especially after playing the game.

Youth and Interculturality in Vienna … Table 1 Interviewees by set, ethnic background, and gender

215 Turkish

SE European (& others)

Austrians

1st interview set

16 (8 female)

19 (8 female) 16 (8 female)

2nd interview set

14

16

10

Gamers (12 female)

8

12

7

Top gamers (5 female)

5

8

2

4.2 Game-Design Methods for Social Learning Our “Serious Games” project also used a pre- and post-design, using online surveys for measuring intervention effects. Students of three school classes (n = 47 and a control group for the survey, consisting of school classes of the same type and grade as the project participants) were asked about their social media use, related topics, and their attitudes towards informatics and society. An introductory workshop was held for each school class in which we discussed topics from the subject area, informatics, and society, to develop a basic understanding of our research topic and, additionally, to impart some basic knowledge about game design and learning games. In a further step, the students sampled commercial games (analogue and digital) and were asked to identify learning potentials within these games and to enter these into a database we developed especially for the project. Building on this, we conducted game-design workshops with each class to support the students in designing their own games. First, we helped them develop concepts (for digital or board games), and in a second step, we supported them in improving/refining these concepts. Over the course of the project, two gatherings were organized where approximately 50 students from three schools attended. The first meeting was a poster session where they presented and shared feedback on the game concepts. At the second meeting (at the end of the school year), the 18 finished games were played by the students—11 board games and 7 digital games. Finally, a public presentation of selected games at Game City 2016, an annual trade show for digital games, was held.

4.3 Challenges to Be Mentioned Involving Viennese teenagers, teachers, and youth centre staff in the research process was time-consuming and called for sensitivity and patience. The project “Sparkling Games” created opportunities for exchanges between the participating students and

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scientists. Expertise in game design was imparted to the students, and they benefitted from reflection on as well as evaluation of games. Conversely, the researchers were able to gain valuable insights into the design of educational games. In contrast to conventional research approaches, these insights did not arise solely through the evaluation of existing products but directly from the target group. Moreover, institutional challenges must be outlined. The Austrian school system, in general, and the curricula, in particular, offer little room for individual initiative; learning in school is too heavily connected to grading and the need to pass the centralized exit exam. Thus, the students essentially did not have sufficient time to complete all their project assignments properly. The most significant limitation for future application in teaching also lies within the school system: with no incentives from external researchers, it is rather unlikely that a playful, project-based learning approach will be incorporated into standard instructional programs. This demonstrates not only national problems, but also general ones, for perceived failings in education—outlined by national (Ito et al. 2010) and international studies (Miller et al. 2016, pp. 73ff.) exist; while the trend should go from “formal” to “informal learning” as well as the reorganization of teacher–student relationships. Ethical research is highly relevant to science-based work with immigrant teenagers and other vulnerable groups. In particular, the assurance of total anonymity was required, specifically for our female and younger participants, concerning their media use, friendships, and social habits.

5 Results and Learnings 5.1 Is Gaming Suited for Social Participation and Connections? The results of the “Serious Beats” project show that the online game had fewer offline effects than there were online effects of “offline life.” When using social networking sites—mainly Facebook—the participating teenagers more or less stuck with their “real-life,” “physical” identities, also communicating more with friends they knew from places other than the Internet than with friends they met online. In principle, our gaming intervention managed to encourage the teenagers to establish contact with other (previously unknown) teenagers, while participating in playful video creation, but it did not trigger strong or sustainable social integration processes. This is likely due to the duration of the gaming intervention being too short (2 months). Although the teenagers did express their identities on online social networking sites, they did not choose an identity different from the one they expressed “offline” but rather reflected their everyday identities online. The fact that they knew most of their online social networking friends in the real world may even have prevented them from experimenting much with identity online.

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This result hints at how much social media have become part of everyday life; thanks to smartphones, the boundaries between online and offline life have become increasingly blurred. In this context, “YourTurn!” as a platform focused on offering common grounds to teenagers rather than reinforcing differences in regard to cultural identity. It was also a platform for demonstrating YouTube knowledge (shared by all teenagers) and discovering shared music/video preferences (despite differences and boundaries). Players gained media literacy. Finding a suitable clip meant learning to reflect on communication, aesthetics, and context.

5.2 Changing Ego Networks When collecting data about our interviewees’ ego networks in the “Serious Beats” project, we asked three questions: “Who are your best friends?” (friendship), “Whom do you talk to in cases of serious problems?” (trust), and “With whom do you spend your spare time?” (socializing). The interviewees named people and answered questions about these actors’ attributes (gender, age, ethnic background, etc.). The persons’ names were displayed in a funnel as nodes, with the interviewees placing the nodes (their friends, family, and acquaintances) relative to themselves (“ego”). Thus, the networks were created with respect to the closeness and importance of the displayed persons to ego (Hollstein and Pfeffer 2010). The lower the nodes were placed, the closer the respective person was considered to be. Based on the self-created images of the teenagers’ networks, a typology comprising seven types of networks was developed. • Huge group of friends: These have large, dispersed networks, and their best friends cannot be identified clearly. Also, if relatives are part of the network, their distance to ego is larger than the friends’ distances. • Lone wolf : These teenagers have fewer than five friends, and their distance to ego is above average. • Family is important: Family members are part of a close network (high density). • Loose family network: Family members are part of a weak network (low density). • Best friend(s): One or a few best friends are placed close to ego. • My mates and I: Friendships are very important (high priority) and close. • All friends are important: All friends are placed very close to the bottom ego line. As examples from our longitudinal study show, most networks changed over the course of time. Only a few cases show similar structures of networks (or minor changes in the network structure), for instance P2, a 17/18-year-old girl of Southeastern European descent. In the second set, her network is smaller, missing one parent and one friend Figs. 3, 4, 5, and 6. P10, a 14/15-year-old Austrian male apprentice, expanded and changed his network structure from nine to twelve alteri, whereas his parents and his brother are

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Set 1 (family is important)

Set 2 (family is important)

Fig. 3 Instance P2, network changes over time

Set 1 (family is important)

Set 2 (all friends are important)

Fig. 4 Instance P10, network changes over time

Set 1 (huge group of friends)

Fig. 5 Instance P46, network changes over time

Set 2 (all friends are important)

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Set 2 (best friend network)

Fig. 6 Instance P8, network changes over time

missing in the second-set network one year later. The friendships in the second-set network are displayed as arranged nearly equally. The network of P46, a 14/15-year-old female of Southeastern European descent, changed from weak to close within one year. Conversely, the network of P8, a 15/16-year-old unemployed male of Southeastern European descent, changed dramatically. Only one best friend remained in the network; the parents and the cousin as well as four other friends disappeared. In sum, the network size has declined from ten to four actors and has weakened. Subsequently, the data were recoded and statistically processed. They show significant differences in network types of gamers in comparison to those of non-gamers. Even before playing our game, the gamers’ group more often belonged to the network types “loose family networks,” “best friends,” or “huge group(s) of friends” (ρ = .811 sign. p = .05). The gaming intervention showed effects on the size and homogeneity of the teenagers’ networks—gamers’ networks were larger to begin with but also increased by one actor on average. We learned that ethnicity influences network size and homogeneity, which means an immigration background leads to larger and more diverse networks. Moreover, the gameplay encouraged several “top gamers” (those who reached at least level 15 during the three-month-long gaming intervention) to establish contact with other gamers/teenagers of our sample they did not know before. Thus, gaming can promote new connections within networks.

5.3 “Sparkling Games”—Effects of Game-Based Learning Our school project also shows positive results with regard to establishing new connections between students—among them intercultural ones—facilitated by the project gatherings that brought together students and teachers from three different schools

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with the researchers. By means of this “magic triangle” of students, teachers, and researchers—inherent in the Sparkling Science funding program—a mutual understanding for education and our research disciplines as well as their challenges was promoted. Within the “Sparkling Games” project, students had opportunities to experience and assess their teamwork skills (and other social skills). This process was supported essentially by their reciprocal feedback regarding the games. The project also provided the research team with exciting insights into the adolescents’ perceptions of the targeted topic of informatics and society. We identified several topics and problematic issues in order to discuss these in the classroom and at our workshops: Cyberbullying, privacy/voluntary disclosure of personal information, cybercrime, digital divide, hacking and critical systems, Internet censorship, and ethical issues. Our online survey also illustrated that the students learned to better understand the connections and implications of informatics and society. Above all, there was a greater awareness of topics such as data security, encryption, and password security after the project. More-sustainable learning effects about these topics can certainly be achieved with structured preparation and follow-up of the content in the classroom. The students’ participation in the project led not only to learning effects about the subject area “informatics and society”; equally central was the promotion of the competent handling of media innovations in the form of (digital) games, whereby not only know-how but also a “do-it-yourself” approach was important. Critical media literacy was established in terms of seeing through game mechanics and inscriptions of globally shared (Western) values ad “1st world problems” within their game analysis. Presenting their own games at the international Game City trade show and reflecting on the design process was a great experience for the students. In line with the intention of the Sparkling Science funding program, scientific content and methods from the fields of game studies and computer studies were successfully passed on to the students. We also found that those who had previously interacted with digital games only rarely (primarily girls) were able to build media literacy in this area. Through the game-design process, all students achieved a clear increase in game-design competency. Moreover, they especially perceived presenting and playing the games at the Game City trade show as highly motivating. Social interactions between the students that arose from the project are noteworthy. The three schools’ target audiences have quite different characteristics (regarding social class, gender, and immigration status), and the students were very interested in getting to know and sharing with each other. The students supported each other with positive feedback; however, those from the other schools were also seen as competition, which, interestingly, was a motivating factor. In sum, the project led to a transfer of academic skills to students, who gained expertise in the areas of game design and serious games as well as in the assessment of and reflection on their creations.

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6 Overall Project Outcomes and Research Implications for the Future The projects discussed in this chapter addressed non-immigrant and immigrant Viennese youths, 14–24 years old, who were students, apprentices, or not involved in education, employment, or training (NEET), thus belonging to the working or middle class. Based on a mixed-methods setting, we held a critical academic discussion of the project participants’ media-related lifestyles and Internet use. In one project, games were created by the students themselves to address problems and raise awareness of technology-related risks such as data security, privacy, censorship, cybercrime, and cyberbullying. In the other project, we created a game setting for playful collaboration on Facebook; collaboration and the establishment of contact took place based on the creative matching of video snippets. Thus, creativity and playful learning within and by creating games worked well in these projects because the players had to take an active role. Learning by doing was an empowering element. Also, collaboration was essential in both projects for developing a game within a team and for creating videos together within the game “YourTurn!”. Our gaming interventions were strongly connected to social learning as well as to building and supporting social interaction. Gaps in our research offer implications for future research and indicate that a larger sample and longer time frame (meaning also that more resources overall are needed) would make sense. We also aspire to conduct larger-scale comparisons between youths in different cities or countries regarding their cultural belonging. Intersectionality should be considered in game design and gameplay, too— cultural, gender, and class inclusiveness and less importance on the written word can facilitate societal change and democratization.

Appendix: Videos 1-minute-long gameplay videos to illustrate the innovative new format established by the game “YourTurn!”: “The Muppet Show” gameplay: http://youtu.be/4cjoSnlKDIQ “Movie quotes” gameplay: http://youtu.be/eRiAjt3EXIU “The Simpsons” gameplay: http://youtu.be/KeH1Ao4un2I

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Digitalisation, Economy and Work

“Glocalized” Digital Youth Cultures Natalia Waechter

1 Introduction Youth cultures have always had a globalized character with localized manifestations, now expressed with the terms “glocalized youth culture” or “glocalization of youth cultures”. After more than 100 years of modern youth cultures, starting with the international “Wandervogel” movement and the international youth workers movement (Waechter 2006), overall digitalization and globalization may support the trend towards more globalized youth cultures. This might become most obvious in digital media-oriented communities such as Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube. Therefore, this article describes four fields of youth cultural activities on social media (self-presentation on Instagram, playing multiplayer online role-playing games, selfproduction of music videos on TikTok, and political participation on Facebook and YouTube), and discusses in which ways they have a global or local character. The term glocalization goes back to Robertson (1995) and refers to the increased rate of interconnectivity of local communities with the rest of the world and the interplay of global and local trends. In the context of youth cultures, the emergence of glocal music scenes means that there are strong global influences on local scenes worldwide (for example defining what hip-hop means), but local music scenes are still shaped as well as by their local experiences. Different structural positions, however, allow some groups of young people to focus more on the global while others are more restricted to the local (Roudometof 2019). For the UK’s Goth scene, for example, trans-local connections were shown to be more important than local differences (Hodkinson 2004). Youth cultures have been described as “excellent research sites” for learning about glocal interconnectivity on the one side and practices that are more the result of local settings and local surroundings on the other (Roudometof 2019). N. Waechter (B) Department of Educational Studies, Ludwig-Maximilian University Munich, Munich, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 G. Knapp and H. Krall (eds.), Youth Cultures in a Globalized World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65177-0_14

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Waechter (2006; 2012) has described five categories of youth cultures, which can be distinguished more or less clearly: music, sports, media, politically oriented youth cultures, and fan cultures. There has always been some overlap between the categories, e.g. the preference for certain musical styles by specific sports youth cultures (e.g. punk rock and skateboarding used to be strongly connected). Today, however, there is even more of an overlap, and it seems that social media are an important field of activity for many youth cultures that are not thought to be “media” youth cultures. There are music youth cultures that have only appeared on social media, such as self-produced music videos on Musical.ly and TikTok (see Sect. 5 in this chapter), and YouTube has become more important for young people for listening to music than CDs or the radio. In the field of digital games, on the one hand, esports has become established with professional players, and on the other, multiplayer online role-play gaming uses social media applications (see Sect. 4 in this chapter). Therefore, it could be placed between sport and media-oriented youth cultures, its exact location depending on the specific context. Even political youth cultures such as new social movements, which are strongly supported by young people, use social media for mobilization, community building, political information, and discussion (see Sect. 6 in this chapter). In this contribution, Instagram and its self-presentation culture seem to be the only “pure” media-oriented youth culture discussed (see Sect. 3 in this chapter). The youth cultures’ relevance for socialization processes and for the young people’s individual development seems to be more important than ever. The construction of one’s identity and one’s biography is less determined by societal structures but more self-determined, which involves more effort and can lead to insecurities. Being part of a youth culture and belonging to a group contributes to identity development and to finding one’s way in a pluralized society (Waechter accepted). Furthermore, the fast changing youth cultures meet the societal requirement of “flexibility” (Stauber 2001) in times of neoliberalism. Particularly, social media represent an important setting for young people when it comes to working on developmental tasks such as identity development and peer intimacy (Subrahmanyam et al. 2008). Social media allow young people to connect with their peers, to develop feelings of belonging, to experiment with self-displays, and to negotiate in- and out-groups (Manago et al. 2008; Subrahmanyam et al. 2008; Waechter et al. 2010). Young people use social media to make new acquaintances as well as to negotiate existing relationships and also to experiment with peer group belonging (Rosenberg and Egbert 2011; Waechter et al. 2011; Waechter et al. 2010). On each platform there are several levels of communities, from the whole network of the global community (consisting of all users of a particular platform) to more regionally and locally based communities (Waechter, accepted). Research, however, has also pointed out critical aspects and negative consequences regarding young people’s use of social media. Scholars have described that there are risks involved, such as addiction, cyberbullying, as well as exposure to harmful content and hate speech (JIM 2018; Kammerl 2013; Waechter 2015; Waechter and Hollauf 2018). While “harmful content” usually refers to sexual and violent content not appropriate for younger age groups, the exposure to perfectly staged

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and produced, beautiful displays of users’ lives on social media may also negatively affect one’s well-being and self-esteem (Brown and Tiggemann 2016; Tiggemann et al. 2018). In this chapter, in the context of online gaming I will focus on hate speech, and in the context of Instagram on the girls’ and young women’s pressure of producing a perfect self-presentation. Young people, who use social media for political purposes, have to consider other risks (such as surveillance and loss of control of their data traces) which will also be addressed in this chapter. The common theme, however, will be the question in which ways social media youth cultures can be considered a global, local, or “glocalized” phenomenon.

2 Methodological Notes The contribution is based on two research projects in which the author was involved as (national) project leader: “ArabTrans” and “The Profiler”. The collaborative FP7 project “ARABTRANS – Political and social transformations in the Arab world” (2013–2016),1 collected data with a large-scale survey successfully carried out in six countries in the MENA region: Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia. The sample sizes per country varied from 1215 (Tunisia) to 2139 (Jordan), with a total sample size of N = 8594. The questionnaire contained questions from the Arab Barometer and the World Value Surveys, but for the purpose of the research presented in this article, we developed new questions on social media and on its use for political purposes as well as more detailed questions on political activities. Additionally, for this article, music videos that served as protest songs in the revolutions of the “Arab Spring” were investigated with qualitative content analysis. “The Profiler” was a national research collaboration, which collected qualitative and quantitative data on social media of young people.2 The survey was carried out with N = 1000 girls and boys in the age range from 10 to 18. Additionally, the research team conducted 16 problem-centred interviews (Witzel and Reiter 2012) and four focus group discussions with five school students each, so the total sample consisted of 36 school students. The interviewed boys and girls were in grade eight or ten, which means that at the time of the interview they were either 13 or 15 years old. The school students in the group discussions were homogeneous regarding age and gender (two group discussions with girls: first group 13 years old; second group 15 years old; two group discussions with boys: again, first group 13 years old; second group 15 years old). Some results from the project that are used in this chapter for describing the girls’ Instagram culture and the boys’ online gaming culture will be also published in Waechter (accepted).

1 The

project was funded by the European Commission (http://arabtrans.eu).

2 “The Profiler”, a collaboration of the University of Graz and the Technical University Vienna, was

funded by the Austrian Ministry of Science (https://cvl.tuwien.ac.at/project/the-profiler).

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3 Girls on Instagram Since its first launch in 2010 and broadening its access to Android smartphone users in 2012, Instagram has attracted billions of users globally. Among its most intense users are girls and women in the age range from 13 to 40, who make up 70% of the followers (Abidin 2016). My own research leads to assume that while both teenage girls and boys use Instagram, girls spend more time on that platform and it seems to be more important to them what happens on their or other people’s accounts (Waechter accepted). The first step for new Instagram users is to create an account to share their or other people’s pictures and videos. Users often edit their pictures with filters that Instagram offers and they add descriptions and comments to their own pictures and videos. The goal is to show one’s pictures to a large audience, to receive positive feedback in the form of “likes” and supportive comments by others, and, most importantly, to make as many people as possible follow one’s account. This is in contrast to Snapchat, which is used to send funny and quick snapshots to friends without much reflecting upon them and which has also been described as featuring “pictures of double-chins, ugliness and self-exposure” (Kofoed and Larsen 2016, p. 1).3 On Instagram, it is crucial to produce and upload pictures of high quality that are meant to stay online (Waechter accepted). The pictures, “polished, neat and perfect” (Kofoed and Larsen 2016, p. 1), may show scenic landscapes, but self-portraits seem to be most important. Our interviews showed that the girls do not only want to impress their friends but also attract a wider public audience. “The goal is to receive likes and positive comments as well as to make others follow them. The general informal rules seem to be (1) the more followers the better and (2) having more followers than following others” (Waechter accepted). One of their strategies to increase their number of followers is “a like for a like”: it is not a general rule but it seems to occur often that one feels obliged to become interested in the pictures of the person who liked one’s own picture and/or became a follower. The more they are on Instagram and the more contributions they like, the more likely they are to think they can increase the number of their followers. This implies that the followers are from a wider public and not just from their own clique or wider circle of friends and that the Instagram crowd is in a competitive relationship among its users. This also implies that there are no regional restrictions for acquiring followers and that one’s pictures are targeted at the global Instagram community. Instagram soon became the favourite platform for “fashion and life style bloggers” and other people who got famous for their periodical posts on various topics. They have at least several thousand followers and are labelled “instafamous” and “influencers”. As idols of their followers, above all, fashion and lifestyle companies use them to promote their products in an authentic and direct way to the target groups. The larger the number of followers (which is visible to the visitors), the higher the perceived credibility of the influencer (Djararova and Rushworth 2017; 3 Despite

only being visible for a few seconds, research has emphasized the pictures’ relevance to young people’s offline lives (Handyside and Ringrose 2017).

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Jin and Phua 2014). Influencers may have reached fame through online contexts (“online celebrities”) but may have been famous before (“traditional celebrities” such as movie stars, musicians, celebrity athletes, or TV personalities). Since online celebrities enjoy more credibility than traditional VIPs, the followers perceive them as closer to themselves as well as to their budgets (regarding the more affordable products the online celebrities promote compared to the high-end brands of the traditional celebrities) (Djafarova and Rushworth 2017). But regular Instagram users also share their (above all positive) experiences with (global) brands (Bookman and Hall 2019). On Instagram, comments are usually positive and regular users avoid negative postings (Djafarova and Rushworth 2017); therefore, Instagram can be described as “feel good platform” (Waechter, accepted). Psychological research has found that positive feedback on social media can enhance the user’s self-esteem (Valkenburg et al. 2006). However, other studies show that female users tend to compare their own appearance with celebrity and peer images on Instagram, which increases negative mood and dissatisfaction with their own bodies (Brown and Tiggemann 2016; Tiggemann et al. 2018). A large online study on regular users has shown that Instagram pictures can be clustered into eight categories (activity, captioned photo, fashion, gadget, food, friends, pet, selfie). The largest category that applied to 24% of the photos was “selfie” (Hu et al. 2014). As the goal is to be seen, recognized, and followed on Instagram, the girls put a lot of effort into producing pictures, above all for the “perfect selfie”. This does not only take a lot of time but can also be frustrating considering the high level of competition on Instagram and the girls’ high self-expectations: Because everybody presents themselves so perfectly, everybody is forced to be perfect. If you constantly see people, also famous people with beautiful clothes and a stunning body, then you do not feel satisfied with yourself. (girl in group discussion, 15 years)

Just equipped with their smartphone camera and some filters the camera offers, they enter a world where not only everybody presents themselves as close to perfect as possible (regarding the current gender norms) but where they also have to compete with professional photographers and even professional models. The girls seem to be aware of the high standard of pictures on Instagram but they are not so much aware of competing with professionals (Waechter accepted). The following quote exemplifies how much effort it takes for them to upload a picture of themselves: “Usually those are not random pictures. I think for most girls the situation is that they take about one hundred selfies, then they delete eighty and then they decide and then maybe they have one, but then they also delete that one because they do not like it, either. And then it starts all over again, until you have a really good picture.” (girl in group discussion, 15 years)

The girls do not only like Instagram because of the possibilities to connect with friends and to acquire followers, but because it enables them to be connected with their idols. They appreciate being on the same platform and in the same network as those they admire, such as international It girls, singers and Hollywood film stars and, probably even more importantly, online celebrities such as “influencers”

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and “YouTubers” (Waechter accepted). Similar to traditional celebrities, those who became famous through their online activities may have fans from around the globe but with a regional focus. The Austrian girls, for example, were much more attracted by influencers and YouTubers from the German-speaking region, above all Germany. While on Instagram the original language seems less important and one does not need much knowledge in English, for consuming YouTube videos the language can be more relevant, depending on the type of video. If the video has text, it usually comes without subtitles and dubbing. While having idols can be seen as a positive aspect for identity development in the teenage years, in the context of Instagram it also has a negative effect. In the interviews, it became obvious that the girls were not fully aware that many pictures are not as casual as they appear to be but professionally produced. Additionally, the assumed closeness to the celebrities creates high self-expectations for the girls. They aim at reaching the same standard of professional pictures as those of their (international) idols, but they can never really succeed (Waechter accepted).

4 Boys in Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games This section focuses on gamers who play online with other gamers (usually in teams) who they may know personally or who they have only met in the game. Such games are called MMORPGs (massively multiplayer online role-playing games). To play online games, the gamers have to log into a central server of their choice. Each game is provided by many servers and each server has a certain language which attracts a certain (regional) community. English servers attract a more transregional, global audience than, for example, German servers do. During the game, participants are expected to communicate in the language of the server. Research on young people and digital games has been much concerned with risks such as violent content (e.g. Fritz and Fehr 2003) and addiction (e.g. Kammerl 2013), but also with benefits for sensorimotoric cognitive skills (e.g. Kühn et al. 2017) and for their self-esteem (e.g. Klimmt 2006). Research understanding digital games as the relevant social lifeworld for young people is, however, largely still missing (Waechter and Hollauf 2018). Applying a pedagogical perspective, Hollauf (2015) and Schrammel and Mitgutsch (2009) showed that engagement in digital games (MMORPGs) allows young people to make experiences that are relevant beyond the world of gaming. Young people use the context of digital games for addressing core developmental tasks (Moser 2014) such as establishing intimate peer relationships (Dreher et al. 2012; Havighurst 1972). Due to the specific context of digital games, there are further tasks they have to accomplish and that are increasingly relevant for the personal development such as time management (Waechter and Hollauf 2018). Digital games have been found to be a great place for experimenting in adolescent development because playing games always implies trying out and learning (Huizinga 1938 [2013]). Playing digital games involves informal

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and complex learning processes for the cognitive and social development (Bogost 2008; Hollauf 2015). In online environments such as social networking sites and digital games, young people have created new forms of communication (Ackermann 2010) which is not a new phenomenon. In order to distinguish themselves from older generations as well as from younger peers and to bond with each other, young people develop their own “youth language” (Neuland 2008), which adults and educators are often not happy to see. However, “the often feared impoverishment of language and communication competence due to computer gaming does not reflect reality. On the contrary, an emancipated use of language and increment of the individual communication repertoire can be found.” (Ackermann 2010, pp. 103–104) While from a developmental perspective it has to be appreciated that young people create new uses of language, there are concerns about one particular form of youth language that regularly appears in the communication in digital games: hate speech. Hate speech is not only widely used in digital games (Brehm 2013), but also “tolerated, accepted and barely recognized in day-to-day play” (Tan 2011). While more or less all gamers today have to deal with getting insulted during the online games to some extent, this is a new world for adolescents at the time they start playing MMORPGs (Waechter accepted). The teenage boys told us that they either play with friends from school or with people they only know from the Internet. Typically, they play online and in teams with the goal to defeat other teams. Usually they make appointments arranging when to meet online for the game. They use several devices to communicate with each other before, during, or after the actual game, most importantly Teamspeak or Skype. Some prefer Teamspeak because it is more anonymous (not displaying a name but only the IP address). Other than about game-related content, they also talk about dayto-day issues. They are also connected on gaming-specific social media platforms such as Steam (Waechter accepted). The interviews showed that multiplayer online role-playing games link a global and a local component. The gamer boys know each other from school but may also decide to play together against another team on an international English server. This other team can be from anywhere in the world, also from mixed locations, and the requirement seems to be the use of the English language. For example, one of the interviewees told us about his teams’ complaints regarding the opposing team when its team members started talking in Russian among themselves during the game. The interviewed boys pointed out that the gaming culture is very creative and supportive. Other gamers, even when not on your team, may help you out and give advice of how to proceed in the game. Furthermore, Let’s Play (LP) videos may help to gain necessary knowledge of how to play the game successfully. Gamers video-record themselves while playing and perform live on YouTube which has several gaming channels. So, on the one hand, the gaming culture can be understood as a globalized “share culture” (Waechter accepted). On the other hand, however, online hate speech seems to be particularly present in the gaming world. Above all young gamers with little experience will typically repeatedly receive ugly comments (“hate”) on a scale from unfriendly to mean and hateful, for example, when another gamer thinks that the young gamers’ performance is not good enough. A whole

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stream of abuse is called “flame”, which may even turn into “cyber bullying” if carried out purposely and systematically by a group of people against (usually) a single person. In our interviews, the boys did not report incidents of cyberbullying but they all referred to the “hate culture” to which beginners are being exposed: Or when you have just started, (…) they are usually quite aggressive and scream at you that you are a bad gamer. Or they write it down because… in the most games you can also write, I mean during the game, so that everybody can see it. (boy in group discussion, 13 years)

As this quote shows, what makes being exposed to hate even worse is that all other people in the game can hear or read the mean accusations and insults. We found different reactions of the 13-year-olds and the 15-year-olds. While the younger ones still have to learn how to deal with the hate culture in online games, the older ones have already developed a whole range of strategies against being harassed. One of the strategies is trying to stay anonymous and to provide little personal information: The only thing that people might know is my age, which I might provide, but this could also not be my real age. Those are the advantages because I think no one knows me, no one knows what I look like, no one knows what my weaknesses are, no one knows how to attack me. (boy in group discussion, 15 years)

Other strategies are trying not to take it personally, using privacy settings and holding back personal information, pictures, and videos. The boys also reported that in the worst case, they switched to another gaming platform or server, which means that they decided to no longer play with the gamers that had insulted them. If they witness somebody else being harassed, their strategy is to stay quiet instead of interfering and defending the victim because they fear that their involvement and taking sides with the victims will lead to getting harassed themselves (Waechter accepted). Both cultures, the “share culture” of helping each other out as well as the “hate culture” with rude speech and insults are not local phenomena but have a globalized character. Gamers playing on international servers share a common understanding of both cultures. Furthermore, as the interviews show, the gamers seem to not only agree with regard to the hate culture and the share culture, they also agree in disliking and opposing, as they call it, the “Instagram perfectionism”. They disassociate themselves from the “perfect” but superficial self-displays on Instagram and stress that as opposed to Instagram, the gaming culture is not about looks but achievement. They proudly explain that their heroes, whom they watch playing online, film themselves sitting at their computers in old sweat pants (Waechter accepted). The appreciation of achievement through “real efforts” instead of mere looks (as they assume for the Instagram users) seems to be another characteristic of the global community.

5 Tween Girls on TikTok On the short video platform Musical.ly (2014–2018) girls and boys from around the globe became producers of their own music videos. Musical.ly allowed users to

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produce lip-synch videos from well-known songs in the children’s own bedrooms without much in the way of technical, musical, and performing skills. After its takeover by TikTok in 2018 such music and dance video selfies continued to be most popular on TikTok. Once TikTok has been downloaded to one’s smartphone, the users can record, edit, and share their own videos with a maximum length of 60 seconds, and like on other social networks they can follow other users and like and comment on other users’ videos. In 2018 Musical.ly was absorbed by TikTok as part of the Chinese Internet corporate group Bytedance, in the process of merging the American, European, and Asian market. This has helped TikTok in gaining the highest growth rates of all social media apps with 500 million users worldwide (Business of Apps 2019). Not only regarding its whole community but also the users’ individual networks it has a strong global component. The example of the German twin girls “Lisa & Lena”, who started their account at the age of 13 and have gained more than 30 million followers, shows that their network of followers spreads beyond national or language borders. Using their success on Musical.ly and TikTok the twins also became “influencers” on Instagram. In spring 2019, at the age of 16, they cancelled their account on TikTok explaining that they have grown out of TikTok. The representative German study on media use of 12–19-year-olds reveals that TikTok is, above all, used by young girls. In 2019, 19% of the girls but only 9% of the boys reported using TikTok daily or several times a week. Among both girls and boys, the younger age groups represent the most frequent users with 21% (12– 13 years old) and 22% (14–15 years old) reporting using the app at least several times a week. The percentage for the 16–17-year-olds drops to 7% (JIM 2019). There is no comparable data available for younger girls and boys but one may assume that the interest in TikTok arises before the age of 12, in pre-adolescence between childhood and youth, as soon as they get their first smartphone. Regarding the active use of TikTok the study only asked the young respondents if and how often they use the app, which means that the number of teenagers producing their own clips might be smaller. While one may assume that producing their own TikTok videos is common practice among the “tween” girls in their pre-adolescent years,4 only few become stars like “Lisa & Lena”. In producing their own videos, they do not only present their performing and dancing skills but by choosing certain songs for their videos, they also show which music, bands, and singers they are fans of. In this sense, the Musical.ly/TikTok culture is a continuation of the girls’ bedroom culture, first described by Angela McRobbie (1991). The young girls, limited in their possibilities of participating in the (still male dominated) teenage and early adolescents’ music subcultures, use their bedrooms for creating a fan culture. Being a fan always had strong active elements such as connecting with other fans, joining fan clubs, sharing fan content, learning the songs’ lyrics, collecting fan items, etc. Now lip-synch apps add another element to typical fandom activities. What is different, however, is that 4 The

term “tweens” refers to being “in-between” childhood and adolescence, not really a child anymore but not a full teenager yet.

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now fans who are very successful in attracting many people to follow their TikTok account become famous themselves. Due to the fast changing field there has not yet been much relevant research published on Musical.ly or TikTok. Most publications are concerned with technical or economic aspects and only few apply a social science perspective. Rettberg (2017, p. 1), for example, investigated typical gestures (hand signs) of the young performers on Musical.ly and argues that visual signs are becoming integrated into verbal language, not only in written language such as emojis but also in video-based communication. Typically, the hand signs are direct interpretations of single words of the lyrics: Hand signs on Musical.ly usually only use a single hand (as the other hand holds the camera) and they almost always replicate or enact selected words in the lyrics (…). For the first phrase in the lyrics, “I’m way too good for you,” the muser first holds up two fingers to signify “too”, then quickly shifts to a thumbs up for “good”, back to the two fingers up again to signify “to”, then points at the camera for “you”. The whole sequence takes less than a second. (Rettberg 2017, p. 2)

Hand signs are used throughout the video but only for selected words. A number of words have specific hand signs which are commonly understood and used in the community, e.g. I/me = thumbs point to self, you = index finger points to camera, or look = handheld horizontally above eyes. The hand signs can be seen as a compensation for the missing voice of the young performer, similar to the emojis’ compensation of the missing (visible) emotions in text-based communication (Rettberg 2017). As the examples show, the meaning of some hand signs is not only obvious to users of Musical.ly and TikTok but to all members of (Western) societies. Nevertheless, this specific usage of hand signs indicates the emergence of a new teenage culture on lip-synch and video-sharing platforms. TikTok, however, is no longer only about dance video selfies and bedroom culture. Recent events as well as ongoing research leads observers to assume that a new political awareness is emerging on TikTok, probably also related to a change of TikTok’s content moderation. Clips of the Black Lives Matter protests over the death of George Floyd in the USA in 2020 drew tens of millions of views. But political awareness can also be found in typical videos produced and posted by teenagers. In general, on TikTok, racism, sexism, and homophobia seem to be “out”, and instead, diversity seems to be the underlying common understanding. Recent research, however, also points out the largely unnoticed use of TikTok by far-right extremist groups (Weimann and Masri 2020). One may add that at the same time, the TikTok crowd—at least the German one—has become a little older, with the main age group expanding from 12–13 years to 12–15 years (JIM 2019; JIM 2018). We may assume that TikTok has become the new global medium for the current teen generation that combines style and political statements. Future research is asked to provide more insight into this emerging culture.

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6 Political Activism of Young People on Facebook and YouTube In our Western societies, important ways of political participation are restricted by age, such as voting or becoming politicians. The voter turnout is usually lowest among the youngest eligible age group because young people still have to learn about politics and they are not being targeted in the election campaigns. While this has led to labelling young people as disinterested in politics, there is also a trend that young people are more engaged in non-traditional forms of political participation such as joining new social movements. In the past, in the context of political activism the term “young people” usually focused on young men and women in their late teens, their twenties, and early thirties (late adolescence and early adulthood). The most recent protest movement “Fridays for Future”, initiated by the Swedish schoolgirl and climate activist Greta Thunberg, shows a much younger crowd, however, with the majority of them still going to school. Scholars disagree whether the Internet and social media contribute to the more political engagement of groups who previously had not been politically active (such as young people), or whether the Internet and social media are only used by those for political purposes who had already been politically engaged. While some scholars argue that the Internet transforms political participation by providing new forms of horizontal and vertical communication, thereby facilitating political engagement and enriching deliberative democracy (Oates et al. 2006; Dyson 1998), Banaji and Buckingham (2013) found for young people that only politically active young men and women continued their political engagement online. In a similar vein, Marr (2005) showed for the whole population that only those use the Internet for political purposes who are interested in politics anyway. In general, young people use social media such as Facebook and YouTube for connecting, interacting with each other, sharing information through text, pictures, or video, and for forming groups. Regarding the content of the communication and information flows, politics do not play a major role, similar to traditional media or face-to-face communication, where political issues are just one of the many concerns of young people. There are no doubts, however, that social media have become important for receiving and sharing political content for those who are politically active in protest movements. New social movements such as the protest movements of the globalization critics or the protests in the Arab countries that led to the fall of long-lasting dictatorships have been characterized and distinguished from former social movements by a common feature: their use of the Internet and social media. Therefore, the events of the Arab revolutions quickly got called “Facebook revolution”, as well as “youth quake” because of the high participation rates of young people (Cuconato and Waechter 2012). It seems that the two labels of a youth and a Facebook revolution are strongly interlinked. The narrative of the young marginalized population was spread on social media by the use of youth cultural forms of expression (e.g., the YouTube video “Rayes Le Bled”, translated into “Mr. President, your people are dying”, by

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El Général). For young people who were strongly excluded from traditional politics (very low voting rates and no political offices) social media may have paved the way to move into politics (Waechter 2019). Scholars have described how online social networks were used for supporting the events of the revolutions in various ways: for organizing political action, for providing alternative news, for shaping the political debate, and for building a community of like-minded activists (Cuconato and Waechter 2012; Howard et al. 2011). Digital media was also used to link like-minded groups, to raise funds, and to reach out to a foreign (as well as a domestic) public (Howard and Hussein 2013). International cyber activists were first mainly interested in fighting the political oppression regarding the unrestricted use of the Internet, but soon allied themselves with those who had stood up against the political leaders in the hope of a new government, and they supported the whole cause of the uprisings (Honwana 2013). In Tunisia, for example, the “hacktivists” damaged the economy by taking down the stock exchange (Howard and Hussein 2013). There are also critical voices in the scholarly debate whether the use of social media really is an important influencing tool in establishing and strengthening the new protest movements that have appeared globally since the anti-globalization (WTO) protests in Seattle in 1999. The so-called cyber-pessimists do not think that social media have made a (positive) impact and have described online-activism as “slacktivism” or “feel good activism” that does not need much effort (e.g. Morozov 2011). The term “clicktivism” also describes the little effort that is involved in ways of online participation such as “liking” a political comment. Further criticism concerns the activists’ loss of autonomy and control of their data traces, communication, and content, practices of surveillance by state authorities, the use of social media by antidemocratic groups, the incorporation of social media for the economic and political interests of those in power, and the danger of losing privacy and freedom of opinion (Dolata 2018, Poell 2014). In the Arab Spring, scholars found, protest on social media only materialized in the streets and became a movement when traditional media, such as several TV channels (Al-Jazeera, France 24, Al-Arabiya) also reported on the activists and their goals (Aouragh and Alexander 2011; Dolata 2018; Kneuer and Demmelhuber 2012; Mozorov 2011). Summarizing the debate, one may conclude that social media provides more possibilities for mobilizing people, and people might join social movements more easily and quickly, which, above all, helps protest to get started. Later on, as we can also see in the “Fridays for Future” movement, traditional media is necessary for complementing social media and contributing to establishing the (young people’s) movement. Regarding globalization, the use of social media in the Arab Spring has several transnational and global elements. A few days after the release of the abovementioned hip-hop song “Rayes El Bled” by the 22-year-old Tunisian rapper El Général, it was also sung by the young Egyptian protesters at Tahrir Square in Cairo (Cuconato and Waechter 2012). Also, other rap songs that became “protest songs” (Rosenthal 2001; Rosenthal and Flacks 2012) in the MENA region (Middle East and

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Northern Africa) expressing the anger and the hopes of the young Arab population,5 indicate a strong international network in various ways. Some rappers were from the MENA region, others were young people who had migrated to the West, e.g. theUSA. The language of the lyrics was Arabic, English, or a mix of both. The content of the lyrics referred to the political and social situation in their own country as well as to the situation and the protest in other Arab countries. Furthermore, the hip-hop protest songs were produced in international contexts, regarding collaborations with musicians and producers, facilitated by digital online productions and exchange. On the one hand, this internationalization has strengthened the hip-hop culture as a global culture, on the other hand, the processes of hybridization (e.g. mix of languages) has created a new music culture on a regional level. Hip-hop is not a borrowed, “foreign” youth culture in the MENA region but a culture of its own, a process, which has been called “indigenization” (LeVine 2012). The cyber activists are also characterized by their strong international network connecting local and regional “hacktivists” with like-minded young people from Western Europe or the USA.

7 Conclusions This chapter shows that youth cultures on social media have a strong global character but with manifestations remaining local in certain contexts. On Instagram, the young (female) users understand themselves as members of a large global community, which allows them to connect with international celebrities on their personal network. At the same time, their personal network is still characterized by a focus on their geographical region, even though typically the users aim at targeting followers globally. In MMORPGs, young gamers connect on international servers to play with other gamers from anywhere in the world. Regional restrictions still occur through language skills, which are necessary to communicate with the other gamers during the game. Furthermore, as our interviews showed, when playing online, the young gamers did not only play with “strangers” but also with their friends from school. In addition to the global character of online role-playing games, there is also still a strong local component. On TikTok, young people connect globally to share self-produced music videos and watch the clips of other teen TikTok stars. The top TikTok celebrities become famous beyond national borders, but there are still regional preferences, probably also related to musical preferences and current events. Finally, young political activists use Facebook and other social media for political purposes for connecting globally with like-minded activists. The example of the Arab Spring shows that processes of globalization have appeared in many aspects. Social media was used for building international communities with like-minded activists, 5 E.g.

Khaled M (Libya): “Can’t Take Our Freedom (feat. LowKey)”, Arabian Knightz (Egypt): “Rebel” and Ibn Thabit (Libya): “Benghazi II”.

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for connecting with like-minded groups, and for reaching out to foreign publics and media. Interestingly, the global activities and networks are strongly related to local ones. Globalized networks of cultural production and distribution helped the local mobilization to become involved in the protests. The empirical examples lead scholars to assume that local contexts have not and will not become irrelevant in youth cultures despite the overall societal and economic trend of globalization. This seems to be true across diverse forms of youth cultural activities and scenes, for politically active young adults just as well as for the early teenagers who share self-produced music videos. One may assume, however, that local references are more important in political (youth cultural) contexts than in contexts such as the video selfies on TikTok that mainly refer to the globalized pop-culture. More research focused on different youth cultural contexts is necessary for further conclusions on common trends as well as differences regarding the glocalization of youth cultures.

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Consumption, Middle Class and Youth Dieter Bögenhold, Yorga Permana, Farah Naz, and Ksenija Popovi´c

1 Youth and Consumerism: Introduction This article is about common links between social stratification, youth and consumption patterns. If we follow Karl Mannheim’s (1952) classic understanding of society as being stratified into different generations (originally published in German in 1928), societies can be looked at as if they are consisting of different age groups which belong together. Each generation or cohort is characterized by having similar birth years and profiles regarding common life perspective, identities and interests (France and Roberts 2015). To return to Mannheim, the youngest members are called youth. When young people grow up to form the next generation, they are replaced by the current generation of youth and so on. An ongoing process of aging in societies must be read as a long line of generations in permanent re-composition. Consumption behaviour is said to be learned behaviour which has its starting point in childhood when modes of consumption are internalized (Martens et al. 2004). One of the typical features which distinguishes different age groups is consumption behaviour since consumption patterns differ significantly depending upon an D. Bögenhold (B) Department of Sociology, University of Klagenfurt, Klagenfurt, Austria e-mail: [email protected] Y. Permana Department of Geography and Environment, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK e-mail: [email protected] F. Naz Department of Sociology, University of Sargodha, Sargodha, Pakistan e-mail: [email protected] K. Popovi´c Department of Economics, University of Klagenfurt, Klagenfurt, Austria e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 G. Knapp and H. Krall (eds.), Youth Cultures in a Globalized World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65177-0_15

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individual’s position in their life cycle. In other words, young consumers spend money or dream about saving money for later purchases differently than older consumers do. Although consumption patterns differ not only geographically and historically but also due to different social classes, different cultures, ethnicities, gender and various other factors, age is often an important denominator of common aspirations. Of course, economic factors have a very important role to play as well (Duesenberry 1949). According to Juliet Schor (1998) it is possible to distinguish between socalled “old” and “new consumerism”. The first type, so-called “old consumerism”, was dominant in the 1950s and 1960s. Then the consumption behaviour of households was modelled by horizontal and proximate emulation or comparison. As the middle class was more homogeneous, it is no wonder that the comparisons and emulations were mainly intra-class. Income distribution was more equal at that time, and the households more active in socializing. The expression used to describe such a type of household consumption pattern was “keeping up with the Joneses”. A family would see the new car, or the new household appliance owned by their neighbours which motivated the family’s consumption desire and purchase. The second type, so-called “new consumerism”, was dominant from the 1980s until the Great Recession in 2007–2008. During the 1970s, income distribution reversed its development from being more equal to being more unequal, the richest becoming even richer. Frank (2004) reverted to the term “conspicuous consumption” which was originally brought up by Veblen (1899) to describe households’ consumption patterns in the USA at that time, manifested by purchasing larger houses, a second car, costly holiday destinations, jewellery, nice clothes, etc. This extension of consumption and consumption aspirations has been called “luxury fever” (Frank 2010): the habits of over-spending by the richest is like a virus that has caused a fever in society. In her discussion, Schor (1998) focusses mainly on middle-class households, understood as those households ranked in the middle zone of income, because they serve as a perfect example of average consumption behaviour. Two decades ago Juliet Schor (2002) stated: “My story is first and foremost an American one, developed from the US experience of the last decade. But I believe it is relevant to other countries and regions as well. By the mid-1990s, it seemed that similar developments were oc-curring in Western Europe. However, I leave that to subject others to explore” (Schor 2002, p. 2). This chapter tries to deliver additional clear data in order to bring some light into the darkness. Based upon our own empirical studies with data provided by EUROSTAT on the linkages between young people and middle classes which carry out the majority of consumption affairs and expenditure (see Fig. 1), we find that the correlation is somewhat strong (0.52). This indicates that the size of the middle class is positively associated with the share of youth population. Thus, it suggests that the shrinking of the middle class is occurring in parallel with the deaging population phenomenon. Young people’s importance as consumers has grown particularly in the last decades, mainly due to the importance of middle-class standards of living, rising levels of education, in-creasing leisure time and expanding markets of new technology. Regardless of young people’s usually limited economic resources and currently disadvantageous position in the labour market in many Western countries,

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Fig. 1 Middle class vs youth population in EU countries (2018) ( Source Own calculations based on Eurostat data)

young people are still undoubtedly an important consumer group (Wilska 2017). In the same way that the middle classes are seemingly under fire, it may transpire that many central and popular assumptions about the middle classes as transporters and transmitters of classic consumption goods in modern mass consumer markets may be increasingly questioned (Buckingham and Tingstad 2017). This article discusses one aspect of the topic of social stratification in a global world economy, namely the link between consumption and the middle classes. The concept of stratification refers to the idea of vertical segmentation in the sense of having more or fewer resources. The middle classes are of interest for multiple reasons: (i) through the lenses of social order, integration and political conflict, the middle classes serve as a buffer between the strata; (ii) the middle classes are defined as household groups in middle income ranges between poverty and richness. They are open to new consumer markets, new fields to study lifestyles and, in relation to this, new consumer behaviour; (iii) the middle classes are of interest for investigating patterns of inequality and social mobility. This last point is of particular relevance in view of the proposed decline in the middle classes in a globalized world. Is there an ongoing de-middledization as coined by Bögenhold and Permana (2018)? Since all discussion on growing (or declining) inequality refers directly to the existence of the middle classes and since the phenomenon of the middle classes is ultimately connected to consumption and consumer behaviour, the paper explores these links in more detail, with the aim of delivering a series of strong arguments to invest further research ambitions in the topic of the middle classes, inequality

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and consumer behaviour. We are convinced that poor and rich income strata have attracted a disproportionate amount of research attention, especially to scandalize different forms of having too little or too much money, whereas the middle classes have not received the research attention they deserve.

2 Consumption and Social Stratification How we consume is dependent not only on the concrete society and time in which we live but also on our preferences, depending on our lifestyles and related tastes, which are almost always related to our position in the system of social classes. Therefore the discussion in the following sections centres around the links between consumption and lifestyles in order to explain the rationality as to why people opt for this or that way of creating their own life paths and worlds of consumption. What do we want to possess, what goods are part of our dreams, for what purposes do we save money? All of these questions provide answers as to how human beings organize their lives, also in relation to material goods. Consumption practices always have the side effect of demonstrating and underlining the social position of their owner in a stratified society (Veblen 1899; Goffman 1951; Bourdieu 1984). Likewise, cultural capital is related to the ability to contribute to social processes of inclusion and exclusion (Lamont and Lareau 1988). Another field of research is the question as to how people who are lower middle or upper middle classes come up with practices of consumption. Being close to poverty, in particular, does not allow a broad variation in strategy or issues of style beyond just managing material survival. Combining those perspectives with further variables such as gender or age opens up a variety of further research questions (Katz-Gerro 2004). The basic assumption behind the discussion is that the middle classes are the basic drivers of consumption. Consumption behaviour and the practices of the middle income segments cover the vast majority of households in society. Their consumption represents what Riesman et al. (1969) once called the standard package of American consumer households, which is—again according to Riesman et al. (1969)—very much learned behaviour since late childhood. In addition, the consumption of the middle classes is widely reported by and transported through the media. In some way, consumption patterns demonstrate the social position of their users. Purchasing expensive objects can make people happy by giving them satisfaction, “joy” and “pleasure” (Veblen 2007 [1899]). The concept of stratification refers to the idea of vertical segmentation in the sense of having more or fewer resources, in analogy to the field of geology, where different forms of material stratification are investigated. Sociologists use the term social stratification to describe the system of social order from a vertical perspective. Degrees of stratification are always relational and they express degrees of social inequality. References are found to class structures, where “lifestyle” is seen as being an expressively cultural moment in consumption and in the social inclusion and exclusion of groups (Bögenhold and Naz 2018). Increasingly, problems have

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become clear in combining the material and cultural dimensions of investigation. What people “are” and what people “do” can no longer be conceptualized by a simple one-to-one fit (Bögenhold 2001). In this understanding, the concept of lifestyle can provide a link between social rank and social practice. The logic of how people organize their leisure time and how they spend their income is not a simple mirror of income level but must be regarded as being embedded in social behaviour. Bourdieu (1984) sees the social world in terms of a metaphor: consider a multidimensional social sphere in which different groups of actors reflect, on the one hand, the sphere of social position and, on the other hand, the sphere of lifestyles. Material distribution in the sense of different social positions is represented in one sphere whereas in the other sphere, the provisions of cultural resources are staked out and manifested in the form of varying lifestyles. Other authors emphasize the growing relativity of the class concept due to increasing trends of mobility caused by education, urbanization and changing demographic patterns, including the declining significance of the institution of the family, so that systems of stratification are becoming ever more intricate and are permanently reconfigured. Especially Beck’s (2002) idea of individualization as a standardized societal principle of increased mobility has shed new light upon social stratification. Taken together, perspectives on and topics of social stratification have multiplied. Grusky, Ku and Szelényi (2008) give an introduction to and an overview of a variety of research questions. Nowadays, research on open social stratification systems has turned to questions of inequality as a research proxy. The current enormous commercial success of Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century (2014) among members of the economics and sociology communities is a demonstration of the ongoing attraction of questions about (in)equality and stratification. Figure 2 illustrates the vertical social stratification system of modern societies where there are bottom and top segments of poor and rich people and a broad middle segment between them. Poor people just try to survive by attempting to satisfy basic Fig. 2 The Middle Class Segment in a Stratified Society ( Source Own representation)

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needs and rich people very often show distinct profiles of consumption behaviour. The vertical profile reminds us of a raindrop and it is an open question whether the raindrop is slender or broader around its waistline. In the sociology of change and political conflict, the middle classes have always held a central function, serving as a kind of conflict buffer in modern societies which is between poverty and affluence. According to Collins (2013), the technological displacement of middle-class labour is not much more than twenty years old, while it took almost 200 years to destroy the working-class labour force (approximately the entire nineteenth century and three-quarters of the twentieth), the computerization of middle-class labour (since the last decade of the twentieth century) is proceeding at a much faster pace than the mechanization of the manual labour force (Collins 2013, p. 56). Therefore, none of the previous ways to compensate for job losses will work effectively in the future. Within recent discussions about the future of modern capitalist societies, many well-founded speculations rely on the interplay between continued processes of globalization, an increased strength of trends in so-called digitalisation and other forms of technological progress as well as their effects on the system of social stratification and social mobility (Wallerstein et al. 2013). Pessimists argue that the twenty-first century trajectory of technological development is likely to push the middle classes into redundancy. If this forecast comes true, it certainly has implications for the degree of societal cohesion and the mass consumer profile of consumption decisions.

3 Changes to the Middle Classes: Empirical Observations Surprisingly, there is no agreement on a definition of the middle class among scholars (Pressman 2015). For a long period of time, distributional studies have focused on the poor and the rich while those in the middle have been forgotten (Atkinson and Brandolini 2011). The concern to define and measure the middle class has increased in the past decade since the issue of shrinking middle classes became a major anxiety. Therefore, since there is no consensus, any attempts to define the size of the middle class are “quite obviously arbitrary and open to challenge” (Piketty 2014). In this study, we focus on the disposable household income range which is measured by the survey of European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) provided in the Eurostat database. We define the middle classes as those whose income lies between an absolute lower cut-off and upper cut-off near the median. The PEW Research Center (2012) defines middle-class in the USA to be between 67 percent and 200 percent of median income. However, we do not think that there is an exact number for either the lower or upper cut-off point because it depends on the context of the study. We follow the arguments by Ravallion (2010) and Atkinson and Brandolini (2011) which state that the lower cut-off for the middle class is equivalent to the line threshold of being at risk of poverty. In other words, those who are classified as middle class are those who are not at risk of poverty. In the EU, the at-risk-of-poverty threshold is set at

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60 percent of the national median household income. Thus, we chose that number to set the lower cut-off for defining the middle class. Meanwhile, the upper cut-off differentiates between the middle class and the rich. We set 150 percent of the median as the upper cut-off for defining the middle class, as also suggested by Grabka and Frick (2008) to measure the size of the German middle class. To sum up, this study defines the middle class as the population group with a relative income position between 60 and 150 percent of the median. As a comparison, the results are also robust when changing the lower and upper threshold into 40 percent and 130 percent of median income, respectively. Table 1 captures the size of the middle class in 28 EU countries (plus Norway and Switzerland) between 2005 and 2018. Nineteen out of the 30 countries are experiencing a decline in the middle classes, while the size of the middle class across all countries has decreased by five percent from 63.4 percent to 62.9 percent. The highest de-middledization phenomenon (Bögenhold and Permana 2018) has been experienced by Luxembourg (11.2 percent decline), Sweden (9.4 percent), Germany (6.6 percent) and Denmark (4.6 percent). Among countries in which the size of Table 1 Countries (EU + Switzerland & Norway) with a decrease in middle class, 2005–2018 Country

First observation (2005)

Last observation (2018)

Size of Middle Class

Poor

Middle Class

Rich

Poor

Middle Class

Rich

share of people with less than 60% of median

share of people with 60%-150% median income

share of people with greater than 150% of median

share of people with less than 60% of median

share of people with 60%-150% median income

share of people with greater than 150% of median

16.5

63.4

20.1

17.1

62.9

20

decrease

Luxembourg 13.7

68.6

17.7

18.3

57.4

24.3

decrease

Sweden

9.5

76.6

13.9

16.4

67.2

16.4

decrease

Bulgaria

18.4

60.2

21.4

22

52.2

25.8

decrease

Germany

12.2

72

15.8

16

65.4

18.6

decrease

Denmark

11.8

76.1

12.1

12.7

71.5

15.8

decrease

Latvia

19.4

55.2

25.4

23.3

51.6

25.1

decrease

Norway

11.4

76.8

11.8

12.9

73.5

13.6

decrease

Netherlands

10.7

72.8

16.5

13.3

69.8

16.9

decrease

Austria

12.6

70.8

16.6

14.3

68.7

17

decrease

Estonia

18.3

55.8

25.9

21.9

54.4

23.7

decrease

Spain

20.1

56.7

23.2

21.5

55.3

23.2

decrease

Lithuania

20.5

53.1

26.4

22.9

51.7

25.4

decrease

European Union

(Source Own calculations based on Eurostat statistics)

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the middle class has increased, Poland (11 percent), Slovakia (5.1 percent), Ireland (5.4 percent) and Portugal (4.3 percent) are those with a significant rise while the remaining countries are more stable.

4 Links Between Youth, Consumption and de-Middledization Current empirical studies on the situation of the middle classes in the USA as well as in European or Asian countries (Kochhar 2017; Pruchnik and Zowczak 2017) show contradictory results about their survival trends, indicating different directions. The findings about the middle classes in Europe presented here indicate that some countries really have suffered from a process of de-middledization. Collins’ (2013) thesis of increased de-middledization seems to have some empirical evidence when confronted with selected empirical data. Our research is also rooted in recent social stratification research but the primary question is whether these observations of inequality will turn into changing patterns of consumption. Whenever they occur, massive social, economic and cultural changes are bound to affect the lives of children. Those changes might be direct, as in the case of war, migration or rapid urbanization, or indirect, as their parents cope with new economic realities. In other words, contextual changes in social and economic structures already influence lifestyles, life perceptions and consumer preferences in childhood (Kaufman et al. 2004). Their wishes and dreams become valid when they have become adults (Cross 2010). When typical consumer households and their purchasing power are shrinking, the “average consumer”, as a typical member of the middle classes, is losing their former dominance. Among the eight countries in the EU with the highest GDP per capita, only Ireland has experienced an increase in the size of its middle class (see Fig. 3 above), while the others have experienced a declining trend. As the middle classes seem to be losing their former degree of consistency and as they are in the process of becoming fragmented, they are in danger of not representing further the “standard package” of modern consumer household profiles (Riesman et al. 1969). It may be supposed that this standard package is part of an ongoing erosion process towards multiplication of lifestyles and consumption identities. The pluralization of society (Bögenhold 2001; Beck 2002) will increasingly influence a shift towards a pluralization of consumption practices as a parallel trend. The debate on globalization in particular explores whether consumption practices occur on an international global level which are labelled elsewhere as the phenomenon of an ongoing process of McDonaldization (Ritzer 1993; Ritzer and Malone 2000). McDonaldization processes can be highlighted in different fields of consumption practices, e.g. in the food, textile, tourism and entertainment industries, in the use of credit cards or in many further fields of application.

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Fig. 3 The eight countries in the EU with the highest GDP per capita and Middle Class trends ( Source Own calculations)

According to Vergara and Rodríguez (2010), it is through the agency of advertising in consumer society that market forces become the central axis not only of the economic sector, but also of the social and cultural sectors, implanting and generating a new set of meanings, values and ways of thinking as well as interpreting reality, new world views and behaviour models. Despite all cultural differences, the trend towards convergence and similarities in consumption behaviour has gained remarkable momentum due to the globalization of the market. Globally shared consumptionrelated symbols, such as brands, product categories and consumption activities, have led to the emergence of a global consumer culture, which is fostered through the globalization of the market (Holt et al. 2004). Of further interest are those research topics which treat consumption as part of a consumption society, which is itself undergoing change and which is part of international processes of homogenization and heterogenization. Of course, the empirical foundation and the conceptual reference of this article relate to Western countries. Especially in the USA, we find the same tendencies that middle classes and their consumption budgets are being increasingly hollowed out (Komlos 2018, Pressman 2010, 2015). It shows that research on social stratification in general and on middle classes in particular is a truly interdisciplinary enterprise of investigation, combining divergent academic lenses covering economics and political economy, industrial relations, social inequality studies, consumption sociology, ethics, gender studies and youth studies. The interdisciplinary nature includes

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many different keywords and combines patterns of consumption, income, work, and gender but also inequality, justice, social and economic change, and political economy as major topics, bridging a diversity of knowledge domains and synthesizing discussions, which must be sought, found and fitted together like puzzle pieces. As far back as the year 2000, under the UN organization, there was a survey among 10,000 middle-class urban young people of the 18–25 age group from 24 different countries across the world. The aim was to question sustainable consumption behaviour of young generations (Nyberg, Stø et al. 2000). In a nutshell, young respondents recognize an environmental impact of their use and disposal of goods but not of their shopping behaviour (Nyberg, Stø 2000, p. 45). It seems that young consumers do not place significance with respect to social responsibility on their individual everyday purchase habits. Rather, young respondents focus on price and quality more than eco-sustainability when deciding what to purchase (Nyberg, Stø 2000, p. 16). Environmental awareness however rises with the rise of their level of education (Nyberg, Stø 2000, p. 44). Findings of this survey are already from two decades ago, it might be instructive to look at recent data for the young urban middle-class generations, and to test if increased education levels have had an impact on political consciousness levels of young generations, how far and to which degree. This contribution tried to bring youth into discussion with consumption and middle classes in a globalized world. We tried to focus some relations between those three items and we introduced to some first evaluations of the dynamics of social inequality and wealth. All this reasoning is somehow very tentative and of preliminary nature so that the argumentation carries out theses which have to be explored in further detail. All this debate does not only take part on the academic ground of discussion on youth and consumption but it has ultimate links to debate on inequalities in modern societies. The United Nations defined Sustainable Development Goals where Goal No. 10 is Reducing inequality within and among countries (United Nations 2015). According to our empirical inspections measures of inequality seem to point in direction of increasing inequalities rather than reducing inequalities.

References Atkinson, A. B., & Brandolini, A. (2011). On the identification of the “middle class” (ECINEQ Working Paper 2011–217). Verona, Italy: Society for the Study of Economic Inequality. Beck, U. (2002). Risk society: Toward a modernity. London: Sage. Bögenhold, D. (2001). Social inequality and the sociology of life style: Material and cultural aspects of social stratification. American Journal of Economics & Sociology, 60, 829–848. Bögenhold, D., & Naz, F. (2018). Consumption and life-styles. A Short Introduction, London: Palgrave. Bögenhold, D., & Permana, Y. (2018). End of middle classes? social inequalities in the digital age, Discussion Paper 04-2018. Department of Sociology: University of Klagenfurt. Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

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Buckingham, D., & Tingstad, V. (2017). Children as Consumers. In M. Keller, B. Halkier, T.-A. Wilska, & M. Truninger (Eds.), Routledge handbook on consumption (pp. 303–313). London: Routledge. Collins, R. (2013). The end of middle-class work: No more escapes. In I. Wallerstein, R. Collins, et al. (Eds.), Does Capitalism have a Future? (Chapter 2). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cross, G. (2010). Valves of adult desire: The regulation and incitement of children’s consumption. In D. Buckingham & V. Tingstad (Eds.), Childhood and consumer culture (pp. 17–30). London: Palgrave Macmillan. Duesenberry, J. (1949). Income, saving and the theory of consumer behaviour. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. France, A., & Roberts, S. (2015). The problem of social generations: A critique of the new emerging orthodoxy in youth studies. Journal of Youth Studies, 18(2), 215–223. Frank, R. H. (2004). How not to buy happiness. Dædalus, 133(2)‚ 69–79. Frank, R. H. (2010). Luxury Fever: Weighting the Cost of Excess, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Frank, R. H. (2019). Luxury fever: Weighing the cost of excess. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Goffman, E. (1951). Gender Advertisements. London: Macmillan. Grabka, M. M., & Frick, J. R. (2008). The shrinking German middle class-signs of long-term polarization in disposable income? DIW Berlin Weekly Report, 4(4), 21–27. Grusky, D., Ku, C. M., & Szelényi, S. (Eds.). (2008). Social stratification: Class, race, and gender in sociological perspective. Boulder: Westview Press. Holt, D., Quelch, J., & Taylor, E. L. (2004). How global brands compete. Harvard Business Review, 82(9), 68–75. Katz-Gerro, T. (2004). Cultural consumption research: Review of methodology, theory, and consequence. International Review of Sociology, 14 (1), 11–29. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1080/ 0390670042000186743. Kaufman, N. H., Rizzini, I., Wilson, K., & Bush, M. (2004). The Impact of global economic, political, and social transformations on the lives of children. In N. H. Kaufman, & I. Rizzini (Eds.), Globalization and children: Exploring potentials for enhancing opportunities in the lives of children and youth globalization and children (pp. 3–18). New York: Kluwer. Kochhar, R. (2017). Middle class fortunes in Western Europe (Luxembourg Income Study (LIS), Working Paper No. 702). Komlos, J. (2018). Hollowing out of the middle class: Growth of income and its distribution in the US, 1979–2013. Challenge, 61(4), 303–324. Lamont, M., & Lareau, A. (1988). Cultural capital: Allusions, gaps and glissandos in recent theoretical. Sociological Theory, 6(2), 153–168. Mannheim, K. (1952). The problem of generations. In K. Mannheim (Ed.), Essays on the sociology of knowledge. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Martens, L., Southerton, D., & Scott, S. (2004). Bringing children (and parents) into the sociology of consumption: Towards a theoretical and empirical agenda. Journal of Consumer Culture, 4(2), 155–182. Nyberg, A., & Stø, E. (2000). Is the future yours? In A. Nyberg, E. Stø, J. Fien, P. Skoien, D.E. Clover, R. Brusdal, R., & M. Maggi (Eds.), Youth, Sustainable consumption patterns and life styles (pp. 7–8). Paris: UNEP & UNESCO. Nyberg, A., Stø, E., Fien, J., Skoien, P., Clover, D. E., Brusdal, R., et al. (2000). Youth, sustainable consumption patterns and life styles. Paris: UNEP & UNESCO. Pew Research Center. (2012). The lost decade of the middle class. Washington, DC: August 22. http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2012/08/22/the-lost-decade-of-the-middle-class/. Piketty, Th. (2014). Capital in the 21st century. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Pressman, S. (2010). The middle class throughout the world in the mid-2000s. Journal of Economic Issues, 44(1), 243–262. https://doi.org/10.2753/JEI0021-3624440112.

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Pressman, S. (2015). Defining and measuring the middle class. American Institute for Economic Research, pp. 1–27. Pruchnik, K., & Zowczak, J. (2017). Middle-income trap: Review of the conceptual framework (Working Paper No. 760). Tokyo: Asian Development Bank Institute. Ravallion, Martin. (2010). The developing world’s bulging (but vulnerable) middle class. World Development, 38(4), 445–454. Riesman, D., Glazer, N., & Denney, R. (1969). The lonely crowd. A study of the changing American character. New Haven: Yale University Press. Ritzer, G. (1993). The McDonaldization of society: An investigation into the changing character of contemporary social life. Thousand Oaks: Pine Forge Press. Ritzer, G., & Malone, E. L. (2000). Globalization Theory: Lessons from the exportation of Mcdonaldization and the new means of consumption. American Studies, 41(2–3), 97–118. Schor, J. (1998). The overspent American: Why we want what we don’t need. New York: Harper Collins. Schor, J. (2002). Understanding the New Consumerism: Inequality, Emulation and the Erosion of Well-Being. PSW-paper 2002/2. United Nations. (2015). Transforming our world: The 2030 agenda for sustainable development. Knowledge platform Available online: https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/post2015/tra nsformingourworld/publication. Veblen, T. (1899). The theory of the leisure class. New York: MacMillan. Vergara, E. L., & Rodríguez, M. S. (2010). The social and cultural impact of advertising among chilean youths. Scientific Journal of Media Literacy. Communicar, 18(35), 113–118. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.3916/C35-2010-03-04. Wallerstein, I., Collins, R., Mann, M., Derluguian, G., & Calhoun, C. (2013). Does capitalism have a future?. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wilska, T.-A. (2017). Youth and generations in consumption. In M. Keller, B. Halkier, T.-A. Wilska, & M. Truninger (Eds.), Routledge handbook on consumption (pp. 314–325). London: Routledge.

Youth and Unemployment: Societal Ramifications—An Empirical Study Gerald Knapp

1 Introduction and Framing the Problem For many adolescents throughout Europe, the transition from school to gainful employment has become more arduous, more diverse and less clearly structured. Fewer and fewer young people can take the process of integration into the system of employment for granted, nor do they perceive it as straightforward. Due to the changing nature of the employment system, it takes adolescents far longer to secure their first job nowadays. An ever-increasing number of young people is likely to encounter detours, time spent in holding patterns, longer job-seeking processes and disruptions. These altered transition trajectories reflect not only the “structural transformation of the working society”, but also the “destandardisation and individualisation processes” in our society (cf. Spannring 2007, pp. 356ff.; Knapp 2007, 2012). What is more, due to the “casualisation of the labour markets” (Dörre 2006, pp. 181ff.; Pichler 2008, pp. 355ff.) adolescents are far more likely to face atypical employment relationships, including involuntary part-time work or marginal employment, temporary employment contracts and contracts for work and services. These precarious and unstable employment situations result in lower incomes for young people, on the one hand, and insufficient social security contributions, on the other hand, adversely affecting their ability to plan for the future. Furthermore, the rising segmentation of the labour market means that some adolescents are drawn into a cycle of exclusion, characterised by marginalised job positions and recurring youth unemployment.

G. Knapp (B) Institute of Educational Sciences and Research, University of Klagenfurt, Klagenfurt, Austria e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 G. Knapp and H. Krall (eds.), Youth Cultures in a Globalized World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65177-0_16

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Those particularly affected are adolescents from families with a low level of education, with unemployed parents (highly over-represented) and children with a migration background (cf. Arbeiterkammer Wien 2006, pp. 15f.). For many young people, gaining access to unemployment benefits is fraught with difficulties, as the challenge in getting a job on the labour market in the first place means that they often do not meet the eligibility criteria for benefits. In many cases, material insecurity and unemployment bear an increasing risk of poverty and social exclusion for young people (cf. Knapp 2008, pp. 324ff.), thus reducing their opportunities to participate in society. The economic and debt crisis in Europe compounds this problem even further. The developments described here illustrate that many adolescents are confronted with a delay in terms of their professional integration, coupled with a prolonged economic dependence on the parental home, or on social support measures. The transition into the traditional autonomy of adulthood and the associated mastery of development tasks—integration into working life and starting a family—do not succeed until late adolescence, if at all, and are often accompanied by manifold difficulties. In those cases where the transition does not succeed, the result is unemployment, or alternating periods of employment and unemployment, the return of older adolescents (especially of young men) to the parental home, and frequently social isolation and stigmatisation. Time and again observers, but also those who are directly affected, interpret these growing barriers to life, which are directly connected to the economic restructuring of recent years, as the personal failure and fault of the young people concerned. The processing of these experiences of crisis usually happens individually, without social support, and carries an elevated risk of failure, leading to negative self-perceptions, social isolation, as well as the danger of being pushed into socially excluded groups and anti-social attitudes (cf. Hurrelmann 2010; Knapp 2012). Consequently, these developments represent a crucial future challenge, not only for the European school and education systems, but equally for the employment systems.

2 Social Conditions of Youth Unemployment The social problem of youth unemployment always emerges under very distinct cultural, social and labour market specific framework conditions. Before we turn our attention to the effects of youth unemployment, we will first outline the social transformation of the stage of adolescence and explore the societal significance of employment for the identity development of young people.

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2.1 Youth and Social Change In the industrial and service societies of Western Europe, the youth phase has transformed profoundly as a result of the rapid socio-economic processes of change (cf. Beck 1986; Beck et al. 1996; Beck 1997). Childhood and adolescence are included in these modernisation processes. Against the background of these modernisation and individualisation processes, the traditional and phase-specific arrangement of life into childhood, adolescence and adulthood is crumbling. The living conditions of young people are undergoing a parallel process of change. To manage a “successful biography” (cf. Thiersch 1986), adolescents must master not only difficult but, in part, also contradictory social challenges. Hence, since the end of the 1980s, the theory discourses in the field of youth research have applied the term “destructuring of the youth phase” (cf. Schröer 2002). This does not only refer to the decay of the relatively homogeneous youth phase, but also describes the transformation of adolescents’ traditional social environments, which used to be regarded as clearly structured and dependable. Young people can no longer rely on predetermined biographical decisions; instead, each and every one of them is forced to make individual life decisions. For the individual adolescent, these social changes admittedly open up “degrees of freedom of action” and “extended spaces of possibility” (Fend 1988, p. 296), on the one hand, but on the other hand, young people in this late modern society are also faced with increasing “risks of failure” (Keupp 1988; Keupp et al. 1999). The occupational trajectories of adolescents depend on educational qualifications gained at school, the individual level of commitment and the social conditions affecting the labour market (e.g. economic and debt crisis), none of which can be influenced by the individual young person. In this context, the theoretical discourses in the field of youth studies refer to the notion of “destandardisation through differentiation and individualisation” (Hornstein 1999). Viewed against the background of the social change of youth, schools—to name one example—are confronted with a wide range of challenges. The social concept of the European school and education systems frequently continues to uphold an image of youth that has been subject to social change for decades. The socially established “youth education moratorium” (Zinnecker 1991), which arose from the industrial working society of the twentieth century, has become obsolete. Originally institutionalised to safeguard the continued social, economic and cultural existence of society, it provided for the exemption of young people from the obligations of employment and family work for the purpose of education and training in the course of the socialisation process. However, despite this obsolescence, most European education systems continue to build upon this image of youth, regardless of the fact the adolescents have long been exposed to a process of “destandardisation”. This process forces them to cope with psychosocial problems, from which they should, in fact, be protected and unburdened, according to the image of youth associated with the moratorium (cf. Schröer 2004; Knapp 2012, pp. 393ff.).

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The psychosocial problems of adolescents, which simultaneously represent development tasks, relate to developing a circle of friends, maintaining relationships with contemporaries of both sexes, accepting one’s own physical appearance, and the adoption of behaviour patterns in the role of men and women. Moreover, they revolve around the commencement of intimate relations, the process of separation from the parental home and knowledge about which occupation to pursue and which qualifications this might require. Finally, the problems also relate to the development of ideas about partnership and family, about self-perception and the perception by others, and the development of one’s own view of the world and value orientation as a decision-making basis for individual action (cf. on this Oerter and Dreher 1995, p. 329; Dreher et al. 2011, pp. 49–81). As a result, the coping perspective of young people is increasingly eclipsing the education perspective within the education system. For many adolescents in the twenty-first century this means that the educational status assigned by the school and education system is increasingly not sufficient to cope with life’s current and future social problems (e.g. unemployment, requirements of the labour market), and to remain capable of acting as a member of society.

2.2 On the Meaning of Gainful Employment for the Identity Development of Adolescents Within the context of life designs, particularly in the case of adolescents, the process of integration into gainful employment is of central importance (cf. Heinz 1995; Knapp 2008, pp. 324ff.; Hurrelmann 2010). For the vast majority of the population, independently from the culture-pessimistic doomsday scenarios of the working society, gainful employment or wage labour forms the sole basis of securing one’s material livelihood. It also serves as a key function in relation to social positioning and opportunities for social participation in relation to various aspects of life (e.g. living, education, participation in cultural and political life, recreational activities, health, etc.). Moreover, gainful employment fulfils an important and meaningful social function in the life of the individual. For the one part, gainful employment pre-structures the daily routine and the rhythm of life. For the other part, it offers the experience of social relationships and forms of personal recognition. In this sense, gainful employment is of central importance for the “identity formation” of the individual (cf. Keupp et al. 1999), and most crucially for adolescents. Allowing for theoretical concepts (cf. Mead 1968; Goffmann 1974; Erikson 1994; Müller 2011), the “identity” of the individual presents a complex structure. This can be comprehended as an individual achievement, which meets not only the expectation of uniqueness, but also the expectation of socially desirable behaviour patterns. Within the framework of social processes of change, every individual continuously needs to produce and simultaneously integrate this achievement.

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In this regard, it should be taken into account that this process cannot be seen as detached from the social and economic framework conditions of the respective occupation, which can either promote or impede the development of the professional identity, depending on their specific structure. Professional identity formation is shaped to a significant degree by educational conditions, experiences of professional success and failure, social recognition granted by stakeholder groups in society, relationships to the immediate peers and other professions (e.g. co-operation partners), as well as institutional and organisational conditions (e.g. scope for freedom, opportunities for personal growth, the approach to rules and regulations). It must be assumed, furthermore, that occupational strains do not only exert a negative influence on the living and working conditions of people, but that they can also lead to “role conflicts” and “professional identity crises”. Although approximately 30 million people are unemployed across the entire OECD area, and 53 million of the 370 million Europeans currently live below the poverty line (cf. Beck 2007, p. 379; Knapp 2008), the importance of gainful employment for the individual’s life plan and design, particularly in the case of young people, has not diminished in the slightest. The risks that have emerged in the labour market as a result of the radical restructuring, rationalisation, globalisation (cf. Beck 1997) and “digitalisation” processes affecting economic systems, coupled with the economic and sociocultural requirements of the family systems and the altered forms of life as well as the structural problems of the welfare state security system (cf. Knapp 2004, pp. 80ff.), are more likely to lead to an “expansion of the employment orientation” across the total population in the European states (cf. on this Mutz and Kühnlein 2000). In view of this societal development, it is understandable that when it comes to the search for “identity”, the twin issues of “work and occupation” are of central significance for all people, especially for young people and those entering the world of work for the first time. The process of integration into the (waged) working society is core to formulating a life plan, it acts as an important key to “life management” (cf. Böhnisch 1994), and it serves as a guideline for succeeding in one’s own life biography (cf. Baethge et al. 1996; Hein and Lappe 1998). In this context, “education”, “training” and “employment” (cf. Kellermann 1986) are of enormous significance for the acquisition of professional skills and competences (“qualifications”) as well as for achieving economic autonomy and independence from the family of origin. Moreover, when regarded through the socialisationtheoretical lens, they are also essential in relation to the identity formation of young people and their “emancipation” as independent individual members of society (cf. also Tillmann 1989; Hurrelmann 1993; Böhnisch 1998; Keupp et al. 1999). And yet, the structural transformation of the “working society” has resulted in the fact that the opportunities available to people, and especially to young people, to realise certain life designs have become increasingly difficult in the context of “work and occupation”, thus hampering the process of human identity formation. In light of this, the significant phenomenon of youth unemployment levels that are above average is emerging as a pressing issue right across Europe and in terms of economic policy; this is often referred to as “Europe’s lost generation”. Compared

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50.0%

39.9% 40.0% 34.3% 32.2% 30.0%

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Fig. 1 Unemployment rates (ILO) of youths (15–24 years old) compared to the overall rate of unemployment, selected EU member states 2018 (annual average as a percentage) (Source Eurostat Data 2018, online; author’s own depiction)

to the overall rate of unemployment in Europe, the unemployment rates (ILO) of youths aged between 15 and 24 years reveal a worrying picture (cf. Fig. 1). It is not only the above-average levels of unemployment that are a problematic issue: due to the increasing casualisation and precarity of labour markets, young people are more frequently exposed to atypical employment conditions, including involuntary part-time work, marginal employment, short-term contracts and/or freelance contracts or contracts for services, which unfold various consequences across extensive swathes of society—for instance in relation to the risk of poverty or exclusion (cf. Knapp and Pichler 2008).

3 Aims, Methodological Approach and Key Data of the Empirical Survey Against the background described above, a large-scale research project at the University of Klagenfurt (led by principal investigator Ao. Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr. Gerald Knapp1 ) examined the determining factors for the emergence of youth unemployment, with the aim of deriving possible measures for shaping the policy on education and the labour market, thus taking a proactive approach to tackling the phenomenon of youth unemployment. 1 The

team working on this comprehensive research project also included Robert Klinglmair and Stephanie Schoahs.

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Building on existing theories and previous studies, the central hypothesis adopted ex ante was that—alongside the economical and regional labour market conditions, coupled with the observed structural shift towards a service society—the complicated interplay of (1) determining factors relating to the family and (2) school or education-related circumstances, was likely to be highly relevant for the emergence of youth unemployment. In other words, youth unemployment is seen as a multicausal problem, for which the (simultaneous) occurrence of numerous influences (such as the social origin and/or a low educational or skill level) is considered decisive. A second essential aim of the research project was to describe the diverse ramifications and side effects associated with (youth) unemployment, as the literature often only analyses single consequences—such as the psychosocial effects of unemployment—in isolation (cf., representative of many others, Kritzinger et al. 2009). Based on the studies mentioned above, which often refer to the German-speaking area and which are not limited to Austria, the literature review and secondary analysis revealed that, taken together, these many studies can only paint an incomplete picture of youth unemployment, in the sense of a combination of causes and their effects. Thus, the project team identified a qualitative research gap, which is further compounded by a quantitative research gap (lack of available data), revealing the need for a new empirical survey, which was conceived and implemented as a quantitative analysis in the shape of an extensive written survey with supplementary interviews (“mixed methods approach”). The empirical survey’s target group or basic population (both for the quantitative and qualitative study component) was comprised of young people aged between 15 and 24 years, irrespective of whether the survey coincided with a period of unemployment or not. This approach allowed the project team to identify the “test group” of interest consisting of unemployed youths, but also allowed for a corresponding “control group”. This group included those young people for whom the transition to the labour market had proceeded smoothly, for the most part, or youths who had already been integrated in the labour market for a while at the time of the survey, and with some success. On the one hand, this allowed a comparison of the professional careers (and the necessary prerequisites, such as the corresponding level of education), and on the other hand, it was possible to outline the manifold (social) ramifications of youth unemployment. In order to gain more profound insights into the multicausal problem situation of youth unemployment, the survey was designed as a modular questionnaire with a total of 72 questions, which were grouped into eight different characteristic areas. In additional to personal characteristics—for instance age, sex or migration background—questions asking about the socio-economic, family background or questions relating to education formed the main part of the survey instrument with regard to the conditions determining the emergence of youth unemployment. Occupation related characteristics—with a separate complex of questions on the topic of unemployment—represent two further key modules of the questionnaire, with the aim to trace the occupational careers of the young interviewees, and thus to identify differences relevant to the labour market between the two groups of interest. Furthermore, an extensive range of characteristics related to the ramifications were also integrated in the questionnaire, such as health-related behaviour or psychosocial stress factors,

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allowing researchers to explore not only the economic ramifications, such as the risk of poverty, but also the individual and social ramifications (e.g. social exclusion or criminality) from a social science perspective. General questions about social relationships or societal engagement—volunteering activities, for example—or about societal attitudes and future perspectives of the young people (e.g. expectations about the future) complete the developed questionnaire, which was pre-tested for comprehensibility and consistency. Finally, the questionnaire was distributed by post to a random sample of N = 6280 Carinthian youths through the Central Register of Residents. Despite the length of the questionnaire, the project team recorded the return of 1454 usable questionnaires; this equates to a return rate of 23.2%. The sample available for further statistical analyses is highly representative: In relation to age (mean value: 19.2 years) and regional distribution, allowing a comparison of rural and urban areas, the data sample conforms to the basic population (cf. Statistik Austria 2013, p. 338; Amt der Kärntner Landesregierung 2014, p. 37). Solely with regard to the indicated sex, females are over-represented in the sample with a percentage of 60.5, while males (39.5%) are clearly under the 51.6% share of the overall population according to Statistik Austria (2013, p. 338). However, this imbalance does not entail any significant consequences, as the focus of the study was placed on the general rather than on gender-specific causes of youth unemployment. In addition, a structured interview guideline was developed for the qualitative survey component, which was oriented along with the questionnaire for the quantitative part of the research project, and was also divided into eight modules. Based on this interview guideline, 25 interviews were conducted in total, primarily with unemployed young people, with the aim of deepening and expanding the results of the quantitative survey.

4 Societal Ramifications of Youth Unemployment With regard to the manifold ramifications of youth unemployment, particular attention is given below to the increased risk of poverty as well as to health-related impacts, while—given their large number—we can only present selected aspects of additional ramifications here. For a complete overview, please refer to Knapp et al. (2018).

4.1 Risk of Poverty and Social Exclusion Numerous studies have shown that processes of exclusion (unemployment or inactivity on the labour market, i.e. the complete withdrawal from the labour market) often go hand in hand with socio-economic disadvantages for the affected individuals (cf. Giesecke et al. 2010, p. 421). One of the most critical economic ramifications of youth unemployment is certainly the increased risk of poverty and exclusion,

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when—despite financial support through passive labour market policies (unemployment benefits, emergency benefits)—a phase of unemployment results in significant financial and thus material losses, which continue on into (young) adulthood. Data from the official statistics, for instance, show that the net annual household income is lowest for unemployed individuals, compared to other occupational circumstances (e.g. skilled worker, lower management) (cf. Statistik Austria 2015c, p. 269), or that unemployment in particular counts as a central risk factor when it comes to the risk of poverty. As such, the risk of poverty for unemployed persons lies at 46%, while the eight percent for employed individuals is markedly below the average of 14% (cf. BMASK 2014, pp. 347f.; Statistik Austria 2015d, pp. 82f.). “Participation in gainful employment is consequently an essential prerequisite for the prevention of poverty” (BMASK 2010, p. 178). Alongside this relative measure of poverty, the term “material deprivation”, which represents an absolute measurement value for the standard of living—unlike the approach based on income—focuses primarily on the actual effect of financial resources. According to the European definition, we speak of a deprived living situation when a household is unable to financially afford several central basic needs. These were addressed, albeit in a modified form, and supplemented by relevant characteristics of social participation, in the study described in this contribution. They include, among others, being able to adequately heat one’s apartment/house, or being able to invite friends or family for a meal once a month. Based on the results of the survey, the project team generated a so-called “deprivation and participation index”, which ranges from a minimum of zero (no limitation) to a maximum of six (maximum limitation); in this respect, a mean comparison test confirmed that the mean values between the two groups of interest were significantly different. Along with the surveyed youths who have a low level of education and achieve a comparatively low level of income due to their disadvantaged position on the labour market, it is especially the unemployed youths, who are affected by financially determined restrictions, but also by lower social participation. Here, the mean value among the unemployed youths is 3.4, while the employed individuals produced a notably higher mean value of 4.9 (t = 7.74; p = 0.000). This implies that on average unemployed young people are unable to afford 2.6 of the listed basic needs, while the result for employed youths only applied to 1.1 of the basic needs (mainly holidays, and thus not an immediate basic need). What is more, results showed that unemployed youths are far more likely to be in arrears with payments—for rent, loans or mobile phone bills (t = 4.53; p = 0.000)—and also feature a greater dependence on state benefit payments compared to employed youths (t = –5.28; p = 0.000). The analyses reveal, for instance, that unemployed (31.9%) versus employed youths are notably more likely to receive housing benefits (16.4%). It was also possible to ascertain that unemployed young people are far less likely to be able to afford a household of their own, which means that the likelihood of remaining with their parents is significantly higher (Pearson-χ 2 = 10.9; p = 0.054; Cramer’s V = 0.16). Consequently, due to the scarcity of financial resources and the close spatial connection, this can lead to friction and imposes a

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considerable associated strain upon the young people, emanating from the family of origin (cf. Schober 1978, p. 204). What is more, the above-mentioned limited social participation can also be elaborated from a second point of view, namely by looking at recreational activities which are associated with costs (cinema, fitness studio, etc.), and which are comparatively less affordable for unemployed young people and thus present a risk of social isolation and the reduction of social contacts (cf. on this also Kronauer 2002). A differentiated analysis allowing for the employment status showed that less than half (45.6%) of the unemployed youth regularly indulge in expensive recreational activities; the small share is explained by 15.2% generally not wishing to do so, and 39.2% stating that they cannot afford it due to financial reasons, as findings from the interviews reinforce: “I constantly have to be careful with my money. My friends get angry, because I am always being careful, and I still never have any money. Cigarettes and going out are really expensive. I have already reduced how much I go out, but then I end up spending more money on other things” (M13), or “Yes, I’m saving for my driver’s license. I planned for it and I have to be patient”. (W1)

In contrast, 76.0% of the employed young people often engage in recreational activities that involve costs, and they are socially integrated to a higher degree (see Fig. 2). Concomitantly, unemployed young people—possibly once again due to their limited financial means—also join the activities of a club, community or association less frequently (z = −4.18; p = 0.000). It is particularly the unemployed youths who reveal a weaker degree of social integration and are less able to turn to (large 80.0%

76.0%

70.0% 60.0% 50.0%

45.6% 39.2%

40.0% 30.0% 20.0%

15.2%

14.1% 9.9%

10.0% 0.0%

Employed Yes

No, not for financial reasons.

Unemployed No, I don't want to do this.

Fig. 2 Engaging in recreational activities, which are associated with costs, according to the labour market status (as a percentage) (Source author’s own depiction)

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and heterogeneous) networks for support. This can be defined as a disadvantage, as Brandt (2006, p. 468) shows, for instance, that unemployed young people are especially likely to find a path out of unemployment through social networks, as the use of social contacts offers a decisive advantage when it comes to the competition for scarce resources such as job offers. In summary, it is possible to state that unemployed young people are affected on several levels—to a statistically significant degree—by financial and socio-economic disadvantages. Result No. 1: The increased risk of poverty and (social) exclusion can be defined as a central consequence of youth unemployment.

4.2 Health-Related Consequences In addition to the effects described above, diverse health-related consequences are also counted among the central ramifications of unemployment, and these are the subject of medical, sociological and psychological research (cf. for instance Kieselbach and Beelmann 2006; Kroll and Lamprecht 2011). Numerous studies have clearly shown that the unemployed—compared to the employed—are affected to a greater degree by health and psychosocial problems. The stresses associated with unemployment can favour behaviour that is risky to health, psychosocial stress and the manifestation of diseases (cf. Robert Koch Institut 2012, p. 1; Hess et al. 1991), as empirical health surveys have also established for the case of Austria. According to Statistik Austria (2014a, b) respectively, the probability that certain diseases will occur is noticeably higher for unemployed persons than for employed individuals; chronic anxiety/depression, high blood pressure or diabetes are among the conditions that the unemployed population is more likely to suffer from. It is therefore hardly surprising that the results of the study discussed here also identified a significant correlation between the (subjective) state of health of young people and unemployment. According to this, based on a rank-sum test, when unemployed youths estimate their state of health it is comparatively worse than when employed young people make an assessment (z = –2.01; p = 0.045; cf. Fig. 3). While only 3.3% of the employed evaluate their state of health as “(very) bad”, the result among the surveyed unemployed youths is 7.6%, despite their young age. In this context, we must note the aggravating factor that a period of unemployment during early adulthood is associated with a lasting effect on health at a later age (cf. Mohr and Richter 2008, p. 26). The state of health, which is subjectively perceived as worse, is closely linked to health-jeopardising patterns of behaviour on the part of the young people. Following relevant literature, for instance, the hypothesis was formulated that the prevalence of smoking correlates with the social class affiliation. Based on the data collected,

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70.0% 63.7% 57.8%

60.0% 50.0% 40.0%

38.9%

28.7%

30.0% 20.0% 10.0%

6.3% 3.3%

1.3%

0.0%

0.0% Employed

Unemployed Very good

Good

Bad

Very bad

Fig. 3 (Subjective) state of health according to labour market status (as a percentage) (Source author’s own depiction)

this was confirmed. Tobacco consumption revealed a significant difference between the test and the control group: While more than half (56.3%) of the unemployed youths regularly consume tobacco products, the same only applies to 37.0% of the employed survey participants (Pearson-χ 2 = 9.90; p = 0.002; Cramer’s V = 0.12). Thus, the elevated tobacco prevalence among unemployed young people underpins the (theoretical) explanations of existing studies, on the one hand (cf. for instance Kieselbach and Beelmann 2006; Jungbauer-Gans and Gross 2009; Hollereder 2011), and on the other hand, it confirms the available data for Austria, as were ascertained within the context of the 2006/2007 Austrian health survey. According to these, 45% of the unemployed and merely 30% of the employed population smoke regularly (cf. Statistik Austria 2014a, p. 76). As well as physical effects, it can also be shown “that unemployment causes a deterioration of the psychological state … depressiveness, symptoms of anxiety, psychosomatic conditions, and the effect on the feeling of self-worth have been established as psychological consequences of unemployment” (Mohr and Richter 2008, p. 26; transl. by the author). Our own evaluations also confirm that especially psychosocial strains (despondency, unhappiness and depression) are observed as central health-related consequences of unemployment among the young people (z = −2.01; p = 0.000), which is again reinforced by selected findings from the qualitative study component: In the past it was the bullying, the divorce, the problems at home and so on. There were a few things, but that is in the past. I also went to see a psychologist. I even went to the hospital every two weeks between from the age of 12 to 15. (M14)

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Hence, particularly during adolescence, unemployment entails psychosocial effects, as the young people are in a process finding their identity—a process of becoming adults and independent—and during this phase great significance is ascribed to professional training and work. Unemployment considerably disrupts the development of the own social identity, the formulation of own life plans and value judgements, not only by binding the young people to the family of origin due, among others, to material-economic reasons, as the study at hand shows, but particularly by excluding them from the peer group, thus robbing them of the opportunity to grow into the adult and professional role (cf. Schober 1978, pp. 200f.; Schober 1987, p. 459). The associated conflict between desire and reality can be seen as a critical life experience, where damage to the personality and psychosocial strains cannot be precluded or, respectively, are not unlikely (cf. Reißig 2010, p. 55; Schober 1978, p. 201). The individual has to find a way to process the resulting mental and social pressure, be this in the form of feelings of guilt or failure, or in the form of aggression directed outwards and projected towards other social groups (cf. Schober 1978, p. 202). Figure 4 provides empirical proof of these—theoretically anticipated—effects of unemployment on the individual life situation of young study participants. Judging by the results obtained, at the time of the survey, many of the unemployed young people who participated felt worthless (11.9%), felt shame about their unemployment (32.4%), and/or exhibited the tendency to be resigned and to have lost confidence in themselves (6.0%) and to be lacking drive (9.1%; in each case “fully applies”). This is compounded by the fact that the unemployed young people do not expect any significant improvement of their individual life situation in the future, and that they look forward to their professional and private future with great

I'm ashamed of my unemployment.

32.4%

I feel worthless.

I don't dare do anything anymore

11.9%

6.0%

I'm listless and usually stay at home.

9.1%

I oŌen feel tense.

9.0%

I'm preƩy aggressive someƟmes.

12.0%

0% applies very strongly

27.9%

25.4%

20.6%

19.1%

37.3%

17.9%

25.4%

31.3%

28.8%

44.8%

30.3%

31.8%

46.2%

13.4%

20% applies strongly

23.9%

37.3%

40% rather not true

20.9%

37.3%

60%

80%

100%

does not apply at all

Fig. 4 Effects of unemployment on the life situation (as a percentage) (Source author’s own depiction)

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uncertainty. As such, one-quarter of the surveyed unemployed youths (24.7%) fears the future, more than half (53.3%) expresses doubt that they will be able to successfully integrate into the labour market, as the following interview statement by one young person underlines: Bad. Yes, bad. I don’t see a green light here. Everything is so complicated. Right now, I can’t say that I will ever have a pleasant situation. I’m not that far yet. I can find a thousand excuses and I still do not know what is ahead for me. I have to let things take their course, and I have to accept whatever awaits me. I don’t plan ahead. I feel very uncertain, and I cannot say how things will be. (M13)

In view of this, it is unsurprising that unemployed young people—compared to their employed peers—are also generally more dissatisfied with their life and claim a lower “life satisfaction”, which has received heightened attention in scientific research for some time now, within the context of so-called “happiness research”. The life satisfaction of the surveyed youths is co-determined—on the basis of the statistical evaluations—by numerous factors such as age, the level of education, the state of health, a possible migration background or social prestige. Above all, though— following earlier studies (cf. Hadjar 2008, p. 379; Enste and Ewers 2014, p. 44; Statistik Austria 2014c, p. 87; Eurostat 2015, pp. 236ff.)—it was possible to show that the employment status is regarded as one of the most central determining factors for life satisfaction. On a scale of 1 (“very dissatisfied”) to 10 (“very satisfied”), young unemployed persons indicated a mean of 6.1, and can therefore be said to be less satisfied with their life overall than employed youths (7.3; t = 3.45; p = 0.000). Policy measures designed to boost employment are therefore seen not only as a supporting pillar for economic growth, but can also promote the well-being of society, as the general satisfaction with life depends heavily on the state of employment. The other correlation determined, namely between the state of health or the level of education and life satisfaction also implies, however, that policies should additionally pay particular attention to (workplace) health promotion and to extensive reforms of the education system (on this, cf. Enste and Ewers 2014). Result No. 2: Unemployment experienced in adolescence and in later adulthood entails long-term physical and psychosocial consequences. Furthermore, due to unemployment, the future prospects of young people are dominated by uncertainty, and life satisfaction tends to be lower. The final part of this subsection addresses three ramifications of unemployment, which are of particular social relevance, before Sect. 5 concludes the present contribution with a summary.

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4.3 Societal Ramifications Schober (1978, p. 202) was one of the first authors to point out that unemployment is often accompanied by aggression that is directed outwards (cf. Sect. 4.2). The so-called “unemployment theory” further assumes that unemployment that is experienced or anticipated leads to acts of violence and can be the result of processing social experiences, direct impressions of the labour market and processes of coming to terms with the respective employment or unemployment situation (cf. Scheu 2009, pp. 18ff.). As we demonstrated in Fig. 4, the unemployed youths who participated in the survey often experienced feelings of aggression (12.0%); further, it was also possible to confirm the unemployment theory of increased criminal behaviour. Although the study discussed here revealed that the predominant share of the young participants (94.5%) had not yet come into conflict with the law (in the criminal law sense), a separate analysis allowing for the labour market status did show that there are differences between the test group and the control group. Unemployed youths are more frequently in trouble with the law (8.9%; on multiple occasions in one case, or 7.6%) compared to the surveyed employed young people (4.8%; on multiple occasions in one case, or 1.8%); the differences are statistically significant (z = − 2.90; p = 0.004). The above results also match the results of the qualitative analysis; the unemployed survey participants are more often in conflict with the law than their employed peers. One of the interviewees, for instance, responded as follows to the question whether she had ever had anything to do with the police: Yes, a few charges, but no previous convictions. I have had to pay fines in the past, like an idiot. For assault, damage to property, noise disturbance, running riot, that sort of thing. And now I’ve been convicted for resisting the police, insulting an official, and property damage. And the court case dealing with my attack on the new girlfriend of my former boyfriend is yet to come. I already got three years of probation, and really, I shouldn’t let anything else happen now. And I don’t know if the thing with her will be added to that or not. I just don’t know. (W1)

Considered from two separate perspectives, these results are clearly of societal significance. One the one hand, because active labour market policies and a long-term reduction of youth unemployment have the power to reduce the number of criminal offences, and on the other hand, because there is potential to reduce the pressure on strained public budgets in relation to fighting crime, as a study investigating lowqualified and frequently unemployed young people showed in the case of Germany (cf. Entdorf and Sieger 2010) (Fig. 5). A further central societal consequence of youth unemployment determined in the study discussed here was that unemployed young people exhibit a lower level of commitment in terms of volunteering. Although it is generally the case that unpaid social activities play only a subordinate role among the surveyed youths, it is nonetheless remarkable that employed young people are far more likely to volunteer than their unemployed peers (z =−2.14; p = 0.033; cf. Fig. 6). This correlation can also

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100.0%

93.4%

90.0%

83.5%

80.0% 70.0% 60.0% 50.0% 40.0% 30.0% 20.0% 8.9%

10.0%

4.8%

7.6%

1.8%

0.0%

Employed

Unemployed Never

Once

Several Ɵmes

Fig. 5 Criminal confrontation with the law according to labour market situation (as a percentage) (Source author’s own depiction) 60.0%

48.7%

50.0%

40.0% 32.4% 29.5%

30.0% 25.0% 19.9% 20.0%

15.5% 11.5%

10.0%

7.2%

6.4% 3.9%

0.0%

Employed (Almost) daily

At least once a week

Unemployed 1-3 Ɵmes a month

Less oŌen

Never

Fig. 6 Commitment to volunteering according to labour market situation (as a percentage) (Source author’s own depiction)

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be observed for educationally disadvantaged youths (z = −3.82; p = 0.000), which shows that especially the less qualified—the largest problematic group in the labour market—clearly do not regard volunteering to be an adequate activity. According to Erlinghagen (2000), this is due to the fact that people with low qualifications are not equipped with the necessary resources, which are required in a knowledge society in order to generate corresponding goods on the “volunteer market”. Conversely, better-resourced individuals can successfully increase their human and social capital on the labour market as well, while those who are less well equipped anyway in terms of qualifications are excluded from this chance to participate and improve (cf. Erlinghagen 2000, pp. 291ff.). However, it is precisely the social and societal commitment and the resulting social relationships and networks, which can boost the opportunities for successfully exiting the state of unemployment and can improve the chances for low-income earners. The more contacts there are, the higher is the access to “useful” information and the better are the opportunities for influence when it comes to searching for work. Social integration should consequently be regarded as a core component in relation to the prevention of or exit from (youth) unemployment, and it is important to promote this resolutely.

5 Summary and Leverage Points for Sparking Improvement The empirical study on the conditions under which youth unemployment emerges, and the ramifications it entails, serves as an empirical basis for the leverage points at which measures for sparking the improvement of the living conditions of young people can be applied, and furthermore it bears significant sociopolitical importance for all of Europe. As well as economic and regional labour market conditions, demographic effects and family-related determining factors along with the level of education, two key determinants for the emergence of youth unemployment could be identified. First, the family life situation and social provenance can be regarded as a significant prerequisite of conditional education and status transfer and thus as central influencing factor in the occurrence of youth unemployment. Second, the level of education has a decisive impact on the individual labour market opportunities during adolescence just as in later adulthood, and can consequently count as essential determining factor for youth unemployment. The elevated risk of poverty and social exclusion can be postulated as central economic effect of youth unemployment. The experience of unemployment during adolescence and later on in adulthood leads to long-term physical and psychosocial consequences. The future prospects of the young people, who are unemployed, are dominated by uncertainty and a loss of perspectives. This is accompanied by a lower level of life satisfaction. A differentiated overview is provided in Knapp et al. (2018). These central insights provide leverage points for intervention measures in the realm of family, education and labour market

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policy, in order to tackle the social problem of youth unemployment in a proactive manner. As education can offer the best protection against unemployment (cf. for instance Weber and Weber 2013), it is particularly important to increase the social permeability and equal opportunities of the European education systems, which are still rather underdeveloped today. Often, it is the social provenance, which determines the kind of education children and adolescents receive; for children whose parents have only attained a low level of education and for children from families with a migration background, it is comparatively difficult to ascend in terms of education (cf. Knapp 2007; Statistik Austria 2013, p. 92; Knittler 2011; Altzinger et al. 2013). Lachmayr and Rothmüller (2009, p. 6) also demonstrate that “educational aspiration” depends strongly on the education of the parents; the educational expansion observed over the past few decades should therefore not be mistaken for an improvement in equal opportunities, as this is due to the different development of relative educational opportunities of separate groups in the population (cf. Becker 2009, p. 20). Instead, it implies a need to act in many European education systems. Early language training for children (especially for migrants), the introduction of all-day schools in order to compensate for the relatively difficult family backgrounds of the youths, which are often decisive for youth unemployment, and the establishment of a “real” comprehensive school, which can contribute to reducing secondary provenance effects (cf. Bacher and Tamesberger 2011; Bacher 2007; Knapp 2007), can be seen as expedient in this context. It is quite common for “remedial” measures to dominate, i.e. measures that apply after the educational career has been disrupted. Intervention strategies tend to focus on reintegrating educationally disadvantaged adolescents back into the education system or preferably drawing them into the labour market, rather than preventing an exit from the education system. Often, their effect is merely curative, as in most cases the formal school-leaving qualification is not replaced, and thus, going forward, the individual’s situation on the labour market is not markedly improved. Above all, intervention strategies are all the more effective and efficient, the earlier they are applied in the education system; preventive measures achieve a greater effect than the curative kind (cf. Steiner 2009, p. 158; Nairz-Wirth and Gitschthaler 2010). Judging by these results, the prevention aspect should be promoted more forcefully (cf. Steiner 2009, p. 158). Moreover, flanking measures should be implemented to reinforce professional orientation, professional continuing education and lifelong learning. However, active labour market policy throughout Europe continues to be of central importance. Despite the strain on public budgets, it is important—in view of the observed unemployment levels in many European countries—to increase the focus on effective measures aimed at the rapid reintegration the long-term unemployed. In addition to strengthening self-worth, avoiding social isolation, increasing volunteering commitment and preventing addiction and violence, it is of particular importance to ensure that those people, who have never been in a regular working situation

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can attain not only a higher level of education and training, but also manage to transition into employment quickly and smoothly (cf. Weber et al. 2007, pp. 2957ff.; Rätzel 2007, pp. 335f.). As the study discussed in this contribution was able to demonstrate, unemployment is associated with a dramatic reduction in well-being. Once job losses occur, it is therefore essential to support the rapid reintegration of the affected persons, by optimising the mediation and qualification measures, especially as unemployment is correlated to negative (health) consequences, thus justifying the special need for action on the part of policy-makers throughout the European labour markets.

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Little Economists in Global Virtual Markets: An Analysis of the Relationship Between Digital Virtual Worlds and Children’s Economic Engagement Cornelia Mayr

1 Introduction The current chapter aims to provide a critical account of debates about the role of a global consumer culture, with specific reference to the position of children. The chapter focuses on a discussion of the ways in which consumer culture itself is currently changing and becoming more digital as well as technologically mediated. It argues that, while the economic globalization of markets and consumption patterns may lead to a worldwide homogenization of children’s preferences and experiences, it has also led to the emergence of a “digital kids” subculture that constructs children as “empowered” consumer experts of new media technology and active producers of information. By taking up and reviewing this issue in relevant literature concerning globalization and children’s consumer culture, the chapter addresses the following questions: (1) What is globalization and how far does it relate to children’s consumer culture? (2) How far do children economically engage in global virtual worlds and relate to these global digital markets? The more ubiquitous and “participatory” techniques that are now being provided by a selective exposition of seven online virtual worlds reflect a new construction of the child as active economic agent. This, in turn, requires a rethinking of the ways in which children are shaped, on the one hand, by digital virtual worlds, but, on the other hand, act as productive forces upon processes of globalization, economy and digitalization. As this chapter shall show, digital virtual worlds may produce a “global commercialized childhood” that seemingly “rules” the gameplay, but this may not necessarily be disadvantageous for children themselves.

C. Mayr (B) Department of Sociology, University of Klagenfurt, Klagenfurt, Austria e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 G. Knapp and H. Krall (eds.), Youth Cultures in a Globalized World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65177-0_17

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2 Globalization of Consumer Culture Undeniably, issues concerning globalization need to take economic action (production, distribution and consumption) into consideration. This relates to a theory of globalization that puts contexts of contemporary Western consumer culture at the centre. A culture ordered by a huge variety of markets can be viewed as a global culture, since economic behaviour involves traces of global developments and processes. Just by looking at the variety of uniform products and brands in supermarkets, one might easily recognize the various notions of a global consumer culture. Wearing Nike sneakers, drinking Starbucks coffee or Coca Cola, buying lunch at McDonald’s, watching sitcoms and sharing pictures on Facebook, all of these consumption practices exemplify parts of a global cultural standardization. However, these snapshots of a global consumer culture may be viewed as signs of what some critics have called a “global village”, which conjures up images of sameness, the reduction in diversity and standardized tastes and desires. This worldwide homogenization of consumer preferences and experiences is also often referred to “CocaColonization” (Mlinar 1992), “McDonaldization” (Ritzer 1993), or “Americanization” and “Disneyization” (Bryman 2001). However, this chapter views globalization as something more than simply a worldwide unification and standardization. For the purpose of this chapter, attention is shifted from the impacts of globalization to patterns of consumer interaction and interconnectedness in worldwide consumer markets. On global consumer marketplaces, the Internet, digital consumption and online communities play an important role through which particular forms of consumer culture are formed and changed by social relations. So, what characterizes the contemporary global consumer culture and consumer response to global digital markets? Different research disciplines, such as cultural anthropology, sociology, cultural studies, communication and media sciences, or social psychology conceptualize consumer culture in several theoretically divergent and different ways. A sociological perspective understands consumer culture as a socially integrating system of signs, symbols, representation and meaning (Warde 2014). From this perspective, consumers are both producers and consumers of culture. They forge hedonic, aesthetic or ritualistic relationships with goods and services to manifest identity, status or lifestyles as well as to attain happiness and satisfaction. As members of a specific consumer culture, people or groups interact with each other to share common values, norms and beliefs (Zelizer 2011; Featherstone 2007; Arnould and Thompson 2005). Hence, brands, goods and services could be seen as cultural symbols and objects that imply a certain meaning, belief or value. All actions related to consumption, like desiring, selecting, purchasing, using, distributing, gift-giving or wasting, are oriented in terms of commodities as cultural objects. Nonetheless, the concept of culture involves a number of direct as well as tacit assumptions. For example, culture can only exist in the shared projections of symbolic meanings among a group of members (Blumer 1969). Brand names and symbols, goods or services may, thus, be of “cultural” significance as long as people attribute

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meaning to them and share this meaning among a group. Another characteristic of consumer culture includes the fact that culture is acquired. People are not born with a set of culture, but rather they learn culture through interaction, observation, imitation and language. Furthermore, culture is transmitted from one generation to another, but it does not have to be identical. Since various factors, like historical, economic, ecological or technological events, influence culture, it can differ among past, present and future generations. A consumer culture is, thus, continuously created in communication and interaction processes. And, in these processes, meanings of consumer objects, values and norms are constantly reproduced, changed and adjusted. Studying sociocultural dimensions of consumption has even given name to a new research perspective, the consumer culture theory (Arnould and Thompson 2005). CCT studies explore consumer practices of specific consumer cultures. In this sense, a consumer culture consists of a group of people who create identity and a sense of community through their purchases. Culture acts as a map that guides consumer behaviour, but does not strictly determine it. In particular, the CCT addresses four domains: consumer identity projects (to construct and express identity), marketplace culture (to create subcultures of consumption), socio-historic patterning of consumption (to explore influences on consumption), and mass-mediated marketplace ideologies and consumers’ interpretive strategies (to examine systems of meanings in advertising and mass media). While this chapter is making an intervention into debates on global consumer culture, it raises more extant theories than it is able to resolve. At this juncture, this chapter seeks to unravel the processes by which consumer culture is instantiated in global digital worlds, rather than to provide an exhaustive review of all consumer culture theories. Thus, this contribution selects Arnould and Thompson’s consumer culture theory with particular focus on the second domain: marketplace cultures. The study of marketplace culture presents a useful sample to illustrate how consumers forge feelings of social solidarity and create as well as participate in digital virtual worlds through the pursuit and sharing of common economic interests. The next section delves into the spaces of digital virtual forms of economy. The concept of marketplace culture serves as a theoretical framework to better explain and understand consumers’ collective creation and participation in digital virtual economic practices. An investigation of marketplace cultures as instances of economic behaviour helps to generate understandings on how consumers respond to and navigate the contexts of digital virtual markets.

3 Virtual Marketplace Cultures Research on marketplace cultures views consumers primarily as culture producers, rather than merely as culture bearers. The current chapter follows Arnould and Thompson’s tradition of marketplace culture research and shares the goal of studying a specific consumer subculture. Accordingly, this section reviews recent literature on particular consumer groups in digital virtual worlds.

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A digital virtual world can be understood as a computer-based simulated environment in which users create a personal avatar (Belk 2013), explore virtual places, participate in economic activities, interact and communicate with other users. Participation in online communities can foster one’s self-esteem, provides a sense of acceptance and freedom, forms friendships and maintains sociality by providing consumers with the desired “link” to other humans. Virtual worlds allow consumers to flourish, to experiment with new personalities, to become free from social norms and expectations they may face in their personal real-world lives (Denegri-Knott and Molesworth 2010). The consumer has a virtually unlimited array of opportunities to fulfil his/her fantasy, to satisfy his/her desires and to make his/her dreams come true beyond what material goods and real experiences can offer (Campbell 1987). Examples of such possibilities are the acquisition and interaction with an endless catalogue of virtual, from common, to exotic to even magical or fictional items. Virtual worlds may invite the consumer to “buy” luxury cars, to acquire fantasy items, like magic potions, swords or spacecraft, or to try out new roles and become a wizard, a criminal or entrepreneur (Denegri-Knott and Molesworth 2010). Moreover, participation in a digital virtual world leads to an increasing commitment to the community culture. Users may develop personalities within the community and adapt their virtual identity to the particular world they are interacting with. Being a member of a virtual world community also offers a sense of shared consciousness of kind, or feeling of “communitas”. As McAlexander and colleagues note, “communities […] are instrumental to human well-being. Through communities, people share essential resources that may be cognitive, emotional, or material in nature” (McAlexander et al. 2002, p. 38). Of particular interest to this chapter’s concerns are the participation, interaction and economic practices of youth subcultures in digital virtual environments. As “early adopters” of new media and technology, children and teenagers can be seen as significant partakers of digital virtual worlds (Kafai et al. 2013; Buckingham 2007; Montgomery 2001).

4 Digital Kids—An Emerging Consumer Subculture Contrary to the image of children1 as economic innocents, children actively engage in a broad range of economic relations. In fact, children’s consumer power can be seen as a global phenomenon (Buckingham 2007; Zelizer 2002). At this point it should be noted that this chapter makes no claims to study the whole recent literature on childhood and consumption, nor the history of children’s economic activities or its worldwide variations. The next parts of this chapter concentrate, therefore, on analyses shedding light on children’s economic practices and social interactions in digital virtual worlds. Even if children’s economic activities do not only occur in online worlds, the Internet, including digital virtual consumption sites, appears to be a significant prevalent location where children interweave with numerous forms of 1 In

this chapter “children” means fourteen years of age or younger.

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socio-economic activities. As market environments are increasingly becoming more global and virtual, a new consumer subculture of “digital kids” has emerged that constructs children as “empowered” experts of new media technology and active partakers in the (virtual) economy. In this sense, today’s children are represented as “digital natives” who are “born with a mouse in their hands” (Lindstrom and Seybold 2003, p. 24). Descriptive terms for this group of children, known from and used by other research disciplines, are “Generation Z”, “Net Generation” (Tapscott 2009), “Post Millennials” (Oblinger and Oblinger 2005) and “The New Silent Generation” (Saldik 2007), to name but a few. This generation of “digital natives” refers to a category of children who are born from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s, are the first to grow up in a world saturated with digital devices, networks of information as well as perpetual connectivity, and have been used to technology and social media since a young age. The virtual economic participation of this group of children raises a new construction of the child consumer, which in turn requires rethinking some of the basic assumptions of consumer culture theory. Often masked by persistent considerations of children’s passiveness in relation to economic practices, children’s consumer power has been largely ignored or marginalized from scholarly attention (Buckingham and Tingstad 2017; Martens et al. 2004; Zelizer 2002). Marketing researchers, psychologists and pedagogues, who mainly examined positive or negative effects of digital environments on children, have conducted much research in this field. Key examples include recent examinations of marketing and advertising strategies (Grimes 2015a; An and Stern 2011; Marsh 2010), informal learning and cognitive development (Kafai et al. 2019; Kafai 2010), children’s literacy (Wohlwend et al. 2011; Marsh 2010), social interaction (Willett 2015), and gender and interaction (Black et al. 2013). While these study examples discuss some facts about children’s economic behaviour in digital virtual worlds, they do not primarily intend to provide a comprehensive analysis of the involved economic processes. One corollary of this is the notable scarcity of research on children’s active engagement in economic transactions, predominantly in digital virtual worlds, and the significance of this to their everyday lives and broader issues of consumer socialization (Cook 2010; Ekström 2006). According to Cook (2010), learning to consume should not be regarded as a matter of one-way transmission from parent to child, but rather as a process of negotiations and practices in relation to various social contexts, relations and participation. Children should be seen as active partakers in economic activities, and not only as passive recipients of external influences (Cook 2010).

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As such, this chapter focuses on the role and purpose of economic behaviour and social relations in children’s engagement in digital (online) virtual worlds. These hundreds of “destinations”, created for children on the Internet, can be seen as part of a new “digital kids” consumer subculture that is swiftly moving to centre stage and it offers unprecedented possibilities of consumption opportunities for children. Meanwhile, a selective thematic review of published research studies indicates an adaptation of the “digital kids” consumer subculture to digital virtual worlds (see Table 1). Children’s virtual economic behaviour has recently received little attention from consumer research perspectives. For instance, Grimes (2018) as well as Grimes (2015a) examined relationships between children’s participation in online virtual Table 1 Seven online virtual worlds selected for analysis Name

Age limit

Population size

Bella Sara

age group: 7–13

Owned/created by and country of origin

Launch date

Examples of studies

over 8 million Hidden City users Entertainment, Inc, Washington, USA

2007

Grimes (2018)

Club Penguin age group: (rewritten) 6–14

over 150 million users

Disney California, USA

2005 2017 (discontinued)

Grimes (2015a, b) Willett (2015), Marsh (2010)

Moshi Monsters

age group: 6–12

over 80 million users

Mind Candy, United Kingdom, Europe

2008

none

Neopets

age group: 8-unlimited

over 170 million users

Knowledge Adventure, Inc. California, USA

1999

Grimes (2018) Grimes and Regan Shade (2005)

SqwishLand

age group: 8–13

over 1 million Tubz Brands users Ltd, United Kingdom, Europe

2010

none

Webkinz

age group: 6–13

over 40 million users

2007

Wohlwend et al. (2011)

Whyville

age group: 8–14

over 7 million Numendon, users California, USA

1999

Kafai (2010)

Ganz, Ontario, Canada

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worlds and commercial terms. The results of these studies demonstrate how market principles (micro-transactions, paid subscriptions) and promotional features shape and constrain the young users’ dimensions of play in these virtual environments. Another study conducted by Grimes (2015b) offers insights into six commercial, game-themed, child-specific virtual worlds and reveals how play is connected with a “neoromantic, consumerist ethos” (Grimes 2015b, p. 142). In her six cases, Grimes particularly focuses on the multiple functions that children perform in shaping the virtual environment in which they act and engage in consumption practices. Her different configurations of the child player present the extent to which child-specific virtual worlds differ from traditional teen- and adult-oriented virtual worlds. The six cases reflect, configure and reproduce the child player in highly ideological and normative ways that run in accordance with a vision of “safe” play and experiences. Hota and Derbaix (2016) investigated how children’s online play and participation in massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) lead to the development of virtual retail shopping motivations and behaviours. Their findings show gender-related differences between boys’ and girls’ consumer behaviours. According to Hota and Derbaix, boys usually engage in virtual retail shopping because they seek in-game progress and power gains, while girls mainly buy virtual items to enhance their social status. Mäntymäki and Salo (2011, 2013) examined factors that drive teenagers’ continuous usage of digital virtual worlds and investigated to what extent their purchase behaviour can be predicted by continuous use. The authors’ results highlight the importance of social influence on the young users’ in-world purchasing behaviour. The consumption of virtual items was, thus, significantly determined by the presence of friends or other relevant users. In particular, group affiliation and status seeking present key drivers that increase the users’ purchase intention. Ruckenstein (2011) shows another relationship between children’s engagement in digital virtual worlds and economic production. The aim of Ruckenstein’s study was to explore how digital virtual worlds benefit from user-generated contents and vice versa how children use virtual environments to be active creators of their own desired world. According to her findings, the children’s creativity in designing their virtual spaces enhances not only children’s agency and their freedom in decision-making, but also supports economic profit making, since virtual worlds use the consumers’ ideas to improve service and develop new products. Similar to Mäntymäki and Salo (2011, 2013), Lehdonvirta et al. (2009) addressed young users’ motivation to purchase virtual items in digital virtual worlds. Their results indicate that virtual commodities have the same social role as material goods. Much like “real” goods, items bought on the marketplace of digital virtual worlds have symbolic meaning as well. In particular, they are used to signal status, distinction between members and non-members, group affiliation and (self-)identity. Further contributions to research on children’s economic behaviour in digital virtual worlds were found in book publications (Dellinger-Pate and Conforti 2010; Wasko 2010). While these studies exemplify first steps into understanding economic and social dynamics of children’s engagement in digital virtual environments, little is still known about digital virtual worlds as places where children can act as active agents with

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economic power. Further research is needed that contributes to this scarcity of knowledge and examines the conversion process from the economic innocent child (Zelizer 2011) to the active partaker in economic actions.

5 Children’s Digital Virtual Worlds Digital virtual worlds present only one component in a rapidly growing global digital media infrastructure. Their emergence and popularity among the youth are emblematic of the powerful and influential role that new technologies, digital media and virtual realities are currently playing in children’s economic behaviour. Beside digital marketing strategies, advertising and branding (Buckingham and Tingstad 2017; Buckingham 2007; Montgomery 2001), various forms of economic practices are quickly becoming a pervasive presence in virtual “kidspaces”. Burgeoning digital virtual worlds empower children by offering them a variety of virtual experiences, tools, products and consumer items tailored to different interests, preferences and tastes. In the surroundings of digital virtual worlds children often act as inventive, knowledgeable consumers. In fact, when children go online into a virtual world, they check their bank accounts for new deposits, buy clothes or other virtual items for their avatars or virtual pets, trade or hang out with other users. This active engagement and participation of children in virtual economic activities creates new relationships between young consumers and markets, breaks down traditional barriers between children and economy and dismantles the invisibility of children as economic agents. Table 1 demonstrates examples of virtual marketplace cultures in which various forms of virtual economic behaviour and social interaction, particularly of children between six to thirteen years, take place. Research began with a brief review of European youth virtual worlds reports (Yamada-Rice et al. 2017; Jackson et al. 2008; ENISA 2008). While there are currently over 400 virtual worlds designed and targeted specifically to children (Grimes 2018), this chapter focused on the most popular North American and European online virtual worlds based on the following criteria: (1) the world had to be “live” and online, two criteria that characterize the possibility of interaction with other users; (2) still in operation and open to the public (defined as free or partially freely accessible); (3) based in Europe and North America; (4) targeted to children between six to thirteen2 years; and (5) specified on play, economic and social activities. These criteria reduced the list to seven at the time of the study. All seven of the digital virtual worlds incorporated economic activities within their play, care and built environments. Targeted age demographics as well as information about population size, owner/creator, country of origin and launch date were found out by cross-referencing the information on the digital virtual world’s website with contemporary information in peer-reviewed journal studies, news stories and press 2 The age limit was set on the basis of a common cut-off in traditional massively multiplayer online

games (MMOGs) that allows users either until 13 or only older than 13 (Grimes 2015a, 2018).

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releases. The selection of example studies was based on the criterion, which determined the inclusion of studies that examined predominantly children’s economic practices in digital virtual worlds or young users’ consumer behaviour among other research topics. Although a comprehensive description of the findings is beyond the scope of this chapter, Table 1 provides a general overview of the identified child-specific digital virtual worlds at the time of this study. Research indicates that the average age of users of these virtual worlds is under 15 years (Grimes 2018; Wasko 2010; Marsh 2010). Despite its popularity among the youth, its financial success and its exponential growth in the number of users (Grimes 2018), the amount of research conducted on children’s engagement with digital virtual worlds is still in an emerging phase. Outside of industry-produced surveys as well as reports and media, very little is known about the virtual world’s social and economic contents and children’s consumer behaviour in them. Especially data about consumers under the age of 13 is currently underexplored. This lack of research seems to be tied to children’s online privacy protection policies, which constrain or restrict access to users under the age of 13 (Grimes 2018). Online digital worlds, such as Habbo hotel, sMeet, Dofus, RuneScape, AdventureQuest, Stardoll or World of Warcraft, determine, for instance, age restrictions in their terms of use or privacy policies and block or restrain access to users who are younger than 13 mainly due to thematic content categorized as inappropriate for children below this age. Because of the age limitation, these online digital worlds were not included in this study’s list. Only the seven identified online virtual worlds applied to the predetermined inclusion criteria. Of the seven child-friendly online virtual worlds, four are based in the USA, one is based in Canada and one is based in Europe. Most notably seem to be the incorporation of a toy tie-in model of Webkinz. Each Webkinz plush toy has an attached tag with a unique “Secret Code” printed on it. By entering this “Secret Code”, the user can play with a virtual version of his/her pet in the Webkinz online virtual world. While users can still create a free account without the purchase of a tie-in toy and a code, the user will not get access to the whole Webkinz World. In general, all of the seven identified online virtual worlds are initially free to play. However, they promote to pay for different forms of membership that reward the user with many features, benefits, games and prizes to which regular free accounts do not have access. Moreover, some of the identified online virtual worlds (e.g. Neopets) restrict the users to certain areas, unless the parents give permission. As for interaction with other users, only one online virtual world (Club Penguin) is classified as a massively multiplayer online game (MMOG), the other five online virtual worlds include features that allow social, collaborative economic interaction or play with other child users. An MMOG is typically defined as an online game that hosts a large number of players on the same server, usually a company’s server. Users can interact with each other at any given time in the game environments. The other identified online virtual worlds can be characterized as a confirmed virtual world (Grimes 2018) that enables users to interact socially or economically within a shared online space. Generally, all seven virtual environments present online worlds in which children can create an online representation, act as producers, distributors

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and consumers, and socialize with other players by chatting, playing online games, trading virtual items or sharing information. Since a comprehensive description of all seven virtual worlds is beyond the scope of this chapter, the analysis will instead focus on dominant features and similarities identified across all seven examples. It thereby concentrates predominantly on the semiotic and textual dimensions of the commercial processes within these online virtual worlds. The remaining sections of this chapter describe findings pertaining to the economic and commercial aspects that were found across all seven online virtual worlds. At this juncture, it is important to note that this study does not address children’s experiences with the digital virtual environments and features. Nonetheless, this study takes a necessary step by building a nuanced understanding of how children can act as economic agents (or victims) in worldwide online landscapes. It particularly contributes to research pertaining to economic dimensions in children’s digital consumer culture.

6 Children as Targets of Global Digital Markets Marketers’ interest in children is by no means a new phenomenon. In recent years, children have become increasingly important as a potential target group with which various markets wish to establish relationships and loyalties. Far from being recognized as a distinct, innocent group that needs careful protection (Zelizer 2002), children are more and more understood as profitable partakers in economic environments. Both the money children spend and the influence they exert on adults’ purchases and marketers, construct the child as empowered agent who is media and consumption savvy. As a result, markets are targeting children more directly and at an ever younger age by using a broader range of strategies to capture their hearts, minds and pocketbooks. Digital virtual worlds present a lucrative market sector, especially for media and toy companies, to fascinate children and youth cultures. In these global virtual environments, children play by the market rules and are embedded in the ideologies of contemporary (digital) consumer culture. In fact, digital virtual worlds are comparable to real markets. Inside each digital virtual world, there is a virtual marketplace where virtual items can be purchased or traded with other users. Prices are set by the function of supply and demand. Each world has also its official virtual currency, often known as credits that indicate the costs of a virtual product, service or activity. Just as in real life, money must be earned to enjoy the various virtual world’s offers. In general, users can gain money by participating in mini-games, certain activities or competitions. Earned credits can then be used to build and decorate one’s home, to buy virtual commodities or pets, or to take care of virtual companions. In this sense, digital virtual worlds follow the economic logics and concepts of real markets.

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Eager to reach young consumers, digital virtual worlds can be closely linked to the global expansion of child markets as well as to issues of growing web commercialization (Buckingham 2007). Previous distinct boundaries between “sacred” childhood and market economy (Zelizer 2002, 2011) disappear and are reinforced simultaneously. Children increasingly participate in global (digital) markets, engage in economic transactions, and thereby construct an image of the active, creative “child economist”. Yet activity does not necessarily mean agency. On the one hand, digital virtual worlds claim to “empower” children to become autonomous creators of their own worlds, and thereby improve their cognitive abilities, social capabilities and economic literacy. On the other hand, they seek to make the child users behave in such a way that conforms to their profit-making market interests. In relation to children’s participation in these digital virtual worlds, it leads to opposing views of the young users: are children active, productive consumers or passive players who are just guided and manipulated by the virtual world’s commercial market ideologies? This section will discuss these contrasting views and point to some possible means of looking beyond such binary thinking. The recent emergence of digital virtual worlds and children’s participation in the form of content production and various consumption practices may lead to a “global commercialized childhood” that transcends national boundaries and cultural differences, but this may not necessarily be disadvantageous for children themselves. While there are accounts that see the (digital) commercialization of human life as a threat to the sacredness of childhood (Grimes 2018; Zelizer 2005), there are also accounts that emphasize the social and economic capabilities of children who advance recent phenomena of “prosumption” (Buckingham and Tingstad 2017; Ruckenstein 2011, 2013; Ritzer and Jurgenson 2010; Jenkins 2006). As the next parts of this chapter shall show, children’s engagement in digital virtual worlds not only reflects positive assertions of the so-called growing “participatory culture” (Jenkins et al. 2016), but also raises concerns about children’s increasing immersion in digital consumer culture. Yet, this chapter moves beyond tensions between consumer agency and market power and focuses instead on the interrelationships between them. Agency is seen here as a form of creative contribution that is practiced through economic actions (production, distribution, consumption). Power is seen as a form of regulation that does not alienate or manipulate, but aims at involving and encouraging child users to actively create content. Digital virtual worlds thoroughly intertwine these two attributes. What follows below is a critical analysis of the reciprocal interplay between the seven selected examples of online virtual worlds (see Table 1) and children. This relational process of consumer–market interaction is grouped into three categories: (1) virtual production, (2) virtual distribution, and (3) virtual consumption. In each of these sectors, differentiation of children’s economic behaviour can be found depending on their engagement in the digital virtual environment. Online worlds appear to be the most prevalent locations that bring together producers, distributors and consumers, often simultaneously, in innovative ways.

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6.1 Virtual Production Connecting with analyses of online virtual worlds, it is useful to begin with a broad definition of production. Production here means any form of participation, labour or effort that creates value (Ritzer and Jurgenson 2010; Prahalad and Ramaswamy 2004). From a capitalistic perspective, such a definition does not signal anything new. Consumers have usually been part of the value chain, processing further a purchased product in order to consume it, and thus adding value to it (e.g. cooking, or adapting a product for alternative use). Forms of production in digital virtual worlds, compared to prosumption, emerge in situations where value is produced by the users for the company. “In these situations, the consumer creates value (through design, knowledge production, or customer feedback) that is co-opted by the company and resold for surplus value” (Humphreys and Grayson 2008, p. 970). Such economic co-creation of value ties this study to questions of how children take on steps in the value chain to contribute to the exchange value creation process3 in digital virtual worlds. Children’s active engagement and creative input can be firmly linked to economic surplus that contributes to the profitability of online virtual worlds. In this sense, most virtual worlds rely on and take advantage of user-generated content, while child users transform themselves into unpaid labourers in their own right. By noting that children are often self-motivated to assist in economic practices (Zelizer 2011) brings in an important point. Studies show that in some cases children refuse any kind of payment or remuneration for their work, often because they perceive getting money as unwelcome bribes (Zelizer 2011). Even in online virtual worlds, children do not expect any incentives for their creative contribution. Instead, the value that child users earn as a result of their engagement is simply their eagerness and enjoyment of participating (Ruckenstein 2011). The feeling of autonomy, a sense of social belonging, group affiliation or the allure of status present some examples of intangible benefits which motivate the majority of children to join the virtual world community (Grimes 2015b; Ruckenstein 2011, 2013; Lehdonvirta et al. 2009). Besides, many children hardly notice the fact that the profitability of the online virtual world depends on the involvement, inspiration and content-creation of the users (Ruckenstein 2011). This raises the question of how “content” is produced within the virtual world. Table 2 below gives an overview of the various possibilities for children to participate and contribute to the value creation process pertaining to the study’s seven examples of online virtual worlds. As can be taken from the results (see Table 2), each of the seven examples invites young users to join in and become creators of their own world in different ways. Neopets presents, for instance, a complex online world where children can either adopt a “Neopet” or create a customized “newborn”. Each Neopet has a unique name, 3 According

to Marx (1867), the value of a commodity is dual. Its exchange-value is the quantified worth of one good or service in relation to another, mostly stated in terms of money units, its price. Its use-value is anchored in the utility and purpose that can fulfil human requirement, wants or needs by way of its consumption.

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Table 2 Seven selected online virtual worlds and virtual production Online virtual world

Forms of virtual production

Bella Sara

Customizing avatar Customizing horse Customizing stable/room Gallery, FanFiction

Club Penguin (rewritten)

Customizing avatar (“Penguin”) Customizing igloos Customizing clothes Customizing player card ArtWork, FanArt In-game contest “Penguin of the week”

Neopets

Customizing pets (“Neopets”) Customizing rooms Creation of personal pet website, Art Gallery, Poetry Centre Contests & Spotlights (be an artist, a writer, a coder or a game programmer)

Moshi Monsters

Customizing monsters (“Moshlings”) Customizing houses Art Gallery Design-a-Moshling Contest

SqwishLand

Customizing avatar (“Sqwavatar”) Customizing rooms Customizing pets (“Sqwishlanders”)

Webkinz

Customizing pets (“Webkinzs”) Customizing rooms Customizing clothes FanArt Showcase, FanVideos Design a companion pet “Webkinz Newz Contests”

Whyville

Customizing avatar (“Whyvillian”) Customizing houses Customizing pets (“Whypets”) Game Design Contest

gender, colour, attributes and personality, all given to them by the user. Similar to Neopets, a new user wanting to participate in the worlds of Club Penguin, Whyville, SquishLand or Bell Sara, is requested to create an avatar, one’s digital representation inside the world. Only Moshi Monsters and Webkinz have fixed species that can be chosen, but not customized in the same way as in the other worlds, where users can select different sets of skin colour, hair, facial features, clothes and accessories to design their avatar/pet. In addition to that, users do not only choose and customize their avatars/pets, but also design and personalize their own homes. As Table 2 demonstrates, all seven examples offer the opportunity to build and furnish one’s own virtual residence. In particular, Club Penguin, Whyville, Neopets and Webkinz exemplify online virtual worlds where players are able to decorate and personally customize their

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homes with many various types of furniture, objects, flooring and wallpapers. Other forms of value creation involve children in the creation of narratives, storylines or fanart that deal with their character or pet. For online virtual worlds to thrive and make profit, they require the creative contribution and involvement of children. For this reason, five examples use in-game methods to keep children attracted to their virtual offerings. In order to meet the desires of the child users and keep them productive, Club Penguin, Moshi Monsters, Webkinz, Whyville and Neopets encourage children to create content by recognizing and rewarding their innovative creations. Club Penguin, for instance, stimulates the children’s creativeness through the provision of theme-based fantasy costumes that enables users to dress their penguin avatars in fancy clothes. If a user dresses his/her penguin avatar in a very stylish, fashionable and unique way, he or she has the chance of being nominated or chosen to get the prestigious position of being the “Penguin of the Week”. These examples of children as creative producers show that a substantial proportion of the online virtual worlds’ websites and activities is mainly generated and sustained by the children’s engagement. Online virtual worlds do not only take advantage of user-generated content, but also actively support and reward children in creating it. This appreciation of children’s creative potential underpins the social dynamics that promotes forms of virtual production. The interaction between the online virtual world and the child users seems to present the locus of value creation (Prahalad and Ramaswamy 2004). Both, the virtual world and the children jointly create value and thereby benefit from each other. Virtual production, thus, draws children into a reciprocal form of economic relationship with virtual markets. As the seven examples of online virtual worlds demonstrate, children’s productive ties with these virtual markets vary significantly in content, but always include the deployment of user-friendly and child-specific virtual environments, on the side of the virtual world, and creative, enthusiastic input from the child users.

6.2 Virtual Distribution As with virtual production, children engage in various forms of virtual distribution. In this study, distribution refers not only to quid-pro-quo exchanges, but also includes significant other forms of transfers. In virtual world communities, children regularly take part in organized systems of distribution that cover a wide variety of objects, gifts, virtual money and information. Table 3 lists the in-game activities related to distribution within the study’s seven examples. Participating in these economic transfers is a necessary part of gameplay to acquire the virtual world’s money as well as to obtain items. Thus, bank transfers, saving deposits, stock markets, auctions and barters present a major part in Club Penguin, Neopets and Whyville (see Table 3). The key point here is that much of the virtual worlds’ economy is based on premises of value exchange. Engaging in these economic transfers requires children to understand a fairly complex system

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Table 3 Seven selected online virtual worlds and virtual distribution Online virtual world

Forms of virtual distribution

Bella Sara

Trade: trading card collections Communication: blog, forum, discussion board

Club Penguin (rewritten)

Money exchange: Stock Trade Building, Auction Communication: chatrooms, forums, text-messaging, blogs

Moshi Monsters

Trade: trading card collections Communication: chatrooms, forums, blogs

Neopets

Money exchange: Stock Market, Safety Deposit Box Trade: Trading Post, Auction House Communication: chatrooms, forums, instant messaging, e-mail

SqwishLand

Communication: safe chat system, sending postcards to friends, blogs, forum

Webkinz

Trade: Trade forum Communication: chatroom, insider forum, blogs, Message Centre Other: sending gift boxes

Whyville

Money exchange: banking system Trade: Trading room Communication: chat areas, bulletin boards, The Whyville Times, y-mail, blogs

of distribution. Similar to real-world commercial transactions, child users have to manage their in-game earnings and investments carefully. Transfer of items usually takes place between players either in the form of gifts or in the form of trade. So far, only Webkinz gives the users the opportunity to send gift boxes to other users (see Table 3). Three examples of online virtual worlds (Webkinz, Whyville, Neopets) offer special trading facilities where members can sell or exchange items with other users. Two other examples (Moshi Monsters, Bella Sara) emphasize trade through an ongoing introduction of new additions in the form of card collection sets. These cards include a special code that enables players to obtain additional items, pets, or access to new in-game areas. Children can trade these cards with other users in the real world to expand their collection and game features. As can be seen from the variety of exchange systems, the majority of the examples in Table 3 reveals extensively organized and differentiated children’s distributional economies. However, not all transfers include an exchange of money or objects. Children’s distributional activities also take place in an exchange of information. In most cases, the worlds’ built-in chat systems present primary means through which users can talk with each other and share information. All seven examples of online virtual worlds use at least one form of player-to-player communication system. Most notably here are the safe chat systems of Club Penguin, Neopets, Whyville, Sqwishland, Webkinz and Moshi Monsters. Unlike adult social networks, these online virtual worlds employ conversation filters to limit inappropriate words. Thus, players can write messages to or chat with each other, but only use preapproved words. In addition to that, in the

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world of Neopets, all players under 13 must have their parents’ permission before they can use the e-mail system, read the message boards or use the chat program. Nevertheless, communication facilities particularly drive the young users’ intentions to express themselves, impress others by displaying their creations, and show off their high status and wealth.4 In fact, much of children’s creative ideas and innovative content are presented in the virtual worlds’ community forums, blogs and fanart. If one follows these children’s distribution practices into their relations with the online virtual world, one can see how virtual worlds take advantage of player-to-player interactions and information exchange mechanisms. Even if children merely chat with other users, communication between them seems to be indispensable for the virtual world’s concept improvement. Content includes not only the children’s creations, but also any kind of information that the users post in the world’s blogs, forums, chatrooms or instant messengers. The economic rationale behind this is that children’s chat discourses indirectly pass on information to the virtual world company. Thus, child users support the virtual world simply through their communication with others. Their discourses are valuable in giving insights into their social aspirations, desires, ideas and creations. Additionally, children often inspire and motivate each other to buy new virtual objects, modify their own virtual home/character/pet and thereby contribute to value creation. As the results show, children’s distribution of information produces value for both, the virtual world company and the child user, in an economic as well as social way.

6.3 Virtual Consumption This section follows the trail of children’s relational ties to online virtual worlds through various forms of consumption. Here, consumption includes the acquisition of the virtual world’s goods or services, rather than their final disposition. Table 4 demonstrates how simulated shopping and commodity consumption present central elements of gameplay in the seven study examples of online virtual worlds. After entering the online virtual world for the first time, the young player will immediately become familiar with the logic of consumption and engage in the simulated consumption activities that are offered by the virtual world. One of the most compelling aspects of the consumerist nature of the seven online virtual worlds is the world’s in-game currency. As can be seen in Table 4, each example applies its own currency that indicates the costs of a virtual item, activity or service. Earning and investing virtual money “rule” the gameplay and articulate the ethos of consumerism. Every consumption practice, from purchasing virtual items, food, clothing, furniture, props and other tools or facilities, revolves around spending virtual money. In all activities, children have to know the monetary value of what they are doing. Two examples (Webkinz, SqwishLand) incorporate a toy tie-in model that allows 4 In most online virtual worlds, high status and wealth can be obtained by possessing many rare and

valuable items or by collecting a lot of virtual species (e.g. pets, monsters).

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Table 4 Seven selected online virtual worlds and virtual consumption Online virtual world

Forms of virtual consumption

Bella Sara

Currency: Horseshoes Shopping: bazaar Microtransaction: Bella Sara trading cards with special codes Access: initially free

Club Penguin (rewritten)

Currency: Coins Shopping: shopping areas/different stores Access: initially free, subscription fee for membership

Neopets

Currency: Neopoints Shopping: Neopets Marketplace, Neopets Bazaar, service shops Microtransaction: Neopet trading cards with special code Access: subscription fee for Neopets Premium

Moshi Monsters

Currency: Coins/Rox Shopping: non-member shops, member shops Microtransaction: Moshi Monsters trading cards with special codes (“egg hunt”) Access: initially free, subscription fee for membership

SqwishLand

Currency: Sqwash Shopping: different stores Microtransaction: Sqwishland toys with special codes Access: initially free, toy tie-in model, subscription fee for membership

Webkinz

Currency: KinzCash Shopping: W-Shop, Curio-Shop Microtransaction: Webkinz toys with special codes Access: initially free, toy tie-in model, subscription fee for membership

Whyville

Currency: Clams/Pearls Shopping: Shopping areas, service shops Microtransaction: buying of pearls by using real money Access: initially free, subscription based services

children to play online with a virtual version of their plush toy. For instance, each Webkinz stuffed animal that was purchased in the real world comes with a special code. Children who register to the online world by using this code automatically have access to additional features and areas within the online virtual environment. Conversely, children who create a free account without a code, get only limited access to the Webkinz World. In addition, three examples mediate the purchase of real-world trading cards. Each card comes with a special code that activates in-game benefits or increases the player’s possession of virtual species after entering the code. Beyond these tie-in product models, access to the online virtual world is initially free in all seven examples, but some worlds offer premium membership and exclusive access to a wider range of in-game facilities through the payment of a subscription fee.

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What can be taken from the results in Table 4 is that each online virtual world includes micro-transactions as part of their revenue model. These micropayments should encourage child players to spend real-world money on obtaining additional content and improving game experience by upgrading their avatars/pets or receiving special items. Although micro-transactions are usually under a critical spotlight (Grimes 2015a), both sides, children and online virtual worlds, can benefit from them. As this study underlines a reciprocal relationship between young users and the virtual world company, micropayments can intertwine both aims. On one level, paying users can add value and enhance game experience that results from the unlocked access to additional features and exclusive elements. On another level, micro-transactions can vastly increase the virtual world companies’ profit. In this sense, the profitability of online virtual worlds relies on the crowd that is willing to pay. The more users spend real-world money on unlocked and extended gameplay, the higher are the revenues. Thus, micro-transactions integrate a real-world capitalistic market system into child-specific virtual world economies. As explained above, there are several ways to connect the gameplay with realmoney purchases. However, there are also various ways to take part in in-game consumption practices. In all seven examples, shopping, for instance, is an easy way to acquire new virtual items (see Table 4). Each world contains a complex system of commerce, including different shops, service industries, catalogues and numerous other forms of consumption facilities. Children can choose a wide variety of virtual items and props. As can be seen in Table 4, the selection of avatars, pets, accessories, clothes, food, items, furniture and other tools sets the landscape for making purchase decisions. Buying those things is a necessary part of gameplay in each of the seven examples as they serve a variety of purposes: to nurture and train virtual pets/species, to dress one’s own avatar/pets/species, to furnish and decorate one’s own home, to visit special in-game areas and to participate in social activities (e.g. parties, gift-giving). Each consumption practice, much like their real-world counterparts, is conceptualized in terms of its virtual monetary costs and benefits. And, what is more, children generally become encouraged to make all these purchases, since they seek to make progress in the virtual environment. Thus, the reciprocal relationship between child users and the online virtual world’s consumer markets can be articulated in the children’s motivation to constantly return to the site in order to consume and thereby enhance one’s own player status. Furthermore, four examples invite children to participate in collection-driven play (see Table 4). These collectibles, mostly in the form of virtual species or trading cards, may also motivate many child users to keep returning to the site. Although the virtual marketplaces of the examples provide an elastic supply of virtual commodities, many items are only available for a limited period of time. For instance, seasonal items, such as Christmas trees or Halloween pumpkins, can be bought only at specific times of the year. Because of their limited supply, these “rare” items are very special and may thus encourage many child users to buy them. In addition to that, online virtual worlds, like Club Penguin, Neopets, Webkinz or Whyville, use a child-specific language of consumption to influence children’s consumer behaviour. “Crazy deal for a crazy day!” (Club Penguin), “Join us for

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TRIPLE WEEKEND, where you get triple the clams” (Whyville), “Half Price Day! All the items that go into shops on this day will all be half price! Wow – don’t have a Kau!” (Neopets), “The Cyber Thursday Sale – save 50% on select room themes” (Webkinz)—all these slogans should direct children’s purchase decisions towards special offers. In sum, the results demonstrate that the study’s examples of online virtual worlds sustain commitment to a virtual version of consumer culture in different ways. Aspects of identity-creation, customizing one’s own virtual home, or caring for and nurturing a pet are translated into a language of economy. In this sense, all seven examples incorporate a strong ethos of consumerism, acquisition and proliferation of virtual commodities. As such, consumption indicates far more than individual purchase decisions. It reveals children as actively embedded in a virtual culture of getting and spending. More importantly, it shows their dynamic, differentiated relations to the online virtual worlds’ capitalistic logics of consumption.

7 Conclusion Through this study’s selective exposition of seven online virtual worlds, it has sought to clarify how children participate in these digital markets as well as to reveal complex social and economic dynamics that seemingly “rule” the gameplay. In this final section, the study summarizes the results from the seven chosen examples and concludes with a discussion of (virtual) market relations with the new “digital kids” subculture. Findings from the content analysis of the seven online virtual worlds shed light on children’s relations to these digital markets as they carry on forms of production, distribution and consumption. Adopting an individualistic perspective on the theory of marketplace cultures (Arnould and Thompson 2005), the virtual environments open opportunities for exploring constantly emerging forms of online communities. In relation to children, themes linking to issues of sociality, belonging, play and economic literacy appear to be of particular interest. This chapter particularly focused on processes of economic interactions and engagements that affect both virtual world companies’ practices and children’s doings. It brings to the fore how online virtual worlds rely on the children’s playfulness, participation and creative capabilities, on the one hand, and how child users, especially those between six and thirteen years, can liberate themselves from their prescribed powerless economic position in an adult dominated world (Cook 2007; Zelizer 2002). What is perhaps most remarkable about this study’s analysis is how a new (digital) youth culture revolves around the ethos of global virtual markets. In particular, these online virtual worlds do not depict young children as incomplete “becomings” that must be educated, but regard them as knowledgeable, inventive “beings”. This perspective underpins the study’s corollary that online virtual worlds clearly do have considerable power to determine the settings that are available to child users, but children themselves also take on an important role in creating those settings.

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In fact, the contemporary culture of “digital kids” provides an expanding field of global (virtual) commerce in which forms of production, distribution and consumption are interconnected. As this net generation continues to expand its participation in world-wide web environments, they adopt a significant role in the creation of online content and contribute in meaningful ways to the profitability of digital virtual worlds. The outcomes of children’s increasing immersion in a virtual consumer culture, especially of those between six and thirteen years, do not have to be as alarming as some study examples claim (Grimes 2018; Dellinger-Pate and Conforti 2010; Grimes and Regan Shade 2005). Of course, the economic “bottom line” will further label children as an effective source of profit and their creative “empowerment” will still remain debatable. Although online virtual worlds cherish the idea of a child as an evolving person, who is able to actively participate in certain forms of economic action, they also represent the latest examples of capitalistic market systems. In these systems, child users are seen to be driven by mere commercial imperatives and economic ideologies which many parents, educators and critics find disturbing (Wasko 2010; Grimes and Regan Shade 2005). However, seeing this in terms of a simple capitalistic market strategy is inappropriate, since the context of contemporary consumer culture is changing (Buckingham and Tingstad 2017; Ruckenstein 2011; Ritzer and Jurgenson 2010). Indeed, one of the interesting characteristics of online virtual worlds is their reciprocal relationship with children that is based on the freedom and creativity of the users. Online virtual worlds are more likely to stand back and to meddle less with the child players who are producing, distributing and consuming the content. The idea is more to let children engage in the world the way they wish (besides issues relating to safety, terms of conditions, code of conduct, etc.) than to seek to control them. Online virtual worlds do not need to dictate to children how to use their virtual facilities, but if they did, the quality of what would be produced on the sites would likely decline (Ritzer and Jurgenson 2010). What can be concluded is that the interplay between virtual worlds and child users consists of synergies and contradictions. Nevertheless, this relation produces value and benefits for both, the virtual world company and children. Yet, one question may thereby be left for consideration: Can children’s economic engagement only be fully appreciated if it is in line with expectations to generate economic profits? All in all, this chapter offered a modest contribution to emerging discourses about the function of online virtual worlds within a global digital youth culture. It attempted to fill the knowledge gap by identifying variables and underlying relational mechanisms in online virtual worlds that configure the child player as producer, distributor and consumer. The most compelling finding from this study is clear support for analysis that emphasizes the role digital virtual worlds play in order to advance recent phenomena of “prosumption” by virtue of the attention paid to children’s cognitive, social and economic capabilities. Researchers can use the study’s results to guide their development of hypotheses as well as to conduct empirical research.

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Moreover, the chapter particularly raises additional considerations pertaining to the special role of childhood within global (digital) markets, most notably assumptions about children’s abilities and vulnerabilities as well as perspectives on children’s active economic engagement. In the twenty-first century, children and youth are increasingly becoming a central and desirable target group for global (virtual) markets. Thus, modern meanings of childhood will increasingly intertwine with and be supported by (virtual) economic activities. Since the current study has merely scratched the surface of an enormous iceberg, additional insights need to be gained. Given the focus of this research on a content analysis of seven online virtual worlds that specialize in children between six and thirteen years, the results provide only a partial glance of a much-needed research field. A complete account will need to empirically address the perspectives and experiences of child users who participate in online virtual worlds. Thus, future research should focus on uncovering how perceptions of the child as producer, distributor and consumer are not only constructed and reinforced by global (digital) markets, but also how they are in turn experienced and shaped by the child itself as an active economic partaker.

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